Category Archives: Omaha Beach

A Rendezvous

One central  philosophy guided my years of American history instruction. The story had to feel personal to each student, after all it is their country. For the unit on World War Two, I aimed to act as a bridge between my grandparents generation to the kids seated before me. While growing up, my grandparents played a large part in shaping my world view, as the old folks often shared their life experiences. Each had a unique tale on how they committed to fight totalitarianism abroad in the 1940’s, and defend democracy at home. 

All the following accounts involved inconvenience, sacrifice, and interruptions to family life. At that singular moment all they knew was to serve their country, and defeat foreign tyranny. 

A new dark age lay in America’s defeat.

This is Ray Turner, born in 1905 in Hammond, Illinois. This young man migrated west, joining family members in Northern Idaho. Ray soon found his way to Spokane, Washington, where he found work as a postal carrier. Stopping for lunch along his mail route he met a waitress in a downtown cafe, Ailene Peterson, a single mother of one, and after a while they fell in love. Marrying in the fall of 1941, the newly weds, while on a Sunday drive caught a breaking news bulletin on the car radio that the Japanese had attack on Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. Ray turned his automobile around, motored back to Spokane, and joined the Coast Guard the next morning. Stationed out of Willapa Bay in Tokeland, Washington, Ray and the crew of the USS Manzanita patrolled the extensive, rugged Pacific coastline of Washington and Oregon monitoring for Japanese vessels. And it was aboard the Manzanita that Ray remained until August,1945 when he mustered out of the service and returned to Spokane. After a life of grandkids, holidays, and fun on his lake property, he retired from the US Postal Service, passing away in 1974.

Kurtz Olson hailed from Wing River, Minnesota, born on a frigid day in January, 1905. Kurtz, as the youngest of seven children took up welding as a young man, and made a fair living during the difficult Depression years. This photo, take in the 1930’s, (Kurtz on the left) indicates that Hitler was considered harmless and laughable. That certainly changed in 1939, and after the Pearl Harbor attack brought America into the war, Kurtz packed up his wife and family and traveled west to Tacoma, Washington in search of war work. Kurtz spent his days dismantling scrap metal in a welding yard preparing the steel for conversion to ships, planes, tanks, and other war materiel. After the war Kurtz moved his family to Spokane, where he welded, owned a series of mutts, cut firewood with his son, and grandson’s. Kurtz passed on in 1989. 

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This GI is Joe Tucker, this snapshot taken somewhere in France around 1944. Born in Craig County, Oklahoma in 1907, Joe found himself back in uniform at the ripe old age of 37, much older than the 18 and 19 year-olds in his outfit. Joe had actually been in the army until 1939, receiving his first discharge before the war. Making his way to the Pacific Northwest he too, settled in Spokane where he met and married a widow with three children. His daughter from his first marriage lived in the city, as well, and he wanted to remain near her. Working for the Northern Pacific Railroad, with his new, larger family, Joe joined the Washington National Guard for the extra pay guard duty brought in. After Pearl Harbor the US Government nationalized the Washington Guard, and off he went to war. After training stateside, then stationed in the south of England, Joe found himself on Normandy Beach on June 7, 1944, D+1. Surviving those first days he and his fellow Guardsmen suffered through the Battle of the Bulge, finally winding their way to Germany. On one particular night, Joe stood guard duty somewhere in Germany. He heard his sergeant grouse was the soldier on duty asleep? The reply was no, it’s Tucker, and he’s awake alright. (Joe liked telling that story). Eventually Joe shipped home to reunite with his family in 1945.

From her waitressing job, Ailene Peterson, turned Ailene Turner followed her new husband Ray to the Washington coast. Traveling with her young daughter Ailene looked for war work as well. Born in 1914, in Clinton, Minnesota, Ailene had married quite young, desperate to leave her father’s stump farm in North Dakota. Husband #1, Joe Tucker had failed her, and with her young daughter in tow, sought refuge with family members in Spokane. It was in Bremerton, Washington that she found employment wiring mine sweepers for America’s Russian allies, (she said they were very rude). In later life, Ailene proudly mentioned that her work never had to be redone. She always wired it right the first time. In an operators cab of a crane, Ailene noticed the girls below waving their arms and jumping about. Shutting down the motor she heard them yell that the Japanese had surrendered, and the war was over. Ailene scrambled down from her seat, and joined the victory celebration. She, too, along with Ray returned to Spokane until her death in 1990.

