A Holiday Weekend . . .

This Veteran's Day holiday weekend, I got a lot of things done.  I toured Skyline Drive in Shenandoah National Park with a friend and was shocked when the officious Park Ranger held her Senior Lifetime Pass granting us free entry, checked the signature line on the back as though she could read a signature anyway, and then carded her!

I also drove a neighbor home from a medical procedure.  These days the medical personnel won't let you leave their premises without somebody you know coming to get you, imposing quite a burden on persons living alone, after they perform today's ubiquitous drive-by surgery--as soon as you wake up they want you outta there!

I went for a nice neighborhood run.  I went out for breakfast with a friend.

And I had lunch at the Lost Dog pizzeria in Westover in Arlington.  I ordered a draft and a large Greek Pie (plenty for any drop-bys) and from my spacious booth I could see anybody entering the restaurant but nobody I recognized came in while I enjoyed my meal and then left, leaving some left over as a talisman for the next time.

The Eleventh Hour . . .

Veterans Day.  Thanks to all who served, including my dad who endured 90 days of murderous combat in Peleliu and 90 more days of hellacious combat on Okinawa during the war against the Japanese Empire.

Thanks to my Uncle Harry, who was a gunnery control officer in Admiral Halsey's Fast Carrier Task Force aboard the light cruiser USS Vincennes during intense naval combat in the Pacific War, earning a bronze star defending his ship against land-based fighter and bomber planes during a carrier strike against Tokyo.  Also during WW2 my Uncle Bill served in the Philippines and my Uncle Bob served as a pilot in a B-26 in the Mediterranean Theatre, and my mom left her hometown in a small farming community in Colorado to go work in the West Coast war industries.

Also thanks to my forebears who served, such as my Grandad, my father's father, who served aboard a destroyer in the North Sea during the Great War.  I had several relatives who served the Union cause in the Civil War, including Daniel Webster Pierce from New Hampshire who was captured, served out the war in a Rebel POW camp and died shortly after his release from having his health wrecked during his confinement.

Thanks to my brother who served in Beirut during the time when the Marine barracks was blown up. And thanks to my relatives and friends who served in Vietnam (a Lamberton, from Georgia, is on the Wall); and to my relatives and friends who have served during the Terror Wars (a friend lies in Arlington National Cemetery who was killed in Afghanistan).

Veterans Day times two

This month I got a twofer.  The centennial commemoration of the end of The Great War I, formerly Armistice Day which became Veterans Day in America, fell on a Sunday, and the federal holiday fell on Monday.  So I got to go at noon on both days to the Lost Dog Cafe in Westover in Arlington, my favorite pizzeria besides Joe and Pats on Staten Island, to have lunch in my ongoing attempt for the last decade and a half to re-establish familial communications with my estranged sons (the divorce, you know), especially since it was such a notable holiday, especially since my middle son is, I believe, a military history buff as am I.

No one showed up, of course.  My sons are interesting people for sure, very unusual in their human motives and emotions.  I regret to say that research into PAS shows that children abused by one parent utilizing it for their own advantage in the divorce wars grow up insecure, lacking affect as adults and many experience failure in their own relationships.

But the pizzas were delicious each day.  More for me, yay!  I'm going to give up my quest to finally encounter the white whale soon, probably on my youngest child's thirtieth birthday.

I hope they have a nice life.  Their lack of interest in or simple concern for a single aspect of anyone on my side of our family is abnormal in the extreme but it is typical of Parental Alienation Syndrome.  Sharon, Meg, her intimate friend the psychologist who cleared the lowly LCSW's grotesque counseling conflict, Vic, Bill, Joe, Van Sicko, and all the rest of the parasites in the coterie of "professionals" ruined, in my opinion, my children's lives, and these vicious murderers of childhoods are fine with the devastation they unleashed as adults against my tender children (they drove the most vulnerable of my minor children to overtly express suicidal and violent ideation against me in his pathetic attempt to please them during their relentless and heartless badgering of him).

Nationalism is the opposite of patriotism--French President Macron

"It is autumn. There are not many of the old hands left. ... He had fallen forward and lay on the earth as though sleeping. Turning him over one saw that he could not have suffered long; his face had an expression of calm, as though almost glad the end had come." Erich Maria Remarque.

"Put the guns into our hands and we will use them. Give us the slogans and we will turn them into realities. ... You plan the wars you masters of men plan the wars and point the way and we will point the gun." Dalton Trumbo.

