WORLD OF ALL

As is well known John Wayne did not serve in WWll and this seemed to affect his politics following the war. I don’t intend to get into the whys or wherefores of his behaviour. He made some classic war pictures which I love.  They Were Expendable, Sands Of Iwo Jima and a small part in the stellar, The Longest Day. In the latter he played a real hero, Lt Col Benjamin Vandervoort. Charlton Heston had lobbied for the role, but the producer, Darryl F Zanuck, wanted Wayne.  As big a star as Heston was, Wayne was bigger. There were a couple of problems though. Wayne did not like Zanuck for a slight Zanuck had made on him following the Wayne produced and directed, The Alamo.  After the relative failure of the movie due to a bloated budget Zanuck had gone on the record chastising actors for taking on producer roles.  “I’ve got a great affection for Duke Wayne, but what right has he to write, direct, and produce a motion picture? Look at poor old Duke now.  He’s never goi...

On this day 25th October 1944 Heinrich Himmler issued orders on combating youth gangs such as Edelweiss Pirates, which had been known to harbor deserters, escaped prisoners of war, and escaped concentration camp prisoners. In stark contrast to the Hitler Youth, the Edelweiss Pirates resisted Nazism in any way they could at a time when doing so was a criminal offense. Much like the tenacious edelweiss flower clinging to the crags of Austria’s Alps that the group was named after, these young Germans resisted Nazi indoctrination. They saw themselves as the opposite of the infamous Hitler Youth, rejecting their paramilitary structure, Nazi ideology, and gender segregation. Hailing from working-class backgrounds, the Edelweiss Pirates resisted Nazism in any way they could — all before their 18th birthdays. The Edelweiss Pirates, or Edelweißpiraten, was a collective of local anti-Nazi resistance groups founded largely in western Germany.  Aged 14 to 17, these teenagers rejected the Hitle...

Irma Grese was only 22 when she was hanged, making her the youngest female Nazi executed following the Second World War.  The world was shocked, and many couldn’t understand how such a young, beautiful woman could be the embodiment of evil. Her trial earned her the nicknames ‘The Beautiful Beast’ and the ‘Hyena of Auschwitz’ for her heartless treatment of prisoners. Following the Second World War, war crimes trials were held to bring the architects of WW2 and the Holocaust to justice.  Inside a courtroom in Luneburg, the Belsen Trials took place  that sought to deal with the SS men and women of the Belsen concentration camp.  Many of these guards had committed horrendous crimes, but what shocked the world was that many young women like Irma Grese were convicted alongside commandant Josef Kramer.  The early life of Irma Grese On October 7, 1923, Irma Grese was born to dairy workers Berta Grese and Alfred Grese. Irma was one of five siblings: three girls and two b...

Was there something that particularly bothered hitler? Yes, there were several things that particularly bothered Adolf Hitler, the dictator of Nazi Germany during World War II.  One of the major concerns for Hitler was the Treaty of Versailles, which imposed harsh reparations and territorial losses on Germany after World War I.  Hitler viewed the treaty as a humiliation for Germany and believed it was unfair. He was driven by a desire to overturn the treaty and restore Germany to its former glory. Hitler also held strong anti-Semitic beliefs and harbored a deep hatred towards Jewish people. He blamed Jews for various societal problems, such as economic struggles and the loss of World War I.  This hatred manifested in the Holocaust, where millions of Jews and other minorities were persecuted and systematically murdered under Hitler's regime. Furthermore, Hitler was obsessed with achieving racial purity and advancing the Aryan master race ideology.  He propagated ideas...

When Death and Duty Calls. Pictured on May 7, 1945, United States Marine Colonel Francis Fenton kneels in prayer over the flag-draped body of his 19-year-old son Private First-Class Mike Fenton, one of over 125,000 casualties (combined American and Japanese lives lost) in the battle for the Japanese island of Okinawa during World War Two. According to witnesses, Colonel Fenton then stood up, looked around at the other fallen Marines, and said: “Those poor souls. They didn’t have their fathers here.” After which Fenton returned to headquarters, wrote a brief note to his wife, and went back to commanding his troops still in the field. Don't forget to leave your thoughts in the comment section below.

