EPISODE 9: TOCCOA AND CAMP MACKALL

Conceived in liberty and dedicated….. If anyone has read Stephen Ambrose’s Band of Brothers or seen the HBO movie you know about Toccoa, GA where the paratroopers received their first training. Band of Brothers is about a company in the 506th Regiment while my father was in the 501st. As well as the start of the paratroopers training Toccoa was the start of something else as that is where I was conceived.

I had been to Toccoa once before with a reunion of the 501st in 2000 but I wanted to come back because it seemed appropriate for this trip, plus last time I did not have time to do any research or climb up Mt. Curahee. And I heard they have started a new museum. It turns out that the new museum will be in the old train station but it has not opened yet. One of the things that really stuck in my mind from my first visit was the train station. This is where all the callow youths from the farms of Wisconsin, or the streets of Brooklyn, would have arrived. As well as my mother and father after their recent marriage. Here is a picture of them at that time:


Mom and Dad

Although the new museum is not yet opened they have finished sprucing up the station and this is what it looks like:


Toccoa train station

There is a set of markers outside of town where Camp Toccoa originally was. Here is the main marker. The declining symbol of boots represents the declining number of paratroopers that are still alive. On the other side of this marker are listed the number of killed, missing. and wounded for each regiment; the total KIA for the 501st is 517 which includes Lt. Marks.


Camp Toccoa Marker

Here is the only remaining building from the camp, probably the mess hall.


Only remaining Camp Toccoa building

Where the parade ground once was is now a grove of pine trees but one can see where the streets of the camp used to be and some have been informally named.


Jumpy Johnson

Howard Johnson was a real character; he would do as many as six jumps in one day, hence his nickname, Jumpy. He gave a famous speech as the troops were about to take off for D-Day. As he pulled his trench knife from its scabbard he said, “I swear to you that before tomorrow night this knife will be buried in the back of the blackest German in Normandy.” The troops went wild. What is funny is that Don Kane says that when Johnson first tried to pull the knife out of the scabbard it got stuck and he had a terrible time trying to get it out. The troops respected him as a leader but thought he was more than a little nuts. He was killed in Holland.

Probably the most famous part of the training at Toccoa was the daily run up and down Mt. Curahee, six miles total. It is very steep. I did not have the time or energy to do the whole thing so I cheated and drove most of the way but still had a strenuous walk of about half a mile up very steep terrain.


Mt. Curahee

The trail up the mountain has been named in honor of Col. Sink who was the head of the 506th and much revered by his men. I know his daughter who works in community planning in the Seattle area. When I first talked to her on the phone I had no idea who her father was (she has a different married name) and was amazed to learn that she was the daughter of THE Col Sink.


Col. Sink Trail

Here is a view from the top. I thought the eagles, if that is what in fact they are, were appropriate because the 101st is known as the Screaming Eagles.


At the top


Screaming Eagles

The picture from below was taken from some peoples’ yard since I could not get a good shot from the road. I was a little uncertain about venturing on their property since they had a Ten Commandments sign at the entrance to their driveway. The woman was very fat and they had two yippy little dogs in a little fenced area. But they were nice; the people I mean, not necessarily the dogs. They bought the house from someone who lived there in the early forties and the former owner remembered seeing the soldiers run up and down the mountain. The ten commandment sign is common in this part of the country and is probably a reaction to the legal battle about the display of this item. Thinking about it, I actually felt that one could do worse than support the Ten Commandments, which is sort of a good statement of ethical conduct. This is in spite of what Bertrand Russell said about the only commandment that he was sure he never broke or wanted to break was “Thou shall not covet your neighbor’s ass”.

After enjoying a quite morning picking up the rays of both the sun and the wi-fi hot spot in a little plaza in the village of Clemson, South Carolina and then braving the conurbation and the seemingly endless strip of urban sprawl leaving Charlotte, North Carolina, I headed to the Southern Pines area of North Carolina in an attempt to see if anything remained of Camp Mackall where I was born. And to see if they have erected a monument to this fact yet.

Here are a couple of pictures of my father at Camp Mackall. The first is of him jumping out of a plane. The second was during the teaching of urban fighting at a mock German-occupied village called Schicklegruberburg. My father received a letter of commendation from Jumpy Johnson for leading his men in this effort.


Geronimo


Schicklegruberburg

When I got to Camp Mackall I had to talk my way past a guard who was keeping people off the small part of the old base that is still used for special forces training. He finally let me through although later I saw this historical marker on the main road on the other side of the base.