One hundred years ago today, at the eleventh hour, the guns fell silent in the greatest war in history till then. The European hegemony was over. But past was prelude and the worst was yet to come, due to economic disparity, isolationism, imperialism and nationalism giving rise to a whole class of people left feeling hopeless, ready to take an insane gamble on lying demagogues such as Hitler and Mussolini who with reckless promises of a return to greatness, transformed the displaced into cultists. Thus the mindless, chanting masses became fervent fascists thanks to the control of information by the state, whereas the real press became the enemy of the people.

President Trump cancelled a scheduled trip to lay a wreath at the Aisne-Marne American cemetery of fallen Marines and soldiers 50 miles from Paris yesterday due to some rain, and instead spent six hours of free time at his suite doing nothing. Meanwhile world leaders Macron, Merkel and Trudeau made trips to cemeteries and battlefields a similar distance away to pay respect to their fallen soldiers.

Holidays

November gave me a couple of opportunities to try to reconnect with my family. Veterans Day presented two, with the actual holiday being on Friday, November 10th, and the actual day of remembrance being on Saturday, November 11th.  (Lunch with The Empty Chair on Armistice Day.)

Life moves on. I decided to go to visit my sister and her family in red Ohio for Thanksgiving this year, after visiting my sister in blue Colorado for the last two Thanksgivings.  (Holidays are for reaching out to family and promoting family togetherness.)

I traded in my little "roadster" for a big truck for my planned upcoming cross-country trips. I put 1200 miles on it and enjoyed a week in the midwest.  (I visited this sister this year, whom I hadn't visited in many years; any normal person would agree it's natural and important to keep in touch with family.)

Now that I'm home again, it's time to prepare for the holiday season. I already know that someone nearby is moving, maybe out of town or out of state or even, perhaps, out of the country.  (Don't forget to leave a forwarding address, in case I need to get in touch with any of our three children, and enjoy NC!)

Time for a change.

To my three sons, from your Dad.
At 12 noon on Veteran's Day I was at the Lost Dog Cafe in Westover for lunch, as is my custom on holidays, where I ordered an Italian pizza pie.  I ate it with pleasure and had plenty left over to take home.

I also ordered two beers.  I could have ordered one, or two, more if necessary.

It was a solitary lunch where I stared at an empty chair.  I actually didn't enjoy it all that much, although the pizza was delicious and my beer was refreshing.

Jimmy, Johnny and Danny, let's flip this decade-long attempt at making myself available to you on its ear.  Suppose you start going there to have lunch at noon on holidays, and maybe I'll come by and we can start catching up and making a new familial relationship a day at a time.

"It takes time to tell the Lord about her two sons in battle."

My Grandmother wrote a weekly column for the local newspaper in the small town in Minnesota where she lived.  During the early forties, everybody's young sons were overseas fighting either the Nazis or the Japanese empire, and both of Grandmother Gretch's two boys were so engaged, both Marines.  Each of them saw heavy, desperate action, and she occasionally recorded her thoughts or her fears for their safety in her otherwise light-hearted column.

Her oldest son, my uncle Harry, a teenager when he enlisted, was an officer commanding the anti-aircraft batteries aboard a heavy cruiser with Halsey's Fifth Fleet.  He earned the Bronze Star for meritorious service during a day of hellish combat of ships versus planes as he and a sister ship accompanied a gravely wounded aircraft carrier limping out of range of land-based aircraft at about three knots after a fast-carrier task force strike upon Tokyo the preceding day.  The rest of the fleet sailed out of harm's way during the night.

Her youngest son, my father, a teenager when he enlisted, was a radioman at two of the most ferocious land battles in the Pacific.  The brutality and bloodletting of the second one, Okinawa, is the reason why we dropped the atomic bomb on Japan to force it to surrender rather than face a projected million American casualties in an invasion of Japan.  He was 20 years old when the war ended, a wisp of a deadly fighting man who tipped the scales at 120 pounds.

Here's how Grandmother Gretch, a keen observer, described troubled people coming spontaneously into church on June 6, 1944 to pray for the safety of their loved ones, most of whom were barely out of their teens.  It starts off with her observation in the third person of an "older woman," who really was herself:

"Near us an older woman with a coat thrown over her house dress slipped to her knees and rested her head against the back of the next pew.  She knelt for a long time, oblivious of the hymn, and her body sagged a little.  It takes time to tell the Lord about her two sons in battle.

"Up ahead knelt a woman in a beautifully tailored suit and a hat that was perfection.  Her hands clapsed and unclasped, clapsed and unclasped through the whole service.  Her only son is in the thick of it.

"Two grave-faced fathers whose boys are in it, and dangerously, sat together and bowed their heads.  A couple whose only son has just left these shores sat anxious-faced, and when they rose to sing their hands touched when they held the hymn book together.

