Bill Petro

WHY WE FIGHT

The world is different than it was even a few years ago as we celebrate Memorial Day. We now are fighting a war, and we now remember why we fight. The History Channel re-runs the HBO series “Band of Brothers,” the adaptation of the Stephen Ambrose book about a company of men from the landing at Normandy through the end of the World War II.

During WWII my father crossed paths a couple of times with the Company E mentioned in “Band of Brothers”. Once at the Battle of the Bulge and later while liberating the death camp Dachau.

My father’s story is told in part on HBO’s website regarding the episode on the liberation of Dachau at: http://www.hbo.com/band/landing/why_we_fight.html.

His full story is told in pictures at http://www.billpetro.com/johnpetroHe rarely volunteered to me information about the War, but when I did ask, he would answer. He left me pictures taken during the liberation of Dachau. Ironically, during a recent visit to Dachau, when I told the workers at this modern memorial, they all asked me the same question: “Do you have pictures?” I still have these pictures of those who survived, who looked like skeletons. I also have pictures of the skeletons of those who did not survive, of the open boxcars with bodies piled high.

Dachau gate: “Work Makes Free”

My father had seen a lot of action during the war and later was in charge of three P.O.W. camps for German prisoners, but nothing prepared him for what he saw at Dachau. He said that he watched his commanders vomit when they saw the camps. Those who were liberated were like the dead, they could not believe that they were finally being freed.

When I stood before this plaque attached to the tunnel leading up to the gate shown above, even with the school children running around playing in the yard on field day, I wept as I considered the bravery of my father’s group, Rainbow Division, one of three divisions to liberate the camp.

These gruesome images must never be forgotten. It must never be forgotten what barbarism that man is capable of committing toward fellow men. But some may say, “I don’t want to think about it, surely no one believes that these atrocities were justified, that they’d ever be repeated.” But only two decades ago, an organization asked to use University of California conference grounds property for a meeting. This request was later denied when it was learned that the organization requesting the facilities believed that the Holocaust was a hoax, that it did not really occur. There was also a corresponding outcry that this organizations’ free speech rights were being violated.

A person who remembers the past can be grateful for the freedoms that were purchased at great cost by those who went before them. They can memorialize those who fought and died, they can honor those against whom horrors were committed. A person without this sense of history is a severed person, self-referential, cut off from the past.

On this Memorial Day, the words of George Santayana, Harvard philosopher and poet are most apt:

“Those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it.”

Bill Petro, son of John Petro
www.billpetro.com/johnpetro

MEMORIAL DAY

The city of Boalsburg, Pennsylvania, an American village on the National Historic Register, claims to be the birthplace of Memorial Day, as do some 24 other towns in America. But Boalsburg’s claim goes back to a practice at the end of the Civil War. It does have an local museum, and a history that stretches back over two centuries. It’s claim is supported by pointing out, on a large sign near the center of town that:

The custom of decorating soldiers’ graves was begun here in October, 1864, by Emma Hunter, Sophie Keller, and Elizabeth Myers.

Named for David Boal who settled here in 1798. Village laid out in 1808. Boalsburg Tavern built in 1819. Post Office established 1820. First church erected 1827. Home community of three United States ambassadors.

Bill Petro, your friendly neighborhood historian
www.billpetro.com

CINCO DE MAYO

Cinco de Mayo is frequently regarded as the Mexican equivalent of the United States 4th of July. This is incorrect. In actuality, it is the equivalent of the “5th of May” in the Spanish language. Another misconception is that this has something to do with Mayonnaise. That too is a bum spread, as the condiment had its origin with the French, who will come into our story later. Nor does it have to do with County Mayo in Ireland, though we’ll make sure the Irish get into this story at some point. Rather, the “Battle of Cinco de Mayo” or specifically the Battle of Puebla, occurred on May 5, 1862.

Background: President Benito Juarez, who had been Zapotec Indian minister of Justice in Juan Alvarez’ cabinet in the 1850’s, entered Mexico City on January 11, 1861 and promptly expelled the Spanish minister, the papal legate, and members of the episcopate. Additionally, he took steps to enforce the decrees of 1859, dis-endowing and disestablishing the church. He could not have known at this time that almost a century later, “antidisestablishmentarianism” would become the longest word in the English dictionary. Although Juarez was recognized by the United States and had received both moral and military aid from the US, there were over $80,000,000 in debts at that time to Europe alone. The Mexican Congress in July 17, 1861 decreed the suspension for 2 years of interest payments on the external national debt, and 3 months later a convention occurred between Great Britain, France, and Spain calling for joint intervention in Mexico.

