I never served in the US military. I am grateful to those who have served, and who do serve.
The above is a short video on the history of the holiday.
-ET
Category: history
The Beatles in Hamburg, and ‘The Cairo Deception’
As many of you will know, I recently wrapped up The Cairo Deception, my 5-book World War II series.
One of the final chapters of the book depicts the Beatles performing in Hamburg, West Germany in December 1962. (I won’t go into more story detail than that, so as to avoid spoilers.)
This is actually true. When I discovered this lesser known piece of rock music history, I just couldn’t resist putting it in the book, as an Easter egg for Beatles fans.
The Beatles both resided and performed in Hamburg from August 1960 to December 1962. The Beatles’ Hamburg residence took place shortly before they became a global phenomenon. The band also performed at a music venue in Hamburg called The Star-Club, as described in Postwar: Book 5 of The Cairo Deception.
The Beatles of the Hamburg period involved a slightly different lineup of the band: John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, Stuart Sutcliffe and Pete Best. After the group returned to England at the end of 1962, Sutcliffe and Best left the band, and Ringo Starr was hired on as the new drummer.
Click here to view THE CAIRO DECEPTION series on Amazon
Reading about the Iran Hostage Crisis of ’79
The Iran Hostage Crisis of 1979 is one of the first major global events that I remember.
I was 11 years old on November 4, 1979, when Iran’s revolution came to a head, and a mob of student militants overran the US Embassy in Tehran. The student militants took 66 American hostages. 52 of these hostages would remain in Iran until January, 1981.
I followed the 444-day crisis on the news. But being 11 years old, I was sketchy on most of the historical background.
I’ve read a lot more about the crisis since then. I’m presently finishing up the above book, Guests of the Ayatollah: the First Battle in America’s War with Militant Islam, by Mark Bowden.
Bowden’s book includes not only the overarching historical details, but also many individual stories: of the hostages, and others whose lives were impacted.
Definitely worth a read if this is a subject that interests you!
-ET
**View Guests of the Ayatollah: the First Battle in America’s War with Militant Islam, by Mark Bowden on Amazon***
Memorial Day 2024
Hello, Dear Reader. I hope you have a safe and happy Memorial Day, and remember those who made the ultimate sacrifice in the service of the USA.
For traditional holidays like this one, you can’t beat Norman Rockwell. The artist painted the above work, Homecoming Marine, in 1945.
If you look closely, you’ll see that the painting conveys a significant amount of backstory. The young marine, and his relationship to the setting, are evident in the painting. The painting also gives us a rough idea of where he served. (Hint: not Europe.)
The obvious youth of the marine in the painting reminds me that at 55, I am now decades older than most of those who served in World War II and all subsequent wars.
I am also humbled. I have never served in the military. But I send out my appreciation and respect to those who have, and do.
-ET
Reading notes: ‘Gulag: a History’ by Anne Applebaum
I’m a child of the Cold War. I was twenty-one when the Berlin Wall fell in 1989. I well remember the Soviet Union as a topic on the evening news. I grew up with a dark fascination with the USSR. I am always interested in acquiring new books and other materials about it.
I was therefore eager to listen to Anne Applebaum’s book: Gulag: A History. Although she’s recently taken to opining about current events on Twitter, Applebaum is the author of a handful of books on Soviet history.
Gulag, as the title suggests, is focused on the Soviet work/concentration camp system, which often housed political prisoners.
Gulag is a thoroughly researched book. Applebaum draws not only on Soviet-era documents, but also on extensive interviews she conducted with camp survivors.
The book has no ideological ax to grind. Applebaum doesn’t soft-pedal the human cost of the Soviet gulag system. Nor does she endlessly bludgeon the reader with authorial intrusions of shock and disapproval. Applebaum assumes that the reader can make her own moral judgments.
While there are passages about the leadership of the USSR and Kremin-level politics, the emphasis of the book is on the prisoners’ experience. Gulag gives the reader a sense of what it was like to have been an inmate in a Soviet prison camp, as much as any book could.
The only downside to this approach is that the many, many firsthand stories sometimes overload the reader with repetitive details.
I’m listening to the audio version of this book, but the printed version is 736 pages. My guess is that 436 pages could have accomplished the same ends in a more succinct manner.
But no book, either fiction or nonfiction, is perfect. Gulag: A History is a worthwhile read for anyone with a serious interest in Soviet history.
