Precision Engagement

That’s SGT Frank Vukasin of Great Falls, Montana, bundled in his winter coat, while using his frozen fingers to jam another eight-round clip into his M-1 rifle and kneeling for the ages. Next to him lie two dead white-clad German soldiers. In 1944 during the Battle of the Bulge, this was precision engagement. As soon as he reloaded, he’d be back on his feet maneuvering again through the Ardennes Forest on this flat battle-field, rather than remaining stationary as would have been the case in the trench of a WWI battle-line. He could pour out a 30 to 40 rounds-per-minute rate of fire in place of the slower rate WWI infantry rifle, the more accurate M1903 Springfield with its single-shot bolt-action.

A history of Black Eagle, Montana, families says Vukasin had been working in the Anaconda Company Refinery when he got drafted. After surviving the war and returning  home, he and his brother traded up through a couple of Black Eagle saloons. He once got a gig as an actor with Clint Eastwood and Jeff Bridges in that poolroom scene of Thunderbolt and Lightfoot. In the years after his wife passed he made his living as a gambler. He died in January 1995 and is buried in Highland Cemetery among hundreds of fellow veterans, not too far from Charlie Russell.

Since 1996, the word battle-field has been replaced by the word battle-space, a multi-dimension civilian and military sphere ranged by every kind of weapon, including weaponized lying and demeaning of truth-telling. Battle-space can be fully ranged with doctored images, honey trap pornography, destructive and instructive movies, and bad or good art and writing, using targeted new media like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and hundreds of variations being sought and linked by like-minded groups.  

The iconic photo of Vukasin in The Bulge serves as an early example of weaponizing images in battle-space. Eight years after Vukasin died, his photograph taken by a U.S. Army Signal Corps cameraman and preserved by our National Archives, was used by the NRA to narrate its firearms oriented point of view. The picture, properly sourced and credited, belongs to all of us, each for our own reasons, as I am using it here to ask a question: “Did anyone care then or now whether SGT Vukasin was a Republican or a Democrat? No! We cared that he was a calm and courageous American soldier who could shoot straight.

That’s because during WWII our leaders did everything possible to bring us together, instead of doing everything possible to aggravate divisions that split us from each other to  disempower us. Fear is being used to harden our hearts. Whether or not we order Pizza with anchovies and who we talk to on FaceBook help to precisely target messages to our minds, which is far better than an enemy’s bullet to our brains. Now we are where we’ve come to be, and only by learning and relearning in our best respective ways will we recover from the November 5, 2024, battle-space defeat of our country.

On the cold winter night we were making inquiries in Black Eagle the waitress in “Borres” told my friend Magoo and I, “The name’s pronounced ‘Vukaaasin.’ When my father was alive, he could tell you everything. He knew all those guys. There were a lot of bars around here. When they came back from the war they all hit the bars. Sorry, I can’t help you more!”

MT 2 Concession Statement

 

Commissioner Downing, congratulations on a clean win. I did my effort in the best way I knew how and have no regrets. Tough job ahead of you. Good luck. Sincerely, John B Driscoll

In the Primary Election 100,411 votes were cast for the nine Republican Candidates and 40,290 (or 28.6%) were cast for the four Democrats. 129,315 more Eastern Montanans voted in the General Election, and 91,631 (or 33.9%) voted for me.

U.S. Military Readiness

 

4:00 PM, 11/03/2024: Completed the first 84 pages of this book. Decided to read it because Darrell Valance thought I should read it. A young former infantryman (8 years) in Hobson was trying to tell me something but I could tell he thought it wise to tip-toe around all that he wanted to say because I’m a Democrat, but he told me enough. We were having the conversation because I am trying as hard as I can to understand why former officers like Sheehy, Zinke and Downing, sworn to protect our U.S. Constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic, support so clearly a threat to our constitution as Trump. The movie War Games, starring Steve Bullock, was produced in part by a group called VetVoice, and, when they were interviewed I could see that they are concerned about the radicalization of some of their fellow soldiers and marines. And, the military is facing a recruiting problem. I am familiar with readiness issues because I used to be the officer responsible for monitoring the readiness of our army guard units. The challenge of meeting readiness standards so that fighting units go off to war ready to fight is HARD. This book is bringing me up to date on the additional challenges.