As European forces advanced, and particularly French troops, their advance was checked at Puebla on May 5, 1862. The Mexican forces under the command of Texas-born General Ignacio Zaragosa managed to defeat a larger and better equipped French force.

However, the next year Napoleon III of France sent almost five times as many troops to Mexico to take over and install a puppet ruler, his relative the Archduke Maximillian of Austria, though he was defeated four years later.

Many believe that Cinco de Mayo is universally celebrated in Mexico as a day of independence. This is wrong on two counts. First, the call for Mexican independence, the Grito de Dolores, was made by Miguel Hidalgo at the town of Dolores on September 16, 1810, though it was not recognized by the Spanish viceroy until 1821. Secondly, because it is not a federal holiday, Cinco de Mayo is not widely celebrated in Mexico, except in Puebla, the largest city in the state of Puebla, Mexico. Elsewhere in Mexico it is observed with eating, drinking, and dancing. In the United States, however, it is widely recognized along the border states that have significant Mexican-American populations, especially in California, to celebrate Hispanic pride and culture, not unlike Irish-Americans do on St. Patrick’s Day.

Bill Petro, your friendly neighborhood historian
www.billpetro.com

MAY DAY

May Day is many things to many people. Etymologically, it is a homophone for the international call for help. It is a corruption of the French imperative “M’aidez” meaning “Help me!” As a holiday it is claimed by many. It is known in the pagan world as Beltane, a fertility celebration, one of the four high holidays in the pagan calendar, Samhain on October 31 is another. Beltane is the day of fire commemorating Bel or Belenos, the Celtic sun god. Indeed, in the modern Irish language, Bealtaine is the name for the month of May. The early Anglo-Saxons began their celebration on the eve before, feasting the end of winter and the first planting. It was a time of revelry and abandon — note the song from the musical Camelot “It’s May, it’s May, the lusty month of May” — with the selection of a May Queen and the ribbons of the Maypole. But this day’s celebration of the revival of vegetation goes back to the Roman practice of visiting the grotto of Egena. The people of ancient Rome honored Flora, the goddess of flowers and springtime.

In 1886 it was co-opted as an international workers day to celebrate the 8-hour workday movement, following national strikes in the US and Canada. Later, the French declared May 1 the International Working Men’s Association holiday in 1889. Some countries consider May Day a bank holiday. This “Labor Day” is on one of the non-holy days in the calendar.

Occasionally, May 1st also marks the National Day of Prayer in the U.S. This day of non-sectarian prayer is observed on different days usually around the beginning of May, but goes back to 1775 when the first day of prayer was declared when the Continental Congress “designated a time for prayer in forming a new nation.” President Lincoln’s proclaimed a day of “humiliation, fasting, and prayer” in 1863. In 1952, a joint resolution by Congress, signed by President Truman, declared an annual, national day of prayer. In 1988, the law was amended and signed by President Reagan, permanently setting the day as the first Thursday of every May.

A pagan festival, a labor day, or a day of prayer. May Day is many things to many people.

Bill Petro, your friendly neighborhood historian
www.billpetro.com

EARTH DAY

April 22 is called Earth Day because it both commemorates and celebrates the anniversary of our discovery of Earth. At this time, by all accounts, there is general agreement that it is far superior to the place from which we came, as we shall see below.

Recently, however, there has been increased concern regarding our displacement of the original aboriginal inhabitants, as is often the case with more “enlightened” conquerors, as we like to think of ourselves.

The indigenous population, a kind of Eukaryota or more specifically Archaeplastida, is known in the vernacular as plants. You cannot have missed the increased coverage in the media on all things “green.” Of course, the Irish were the first to capitalize on this, but now everyone seems to have jumped on the bandwagon, with everything from green cars to green computing.

Increased recognition of this under represented earlier population of our planet, sometimes persecuted almost to the point of extinction — when was the last time you saw a chocolate bush — has brought greater attention to rampant plantocide: witness for example that in Kansas whole fields of wheat continue to be slaughtered.

Hence, this year there is special attention paid to underprivileged plants, with the motto “Take A Plant To Lunch…But Don’t Eat It .” Instead, responsible Earth people might consider an alternative. One could chose instead animals, which already have the good sense to be made of meat. And they are higher in protein, like chocolate, one of the other four food groups.

So, in celebration, let’s respect our plant brethren. They’re often at least as intelligent as some people you know: have you ever noticed how a sunflower tracks the movement of the sun? Think about it. They’re also quiet and, while generally not good conversationalists, are better behaved than many human children.