Besides being my grandparent’s, and generously sharing their remarkable stories with me, what else did these people share in common? They put aside their personal lives to step up in defiance of fascism and authoritarianism. They knew that service to America, to our democracy, was their first duty.

Retelling my grandparent’s war-time sacrifices to my history students added a vividness to the coursework that encouraged the kids to do the same with their elders. That, once again is how I bridged the war years to now, making it personal for students. 

President Roosevelt had characterized that moment as America’s “Rendezvous with Destiny,” and those people rose masterfully to the challenge. And despite all the hostility to democracy today, we cannot surrender to those forces, and betray our forebears who stood up to defend our way of life.

Perhaps now is our “Rendezvous with Destiny,” and this time all we have to do is vote for the Democrat over the wannabe dictator.

Once again, a new dark age lay in America’s defeat. 

Gail Chumbley is the author of the two-part memoir, “River of January,” and “River of January: Figure Eight.” Both are available on Kindle. Chumbley has also penned two history stage plays, “Clay,” and “Wolf By The Ears.” She is the co-author of “Dancing On Air,” and feature length screenplay, and is working on “Peer Review,” for the stage, a series of short plays where DJT meets real presidents from the past.

gailchumbley@gmail.com

The Unforgivable Curse

Many of us have read JK Rowling’s Harry Potter books and/or watched the films. The author created a wondrous world of spells, incantations, and even included law and order via three unforgivable curses. 

There are guardrails in this tale, and a bit of a messiah storyline. Harry willingly sacrifices himself, as had his parents and many others before. However, the “Boy Who Lived,” does, and returns to fight and vanquish wickedness. 

Love, too, permeates the storyline, and the righteous power of good over evil. 

But that’s not my take.

As a career History educator I came to a different conclusion; Harry Potter told me that failing to understand our shared past can be lethal. And that was the metaphor I preached to my History students.

Harry rises to the threat and defends all that is good and valuable in his world. If he didn’t, Harry could have been killed and his world destroyed.

It’s so apropos at this moment in our history to grasp our collective story as Americans.

Honest differences within the confines of our beliefs is one thing. Obliterating the tenants of democracy is quite another. 

Americans cannot surrender our country to this would-be dictator, the things that have cost our people so dearly. Freezing soldiers at Valley Forge did not languish to enable DJT to trademark his brand to hotels, steaks or a failed university. The fallen at Gettysburg, and the suffering in Battle of the Bulge was not to pave the way for DJT to get us all killed from a ravaging plague. The girls who perished in the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire, the miners murdered in the Ludlow Massacre, or humiliated Civil Rights workers beaten at the Woolworth’s lunch counter was not for Donald Trump to validate racism and sexism and undo labor laws. 

He doesn’t know our nation’s history, and as George Santayana warned us, we are condemned to sacrifice all over again. 

Vote. 

Gail Chumbley is the author of the two-part memoir, “River of January,” and “River of January: Figure Eight.

gailchumbley@gmail.com

That’s All

Colonel Clark used to bring his young son down to the dojo where my brothers participated in judo lessons. Judo had been my grandfather’s idea and he faithfully chauffeured the boys, and I sometimes came along too.

My Grandpa Ray always sat with Colonel Clark, if the old gent happened to be present. That meant I sat with Colonel Clark too. The two old men would talk and talk, seated next to one another, though their eyes remained fixed on their boys on the mats. They never seemed to look each other, but remained absorbed in their conversation.

My own distracted attention span only caught snippets of the murmuring discussion. “MacArthur, Wainwright, and Bataan,”  came up in their exchanges And despite my youth, I understood something grave, something momentous lay behind the back and forth of these two men.