Historical marker

Once past the guard I came across this sign on the old base, which was named after John Thomas Mackall, the first paratrooper killed in WWII.


On site sign

I was able to find the base by use of a USGS map. In addition, I have a historic USGS map which shows where the old hospital area was. It is the dark area in the center of the second photo.


USGS map


Old map

So I figure I was born right about in the area shown in the following photo. In fact, the brown marker in the picture is to be the site of a monument to be erected noting this event.


Drop Zone

And here is the design of this future monument:


One Polk Two Fell

Actually, this is a maker at the James K. Polk Museum in Pineville on the outskirts of Charlotte (half of North Carolina is on the outskirts of Charlotte). That museum was closed on the Monday I was there so I was not able to inform them about the true history of the Polk Doctrine (an old family joke).

After checking out Camp Mackall I headed into nearby Southern Pines where by mother and father lived. I was not able to find any historical record of the Southern Pines Cottages where they lived but once again I was moved by the railroad station. I could just envision my grandmother getting off the train here after the long trip from Los Angeles to be with my mother while she gave birth; my father was off on maneuvers in Tennessee at the time but he returned shortly thereafter.


Southern Pines Train Station

So that’s were this part of my journey that concerns WWII ends, at the beginning where it all, at least for me, began.

EPISODE 8: ASHEVILLE TO GEORGIA

Situated midway down the Blue Ridge Parkway is the town of Asheville, NC. The main attraction there is the Biltmore Estate built by George Vanderbilt, grandson of railroad tycoon and probable robber baron, Cornelius Vanderbilt. I have not been negative about much of anything on this trip but I am going to be a little bit negative here because I just did not like it very much. When I first saw it I thought I was in the Loire Valley -- this structure would fit in there but not here.


Biltomore view


Big house

Old George tried to use good taste by hiring famous architect Richard Morris Hunt and filling it with famous art. Hunt did a great job building a French renaissance house, but why? I just don’t think it fits into the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina. Compare Fallingwater, how it fits into its location. Also, somehow I like San Simeon more – I am sure William Randolph Hearst’s taste was more suspect but somehow his effort seems more honest in its acquisitive grossness.

Also, at Biltmore I found it hard to believe that anyone could have so much money. It reminded me of when I was at Chatsworth House in England a year or so ago (the family the Kennedy sister who was later killed in an airplane crash married into); I asked one of the attendants what all the stuff inside the house meant; did it mean that the person who has the most stuff when he dies wins?

On the self-guided house tour as I entered the library another visitor asked a staff person if she had heard all the possible questions. I said I had one she may not have heard. Having just left the billiard room, I asked her if she knew where Col. Mustard was. And I had not even been to the conservatory yet.

One very positive thing that Vanderbilt did was hire Fredrick Law Olmstead to design the grounds and they are very impressive. According to The Devil in the White City, Olmstead spent a lot of time here in Ashville when Daniel Burnham wished he were in Chicago working on the Columbia Exhibition.

Olmstead, in turn, suggested hiring Gifford Pinchot to run the forestry program. This was a new field in America. Pinchot went on to be the first director of the US Forestry Service. They then brought in a German to run the program at Biltmore. It is interesting that Pinchot was educated in France and then a German was brought in to establish the first forestry school on the Biltmore property. This is all recounted in the Forest Service’s Cradle of Forestry interpretive center north of Asheville and about 4 miles off the parkway.

Back to the grounds at Biltmore. As would be expected, to me Olmstead’s less formal gardens are more impressive than the formal gardens. Here is a view of the house from the Shrub Garden:


From the Shrub Garden

The formal English style Walled Garden, as seen is this picture, was nice but I have seen better in England. (Also, his “Italian Garden” – not pictured – was nothing really special and it was more French anyway.)


Walled Garden

Actually, the part of the Walled Garden I liked the best was the butterfly garden that actually had butterflies hovering around the plants. In the picture below there is actually a yellow butterfly hanging from the stem of yellow flowers.


Butterfly Garden

The other main Asheville attraction, although very, very different, is the Thomas Wolfe memorial that consists of a visitor center and the restored former boarding house run by his mother that was portrayed as “Dixieland” in Look Homeward Angel. I have never read him so I did not know how autobiographical his novels were, a fact that was not appreciated (at first) by Asheville residents who recognized themselves and considered their portrayal unfavorable. Here is Old Kentucky Home, the boarding house:


You can't go home again

Downtown they have a couple of memorials too. First, there is a little marker on the spot where Tom’s dad had his stone monument shop. Supposedly that is where the stone angel stood that was looking home. This marker contains stone cutting tools with a quote from one of Tom’s novels. In the background of this picture is a sculpture that was done by the late husband of a woman I met when I parked my car and asked her where the statue of the angel was. That stature is shown in the next picture.