After Phineas P. Gage took an iron tamping rod through his skull in 1848, his personality changed drastically in a baffling case that helped give birth to modern neuroscience. On September 13, 1848, Phineas Gage was working on the side of a railroad, outside Cavendish, Vermont. He was part of a crew blasting rock out of the way for new tracks to be laid down. His job, specifically, was to pack the rock full of blasting powder and then use a tamping iron, a three-foot-long, 1 1/4-inch wide iron bar, to tamp it down. Around 4:30 PM, Gage’s attention was momentarily pulled from his work by the men working behind him. As he leaned forward and looked over his left shoulder to speak to them, the tamping iron sparked against the rock, exploding the powder in the hole. The tamping iron flew out of the hole, into Gage’s left cheek, through the roof of his mouth, into his brain, and out through the top of his head.  Gage was thrown to the ground, twitching. After a few minutes though, miracu...

“In Sardinia, the use of the "femina agabbadòra hammer" was a women's practice.  Whenever an elderly man or woman of a given family was dying and in great pain, the family would call for the Accabadòra or Lady of the Good Death.  She would usually be a widow dressed entirely in black, who likely inherited her role from her own mother or grandmother. The title Accabadora means "She is the One Who Ends." She arrives with a large hammer of carved olive wood wrapped in heavy wool, and is left alone with the individual who may yet be screaming in agony and terror. A witness testimonial of the practice translates: "It was dark. The room was illuminated by a single wick in mastic oil.  The Accabadòra entered the house -- the door had been left open for her. She passed no one as she enters her patient's room at at the bedside.  "She caressed the face of the dying person, chanted the rosary, sang one of the many lullabies usually sung to children. Finally s...

James Baldwin's advice on writing and the creative process: "If you are going to be a writer, there is nothing I can say to stop you. If you're not going to be a writer, nothing I can say will help you. What you really need at the beginning is somebody to let you know that the effort is real." "When you're writing, you're trying to find out something which you don't know.  The whole language of writing for me is finding out what you don't want to know, what you don't want to find out. But something forces you to anyway." "I start working when everyone has gone to bed. I've had to do that ever since I was young—I had to wait until the kids were asleep.  And then I was working at various jobs during the day. I've always had to write at night. But now that I'm established, I do it because I'm alone at night." "Rewriting is very painful. You know it's finished when you can't do anything more to it, thoug...

A great woman erased from history by idiots. The branding of the syrup was a tribute to this woman’s gifts and talents.  Now future generations will not even know this beautiful woman existed. What a shame.  The world knew her as “Aunt Jemima”, but her given name was Nancy Green and she was a true American success story.  She was born a slave in 1834 Montgomery County, KY. and became a wealthy superstar in the advertising world, as its first living trademark.  Green was 56-yrs old when she was selected as spokesperson for a new ready-mixed, self-rising pancake flour and made her debut in 1893 at a fair and exposition in Chicago.  She demonstrated the pancake mix and served thousands of pancakes, and became an immediate star.  She was a good storyteller, her personality was warm and appealing, and her showmanship was exceptional.  Her exhibition booth drew so many people that special security personnel were assigned to keep the crowds moving.  Nanc...

What a man, ran out of ammo and went to hand to hand even throwing rocks at the enemy.  On September 17, 1951, 22 year old Herbert Pililaau found himself fighting for his life against the North Korean army on what would become known as the Heartbreak ridge. His squad was tasked with covering a retreat. When it was time, Pililaau ultimately volunteered to cover the retreat of his squad, telling his commanding officer to go on without him.  U.S soldiers watching from far above then witnessed Pililaau first exhausting his ammunition, then expending all his hand grenades, at which point rather than retreat, he began throwing rocks at the advancing North Korean soldiers. Once the enemy soldiers reached him, he pulled out his trench knife and leapt upon them, stabbing with one arm and punching with the other. The following day, U.S. soldiers found Pililaau's body surrounded by the bodies of forty North Korean Soldiers he managed to kill before he was stabbed to death. For his action...