Later my older brother filled in the substance of what I reluctantly overheard.

Colonel Clark had been left on the Bataan Peninsula with around 12,000 American soldiers when General Douglas MacArthur evacuated the Philippines in 1942. Under the new command of General Jonathan Wainwright the Americans surrendered to superior Japanese force, among them young Clark. The Japanese summarily ordered this defeated army to march some sixty miles through the dense, humid and scorching jungle. The purpose of the Bataan Death March was cruel attrition; death by exposure, heat exhaustion, dehydration, and starvation. American numbers dwindled. When a captive stumbled, or fainted from heat stroke, or dehydration, the penalty was an immediate beheading. Young Clark bore witness to this historic moment of living hell, and he clearly never separated himself from that ordeal.

Bataan had fused forever into his being.

And that that same ordinary old gent who chatted quietly with my grandfather had a young son was a miracle. In light of his wartime ordeal, Clark should never have survived much less sired a child.

The valiant are everywhere. 

For example there was George, the high school janitor.

For many years this little old fellow cleaned the litter-strewn halls where I taught American history. Equipped with two hearing aids, this diminutive man pushed an immense dust mop, wider than he was tall.

To a passing eye George moved about nearly invisible. Just a friendly, gentle, and harmless grandfather.

As I pontificated about D-Day, Tarawa, and the Bulge to sleepy Juniors, a foot or so of mop often slid and stopped by the open classroom door.  Silent, George hid as I blathered on about the Second World War. A short time later I learned this quiet 80-something had once handled a M-1 Garand, shivering aboard one of those heaving and crashing Higgins boats, churning  toward destiny on Omaha Beach. George had been in that first wave in June, 1944. 

Humbled to learn our little janitor was a living, breathing hero, I became the student. “So George, what do you remember most about that morning?” 

The old warrior rasped in a high, faded voice, “It was awful early, and the water was awful cold.”

So understated.

Another veteran crossed my path at the high school by the name of Roy Cortes. His son, our school Resource Officer brought Roy by to visit with my students. And another narrative of a remarkable life unfolded.

As a teenager Roy was hired by FDR’s Civilian Conservation Corps. In the forests of Idaho Roy Cortes fought fires, built campsites and lookout towers for the US Forest Service. But in late December, 194, after Pearl Harbor, Roy headed straight to the recruiting office, and was sworn into the US Army.

Roy, too, had ferried over from Southampton England, the afternoon of that bloody June day.

“What do you remember most about the invasion, Sir?” a student asked.

The affable elder smiled slightly, then a cloud passed over his expression. “I lost everyone in my outfit. I was real scared. Then I had orders to regroup with other survivors on the beach. You see, that was bad because I’m Mexican-American, and my first platoon got used to me, and the bullying had stopped. Now I had to start all over with the slurs.”

“For days, as we moved inland, these fellas giving me the business. One time this guy says, ‘Mexicans can’t shoot.’ I said that I could. So he said, ‘Ok Manuel, Jose, or whatever your name is. Show me you can shoot.”

“See those birds on that tree branch up ahead? The guy pointed. Shoot one of those.’ I lifted up my rifle and aimed at the branch and pulled the trigger.”

At that Roy again begins chuckling. “I missed the branch, the birds all flew away, and twelve Germans came out of a grove with their hands up.”

Astounded, no one spoke. Then a huge wave of warm laughter filled the classroom. Roy simply smiled and shrugged.

Colonel Clark, George the Janitor, and Roy Cortes. They were just kids whose lives became defined in ways we civilians can never fathom. They were scared, and hot, and cold, and hungry, and suffering, and ultimately lucky enough to come home to America.

They married, raised families, and move on with life.

That’s All.

Gail Chumbley is the author of the two-part memoir “River of January,” and “River of January: Figure Eight,” co-writer of the screenplay, “Dancing On Air” based on those books. She has penned three stage plays on history topics, “Clay” on the life of Senator Henry Clay, “Wolf By The Ears” examining the beginnings of American slavery, and “Peer Review” where 47 is confronted by specters of four past presidents.