"A very young bride whose husband is in it came in with her face white and her eyes frightened.  Like a lost child she sat as close to her mother as she could.  On her feet were frivolous, high-heeled scarlet slippers that one felt she had worn to keep up her morale.  There is something very reassuring and gay about red slippers, even more so than a flowery new hat.  A girl in a shabby gray coat sat stiffly upright and kept ducking her head to wipe her eyes.  Both of her brothers are in Europe.

"Many people were there who had no sons in it, and they seemed anxious, compassionate.  It was as though they were humbly eager to do what they could by the comfort of their presence and their prayers.  A thing that shocked us was that we saw no young men between about 17 and 35.  How blessed a thing it will be to have them back."

By Gretchen Leicht Lamberton, excerpted from "D-Day",  appearing in Reflections and Recipes by the Casual Observer, Gretchen L. Lamberton, c1966 by the Leicht Press, Winona, Minnesota.

When a moment is longer than a minute

Yesterday morning, Veteran's Day, I was running hills in my home town up around the elementary school which sits atop the second best hill in town and also has several sets of stairs to run up and down on.  I attended school there a long time ago.

As I was cutting across the footpath which goes around behind the school from Oak Street to Highland Avenue, which street is the best hill in town, the PA system blared out quite audibly that we would now have a moment of silence to honor our veterans who have sacrificed so much for our freedoms.  I pulled up, faced the building where I imagined there would be a flag inside somewhere, took off my hat and stood at attention, reflecting upon the veterans I have known, from my brother who served with the Marines in Beirut to a running friend who was lost in Afghanistan to other current vets of the several wars of the past 65 years, and to all the WWII and WWI vets who have passed.

As the seconds passed and I stood in respectful stillness, I got to wondering how long a moment really was.  After a minute passed without further issuance from the playground speaker, I put my hat back on, turned and resumed my run.

As I ran off, I heard the announcer come on the loud public address system to say that that concluded the moment of silence and now the pledge of allegiance would be recited in every classroom.  When I got home and looked up "moment" I discovered that although a moment currently encompasses a brief, non-specific passage of time it actually was a specific measurement of time in the middle ages consisting of 90 seconds, or 40 strokes every hour.

A mother's glance

On this Veteran's Day, I want to acknowledge the service of my family members I know to have served.  My grandfather in the Navy in WWI (escort duty in the Atlantic) and my father and three uncles served in the Marines and the Army in WWII (Peleliu, Okinawa, China; several Pacific naval engagements; Philippines; Mediterranean Theatre).  My brother Jack served in the Marines during the Beirut deployment.

The Marines were handled roughly in Beirut, losing a couple of hundred men, most in one night to a suicide bomber who crashed his truck loaded with explosives into a Marines barracks and blew it up while the Marine sentry tried to load his duty rifle as the truck careened past him after approaching him because the stupid rules of engagement called for the sentry to be patrolling with an empty rifle because he might inadvertently harm a civilian.  He had full magazines in ammo pouches on his belt but that's not the same thing in a crisis in the dark as having a loaded rifle with a live round in the chamber a mere bolt-action away.

My brother, a squad leader for a machine gun unit on the Regimental Combat Team, had been rotated out of Beirut by then but after that devastation his unit went back in, taking a few casualties to snipers and explosive ordnance during the two details.  In the summer of 1982 I was visiting my parents when Newsweek magazine came out with a story on the Marines' deployment, accompanied by a picture of a Marine marching with an American flag, flanked by two Marines with shouldered rifles, one left-handed and one right-handed.

The Marine on the right in the picture with his M-16 on his left shoulder, rail thin with his face half-obscured by the shadow thrown by the brim of his campaign hat, cleft in his chin, looked awfully familiar.  "Is that Jack?" I asked my wife.

"No," she said with certainty.  I asked my father the same thing.  "No," was his answer after a long scrutiny of the photograph.

Then I showed the picture in the magazine to my mother.  She glanced at it and immediately said, "That's Jack."  She was right.

Eleventh Hour Eleventh Day Eleventh Month

95 years ago the guns fell silent at 11 am on this day in Europe and The War To End All Wars was over.  My grandfather served in that war.

A mere generation later the world was back at it with increased ferocity.  My father and all of my uncles served in that war.

There have been many wars since then, and we are engaged in a war or wars even now.  My brother served in Beirut.

This post is in honor of those brave men, and everyone else who served as well, and in memory of all those who fell in defending our way of life.  Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies; thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over.

I went to an 11 o'clock memorial service at the community commons at which an American-born woman named Mary, an teenage detainee at the Japanese-American internment camp of Topaz in UT during WW2, was the featured speaker and spoke of the terrible experiences she and her community suffered wherein they all lost their entire lifetime possessions and were discharged from the camps after the war with $10 in their pockets.  A sobering reminder of the excesses that war engenders.