-ET
**View GULAG: A HISTORY on Amazon**
Challenger disaster +37 years
I was a senior in high school on January 28, 1986. The explosion of the Space Shuttle Challenger occurred that day at 11:39 a.m., EST.
The explosion took place just 73 seconds into the shuttle’s flight, and killed all seven crew members. Among the dead was Christa McAuliffe, a Massachusetts teacher who had been a guest astronaut.
That year I had a part-time job in my school’s cafeteria. I was operating a soda machine in the lunch line when the students began filing in, talking about what had happened. This was one of those national tragedies that was announced in classrooms, rather like the assassination of JFK, when my parents were in high school.
The Reagan Administration had been hoping to revive interest in the U.S. space program, as well as to inject some life into math and science education. (Even then, there were concerns that American students were falling behind their global counterparts in math and science.) The presence of teacher Christa McAuliffe on the mission was a key part of that effort. McAuliffe’s inclusion would have been a good idea, perhaps, if not for what happened.
I’m not going to exaggerate, and say that the Challenger disaster depressed me for a month, or anything like that. I was sorry for the loss of life, of course. But in 1986 I was a self-absorbed teenager, and this was a faraway event.
The disaster did have a sobering effect on me, though. At my present age (I’ll let you do the math), I am acutely aware that life is fragile, and that bad things happen to good people. I wasn’t as aware of this in 1986.
The Challenger crash dominated the news for weeks afterward. A case can be made that Christa McAullife received a lion’s share of the media attention. This was probably inevitable, given that she was a civilian volunteer and a teacher. McAuliffe was about the same age as my mother, I remember noting.
The investigations and Congressional hearings surrounding the disaster lasted for several years. In 2004, President George W. Bush conferred posthumous Congressional Space Medals of Honor on all the Challenger crew members.
On the night of the disaster, President Reagan delivered this televised speech to the country. One of his more moving oratory moments, in my opinion.
A sad moment for the country, and one that I still remember, almost four decades later.
-ET
German rocket scientists, Nazi-era anti-smoking campaigns, and history’s interesting ironies
The Nazis were evil; they weren’t always stupid. In some scientific endeavors, Nazi Germany actually surpassed the Allied Powers.
For example, one of the first things the Americans did, upon conquering Germany, was to scoop up a rocket scientist named Wernher von Braun. During World War II, Braun was a chief developer of the V-2 rocket program. (He was also a member of the Nazi Party and the SS.)
But after the war, the US faced new enemies. The American government brought Braun to the United States, where he worked on American rocket programs, with both scientific and military applications. Wernher von Braun had a hand in the Apollo spacecraft that would eventually lead to eight crewed lunar missions in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
That may not come as too much of a surprise to many readers. After all, most people know that Nazi Germany had some advanced weaponry. But did you know that Nazi scientists also raised the alarm over cigarette smoking long before anyone else did?
This historical curiosity provided a scene in Book Four of The Cairo Deception.
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In Book Four of The Cairo Deception, Rudolf Schenk tells Jack McCallum that the Nazi government had identified cigarette smoking as a major health concern: a cause of heart disease, lung disease, and cancer. Jack is skeptical; but on this matter, at least, Schenk is actually telling the truth.
The German medical community actively discouraged cigarette smoking decades before those of other countries, including the United States. Adolf Hitler (as noted in Book Four of this series) was personally opposed to cigarette smoking. Hitler was a teetotaler, too.
Smoking was never quite outlawed in Nazi Germany. Nevertheless, official propaganda discouraged smoking among German citizens and servicemen alike.
In this regard, Nazi Germany was ahead of its time, and in a good way. This must be kept in perspective, obviously. Nazi Germany’s prescience regarding the harmful effects of cigarette smoking was overshadowed many times over, by all of the evil that that government committed—both in Germany and elsewhere.
Childhood memories, and writing about World War II
World War II has been on my mind and in my fiction a lot of late.
I’m presently finishing up the last book in The Cairo Deception, my WWII-era suspense/drama series. The most recent installment in The Rockland Horror, my historical horror series, takes place in 1945. The plot of The Rockland Horror 4 is intimately bound to the events of World War II.
