Soon There Will Be No More

I'm too busy to write a new post about it today and the anniversary crept up on me. Here's a link to what I wrote last year about Pearl Harbor: link

Last Letters From Stalingrad: #11

[The key to understanding this ongoing series may be found here, and here. Each letter (39 in all) was written by a different and anonymous German soldier who knew he was going to die. I associate these letters with Christmastime for reasons explained at the links.]

...Today O--- and I are enjoying a wonderfully quiet evening. For once everybody is sitting around across the street and not here. The Russians are quiet, and we were able to close up shop early. A good bottle of Cordon Rouge drunk peacefully in the evening made us feel especially good.

I read Binding's war diary* and some other things. How incredibly well this man echos what moves and touches us out here. He purges the experience of all that is false and irrelevant.  Only the crucial things radiate from his mind, from his words.

We expect nothing more of great decisions that would have to be made...by the men on top. Whether time will not outrun these decisions anyhow, no one can say!  But there is nothing else for us to hope for. The only thing that has been done until now has been fearfully violent fighting over Hill X inside and outside the city. Generals and colonels have played with the possibility that this hill, of all things, might be a turning point in world history! And not only generals!

Everyday a few positions are taken; everyday, the enemy or we, depending on who happens to be holding them at the time, are thrown out again! Neither the enemy nor we have so far had sense enough to decide to take only what can be held.

One can safely say that with little things it is the same as with big things!  This perpetual activity without result demands an indolence or an endurance which is almost impossible to muster, and since it consists only in waiting, it wears you out.

Soon it will be ten o'clock. I want to sleep as much as I still can. The more you sleep, the less you feel the hunger. And the hunger is not pleasant, it's cruel.

All my love to you.

______________________
*He's referring to Rudolf Binding's A Fatalist At War, published in 1927.

Buried At Sea

I took my son to Pearl Harbor last summer. My family was on vacation, staying on the Big Island, but I insisted on flying over to Honolulu for a day trip and he wanted to go too. It was an expensive side trip, but I just couldn't get that close without paying my respects.

We got there early in the morning after all the morning tickets for the USS Arizona Memorial were already gone (I think they give the early ones to package tours--not to walk on visitors like us). Anyways, we got tickets for later the same day which gave us plenty of time to visit the nearby USS Missouri.

The guns of the USS Missouri point out over the sunken remains of the USS Arizona

Japan surrendered onboard the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay, less than four years after Pearl Harbor. I already wrote a bit about that ship back here. The Mighty Mo (BB 63) keeps vigil over the sunken remains of the USS Arizona (BB 39); the two ships are poised, bow-to-bow, symbolizing the beginning and the end of the Pacific War. The Missouri is worth a self-guided tour, much like the USS Midway in San Diego is.

Back at the Arizona, the US Park Service shows a great short documentary film narrated by Stockard Channing. I found a snippet of it here (wish I could find the whole thing):

The movie is well-made and teaches the whole inevitability of Pearl Harbor. It's emotionally moving too and softened me up before the boat ride over to the memorial perched over the wreckage. That's really all that's left on the surface--a memorial. A turret base still protrudes, amazingly, given that all iron needs to rust is water, salt, and oxygen. I credit the turret's longevity to the chromium and nickel mixed into the steel--Kruppstahl--but that's just me.

Underwater, the Arizona is remarkably intact.^link Of course you can't dive her, but the Park Service does regular underwater inspections--but I found this cool model of the wreck back onshore:

After paying our respects, we returned to the museum exhibits and various grounds and memorials.

This plaque touched me:

What a comfort to know where one's final remains belong!  That sentiment, along with the shipwreck aspect, reminded me of the last scene in James Cameron's Titanic where the fictional Rose Dawson rejoins her erstwhile lover in death:

Link

The Spurs Twins

Have You Heard Of The Ship Called The Good Reuben James?

I particularly like this old Woody Guthrie song sung by The Kingston Trio entitled The Sinking Of The Reuben James. The maker of this YouTube video put the names of each lost sailor into scrolling graphics.

I love how each man's name seems to rise from the blackened depths--names that might otherwise be forgotten:

Looking over some of the music posts I've put up in the past it's sad to see so many of the YouTube video links get disabled. Rumor has it that some of this creative YouTubing may all be coming to an end.

Surely there can be some kind of mutual recognition between the owners of the song's copyright and the artists wanting to make use of them. The short answer to this is licensing. But what artist is going to find (let alone contact) the owners of the copyright? I see an opportunity for Google here. Perhaps they could broker reasonable fee-for-usage licensing--something akin to iTunes.