(Of course, this is with the exception of fungi, the so-called “trailer trash” of the plant kingdom, which have been disowned for phylogenic reasons, not to mention their being “photosynthetically challenged.” Some of these heterotrophs have, through remedial education, found a home in breweries)

Nevertheless, plants, as you’ll recall, are one of the reasons we came to Earth. Some of the other reasons include:

• Location: it’s right here. Look just below your feet.
• Memorable: it’s shaped like the new Cingular logo (A.K.A. the new AT&T)
• Almost entirely spherical: which makes it convenient for those “round the world” trips and has a much more pleasing shape than where we came from. Did you ever wonder why we called the previous generation “squares”?
• Great restaurants: and great atmosphere, unlike, for example the Moon which has great restaurants but no atmosphere.
• Oxygen-Nitrogen atmosphere: so crucial for those of us who breathe, and better than methane in so many ways.
• Gravity: which is set at a convenient one “g” is quite handy for keeping everything in its place.
• Neighbors: generally far enough away that they don’t bother us much, and those who do are generally more intelligent than average, needing to understand things like calculus, tachyons, and three-phase cyclotronic nuclear-fissionable uranium isotope molecular reconstructors for trans-dimensional physics.

I don’t know about you, but I’m planning on spending the rest of my life right here on Earth.

Bill Petro, your friendly neighborhood historian
www.billpetro.com

HISTORY OF GROUNDHOG DAY

Groundhog Day comes from Candlemas Day, observed for centuries in parts of Europe on February 2 where the custom was to have the clergy bless candles and distribute them to the people. This seems to have derived from the pagan celebration of Imbolc — the Feast of the goddess Bridget, or in Christian Ireland “St. Bridget’s Day” and alternatively “The Purification of the Virgin” commemorating the time when St. Mary presented Jesus at the Temple at Jerusalem. It comes at the mid-point between the Winter Solstice and the Spring Equinox. The Roman Legions, it is said, originally brought the tradition to the Germans.

In more modern times, says the old Scottish couplet:

If Candlemas Day is bright and clear

There’ll be two winters in the year

By the 1840s the following idea caught on in the U.S., particularly in Pennsylvania whose earliest settlers were German immigrants. If the groundhog sees its shadow on a “bright and clear” day, six more weeks of winter are ahead.

Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania is the headquarters of the celebration where the groundhog “Punxsutawney Phil” regards his shadow at Gobbler’s Knob, a wooded knoll just outside the town.

Bill Petro, your friendly neighborhood historian
www.billpetro.com

THE WAR: part 3

So what did Ken Burns show in his 1.25 hour preview of his 14.5 hour, 7 part documentary on World War II called The War? The audience included hundreds of Air Force cadets, virtually the same age as the soldier’s were who fought in the story.

Using still photos and film from the National Archives, most of it taken by the U.S. military, much of it never seen before by the general public, through the words of newspaper clippings, letters, and 40 first-person accounts we were told about:

Tarawa: A strategically located Pacific atoll, America lost almost 3,000 Marines in November 1943 in a bloody attack against 4,700 Japanese soldiers defending an air strip. Only 17 Japanese survived.

On March 9, 1945, 354 B-29 bombers dropped jellied gasoline, napalm, on 16 square miles of Tokyo. 100,000 died, over a million were left homeless. And that was just the first raid.

B-29 bombers: In the Pacific theater, the B-29 “Superfortress” bomber was fitted with Norden bombsighting technology. Bombardiers liked to boast that with the “Norden bombsight they could drop a bomb into a pickle barrel from 20,000 feet.”

In Europe, the Allies would do their bombing runs over Germany at night, to avoid detection in the pre-radar era. Their accuracy, however, showed that only 1 in 5 strikes were within five miles of the target. When the American’s joined the war, they’d fly during the days — more accurate, but much more dangerous.

B-17 belly gunners: One airman told the story of how he had joined at 19 to experience the excitement of flying. Of the 9 guns on a B-17 “Flying Fortress,” he was a belly gunner. They’d fly over Germany with an Allied fighter escort, but the smaller planes would run out of fuel be reaching the drop zone. As the bombers approached their targets, now unescorted, German fighters would climb into the skies. They were fast, and he had a hard time tracking them with his 50 caliber guns. But the German fighters used rockets, and could attach from a much greater distance. “Our guns couldn’t reach them.” On one sortie (shown with an incredible accompanying audio track), he was hit and began to bleed in the belly turret. Using his training as a Boy Scout, he saved his own life by properly applying a tourniquet. It was “minus 30 outside and the blood began to collect and freeze. I had to gather it up, or it would be a mess to clean up when we landed… It was about 4 hours to fly back to base.”