Tom's dad's tools


Looking homeward

After Asheville I returned to the Blue Ridge Parkway. Overall I traveled from about Mile 105 near Roanoke to the end at mile 469, which makes 364 miles over parts of four days. I did not realize that October is the most popular month because of fall colors. They were impressive but I saw more color farther north in NY and Pennsylvania. I mentioned before the old time feeling with the stone decorated tunnels and some stone barriers along the edge of the road. I loved the tunnels especially, most of which curve as they bend around and through the mountains. Another thing that impressed me is how one feels completely removed from the urban environment; however, there is a lot of development deceptively close to portions of the parkway but you would not know this unless you left the parkway. Here are some pictures from along what is one of the most scenic drives in America.


Sunset on the Blue Ridge Parkway


Lower Falls


Tunnel on Blue Ridge Parkway

At the end of the parkway your can either turn right and visit the Great Smoky Mountains or turn left and visit the incredible town of Cherokee, the capitol of the Cherokee reservation. This is all that is left of the Cherokee nation that was mostly moved to Oklahoma in the Trail of Tears. It has all sorts of crap as well as some museums that I suppose might be nice. But I mainly went here because I was hungry. As it turned out my lunch was a treat because of a waitress at the Grandma’s Pancake and Steak restaurant. She looked like she could be a Native American but her accent was not right. (An Indian waiter had a really strong southern accent.) I asked her where she was from and she said Indonesia. I then started talking to her in Indonesian. She was surprised and we had a nice limited conversation. I think she was on some sort of training program but I am not too sure since my Indonesian is not all that good anymore, although people in the restaurant were impressed.

The Great Smoky Mountains are very touristy. It is the most visited of all National Parks. And, as I said, October is the most popular month. I decided not to spend much time here after driving through in a long line of traffic. At the other side of the park is the town of Gatlinburg. I wanted to see it because that is where Johnny Cash’s Boy Named Sue met his father. But as soon as you leave the national park you hit a horrid street full of Day’s Inns, KFCs, etc., etc. Sort of a bookend upscale cohort to Cherokee on the other side of the park. Maybe there is a nice older downtown Gatlinburg somewhere, and maybe there is a street of mud with a bar on it as in the song, but I won’t see those since I did a “180 “and headed back into the park. I also took the advice of a park ranger to avoid traffic by not driving past Dollywood which is a little down the road from Gatlinburg. I kind of wanted to at least see where Dolly Parton’s theme park was located but I figured there were twin peaks back in the park.

After driving around the park through Tennessee I headed back to North Carolina on small winding roads. Off the beaten track down near the Georgia border, but still in North Carolina, is a highway lined with waterfalls. The largest is called Dry Falls for some reason. They are hardly dry as can be seen in these pictures.


Dry? Falls


Looking out from under the falls

Just over the border into Georgia is the famous Dillard House restaurant. It is a huge place and the amount of food they serve is extraordinary and it is all you can eat. The quality (as well as the quantity) was surprisingly good. When you sit down there are starters already on the table: cole slaw, apple salad, relishes, and calico salad, which is a delicious combination of tomatoes, cucumbers, etc. Then they bring ice tea. sweat or unsweetened, and a basket of biscuits and corn bread. Next comes the meal: individual plates of each item and you can have more of anything you like, just like grandma’s house. This meal consisted of two kinds of chicken (friend and roasted – OK, not great), spare ribs (no sauce but very smoky and very delicious), country steak in mushroom gravy (really good), country ham (also OK, not great), green beans (overcooked of course), collard greens, fried potatoes with onions, sweat potato soufflé (really good), creamed corn (not good), cheesy creamed cauliflower (surprisingly good), fried green tomatoes, and strawberry cobbler with ice cream for dessert. As I was eating I realized I had no idea how much it cost but it was only $22.50. As I said, it was all you could eat and I took home most of the chicken and half of the ham but ordered a couple more spare ribs since they were so tasty. But the actual highlight for me was the fried green tomatoes, which I never had before. They were terrific. Now that I am in the South there should be more of those on the way.