I easily agreed with the authors criticism of the shuffle of general officers to the board rooms of military industry’s with which they used to deal. Though I sense a little male whining at having to make cultural changes, it’s not so much. I think it’s a helpful book and I’m looking forward to finishing the last 144 pages. We need to get every branch of our armed forces into tip top fighting condition while never again wasting them on wars of choice like Iraq.

Final Eastern District MT2 Campaign Cost: $4,573.21.

 Today, October 30, 2024, I’ve been advised by Helena Body and Paint that our car will not be released by them until November 4, the day before election. This means the attached summary of expenses for my campaign for Congress, including $500 deductible for our USAA comprehensive collision insurance which otherwise covers repair for damages sustained from hitting a deer in the dark at 6:37 AM just south of the Marias River is final. This campaign for Eastern Montana’s Congressional seat cost  $4,573.21, which is $426.79 less than the $5,000 of personal expenditures allowed by the U.S. Federal Elections Commission and the U.S. House of Representatives. I intend to continue my last walkabouts and public appearances here, or from here, in Helena through November 5, 2024. 

MT2 Campaign Expenses:

Filing fee: $1,740

Democrat Hat: $20 ( No Receipt)

Gas @ Forsyth  $45.58 (Miles City/Glendive )

Gas @ Miles City $$24.35 (MC/Glendive trip)

Gas @ Helena.     $38.63 (MC/Glendive trip)

Running Sub-Total: $128.55 plus Filing Fee

Gas@Helena $29.55 (Great Falls Debate)

Gas@Helena $9.04 (Boulder Speech)

Dinner Tickets $50.00 Boulder Speech)

Running Sub-Total: $217.14 plus Filing Fee

Gas @ Havre $39.44

Gas @ Helena $26.24

Havre Dinner Ticket $35.00 (No Receipt)

Running Sub-Total: $318.02

Remaining Balance: $2941.98

AFL-CIO Interview gas. $44.29 (Hamilton Gas)

Running Sub-Total: $362.31

Remaining Balance: $2897.69

American Legion Speech: $154.60 (NoWhere)

                                                     $42.59 (Jordan)

                                                     $16.76. (Miles City)

                                                     $25.63.(Billings)

                                                     $41.47. (Helena)

                                                    $281.05 (Trip)

Running Sub-Total:               $643.36

Remaining Balance:             $2616.64 

Sidney Community Stage Speech

Gas @Cook City: $43.35

Shower @Lockwood $15 (Friday)

Shower @Lockwood $15 (Saturday)

Gas @Lockwood $28.74

Ingomar Rodeo    $10.00

Shower @Lockwood $15.00 (Sunday)

Parking Ticket @Billings $10.00

Gas @circle K Billings $48.15

Shower @Lockwood  $15.00

Gas @Fort Smith $45.38

Gas @Custer $40.89

Camp spot Makishika $9.00

Shower @Glendive $10.00

Richland Fair @Sidney $2.00

Gas @Glendive (Trailstart) $49.16

Gas @Columbus $41:30

Gas @Helena $28.42

                       Trip total: $426.38

Running Sub-total:  $1,069.75

Remaining Balance: $2,190.25

Donation to HCTV: $100.00

Remaining Balance: $2,090.25

Jefferson County Swing: $23.85 (S. Helena)

Remaining Balance: $2,066.40

6th swing:

Gas @Brady: $33.25

Remaining Balance: $2,033.15

Shower @Shelby: $15.00

Remaining Balance: $2,018.15

Gas @Whitefish: $41.76

Running Balance: $1,976.39

Gas @Sweetgrass: $39.93

Running Balance: $1,936.46

Shower @Shelby: $1,921.46

Gas@Inverness: $26.00

Running Balance: 1,896.46

Gas @Helena: $43.39

Running Balance: $1,853.07

Gas@Park City: $36.82

Running Balance: $1,816.25

Gas @Big Timber: $50.57

Running Balance: $1,765.68

5:15 Gas @ Townsend: $52.36

Running Balance: $1713.32

6:04 Gas @Helena: $4.08

Running Balance: $1709.24

6:10 : Home

0700 Shower at Lockwood: $15.00

08:45 Gas at Lame Deer $48.56

 9/14 Remaining Balance: $1645.68

8:30 overnight Medicine Rocks: $9.00

9/14 remaining Balance: $1,636.68

9/15 Gas at Baker: $37.21

9/15 Remaining Balance: $1,608.47

9/15 Gas at Plentywood: $46.99

9/15 Remaining Balance $1,561.48

9/16 gas at Scoby; $23.60

9/16 Remaining Balance: $1,537.88

9/16 gas at Malta: $25.99

9/16 Remaining Balance: $1,511.89

9/17 Gas at Helena:$43.47

9/17 Remaining Balance: $1,468.42

9/21 Gas at Geraldine: $30.67

9/21 remaining Balance: $1,437.75

9/21 contribution to Hill County Dems: $5.00

9/21 Remaining Balance: $1,432.75

9/23 Gas at Fort Benton: $39.57

9/23 Remaining Balance: $1,393.18

9/23 Gas at Helena: $22.41

9/23: Remaining Balance: $1,370.77

9/23: Deductible for deer wreck: $500.00

9/23: Remaining Balance: $870.77

9/30: Gas at Belt: $32:35

10/1: Remaining Balance:$838.42

10/1: Gas at Chinook: $48.52

10/1 Remaining Balance: $789.90

10/1 Gas at Glasgow:$40.00

10/1: Remaining Balance: $749.00

10/02: Gas at Saco: $47.01

10/02:Remaining Balance: $701.99

10/02: Sleeping Buffalo Hot Springs: $13.00

10/02: Remaining Balance: $688.99

10/03: Gas at Roundup: $31.22

10/03:Remaining Balance: $657.77

10/03: Lockwood shower: $15.00

10/03: Remaining Balance: $642.77

10/03: Gas at Three Forks: $46.15

10/03: remaining Balance: $596.62

10/04: Gas at Helena $7.61

10/04: Remaining balance: $589.01

10/15: Finds remaining for MT2: $589.01

10/16: Gas at Red Lodge: $44.34

10/16: Remaining Balance: $544.67

10/17: Shower at Lockwood Truckstop: $15:00

10/17: Remaining Balance: $529.57

10/17: Gas at Broadview: $45.00

10/17: Remaining Balance: $484.57

10/17: Overnight at Ackley State Park: $7.50

10/17: Remaining Balance: $477.07

10/18: Gas at Helena: $42.78

10/18: Remaining Balance:$441.79

01/01: Autobody Shop Credit Card Charge: $15.00

01/01: Remaining Balance: $426.79

Let the Record Speak

     Journalism made the difference. Americans were reading and hearing plain language assessments of the happenings in Germany. One of those journalists was syndicated columnist Dorothy Thompson. She had been writing columns between 1936 and 1939 when she summarized them in a book titled Let The Record Speak.  

  “This it seems to me, is the lesson of the news in the last three years, National Socialism, or Nazism in Germany, will become the most world-disturbing event of the century, though Nazism is not, in its nature, only a German phenomenon. Nazism is a fusion of elements that are present in the minds of men and women everywhere, and it does offer one answer to political, social, and economic problems that everywhere press for solutions.” She argued, “Americans must understand there is a fundamental incompatibility between any form of social order based upon political and economic freedom, and the dynamic aggrandizing of Fascism, or National Socialism. Nazism is a total Revolution.”  