To be clear about the title of this post: no, I do not have firsthand childhood memories of World War II. I was born in 1968, twenty-three years after the war ended. By the time I became aware of names like Pearl Harbor, Hitler, and Hirohito, the war was at least thirty years in the past.
My grandfather, however (pictured above) was a WWII combat veteran. He served in the Atlantic in the US Navy. His experiences were roughly similar to those depicted in the 2020 Tom Hanks movie, Greyhound.
From a very young age, I was captivated by history. And what better way to learn about history, than by listening to the stories of a relative who actually took part in it?
My grandfather regaled me with his accounts of Egypt, Russia, the United Kingdom, and Syria. He also told me stories about fighting the German U-boats and Messerschmidts.
My grandfather was, in many ways, my first “action hero”. His experiences, though, were very common among men of that generation, who have been called (for good reason) the Greatest Generation.
I don’t remember a thing about World War II. But some of my fondest childhood memories involve listening, with rapt attention, while my grandfather told me about it. He has been gone for decades now, but I still miss him, and I miss his stories. He gave me an enduring interest in World War II, and it isn’t surprising that the war should show up in some of my stories.
Thieves and buried treasure
Coming soon:
SHOWDOWN IN CAIRO: Book 4 of THE CAIRO DECEPTION
What follows is a sneak peek at Chapter 6 of the fourth book in THE CAIRO DECEPTION, my World War II-era adventure/drama series.
The first three books of THE CAIRO DECEPTION are already available on Amazon.
In the excerpt below, Jack McCallum, a soldier turned treasure hunter, has made a discovery in the Egyptian desert outside Cairo.
The discovery could make him rich, set for life.
But treasure isn’t the only thing waiting in the Egyptian desert…
CHAPTER 6
The gemstone was about the size of a plum. Jack picked it up from among the clay fragments, his heart pounding.
There were little images on one side of the stone, carved into its oblong surface. Jack recognized these as Egyptian hieroglyphics, too, though he had no idea what they said.
“Tahmid,” Jack said. “Do you realize what this is?”
“Yes, boss. I do.”
It was unbelievable. This was the Garnet of Hatshepsut. Exactly as John Millhouse had promised.
Jack felt a sudden, not altogether unpleasant wave of dizziness. He paused for a moment, to take in the realization: He was going to be a rich man.
“Looks like you’ve struck it rich, boss,” Tahmid said, as if reading his mind.
Jack was distracted by the distant sound of voices, going back and forth in Arabic.
He looked up over the side of the hole.
There were roughly a dozen men, dressed in what approximated Arab bedouin attire. They had arrived on about as many camels.
They were about a quarter-mile away. At present.
Roughly half of the men were carrying rifles. The rifles appeared old, but they probably still fired. Several of the rifle-bearing men wore bandoliers criss-crossed over their chests. Many of the men were also wearing scabbards with what looked like long fighting knives.
Jack ducked down back into the hole. He raised a finger to his lips, in order to indicate that Tahmid should be absolutely silent. He pantomimed the presence of the men with his hands and fingers.
Tahmid took a cautious peek, as well. When he ducked down again, the man’s face bore an expression of abject terror.
“Thieves,” Tahmid said. “Like I tell you, the desert not safe place.”
“You said that it isn’t safe at night,” Jack countered. “This is the middle of the day.” Jack pointed upward, at the blazing sun.
“Sometimes dangerous during the day, boss. Better to stay in the city.”
Jack was tempted to ask Tahmid why—if he felt that way—he had hired on as a digging assistant to begin with. But that was a fruitless discussion that he had no time for.
His only concern now was those men in the desert. It was a dire situation. Those men would think nothing of murdering two treasure hunters in order to take the gemstone.
Jack thought back to his encounter in the alleyway, with the gang of eight hoodlums (led by the short man with the scar), and the advice of Rudy Gunther, who had literally saved his life that day.
Rudy had advised him to acquire a gun. Jack realized now that he should have taken that advice. But he didn’t know how much use a British Webley revolver would be, anyway, against a small army of armed men.
There was nothing to do but wait. The men were on their way to somewhere, obviously. They had stopped for a rest, or simply to look around, perhaps using the nearby pyramid as a landmark.
If they rode by here, Jack and Tahmid were goners. If they rode in another direction, they could probably escape.
Jack waited ten minutes. Hearing nothing, he looked up over the edge of the hole again.
The men were gone.