After that meal I don’t know how I could think of food but I had to check out the other possible largest apple in the world. This was actually a gift from the city of Winchester, VA (see Episode 5) to the city of Cornelia, Georgia. I am not sure which is bigger, but this one looks pretty large.


Another Big Apple

EPISODE 7: COUNTRY ROADS AND D-DAY MEMORIAL

In Fairmont, West Virginia I asked an old codger at a gas station - the old kind without any food store attached - how to get to highway 310 which looked like a nice back road to head over the hill. He said that it was a dangerous road and that I should take Highway 150 instead. I started singing:

Country roads, take me home,
To the place I belong
West Virginia, Blue Ridge Mountains…..

He said, if you take 310 you just might meet John Denver. (OK, so this conversation did not go exactly like this. You can’t tell me that my old Peace Corps friend Paul Theroux - same director, different continents - doesn’t embellish his conversations.) I said OK I would use his road but when I came to a traffic signal where he told me to turn right I saw a sign to Highway 310 and turned left. It was a nice back road.

The longest covered bridge in West Virginia is located in picturesque Philippi. This is also the site of the first land battle and first death in the Civil War. In the interest of full disclosure, and for those who noticed that Dustin Hoffman was driving the wrong way across the Bay Bridge to Berkeley in The Graduate, I took the picture inside the bridge coming back the “wrong way”.


Philippi covered bridge


Philippi covered bridge

I had a very nice drive over the Allegany Mountains into Virginia through beautiful territory listening to country music on the radio. “Tequila Makes Her Clothes Fall Off”. It doesn’t get any better than that.

On the other side of the mountains is the town of Staunton, the birthplace of Woodrow Wilson. He only lived here one year so his connection is a bit tenuous but his library and museum are here anyway. I found this small museum interesting because Wilson was the subject of my first real research paper in High School. I was doing research on the sports and hobbies of three presidents, Wilson, Taft, and Roosevelt. This was assigned by my teacher and friend who used his students’ research to help write a book on the subject. This is the same person who wrote the children’s book on Jumbo I mentioned way back in Episode 3.


Woodrow Wilson's Birthplace

Staunton is also the site of the Sattler Brothers museum but I gave that a miss. What I did do was have my first WalMart experience. I had gone to a photo shop earlier to try to figure out what to do with my chip that contains my lost photographs. The woman at the shop suggested that I not reformat it but buy another chip and I could do that at WalMart. I protested but she said she would never have film processed there but their stuff is cheap. When I checked into a rather fancy private campground outside of town their brochure of Staunton attractions included WalMart so I figured this was in the cards. When I got to the megastore I recalled that I needed to buy other stuff too: batteries for my flashlight, pillow cases to cover the disreputable ones I bought at a motel back in Washington for 25 cents each - not to sleep on but to use to sit on in the back of my truck, duct tape to make some minor repairs. I got a little carried away. And I got such a kick out of the fact that they really do say “Attention WalMart shoppers” over the intercom. It was not too bad, very much like Costco and the employees were very helpful. It was a little weird to see some of the RVs parked outside for the night. (More on RVs and campgrounds later.) I got so carried away that by the time I got to a very famous restaurant (Mrs. Rowes) it was already closed. And I had been trying to decide between their world famous pan-fried chicken and pork chops. But I went there for breakfast the next day and had country ham on buttermilk biscuits. Yummmm.

I stopped in Lexington mainly to visit the George Marshall museum at VMI. I learned that in the late 1930’s he was stationed in Vancouver, WA supervising the Civilian Conservation Corps in the area because they needed some military supervision for some reason. General Marshall was chief of staff in WWII, Secretary of State under Truman, and Noble Peace Prize winner for organizing the Marshall Plan. Not noted, but discussed in the Truman Library I visited earlier this summer, Truman and Marshall had a big argument over Israel but Truman decided to recognize the formation of Israel over Marshall’s strenuous objection. Just for kicks here is the soda fountain where Truman had his first job as a kid in Independence, MO.


Clinton soda fountain

Back to this trip. While in Lexington I also checked out the nearby Washington and Lee campus chapel where Robert E. Lee and his horse are buried (Lee inside, Trooper outside). The chapel is on the left in the following picture:


Long way from Berkeley

The next stop in Virginia was the D-Day Memorial in town of Bedford. I had attended the dedication in 2001 and this visit was a lot less hectic. In 2001 the names of the fallen were not in place yet, so I wanted to revisit the memorial to see my dad’s name. By coincidence the name of the father (Frank Elliott) of a woman I know in the American World War II Orphans Network (AWON) happens to be on the same plaque. This memorial is located in Bedford because this small Virginia town lost 19 young men on D-Day, the highest percentage of any town in the nation. It is an interesting memorial, run by a small independent group that had some real financial problems at first as they got in over their head. These problems seem to be solved. yet the entire memorial is still not complete, but what is there gives a nice impression. It is sort of a pay-as-you-go effort; it appears that those military units that have plaques on the walls are there because the various units themselves have funded them. But the overall effect is pretty impressive.