Himmler in Germany was calling Nazism “Counter-Revolutionary” in that it aimed to reverse all the change, including the American Revolution, that had happened since the European Enlightenment. Thompson described Nazism as a break with Reason, with Humanism, and with the Christian ethics that are at the base of America’s Liberal Democracy. She saw Nationalism as similar to Communism in that they both broke with the ethic or science that elevates the search for truth into the noblest of human passions. She thought Nationalism was worse than Communism, because it denies the concept of the inviolability of the human being. She saw Nazism, unlike Communism, as treating all of life as the unremitting struggle of tribal groups for biological survival. “In this struggle telling lies is openly accepted as a useful means to an end, which is dealing with what Nazis believe to be naïve and decadent democracies.” Since Nazis subjugate and destroy the common sense that grows out of human experience, the columnist wrote, “National Socialism is the enemy of whatever is sunny, reasonable, pragmatic, common sense, freedom-loving, life-affirming, form-seeking, and conscious of tradition.”

Thompson predicted, “Therefore I believe that the conflict will be conjoined, certainly in the realm of ideas and probably by force, not in the East but in the West. And I have believed that, sooner or later, by force or diplomacy, by political means or military means, the western world will have to take a stand against the Nazi challenge. It’s too late to answer the slogans of Fascism with the slogans of Democracy. It’s too late to hope that we shall preserve Democracy without effort, intelligence, responsibility, character and great sacrifice. In the next decade there will be no free rides to freedom; it will not be preserved by geography or by the insistent chant, that no matter where else it is raining, it is bound to be sunny here---if not today, then tomorrow.” 

     As Americans absorbed these journalist impressions by 1940, Montana’s Army National Guard, the 163rd Infantry Regiment, received federal orders. During August 1940, the Pacific Northwest had been experiencing its largest concentration of troops since WWI. Over 14,000 soldiers comprising the U.S. Army’s 3rd Infantry Division and the National Guard’s 41st Infantry Division, made up of regiments from Idaho, Montana, Oregon and Washington, practiced maneuvering against each other along the Nisqually River. When the guardsmen went home from their usual summer training, they left much of their equipment and tents at Camp Murray near Fort Lewis. On August 27 the 1750 members of the 163rd Infantry Regiment received letters advising them to be at full strength for induction into federal military service September 16. This meant discharging some for age, health and dependent status and filling their positions with reservists and new recruits from dusty towns and impoverished farms. The day of induction for one year of active duty with the 41st Infantry came on the same day as the first peacetime draft became law. Six weeks after Montana’s 163rd Infantry Regiment entrained, all men between the ages of 21 and 36 were required to register with the Selective Service. Local draft boards were authorized to review physical, mental, moral, marital and occupational details for every man in that age group befor ranking each for mandatory induction into the military. Already yielding to the portents of war, 62 percent of Montanans favored conscription. 

    Wether inducted by federalization, voluntary enlistment or the draft, future soldiers, sailors, marines and airmen from Montana began flowing to military service from family homesteads on narrow twisting roads lined by crooked fence posts, often guarding more agates and arrowheads than fencing out neighbors cows. Compared with today’s 1,132,812 people, the 1940 census counted only 559,456 of us living in our same 56 counties. Changes in other parts of the world caused a huge exodus of workers out of Montana to coastal defense industries and another 57,000 Montanans, including 567 women left our state for military service. At least 1869 Montana men and women were eventually killed.

The Rise of Hitler

 

Nationalist Blood Banner

     In late 1919 when protestors tried shouting down Hitler during one of his beer hall speeches, his army friends brutally beat the protesters, and threw them from the building.  In early 1920, the ex-soldiers turned beer hall brawlers, armed themselves with truncheons and started calling themselves Schutz Abteilung, or hall protectors.  They were a constant presence at Hitler’s rallies, guarding against disruptions, especially by the rough-neck workers comprising two other parties, Social Democrats and Communists.  Hall protectors sometimes went on the offensive to disrupt the other parties’ meetings.  People were killed.  In 1921 after one battle in a Munich beer hall, the hall protectors took the new name, Sturm Abteilung (SA), or storm troopers.  They wore brown shirts as though it were a uniform.  Always difficult for Hitler to control, the Brown Shirts grew in number.   By  June 1934 they amounted to between 3 million and 4 1/2 million members.  That’s when their leadership was murdered by Hitler’s Protection Squads, the Schutz Staffel or (SS), during the Night of the Long Knives. 