What happened to the American woman who tried to kiss Adolf Hitler? The incident you are likely referring to involves an English woman named Unity Mitford, who was known for her support of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi regime. Unity Mitford was not attempting to kiss Hitler; rather, she shot herself in the head in a Munich park in 1939 after Britain declared war on Germany. Unity Mitford had been an admirer of Hitler and the Nazi party, and she moved to Germany in the early 1930s to express her support. She became close to high-ranking Nazi officials, including Hitler himself. The exact motivations behind her suicide attempt are not fully known, but it is widely believed that she was devastated by the outbreak of World War II and the conflict between her native Britain and the country she had come to embrace. Although she survived the suicide attempt, the gunshot caused severe brain damage, and Unity Mitford lived the rest of her life in a diminished mental state. She returned to England w...

Did the Nazis have something called a "Joy Division"? Between 1942 and 1945, Auschwitz and nine other Nazi concentration camps contained camp brothels (Freudenabteilungen) "Joy Divisions"), mainly used to reward cooperative non-Jewish inmates. "Freudenabteilungen" was a term used by the Nazis during World War II to refer to special units or sections that were organized within some concentration camps for the purpose of providing sexual services to the none-Jewish, male prisoners, The term translates to "Joy Divisions" in English. These units were essentially brothels established in some concentration camps, where women, often prisoners themselves, were forced into prostitution. The Nazis implemented these "Freudenabteilungen" under the belief that providing sexual outlets for male prisoners might reduce tensions and prevent resistance within the camps. These brothels were operated under extremely exploitative and coercive conditions. Wo...

Major Dick Winters led perhaps the most storied U.S. Army unit in all of World War II.  On D-Day, he and his "band of brothers" in Easy Company defeated a far larger German force and allowed the Allied advance to continue. At the Dachau concentration camp, they liberated scores of Holocaust prisoners who'd endured months, if not years, of hell.  And as the war in Europe drew to a close, they captured Hitler's personal mountaintop retreat in southern Germany — then kicked back on his terrace in triumph while sipping champagne from his wine cellar.⁠ ⁠ But for decades, Winters was reluctant to even tell his story, lest he be called a hero.  Eventually, however, Easy Company's harrowing and courageous exploits on the Western Front in 1944 and 1945 would be immortalized in "Band of Brothers." Thank you for reading. Don't forget to leave your thoughts in the comment section below.

In 2014, a 132-year-old rifle was discovered leaning against a tree in a remote part of the Nevada desert by pure chance.  Archaeologist Eva Jansen led a team on an expedition to search for artifacts in the Nevada hillside within Great Basin Park when they stumbled upon the rifle. The rifle was found with its wooden stock partially buried and severely rusted, making it nearly indistinguishable from the tree behind it.  Identified as a Winchester Model 1873 due to an engraving of "Model 1873" on its side, it was one of the most popular guns of its era.  Winchester produced over 700,000 of these rifles, which were relatively inexpensive at the time (around $50 then, equivalent to $1,000 today) and earned the nickname "the gun that won the west." The circumstances of how the rifle ended up in its resting place, exposed to the elements, remain a mystery.  The chief of Great Basin Park noted that there were no other artifacts nearby that could provide clues about its ori...

On this day 25th November 1945, Operation Deadlight commences. On 4 May 1945 Grossadmiral Karl Dönitz, who Hitler named as his successor as head of State shortly before he committed suicide, ordered all combat U-boats to cease offensive operations and return to their bases with a brief one-line message: ‘All U-boats cease fire at once. Stop all hostile action against Allied shipping. Dönitz.’ Generaladmiral Hans-Georg von Friedeburg, Dönitz’s successor as Commander-in-Chief of the Kriegsmarine, surrendered the German Navy at 11.10pm on 7 May 1945 at a ceremony held at Reims in France, followed by a repeat signing in Berlin the next day at the insistence of the Russians. The terms included the entire German fleet, but apart from the cruisers Prinz Eugen, Nurnberg and Leipzig, only 15 destroyers, 11 torpedo-boats, and two dozen minesweepers were all that remained of the Kriegsmarine’s surface fleet Operation Deadlight was the Royal Navy code name for the rem...