D-Day Memorial


D-Day Memorial 2


D-Day Memorial 3


Against all odds


The Fallen


List of KIAs


Lt. Marks


One way to look at it

After I left Bedford I headed for the Blue Ridge Parkway, which is one of the most scenic highways in the country. It was started by the Civilian Conservation Corps and still has the feel of an older highway from an earlier time. I was thinking this when a series of vintage vehicles drove past going the other way. I almost got into an accident pulling over to the side of the road but I could not get my camera out in time. In any case, here are two pictures from the parkway. The first is supposedly of the most photographed item on the parkway – so why should I be any different? The second is of the underside of viaduct, the last section of the parkway to be constructed. It is an amazing engineering feat where the viaduct was constructed around the side of a rocky mountain; each section of the viaduct was built from the previously built section and the supports were placed from above.


Where I first met you


Why not a goose?

EPISODE 6: NO PICTURES -- GETTYSBURG, ALTOONA, JOHNSTOWN FLOOD, FALLINGWATER, AND ARTHURVILLE

The first minor disaster of my trip happened to me in the New Deal Homestead town of Arthurville, West Virginia. I did something to my camera and lost all my pictures since Gettysburg. So this episode will not be illustrated. I understand there is a possibility of recapturing those lost photos especially if I don’t reformat the chip. But this will have to wait until I come home.

I took a picture of the site of Pickets charge and one of the monument to Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address. I talked to one of the rangers in the visitor center about whether or not Lincoln was justified in being really angry with General Meade for letting Lee’s army retreat to Virginia without any effort to pursue and destroy. The ranger thought that Lincoln was not justified since Meade had to minister to the dead and wounded, etc. This reminded me of a joke told by a comedienne, whose name I can’t recall, that I heard when she was on the same bill as David Sedaris in Seattle a couple of years ago. She was pointing out how politicians have to be diplomatic in their speeches. When Lincoln said, “It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced”, what he really meant to say was: “That goddam, f--king Meade.”

One of the best things about travel is the positive surprises. I was just trying to get to Altoona without going on a major highway and wound up on Highway 74 north out of Carlisle. It turned out to be a fantastic drive up and down a mountain ridge that I had no idea was there. The leafs were turning and the scenery was breathtaking. I came across a little town called Icklesburg, or something, and decided to stop at a little roadside stand. I had the most delicious Italian sausage sandwich in a wonderful roll that they bake themselves using their pizza dough. It was fantastic. And they had a sign in the bathroom: “If you sprinkle while you tinkle, sweetie please wipe the seatie.”

One of the reasons I went to Altoona is that I have in my notes, that I got from somewhere, that there is a famous wooden roller coaster, maybe the biggest, tucked into the right field wall of their minor league ball park. I envisioned this old-fashioned park right in the heart of town with the outfield wall modified to take the roller coaster into consideration. I knew the baseball season was over but thought I might be able to ride the roller coaster anyway. Well, I was greatly disappointed. In it not in the heart of town but out across the river and freeway from downtown Altoona. And it turns out the coaster right next to the ballpark is not the famous one. That is located a bit closer the to river and it is the oldest wooden roller coaster, not the biggest. I was able to take a picture (now lost) of this strange looking ride only from afar since the amusement park within which they are located was closed for the season. I think this was a greater disappointment than the Worlds Largest Kazoo.

However, the other reason for coming to Altoona was not a disappointment at all. Horseshoe Curve is a massive bend in the Pennsylvania railroad track outside of town. It was built to connect one side of a valley with the other and is built over two large fills of two ravines. One takes a little funicular up the side of the hill and you can stand right next to the track at the bend of the curve. As if on cue a huge train about 100 cars long roared by encircling me with the front of the train on one side of the valley and the end – no caboose, of course – on the other side with me in the middle of it all. It was really cool and truth be told the pictures I took did not do it justice because one would have needed a panoramic lens. One interesting note: the Pennsy was one of the most forward thinking railroads but was one of the last to convert to diesel; maybe they did not want to thumb their nose at their best customers, the coal mines of Pennsylvania.