The SS started in 1925 with ten hand-picked Brown Shirts sworn only to Hitler.  This squad eventually held control of a blood spattered flag called the Blood Banner. SS recruit number 168, a publicity-shy man named Heinrich Himmler, had carried the banner in Munich, during a failed November 1923 Nationalist attempt to take over the War Ministry.  This failed Beer Hall putsch resulted in Hitler spending six months in prison, where he was able to write his book, Mein Kampf.   Himmler was a gifted organizer, who believed persons of Aryan ancestry were a master race.   By 1929, certain that he possessed Himmler’s personal loyalty, Hitler placed Himmler in charge of the SS.  He accepted Himmler’s intent to make the SS an elite racially pure organization.  Prospective SS members were required to produce evidence of Aryan ancestry going back three generations.  The first Protection Squad spawned others in every district of Germany, each with 10 men and one officer.  Though smaller in numbers, the SS were more disciplined than SA Brown Shirts.  These SS political purpose units of men, 25 to 35 years old, in good physical condition and of sober habits, also swore their personal loyalty to Hitler.  As with every SS organization that followed, each SS squad’s flag touched the Blood Banner. 

In 1932, Hitler secured an emergency decree that gave both the SA and the SS government police powers.  Himmler became head of the Nationalist Party’s police in Munich.  The number of SS elite exploded to 30,000.  One of these, a former naval officer named Reinhard Heydrich, impressed Himmler enough to be given the job of forming a state security and intelligence service of secret SS spies.  This new entity, called the Sichereits Dienst (SD), reached into every part of every German’s personal life.  At nearly the same time Prussia’s Minister of Interior, Hermann Goring, took command of the Prussian Police Force and, from its seasoned police officers, formed a secret state police with unlimited arrest powers.  He called this new entity the Gestapo.  The Gestapo, aided by armed SA and SS, began hunting whomever they considered Communists or sympathizers, and herded them into camps. 

Hitler was appointed to be Chancellor of Germany with full powers on January 30,1933, and was welcomed by many Germans as a force against the “secular humanist values of the Enlightenment and the French Revolution.”  Those are the values underlying our American Revolution, our Declaration of Independence and our U.S. Constitution.  The Nazis had already added the word Socialism to the word Nationalism, as spin to attract workers away from the Social Democrats and the Communists.  To gain support of self-identified Christians the Nazis lied by advertising themselves as the inheritors, not opponents, of Christian traditions.  On  February 28, 1933, Hitler issued a “Decree for the Protection of People and State,” which suspended all basic civil liberties.  A few days later, as Munich’s Chief of Police, Himmler established Germany’s first Concentration Camp.  It’s purpose was to provide “Protective Custody” for  political prisoners.  This first camp, was constructed by converting an old ammunition factory northeast of Munich near a place called Dachau. That’s where Himmler created the first band of guards called  Totenkopf Verbande (TV-SS) or Death’s Head SS. These were trained and indoctrinated to guard people taken into protective custody, not as prisoners, because there was no independent judicial review of the happenings inside the incarceration sites.  The incarcerated were stateless, with no human rights to underpin any expectation of being treated with human dignity.  Their statelessness was indefinite.  The SS exploited for profit the forced labor of these individuals for as long as they could physically survive.  A continuous flow of human beings into protective custody was assured by the SD and the Gestapo working together under Heydrich, in his position working for Himmler.  Targeted individuals, groups and even entire races were gathered, processed, used and murdered.  Rudolph Hess, who later commanded the concentration camp at Auschwitz, found the Death’s Head SS so hate-filled by indoctrination against anyone incarcerated that it “is inconceivable to those outside.”  