On this day 26th November 1942. The composition of Soviet penal units was standardised by Georgy Zhukov's order, "The Status of Penal Units of the Army". The list of offenses that could result in assignment to a penal unit was long: cowardice in combat, desertion, neglect of military equipment, sabotage, drunkenness, and many more.  Shtrafniki, as the disgraced soldiers in the units were known, were stripped of their titles, medals and orders.  Although able to serve as junior commanders in their new units, the senior commanders came from regular units, These penal battalions, would have an official strength of 360 former Gulag prisoners plus a small heavily armed guard detachment.  The former prisoners would only be issued with weapons and ammunition immediately before going into action.  They were typically required to serve in the penal battalion for between one and three months, and would be eligible to transfer to a Red Army unit if they were to sustain a combat...

The heroic death of Francis Xavier McGraw of Philadelphia he must be remember. Pennsylvania, a Private First Class in the U.S. Army, was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor for his heroic actions on November 19, 1944, near Schevenhutte, Germany. McGraw joined the Army from Camden, New Jersey, and by November 19, 1944, was serving as a private first class in Company H, 26th Infantry Regiment, 1st Infantry Division.  At that time, the 26th Regiment was fighting in the Battle of Hurtgen Forest, a grueling dense forest offensive near the German-Belgian border.  During a German counterattack on November 19, 1944, he manned his machine gun despite intense enemy fire and left cover to retrieve more ammunition.  Although wounded, he continued to fire his machine gun until again running out of ammunition. He then engaged the German troops with a carbine but was subsequently killed. He was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor for his actions on November 19, 1944. McGraw is b...

 Honouring the Heroes We Lost: Private Andrew John Jerad McNally of the 1st Canadian Parachute Battalion. Andrew "Andy" John Jerad McNally, of Edmonton, Alberta immigrated to Canada when he was 2 years old from his birth town of Randalstown Northern Ireland.  Andy, the eldest of 11 children had aspirations of becoming a machinist. These dreams would be put on hold with the outbreak of World War II. "In October 1941 at the age of 17 years old Andy joined the 2nd Battalion of the Edmonton Fusiliers, a reserve unit of the Canadian Army.  He was a high school student in the 10th grade when he dropped out of school and entered active military service on January 16, 1942.  Andy was only 17, although his military records list an incorrect birthdate putting him at age 18 at the time. Following basic training Andy took driver's training at Red Deer, then transferred to the 1st Canadian Parachute Battalion.  Following advanced training at Currie Barracks in Calgary he joi...

The so-called 'Denshawai Incident' on 13th June 1906 has long been cited as a key event in the re-emergence of modern Egyptian nationalism.  What followed, the public execution and flogging of Egyptian villagers after they attacked a group of British officers who had mortally wounded a local woman while treating their food supply — pigeons — as targets for game shooting, caused widespread outrage.  And not just in Egypt. Writing on 28th October 1907, London barrister Frederic Mackarness argued that such behaviour would have but one result: “British rule in Egypt to be associated with injustice and cruelty, and the army of occupation to depend for its safety on methods of terrorism.” “THE DENSHAWAI SENTENCES.  “To the EDITOR Of THE WESTMINSTER GAZETTE.  “SIR, — The moment when fresh honour is being paid to Lord Cromer is surely not an unfitting one to add one more to the many appeals which have been addressed to Sir Edward Grey to remit the remainder of the tremendous...