On the way to Fallingwater I noticed signs to the Johnstown Flood Memorial so I thought I would stop by. I really didn’t recall the cause of the flood. I thought it was just caused by a large storm. A storm was involved but what really caused the flood was the failure of a dam holding back a huge lake. Over 2000 people were killed. What I did not realize was that the lake was an artificial one built only to serve the recreation needs of a sportsman club comprised of very rich business people from Pittsburgh, the likes of Carnegie, Mellon, and Frick. An older dam had breached earlier and these plutocrats just had the dam repaired without any engineering assistance. There is some controversy but it is felt that the dam failed because of this lack of proper engineering.

Well, one place where I am sad that I lost my pictures was of Fallingwater although I was able to get this off the Internet – although this is in winter.


Winter at Fallingwater

It is really an impressive place. One of the things I wanted to point out was that it certainly does not meet the 50-foot setback requirement from an environmental critical area (as some of the detractors of the ECA policies used to point out). One picture that I lost was of a statue in the courtyard by that old Litvak, Jacques Lipschitz, again.

As I noted, Arthurville, WV was an effort by the FDR administration to provide assistance to miners from Morgantown who were unemployed because of the depression. It was a homesteading program where these unemployed minors were provided land whereby they could make a living. It was a typical New Deal program that provided lots of social services. Eleanor Roosevelt was especially interested in this project and she came every year to attend the high school graduation ceremonies. I took some pictures of the different types of homes provided, some rather substantial. But…..

EPISODE 5: BALTIMORE TO HARPERS FERRY

Here are a couple of signs from the road, the first from outside Baltimore and the second from Greenbelt, MD. The second reminds me of the Marx Brothers routine, I think from Animal Crackers, where Groucho is dictating a letter to Zeppo and addressing it to the law firm of Hungadunga, Hungadunga, Hungadunga, and McCormic.


Seattle Coffee?


One for each wisdom tooth

The main reason I went to Baltimore was to visit Ray Geddes, another of the 501st paratroop infantry regiment. Although Ray was not standing right with my father when he was killed, he did know him and has turned out to be my best friend of all the old veterans. When I met him at the first reunion I attended he told me then that he was afraid of my father. I have seen him at several subsequent reunions and I have visited him and his wife Shirley a couple of times before in Baltimore. Also, Ray arranged a reunion of just G Company (not the entire regiments) in Baltimore in 2002. It was a great occasion where my kids were able to attend and meet Ray, Walter Turk, Don Kane who we are about to meet, Jack Urbank and Warren Purcell. Urbank and Purcell have died within the last year. Purcell was still able to get into his army uniform. None of the men travel anymore, hence this journey of mine to see them at their homes.

Here is part of the picture from Camp Mackall again. Ray is standing in the first row, four men to the right (our right) of the man standing behind my father.


Ray at Camp Mackall

Ray’s fighting time was relatively short. He was at Pouppeville but was not near my father. However he was very close to a memorable incident where a man got shot and Eddie Hohl, a medic, went up to take care of him. Hohl was shot by a German as he ministered to the man, an egregious incident. Hohl was buried in the same temporary plot as my dad, in the courtyard of the house that was formerly used as the German headquarters.

Two days later in a famous encounter at what later became known as Dead Man’s Corner, Ray lost the sight in his left eye when it was penetrated by a piece of shrapnel the size of a finger nail. Urbank told me last year that he was standing next to Ray and the vitreous humor spilled on him. So that was the end of Ray’s time with the airborne as he was sent back to the states to recover.

He met Shirley when he was a MP in Baltimore as he finished out his military duty stateside. She was a western union operator in a RR station that Ray was patrolling. That building is now an historical monument, maybe because that is where Ray and Shirley met, but maybe because it has something to do with Lincoln stopping there on his way to the White House. Ray is not sure.

We had a great visit and it was not hard to get Ray to talk on tape for a couple of hours.
Shirley is an avid bird watcher and a great cooker of soft shell crabs, which we had for, lunch. Ray is an avid gun collector, mainly of civil war vintage firearms. I was also able to meet one of their sons who was in town; he is an economist in Cornell’s policy program and has just finished a year’s stint with the Council of Economic Advisors.

In this picture Shirley is holding the recent book by Jerry McLaughlin that features men of Company G, and my little write up of the Pouppeville action in the appendix. Ray is holding a book on Utah Beach by an historian that lives very near Ray- it includes a quote by Ray about the Eddie Hohl incident.