“How long till our ride meets us at the rendezvous point?” Jack asked Tahmid. Jack’s digging assistant took care of arranging their daily transportation. So far, he had done that with reasonable reliability and efficiency.
Don’t let me down today, Tahmid, Jack thought. Please.
“Two hours,” Tahmid reported.
The rendezvous point was at the intersection of two poorly maintained macadam roads. The spot was out in the open. Completely exposed.
Jack didn’t think it would be advisable to go there now, and risk so much time at a vulnerable location. Not with the garnet in his possession, and with a roving band of thieves afoot.
“We’ll leave in one hour,” he told Tahmid.
He wrapped the garnet in a clean cloth, and placed it in his pocket.
***
An hour later, Jack and Tahmid set out with their sparse equipment for the spot where their transportation would be waiting.
They reached the spot, and Jack scanned the horizon anxiously. What if the armed men returned?
Then all was lost. But this was the last big risk. If he could make it back to Cairo, he would be set. Or almost set.
A short while later, an old Ford Model A came chugging into view.
“That’s our ride,” Tahmid said.
The car was driven by two Arab men, who greeted Tahmid in Arabic, and nodded unsmilingly at Jack. They strapped the shovels and other equipment to the roof of the car. Then Jack and Tahmid piled into the back seat.
Jack remained acutely aware of the gemstone in the pocket of his trousers. This was the stone that—if he could hold on to it and get it out of Egypt—would change his life.
The Arab men chatted with Jack during the roughly half-hour ride to the edge of Cairo. Jack didn’t mind. By now he was used to people speaking a language that he couldn’t understand. (And Jack had all but given up on learning any Arabic.) Jack, moreover, was lost in his own thoughts; and he now had a lot to think about.
There was another matter, though. Jack knew nothing about these men in the front seat, or their relationship with Tahmid. What was to stop Tahmid from double-crossing him? Tahmid could tell the men about the gemstone, and arrange a robbery. Then they could plan to split the proceeds from the sale of the garnet among them. Never mind that a stone this valuable would be virtually impossible to sell in Egypt.
When he arrived safely back in the city, however, Jack felt guilty for his suspicions during the ride. True, Tahmid had been an unmotivated and lackluster employee. There was no indication, however, that he was dishonest or prone to criminal activity. Otherwise, Jack supposed, he would having joined the crew of the scarred gangster from the alleyway, or perhaps the men on camels whom they had seen today in the desert.
Get Book 1 of THE CAIRO DECEPTION
‘The Rockland Horror 3’ and the Model T
The next installment of The Rockland Horror series is set in 1917, early in the age of the automobile.
That, of course, means Henry Ford’s iconic Model T. The Ford Motor Company manufactured the Model T between 1908 and 1927.
The Model T was mass-produced with simple specifications. The car originally came only in black, though a few other color choices were added in later model years.
The Model T was also quite affordable. The base price for a 1916 Model T Runabout was just $345, or $8,324.76 in 2021 dollars. This was, obviously, much cheaper than just about any car manufactured for the U.S. market today.
But this simplicity came at a price. If the Model T was cheap (even by early 20th-century standards) it was also far more difficult to use than modern vehicles.
The Rockland Horror 3 (now in production) will be a horror novel, not a book about early automobiles. But the story does involve some car chase scenes, and I wanted to make these scenes reasonably authentic.
My maternal grandfather was born in 1921, and even he never owned a Model T. Driving the Model T is one of those experiences that has passed out of “living memory”, so to speak.
I therefore went to YouTube, where there were, indeed, a few videos about starting and driving the Model T. I’ve embedded two of them here.
You probably already know about the crank start. But even that isn’t the worst of it. To start a Model T, you had to arrange a series of switches and levers inside the car in the right combination. Then you had to “choke” the engine by priming it with gasoline, and then…
Let’s just say it’s complicated!
Remembering ‘Red Dawn’
80sThen80s now is one of the few accounts I follow on Twitter, because, well…I’m nostalgic for the 1980s.
Today the account tweeted this post about the movie Red Dawn (1984). In response to the poll, I gave the movie a 9.
Red Dawn wouldn’t necessarily be a 9 if it were released today, mind you. But you have to evaluate a movie by the filmmaking standards of its era. A lot of movies in the early 1980s were pretty rough, compared to the slick, CGI-enhanced productions of today. And so it is with Red Dawn. Continue reading “Remembering ‘Red Dawn’”
A Column of Fire, by Ken Follett (mini-review)
I just finished reading Ken Follett’s mammoth historical novel, A Column of Fire.