Go Get ‘Um

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The date was June 5, 1944, and General Dwight D Eisenhower had made the decision to begin the Allied invasion of France the next morning. Christened “Operation Overlord” the massive campaign required disruption inland from the Normandy coast to insure a solid beach-head. The task fell to soldiers of the US 82nd Airborne, the US 101st Airborne,  and members of the 6th British Airborne. The mission was to impair the Wehrmacht’s ability to move their Panzer units toward the five invasion points.

General Eisenhower met informally with soldiers of the 101st, chatting and encouraging, to build morale. He must have felt an enormous responsibility sending these young Americans on such a hazardous and vital mission. While he mingled with the men, Ike suddenly wondered, “Is anybody here from Kansas?” A voice replied from the crowd, “I’m from Kansas, sir.” Ike looked the boy in the eye and responded, “Go get ‘um, Kansas.”

That story always leaves me teary. I don’t cry in movies, poetry doesn’t move me, and books have to be awfully emotional to elicit a sob out of me. But that moment of raw, honest regard, with so much at stake, hits me in the heart.

Washington at Trenton, Grant at the Wilderness, Doughboys in the Argonne, GI’s at the Bulge, Marines at Hue: the devotion to duty chokes me up. Every time.

But today Americans seem somehow lessened, cheapened. There are no Eisenhowers, or Washingtons, or Lincoln’s to describe what we represent. The institutions that inspired countless young people to lay down their lives are now attacked by an ersatz strongman from within. How could this happen? How can citizens of good conscience condone this very real threat? Where is our collective honest regard for our past, present , and future?

Makes me want to cry.

Gail Chumbley is the author of the two-part memoir, “River of January” and “River of January: Figure Eight.” Both are available on Amazon.com

1944

A Christmas card from a weary GI to the students of Garfield School.

From France to Spokane Washington, 1944

Gail Chumbley is the author of River of January, a memoir. Available on Kindle.

Waves

 

 

Preaching in 1630, Massachusetts Bay Governor John Winthrop, declared the new Puritan settlement a godly utopia, “A City on a Hill.” Since that time Winthrop’s assurance of purpose and perfection has shaped the narrative that is American history. For over two centuries the United States pushed forward striving to make real those founding aspirations. Many Americans, either in groups or as individuals have fought the good fight to extend liberty for all: the most notable example being the abolition of slavery. Yet the path toward realizing the dream of heaven on earth has been many times interrupted with progress’s nemesis—armed warfare.

As Revolutionary War zeal subsided in the late 1700’s, a series of remote camp meetings sparked a movement called the Second Great Awakening. (Yes there was a First) The popularity of these rousing evangelical revivals lit an impassioned fire that called Americans, mostly Northerners to eradicate sin in the shiny new republic. Determined reformers such as Charles Grandison Finney, Frederick Douglass, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton labored tirelessly to rid America of her shortcomings; drunkenness, degrading of women, punitive treatment of the mentally ill, racial inequality . . . in order for the country live up to its charge as a “called nation.”

Despite the diversity of causes and legions of faithful supporters, slavery alone came to dwarf all other movements and to ultimately divide the country. Early instances of violence in the effort to end slavery offered a taste of the violence to come in the Civil War; Abolitionist-editor, Elijah Lovejoy was shot dead in the doorway of his newspaper office, while another anti-slavery editor, William Lloyd Garrison found himself tarred and feathered repeatedly by those who hated his militancy. Zealot John Brown hacked to death five pro-slavers in an episode known as “Bleeding Kansas.” In these instances, “the writing on the wall” had truly been composed in blood.

When hostilities began in April, 1861 the energy of a nation fixated on the course of each battle, fear and resolve ebbing and flowing with each outcome. The shape of America’s future waited in the balance. Finally, after four ghastly years of bloody fighting, Southern hopes of an agrarian, slave-ocracy died, and as President Lincoln so eloquently phrased it, America found “a new birth of freedom.”