Afterwards I went to have lunch during the noontime hour at the restaurant I always dine at on any holiday I am in town for, the Lost Dog Cafe in Westover, which is near our house when I resided in Arlington with my (now ex-) wife and our three children.  As you can see, I had a good meal, enough for two or three or four persons even.

Hey Danny Lamberton

Hi youngest son Dan. As you know, you haven't spoken to me, or anyone on my side of the family, in over half a decade because you are the victim of Parental Alienation Syndrome, perpetrated upon you when you were a minor by your Mother Sharon Rogers and her coterie of "professionals," when she involved you in our divorce proceedings early this decade. You should know that some people consider PAS to be a form of child abuse, and I am sorry that I was unable to protect you from it.

In my unending (at least until you turn 21 like your two similarly-situated brothers) attempts to contact you, I am inviting you to lunch with me at 12 noon on Veterans Day next Wednesday, November 11th, at Westover's Lost Dog Cafe. Bring anyone you'd like (like Jimmy Rogers and/or Johnny Lamberton). As you undoubtedly know, your Mother knows your address but refuses to give it to me, so I must resort to these entreaties on the Internet.

We can start our brand new father-son association during that noon hour next week. It will be the first day of the rest of our lives. Quite frankly son, I'm 57 now and you and your brothers just might be running out of time.

Since it will be Veterans Day, I'll tell you everything that I know about my Dad, your grandfather, James Wilson Lamberton, who died of lung cancer when he was 61 while I sadly watched him depart from this sphere, before you were born. I wish you could have met him!

Among his many other notable achievements he was a war hero, serving during World War II with the First Marine Division at the battles of Peleliu and Okinawa. Both were terrible, bloody affairs.

He waded ashore at Peleliu on September 15, 1944 as a 19 year old boy and he once said to me in response to yet another wondering, inquiring little boy question that I impetuously put to my strong father about his wartime experiences, "The division had 15,000 Marines and took 5,000 casualties. Imagine, Peter, lining up all in a row and looking to the left of you, and to the right of you, and knowing that one of the three of you was going to get hit."

It was one of the few things that he ever said about that horrific battle. I was and continue to be awestruck at the sacrifices that he and others like him made for us.

Come on Veterans Day and I'll tell you everything I know about this hero that you never met.

The Eleventh Hour of the Eleventh Day of the Eleventh Month.

Veterans Day. Really it's Armistice Day. At the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month in 1918, they ended the incredible slaughter of World War One.

How orderly. The Germans had already consented to the terms of their defeat, having suffered their "Black Day" after their nerve cracked on August 8, 1918, when the Allies (bolstered by the newly arriving American doughboys--Over There--) launched their counterattacks that would end The War To End All Wars.

Unbeknownst to anyone, in the mix was a Bavarian corporal on the front lines who was almost orgasmic in his love of the destruction of war. (This would be Adolph Hitler. If you didn't know this, you really need to get off the Internet and go spend some time in the library.)

People died on the front lines while waiting for the eleventh whatever to arrive. I think that's the point of the famous Erich Remarque book, "All Quiet on the Western Front." Here's the ending page. (The protagonist was the last schoolboy left out of a number of students who had marched proudly off to war in 1914.)

"He died in October 1918, on a day that was so quiet and still on the whole front, that the army report confined itself to the single sentence: All quiet on the Western Front.

He had fallen forward and lay on the earth as though sleeping. Turning him over one saw that he could not have suffered long: his face had an expression of calm, as though almost glad the end had come."

The Academy Award winning movie had the protagonist being shot down by a sniper when he tried to cup a butterfly that had alighted atop the German trench line.

I have three sons. These young adults so love their Mother, who immediately conscripted them while they were minors to be front line soldiers in our divorce, that they haven't communicated with me for years. (They have, however, taken every single dollar I have ever sent to them without a single word of acknowledgement.)

I sent the above quote to each of them when he turned 18. I worry about them. They could be drafted for the ill-defined and apparently interminable war on terror if the draft was ever resurrected, and maimed or killed. For what?

But let me pay tribute to some real men on this special day. Thank you Uncle Harry, for your service during WW2 aboard the Cruiser Vincennes, and for your heroic actions in earning a Bronze Star as you protected your men, and us. And thank you, Dad, for doing your duty at Peleliu and Okinawa, horrifying ordeals you underwent while protecting our way of life that 99% of the persons reading this blog will never have the remotest clue about. (I miss you.)

(Below: Here's a real warrior from The Great War, my Grandfather, "Jack," from Winona, Minnesota. He served in the U.S. Navy from 5/1917 to 2/1919, patrolling aboard a Destroyer in the North Atlantic and around the British Isles.)