     In 1933 Hitler still wanted to better control the SA Brown Shirts led by Ernst Rohm.  Hitler and Rohm were long-time personal acquaintances, each with his own ideas about how to fashion Germany’s future.  Rohm, for example, significantly differed by wanting to continue a revolution that would rid Germany of Hitler’s wealthy supporters. Hitler decided to eliminate this festering problem and called for a quiet meeting in the Bavarian Alps.  He convinced Rohm and others that in quiet retreat-like surroundings they could have a relaxing heart-to-heart talk.  To put all the Brown Shirt leaders more at ease, Hitler suggested they let their paramilitaries and street-fighters return to their homes for a rest.  Then, for three nights beginning June 30, 1934, happened a seminal event called The Night Of The Long Knives.  By that time the SS, including the Death’s Head SS at Dachau, the Gestapo SS, the SD, and the Allgemeine or General SS, had more than 200,000 in their ranks.  Himmler dispatched units of these men across Germany to visit and murder SA Brown Shirt leaders, and various other political opponents.  Hitler admitted 77 were killed.  Others’ estimates range as high as 1,000.  The crime spree confused Germans, so in a July 13, 1934, address to the German Reichtag Hitler gave an explanation which most of the German legislators chose to accept: 

“Deputies, Men of the German Reichtag!” Hitler detailed what he called a plot by Captain Rohm, aided by a foreign diplomat whom he did not identify, to usurp the government.  Hitler asserted, that in the best interest of the nation, he had ordered a blood purge to save Germany from turmoil.  “Only a ferocious and bloody repression could nip the revolt in the bud.”  He admitted that he had himself led the attack in Munich, while Goring with his “steel fist” did the same in Berlin.  “If someone asks me why we did not use regular courts I would reply: at the moment I was responsible for the German nation; consequently, it was I alone who, during those twenty-four hours, was the Supreme Court of Justice of the German People.”  After the audience did considerable standing and saluting, shouting and cheering, he resumed.  “I ordered the leaders of the guilty shot. I also ordered the abscesses caused by our internal and external poisons cauterized until the living flesh was burned.  I also ordered that any rebel attempting to resist arrest should be killed immediately.  The nation must know that its existence cannot be menaced with impunity by anyone, and that anyone who lifts his hand against the State shall die of it.”  He acknowledged, “the cost of the purge has been high.”  That’s when he probably lied that 77 were killed, including, he said while laughing, “three SS men for mistreating prisoners.”  With applause thundering throughout the house, he closed by saying, “I am ready before history to take the responsibility for the twenty-four hours of the bitterest decision of my life, during which fate has again taught me to cling with every thought to the dearest thing we posses, the German people and the German Reich.” With no one left alive with enough public stature and personal courage to oppose the murders, Hitler, with his SS firmly under Himmler, became the Law.

     By 1939 the General SS alone had expanded to 240,000 members and was being used for staffing many of the headquarters and support functions for the other complex SS organizations.  By 1943 the Gestapo fielded 45,000 men, each wearing a serial numbered warrant medallion giving its bearer unlimited arrest authority.  These were aided by 60,000 agents and 100,000 informers.  By 1945 the infamous Einsatz Gruppen SS or Action Squads, comprised of personnel from the other SS organizations, were following close behind military combat units during their invasions of other countries.  Often aided by local auxiliaries, Action Squads rounded up targeted civilians and murdered them on the spot.  Reputable sources suggest that between 15.8 million and 18.7 million non-combat human beings were killed by these sorts of SS unit’s.  There was another SS organization taking shape for killing combatants.

Called the Waffen or Armed SS, these military units grew to a million men, but never more than 10 percent of the Wehrmacht’s total strength.  The Wehrmacht was the German Army, Navy and Air Force. There were two big differences between volunteers for the Waffen-SS and volunteers for the Wehrmacht.  Waffen-SS physical requirements were higher and they included proof of Aryan bloodlines, but Waffen-SS educational requirements were much lower.  This made Waffen-SS troops more amenable to indoctrination.  Their ideological training left them believing they had destinies as missionaries of a new Aryan Order, which would eventually rule the world. They were trained to obey, regardless of sacrifice required, and convinced the Nazi ideology would reign supreme. Each Waffen-SS soldier swore his personal oath of allegiance to Hitler.  Every member was prepared to carry out every order, whether issued by Hitler or by an immediate superior.²  Each had impressive determination and courage and disdain for death.  Of the Waffen-SS divisions at the end of WWII, ten were armored divisions.  Seven of these were SS-Panzer, meaning they were tank  heavy, and three were SS-Panzer Grenadier, meaning they were infantry heavy. 