Left unaddressed were those other reforms, forgotten in the war. The mentally ill remained behind bars, incarcerated alongside dangerous criminals. Women were legally considered wards of their husbands, with no more standing than dependent children. Countless young children toiled endlessly in textile mills and coal mines, exploited by owners, deprived of any chance for an education. And the legions of former slaves faced a new form of slavery, Jim Crow and sharecropping.

Reform again gathered momentum in the late 19th Century. Aiming once more for that ‘city’ aspiration, the Progressive movement took shape, carried on by a new generation of the faithful, imbued with a sense of social justice to confront the many wrongs left unaddressed from an earlier time, and new issues related to urban growth. Notables from this post bellum movement include; Jane Addams, one of the founders of American Social Work, writer Upton Sinclair and his shocking expose’ The Jungle a condemnation of the meat industry, and John Dewey who normalized public education with coherent curriculum’s and compulsory school attendance. Dewey believed, as had the founders of America, that the nation relied upon and deserved an educated electorate to safeguard the promise of America into the future.

This movement found a great deal of success in improving the country and the lives of its citizens. Building safety reform came on the heels of the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire in 1911. The Jungle brought about the establishment of the Food and Drug Administration, while political reforms included the secret ballot, limiting “Bossism,” and other forms of political corruption.

Then, in 1914 Europe went to war. By 1916 Progressive President, Woodrow Wilson committed America to join in, asking for a declaration against Germany, sending American soldiers into the trenches. And once again, when the guns silenced progressive reforms disappeared as if they had not existed. On the imaginary road to “Normalcy,” the wealthy and powerful misused the country as a personal piggy bank, plundering and cheating with no legal check.

After a decade long litany of economic abuses tanked the Stock Market in 1929, the nation once again turned toward progress, this time on an unparalleled scale. The advent of Franklin Roosevelt and his wife, Eleanor, to the White House marked a revitalization of reshaping America to benefit all Americans. The New Deal remembered for its alphabet agencies, aimed to recover the devastated economy and ward off future abuses that had nearly destroyed the well being of the Republic.

America’s entrance into World War Two bucked the pattern of a reactionary pushback. FDR remained at the helm, until Harry Truman took the reins of government, continuing the tradition of affirming change. GOP President Dwight David Eisenhower kept a moderate hand on the tiller, particularly in the realm of Civil Rights, enforcing the Brown V. Board of Education decision to desegregate public schools.

But with JFK’s murder, the wheels once again came off social progress. As much as LBJ tried to give America all he could; The Civil Rights Act of 1964, The Voting Rights Act of 1965, the Highways Beautification Act, Head Start, Medicaid, and many more pieces of his Great Society legislation, Vietnam eroded all the good.

That endless nightmare of a stalemate in Southeast Asia worked at cross purposes for bettering society. The daily body count, student protests, war atrocities, such as the My Lai massacre, or the shock of the TET Offensive in 1968 sapped America’s desire to do anything but find a way out of the jungle.

Promoting the general welfare came nearly to a complete halt by 1980. The advent of the Reagan Revolution, and subsequent downsizing of the federal government left the vulnerable largely on their own. School lunch programs were cut, the mentally ill let out on the streets of America, while the armament industry threw the nation into deep deficits.

On this Memorial weekend it might be good to consider the potential of America when at peace. Trapped today in an endless cycle of war, this nation struggles to find her soul, to embrace together the light of our national promise. Two military presidents, our first, General George Washington and our thirty fourth, General Dwight D. Eisenhower pleaded with America in their farewell remarks to avoid war as the worst use of our best abilities. Both men, forged in the adversity of difficult wars, recognized the wasteful distraction and deadly allure of war. Washington cautioned against “entangling alliances, and Eisenhower “the military-industrial complex.”

Ultimately, those who know war grasps what is truly lost. Every weapon produced in a munitions factory most certainly casts a wrench into the wheels of human progress. Winthrop meant his reference from the book of Matthew to inspire an example to the world. Forcing Americanism by the barrel of a gun is born to failure, achieving nothing lasting but resentment abroad, and stagnating injustice at home.

Gail Chumbley is the author of the memoir, River of January, also available on Kindle.