How did Nazi guards feel when they had to put a 6 year old into a gas chamber? How can anyone do that with such a relaxed mind? They drank… a lot of alcohol. Some guards simply didn’t know. Allow me to explain. Upon arrival to the camp, people were placed in 2 lines. One line to work, one line to die. The ones who couldn’t work would be marched off to the gas chambers. No guards made mentions of any gas chambers. They would either march the prisoners there, or the Sonderkommando would (abled prisoners who would march the prisoners there.” Prisoners were marched there in big groups. The SS personnel that were in charge of dispensing the Zyklon B pellets into the chamber did not see who would walk in there. Once the prisoners were in the gas chamber, the guard would walk up to the roof and pour the pellets in through the chute. Thats it. Some guards did it without seeing who would go in as their job was basically gas handler. For the guards that did know, the...

Pictured above is Willemien Rieken. She was only 9 years old when she first began laying flowers on the grave of William Edmond, a British soldier who fought and died to liberate her Dutch Village. From the day he died, and for 75 years, she looked after his grave and kept his memory alive. During WWII, William served with the 1st Airborne Reconnaissance Squadron and took part in the Battle of Arnhem in the Netherlands. Sadly, on September 17, 1944, he was shot in the back by a German sniper and fell to the ground. One of his comrades, St David Christie, rushed to his aid, but nothing could be done to save William. Seconds before dying, he said to David: "Tell my wife I love her." This British soldier was then buried at the Arnhem Oosterbeek War Cemetery. Willemien Rieken passed away in 2020. She was one of the last surviving Flower Children, young people who laid flowers at hundreds of graves of Allied casualties in a ceremony after the end of the war. ...

A German concentration camp was no place for women. but the Germans thought otherwise, and designed KL Ravensbrück precisely as a place for women. The camp, for years hidden behind the Iron Curtain and overshadowed by places like Auschwitz, received only cursory mentions in the literature on German Nazi terror.  However, to quote author Sarah Helm, “Just as Auschwitz was the capital of the crime against Jews, so Ravensbrück was the capital of the crime against women.”   Over 100,000 of them went through Ravensbrück, and between 30,000 and 92,000 died there. They came from 30 countries, but the largest group were 40,000 Poles.  In the six years of its existence, the camp and the population of the inmates grew severalfold, spawning nearly forty sub-camps, to great satisfaction of Heinrich Himmler, the camp founder. The women were worked to death, beaten, shot, hanged, gassed and experimented on, and most of the dozens of Polish “Beinoperierte” who had their leg muscles cut ...

SOME GREAT STORY TELLERS FROM ARDNAGREEVAGH (1937). 'There were three sisters long ago and they were great story-tellers. They were Sweenys.  They were related to Micheál Mac Suibne, the poet. The three of them were married. One of their names was Mrs. Fleming.  The other one's name was Mrs. Davis and the third was Mrs. Heanue.They told all their stories in Irish. The best one of them that was fit to tell stories was Mrs.  Heanue. She had a charm for telling stories. If a person went listening to her he couldn't leave her until she was finished. Sometimes she would tell you ones lasting a day and perhaps longer. Mrs Heaney lived in Ardnagreevagh.  One morning John Heaney from Letter Hill was going to the strand cutting black wrack. He was in a great hurry.  He had a cleeve on his back. He went into Mrs Heaney to light his pipe. She asked him what hurry was on him. He told her. She told him to sit down on a chair.  When he did, she began her story. He though...

The GIs who raped France: We know about the mass rape of German women by Stalin's soldiers. Now a new book reveals American troops committed thousands of rapes on French women they were 'liberating' The handsome American soldier was Elisabeth’s tenth client that evening. Working her trade on the top floor of a dingy apartment block in Paris, she felt that she had seen them all. For the past four years, the men had been Germans, and now, since the city had been liberated in August, 1944, they were Americans. It made little difference. Elisabeth held out three fingers of her hand to indicate the price of her body — three hundred francs. ‘Too much,’ said the soldier. Elisabeth sighed. She had seen that before as well. Wearily, she kept the three fingers held up, almost as an insult. There was no negotiation — three hundred was little enough as it was. ‘Two hundred,’ the soldier insisted. ‘Non,’ said Elisabeth. ‘Three hundred or nothing’. The soldier approached her, ...