The novel opens in 1558, just as the reign of the Catholic Queen Mary is coming to an end. Mary has reversed England’s Protestant shift, which began when her father, Henry VIII, decided that he couldn’t make due with one wife and a mistress.
Mary, who is also known to history as “Bloody Mary”, occasionally burned Protestant dissenters, and this is depicted in one of the opening chapters of A Column of Fire. Hence the name of the book.
This is the opening historical backdrop. The hero of the novel is Ned Willard, who is a young man in love as the story opens. The object of Ned’s affections is Margery Fitzgerald. Ned’s affections are returned, but—of course—there is a problem.
Margery hails from a devoutly Catholic family that has prospered under the reign of Mary. Through the connivances of Margery’s fanatically papist brother, Ned loses Margery to Bart, a member of the local Catholic nobility.
And so Margery enters into a loveless marriage with Bart (who is an uncouth, insensitive, and blundering brute), while Ned goes off, forlorn, to seek his fortune in London.
Ned is a lukewarm Protestant who abhors the intolerance of Mary’s reign. Ned longs for a monarch who will allow the British people to worship freely (or as freely as possible, according to 16th-century standards of “freedom”.)
Just as Ned is reeling from the loss of Margery, Mary dies. Elizabeth takes the throne. A chance connection to Sir Francis Walsingham (principal secretary to Elizabeth) enables Ned to enter the service of the Crown. Ned is greatly impressed with the young queen. With the option of a married life with Margery closed off, Ned devotes himself to the service of Queen Elizabeth I, and the implementation of her (initially) tolerant ideals.
There is a lot more to A Column of Fire, of course. This is a 900-page book, after all. There is also a storyline set in France, where Protestants are a minority in an officially Catholic country. Still another set of characters has adventures in Spain and the New World. (All of the storylines converge before the end of the book.)
The overarching theme of A Column of Fire is the religious strife that gripped Europe in the aftermath of the Protestant Reformation. As noted above, the story opens with anti-Protestant burnings in England. Follett later weaves into his plot the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre in Paris, and the Gunpowder Plot of 1605. The book covers around half a century. (Ned Willard is in his eighties in the final chapter.)
I loved this book. I have read almost everything that Ken Follett has written to this point, and A Column of Fire is hands-down my favorite.
I like stories with complex twists and turns, and physical threats; and A Column of Fire has all that in spades. There are sea battles, and opposing rings of Catholic and Protestant spies.
The majority of readers seem to agree with me. A Column of Fire is highly rated both on Amazon and Goodreads.
But even a really good book has its flaws. Most of the criticisms of A Column of Fire come from one of two angles, which I’ll address briefly.
Ken Follett seems to harbor a secret desire to be an author of Harlequin romance novels. Almost every movie, novel, and television series has a love interest (or multiple love interests), and I’m not suggesting that this, in itself, is in any way a drawback.
Follett, however, tends to go overboard on his sex scenes.
Now, before you ask, I’m no prude. I’m a fifty-year-old, very heterosexual man with right-leaning libertarian tendencies. I have an equal loathing for leftwing political correctness, and anything that smacks of goody-two-shoes censorship.
That said, there is only so much detail that I need when an author describes a romantic coupling. To be blunt about it: Once the author has described the male protagonist’s erect penis, or the heroine’s moist nether regions, the author has given me more detail than I actually need.
Follett does this on multiple occasions (and in more than a few of his novels). There are some lacunae that an author should trust readers to fill in for themselves.
Secondly, A Column of Fire has something of an anti-Catholic bias. Almost every Catholic character is portrayed as a bloodthirsty fanatic, an amoral schemer, or a deluded simpleton.
(This may be a thing with baby boomer British authors who write historical fiction, as I’ve noticed a similar tendency in the historical novels of Bernard Cornwell.)
These flaws, however, are minor ones. On balance, A Column of Fire is a great read.
A final word before I end: You’ll appreciate A Column of Fire far more if you already have a basic knowledge of European history in general, and the Protestant Reformation in particular. But then, if you don’t already have some interest in history, then it’s unlikely that you’ll be strongly attracted to this book.