The Waffen-SS began growing in 1939 with Germany’s invasion of Poland.  They started with no more than a few battalion and regimental-sized units scattered through the Wehrmacht. They proved courageous in battle. A year later, on May 10, 1940, two German Army Groups started their 46-day conquest of Holland, Belgium, Luxembourg and France.  Army Group B made a feint into neutral Belgium to draw the British Expeditionary Force and the best-equipped French army units into Belgium for a meeting engagement.  This allowed Army Group A, comprised of 45 1/2 divisions, including 7 Panzer divisions, of which by then two were SS-Panzer divisions, to attack out of the Ardennes Forest.  They took the same surprise route that later forced The Bulge in American lines, precipitating the savage, no holds barred, Battle of The Bulge.  Both times through the Ardennes a huge German surprise force struck around the north end of France¹s  stationary Maginot Line fortifications.  After crossing the Meuse River into open tank country, Army Group B blasted like lightning to the English Channel, cutting through the rear of the northwards committed Allied forces.  At Dunkirk a nearly miraculous evacuation saved 335,000 British Soldiers.  Within a few more weeks Hitler finished defeating, or browbeating into allying with him, the whole of non-Russian Europe.  Nazis, using the greatest and most successful armed force in History, were extending protective custody.  Going east into Russia to gain living space for the Aryan master race, they intended to murder 34 million people with Slavic ancestors. Slavs were already the people on the land, but were among the human beings Nazis considered as an inferior race. 

During the 1939-40 time period most Americans paid little heed, or were still trying to make sense out of what they were seeing on the newsreels in movie houses.  Straight out of Montana’s Western District, Congressman Jacob Thorkelson was making a national name for himself with his anti-semitic rhetoric and attention-grabbing entries into The Congressional Record.   Dr. Thorkelson was a Norwegian Sea Captain, who arrived around Butte after becoming a mail order Medical Doctor. Though he ran as a Republican, he got elected because Democrat Senator Burton K. Wheeler was clashing with President Franklin Roosevelt over several major issues, including possible U.S military involvement in Europe. Wheeler was not happy with some public utterances by the previous incumbent from Western Montana, Congressman Jerry O’Connell.  At this time the U.S. had one combat-ready division, 471 aircraft, and 200 tanks. 

Montana Faces and Fascism

     In the beginning were stories of selflessness and indomitable character. My friend, Randy LeCocq, sometimes called Magoo, and I included some of those stories in our book, The Battle Of The Bulge, A Montana Perspective. Certain there were more stories, we decided to take our little book on the road. We scheduled nine, two-hour meetings in public libraries around our state to tell others what we had learned. It seems few think of World War II (WWII) now. Most who were in it and experienced horrific events have now died. Those who were left at home struggled with too small of a labor force and severe shortages of equipment and fuel. Few who experienced either aspect seemed to think they should have been the reporters of it, so it’s been largely forgotten. Children and grandchildren who might know a small piece of the story have moved away to other towns, states and countries. Newly arrived Montanans know a different history. Our country, no longer requiring mandatory national service, leaves people less likely to learn each other’s family stories. So, our first notion was that we’d be casting a beam of light into today’s darkness about Montana during WWII, but that expectation didn’t line up with what we encountered. As a people, we Montanans seem to have entered into a transitional phase between what was and what comes next. We are in a liminal space of not knowing. Our choice of inclinations, divided broadly into love and fear are what we have left to guide us.