Ray and Shirley

On to DC. These next photos are of one of my favorite places in the capitol: a row of Georgian row houses that are used as executive offices on Lafayette Park, kitty-corner from the white house. The was a proposal to tear these buildings down and build a new executive office building on the site but first lady Jackie Kennedy stopped this nonsense and had them preserved. The close up is of the Council on Environmental Quality office. The most “high profile” project I ever worked on when I was with a planning firm in Berkeley in the 1970s was when we were a subcontractor on a project funded by the CEQ – I think it was to evaluate the urban growth impacts of a Sacramento waster water treatment plant but don’t really recall. What I do recall is getting a trip to DC, meeting in this office building, and then later meeting with the CEQ project director in her home in Georgetown and meeting her nephew Seymour Hersh who had just cracked a big story on assassination attempts on foreign leaders or something.


By Lafayette Park


Council on Environmental Quality

I didn’t even bother taking a picture of the White House. There was a time when that building meant a lot to me but not now. I was not really angry or upset – it just made me feel rather sad and empty.

On to the main reason for coming to DC – the new World War II memorial. It has a very controversial history. It’s location and architecture were large bones of contention. I did not feel that it detracted all that much from the open area between the Lincoln Memorial and the Washington Monument since most of the memorial is sunken below ground level. But I think the critics that have said it looks like fascist architecture and could have been designed by Hitler’s architect are probably right. But mainly it just left me rather cold. Especially as compared to the Vietnam Memorial which has turned out to be such a humane achievement.

These pictures feature references to Normandy and D-Day, which are important to me, of course. Also, there are pictures of two scenes, which seem obligatory in recent memorials since the Vietnam Memorial received such criticism for not featuring human figures – I think that criticism was wrong. Anyway, the first scene shows a jumpmaster (like Lt. Marks and his men, like Turk, Orlowski, and Geddes); then a scene of the fallen. Following is a picture of the wall of gold stars, one for each 100 men who were killed in action. The last picture was taken at the visitor kiosk where one can look up on a computer screen the names of men who were killed in action.


WWII Memorial 1


WWII Memorial 2


Atlantic Theater


Normandy


Ike’s D-Day letter to the troops


Jumpmaster and troops


The Fallen


Gold Stars


Lt. Marks KIA


Here is the new Indian Museum in DC. It was interesting in the respect that they tried to have Indians themselves be the curators and designers instead of other “outsiders”. It covers all of the Americas. I thought the lay out of some of the exhibits was a bit confusing and the displays could have even been stronger with respect to the genocide perpetrated against Native Americans. They have good Indian food (not Curry) from different regions in the Americas.


Where's the Casino?

Speaking of Indians, here is a picture of the Marine Memorial at Arlington Cemetery. One of the flag raisers was Ira Hayes who could not deal with the fame from being one of the flag raisers. He died in a drunken stupor in the freezing snow back home in New Mexico or Arizona. The main reason I took this picture is to mention probably the best book by a child of a WWII veteran, Flags of Our Fathers by James Bradley. He notes that half of the flag raisers never made it off of Iwo Jima alive. His father was one that survived but never considered himself a hero. He felt that the men that died there were the heroes.


Iwo Jima

Then down the road a bit on the main drive leading to the National Cemetery is a memorial to the 101st Airborne Division (the 501st Paratroop Infantry Regimen was part of the 101st in WWII). Note the inscription on the back, showing the people who sponsored this monument; it includes Julian Ewell. I think I mentioned that he led the attack on Pouppeville. He put his head around the corner of a building and was also hit by a German sniper. But instead of getting killed as my father, he was only hit in the helmet. Ewell went on to have a long career in the military and is still alive today. Such are the fortunes of war. What a difference two inches can make. I may have told this story before.


101st monument


Ewell

When I go to DC I usually pay my respects to Jack and Bobby here at Arlington. I think the architect who designed JFK’s gravesite was the Kennedy family favorite, John Carl Warneke. I think he did a good job although most of his stuff in California is not much to write home about, at least that is what I thought when I was in the first group to live in one of the dorms he designed at Berkeley.


JFK


Glow from that fire


Bobby

Greenbelt vs. Tyson Corner In the DC area I stayed in campgrounds both near Greenbelt, MD and Reston, VA – both new towns of a different era. Reston is near Tyson Corner and it is hard to imagine two different types of places with different types of people as Tyson Corner and Greenbelt – at least the “old” Greenbelt I saw. Here is a picture of the town center that was built by the federal government in the 1930s as one of three new towns, art deco and all:


Greenbelt, Md

In Greenbelt I came to have breakfast at the New Deal Café because they have a wi-fi hot spot there where I could use my laptop for email and blog entering. It was quite a scene, a throwback to the New Deal era or at least some island of counter-culture. I will try to paint a verbal picture of the scene. Most of the staff seemed to be developmentally disabled. This slows down the food ordering process quite a bit. I think there must be some assisted-living situation nearby. I saw an old guy with a stroke and one arm hanging down. Also, a chubby middle-aged guy with a short grey goatee, wearing a black t-shirt and faded jeans and white tennis shoes, is talking about Brazilian music with a young Brazilian mother. But mainly he is carrying on about the ACLU defending the right of people to have sex in public in Oregon as a matter of free speech. He says he is a liberal but this is too much. He says they would also defend the Minutemen guarding our border against immigrants. He says their new acronym should be American Criminal Law Association. Before he eats he says grace: “Jesus, Buddha, Allah - ruba dub dub god bless this grub – that should take care of it.” The owner is a woman with grey hair; she looks like she lives in Berkeley. Another man is talking with a heavyset woman with red hair - she is a grand mother but does not seem all there. In any case, this seems a world away from Tyson Corner, which is like 12 Bellevues lumped together. I went to a mall there because I heard on the radio that they had an LL Bean store and I left my favorite LL Bean shirt in a motel in Winnipeg, I think. First I went to the wrong mall – then I found the store in the bigger (I mean VERY big) mall. The whole place is an amazing sea of commercialism. I did buy a shirt (not the one I lost which was not in stock) but got out as soon as I could. All this by way of showing what differences there are in this country.

After leaving DC I headed up to Purcellville, VA to see Don Kane, the last of the men from my dad’s unit that I will visit on this trip. Don does not remember my father but I have met him a few times at reunions and we have gotten along very well. I also had some nice discussions with his wife, Sue, who died earlier this year. She was a planning commissioner in the area and worked hard to preserve historic buildings and wildlife areas. In a really nice gesture they have named a wild life sanctuary after her.


Sue Kane Nature Preserve

In probably the biggest oversight so far, I forgot to take a picture of Don but will try to rectify that somehow. The main thing that I want to note about Don is his amazing story on D-Day; this shows the fortunes of war as the story about Ewell, above. My father and the other officers did not fraternize with the enlisted men but he had a drinking buddy, 2nd Lt. Crouch, that he stayed with in Lambourn, England while the others went off to London. Most of the men I have met did not like Crouch. Anyway, as they were about to get on the planes and head for Normandy Crouch decided he wanted to be on the same plane as his Sgt. so he kicks Don Kane off the plane. Don is angry for being separated from his buddies. But the plane that Crouch got on is shot down and explodes over Normandy. He is buried in the cemetery at Normandy and Don is still alive to this day.

So that ends my series of visits with men who served under my father. I feel very grateful that I have been able to meet and become friends with these men over the past few years. It is a real blessing.

After visiting Don I drove to Winchester VA, and Charles Town and Harpers Ferry West Virginia. The following pictures show Patsy Cline’s home in Winchester, the former James Wood high school (now middle school) where Patsy may or may not have gone but where Dennis Meier went for sure, the worlds largest apple with an “apple on parade” in the background – everybody is doing this fund raising idea it seems, and finally the main street turned into a pedestrian zone. As with other attempts at pedestrian-only areas it does not really seem to work as they are usually under utilized. Although we like to deemphasize the car, if cars are removed completely these areas often become out-of-sight out-of-mind and are not used much. A comparison in my mind with the huge amount of “pedestrian” activity in the malls – after driving there - in Tyson Corner really struck me.


Patsy Cline's home


James Wood High


World's Largest Apple


Pedestrian zone in Winchester

On to Charles Town in West Virginia. Here are pictures of the courthouse where John Brown was convicted; he was hung a few blocks south on George St. Then there is a picture of an estate (Happy Retreat) in the same town owned by George Washington’s brother and where Dennis Meier used to play.


Charles Town Courthouse


Happy Retreat

And here is one of the armory buildings located up the road in Harpers Ferry which John Brown attacked and where he was captured. The building now stands a few yards from its original location. It had been taken down and shipped to Chicago for the Columbia Exposition in the early 1890s. Make no little plans. Eventually it was returned to Harper’s Ferry in close to the original place.


Armory building in Harpers Ferry