     In the issue of Harper’s Magazine that was on the newsstands during Magoo and my road show, my late friend Edwin Dobb eloquently crafted an essay he titled, “Nothing But Gifts.” I believe he spoke for most Montanans and most Americans in this moment. He asks, “What does it mean to choose to love?” Like myself toward the end of life, he had gained insights for responding to the perplexities of today’s living. As beneficiaries of everyone and everything that preceded us, the challenge lies in knowing whom we should thank and how. Those who came before us are all dead. In our indebtedness, rather than pursue somebody’s bloody notion of a past America or a future paradise, we are wise to thankfully construct our lives out of the range of available things and within the context of conditions we have been given. We overcome estrangement by caring, even by adopting others. We lessen power of the monstrous over us by reducing it to human scale. Quietly, by helping where we can, we build solidarity in the face of calamity because we are all in this together. When death comes, we hope for enough gracefulness among ourselves, families and friends to heal the opened remnants of our lives in a good way. These views, born of our shared Butte legacy where “no smoking” signs in underground mines had to be posted like trees in sixteen languages, clash with the “American fairy tale of self-sufficiency and solitary achievement, still dominant because of our country’s relative comfort, affluence, and insulation from prolonged, widespread horror.” Without requiring any effort or sacrifice, the alternative fairy tale feeds romantic notions of the West and of America as being exceptional, compared with all the other places occupied by peoples of this world. These fairy tales are self-built narratives hiding fear.

     Those who live with fear seem to be facing the back wall of a cave, to which they’ve chained themselves, content to be entertained by shadows cast on the cave’s wall by puppeteers with the use of light coming from behind. One puppeteer, a Russian circus master with genius that American entertainer Michael Jackson said he sensed in Adolf Hitler, has a puppet that trumpets to his narrow fan-base self-aggrandizing assertions and comments demeaning of others. His crass theme, shared with Nationalists from England, Hungary, Israel and Italy, is that our most monstrous threats are not economic inequality, government tyranny or climate change but immigrants. These dime-a-dozen demagogues use fear as the sizzle that sells their bony political steaks, particularly where there exists a high penetration of Facebook users in their target populations.  An air of debauchery in all their backgrounds hints at an even worse spectacle, had our whole world succumbed to such Nationalists (Nazis) in WWII. This story is not about those puppeteers.

     This Gonzo Road Show Diary is about what we are capable of doing. Otherwise in this moment, if we allow fear to make the normal appear monstrous, we may be sitting astride the line between bounteous peace and horrible war, real war. In a Third World War (WWIII) the boundaries of nations will not be battle lines nor will the topography of our continents and seabeds be battlefields. Our hearts and our minds will have encounters in battlespace, where religion, skin color, language or military uniforms will not distinguish friends from foes. We must resist, not react, to the “suspicion, hatred and bigotry that has settled over large parts of America.” If we encourage those who intentionally perpetuate this climate, the eventual carnage will be horrible. It will be wiser to ignore the hysterical and deflate our common problems to human scale, addressing them one at a time as what comes next enters this liminal space. Hopefully, we will allow ourselves to be transformed.

     This story reports my personal journey toward the cave’s opening by relating some of my thoughts stimulated by the focus of our road show, The Battle of the Bulge and WWII. In 1946 as this story begins, 359 military cemeteries around the world were trying to contain the remains of 286,959 American WWII dead. The number of identifiable remains was 246,942. Of the missing sets, 18,641 had been located. Of the located sets, 10,986 remains were placed in overseas military cemeteries and 7655 remains were left in isolated graves. The next year some of the relatives of the war dead wanted their loved ones brought back to the United States (U.S.) to be reburied in local or national cemeteries. That program was discontinued in the mid-1960s. By then, 171,000 bodies of dead Americans had been repatriated. This left 97,000 others, including 935 Montanans, near their places of death. These men and women were serving as one civilian, two merchant mariners, 32 marines, 191 sailors, 282 airmen and 427 soldiers. In total, they wear 4 Distinguished Service Crosses, 44 Silver Stars, 70 Bronze Stars, 3 Legion of Merit, 28 Distinguished Flying Crosses, 4 Navy Crosses, 312 Air Medals and 714 Purple Hearts. Among those still in military status overseas were U.S. Army Air Corps PVT Bill Gruber who died in the Bataan Death March, and PVT Bill Boegli of the 322nd Infantry Regiment, 81st Division killed in 1944 while evacuating fellow wounded soldiers from Angaur Island, east of the Philippines. Both were identified and returned to Montana in 2018.