Operation Cobra. Following the Normandy Invasion, the Americans wanted to break out of the area. Hedgerow warfare in August of 1944 closed the “Falaise Gap,” and ultimately drove the Germans out of that area of France.

B-29s would fly bombing raids from Saipan to Tokyo, but there was an airfield on a small island along their route that would send up fighters to harass them. This island was Iwo Jima. Six thousand tons of bombs were dropped on the island. Then another day of naval bombardments. Three waves of Marines went in, and it looked like it would be easier to take than expected… but twenty thousand Japanese were waiting. By February 17, 2050 Americans were dead, and the battle would rage for a month, until 6821 died. Twenty-seven Medals of Honor were awarded, 13 posthumously. They were called the X-ray Company, so many of them were lost.

Flame thrower. One humorous story was told of a soldier using a flame thrower during the attack of Iwo Jima. After several hours of battle, he went to the beach, stripped of his equipment and clothes, and took a swim. He got out, suited up, and continued fighting.

Ken Burns says that we often look back on these years and believe they lived in “simpler times.” But, he pointed out:

The 30s were the time of the greatest economic dislocation in the world, and the 40s saw the world greatest conflagration. In many ways, it is we who live in simpler times.

Much of the narration of documentary was done by the actor Keith David. Ken Burns concluded his preview with a song called American Anthem, written by Gene Scheer, but not for this documentary. However, Nora Jones did a special recording, and he played it with scenes interspersed from the film. It was quite stunning, indeed.

Don’t miss the September 2007 debut of The War.

Bill Petro, your friendly neighborhood historian
www.billpetro.com

THE WAR: part 2

Ken Burns explained to the audience at the Air Force Academy last week why he had spent the last 6 years researching and producing The War, his 7 part, 14.5 hour documentary on World War II which will debut on PBS in September 2007:

Every day, over 1,000 WWII veterans are dying.

WWII was the greatest cataclysm in the history of the human race

We wanted to dispel the myth of the “gallant bloodless war”

There are young people today who think that in WWII the Allies fought against the Russians, and on the side of the Germans

We don’t think of memory as a concrete thing, but we must preserve it before it’s gone. This is the story of WWII told from the bottom up, not by experts. We wanted to tell the whole story, not small parts of it like “Saving Private Ryan.” It is a difficult story to tell.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, who was wounded 6 times in the Civil War and later became a Supreme Court Justice talked about the “incommunicable experiences of war.”

CBS news journalist Eric Sevareid in 1985 said that “War happens inside a man…and that is why, in a certain sense, you and your sons from the war will be forever strangers. If, by the miracles of art and genius, in later years two or three among them can open their hearts and the right words come, then perhaps we shall all know a little of what it was like–and we shall know then that all the present speakers and writers hardly touched the story.”

Ken Burns continued:

In extraordinary times, there are no ordinary people. We selected first person accounts from 40-50 veterans across four geographical locations across America:

• Mobile, Alabama - which was an important shipyard
• Sacramento, California - a larger, varied town
• Westbury, Connecticut - populated with Southern European immigrants: Italians and Jews
• Luverne, Minnesota - in Rock County

As we watched the 7 or 8 clips during the preview, we heard a newspaper column being narrated from the editor of the Rock County Herald. He described getting a phone call early in the morning on D-Day from a woman acting like a modern day Paul Revere. As the editor described what was different about this day in America, the Air Force Academy cadet next to me did not realize it was being narrated by Tom Hanks. It was riveting.

To be continued…

Bill Petro, your friendly neighborhood historian
www.billpetro.com

THE WAR, part 1

Tonight I talked with Ken Burns, who you know for his award winning documentaries including The Civil War, Baseball, and JAZZ. I had the privilege of sharing with him two questions, after he presented a preview of his new documentary coming out in Fall of 2007, about World War II called simply The War. This presentation took place at the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs. We got to see 7 or 8 clips, or about an hour and a quarter of his 7-part, 14.5 hour series that he has been working on for some 6 years. He’s previewing this documentary at military academies around the country.

I’ll tell you more about it in my next article, but now I’ll share the two questions.

1) I asked:

Mr. Burns, in terms of the power of pictures, the “Ken Burn Effect” is so renowned, that Apple computer includes it in their iPhoto desktop application. Can you share with us where this came from?

Ken Burns’ answer:

I am the son of a photographer, and I started in photography long before I ever hoped to do film making. But photos should not be static, they should move and suggest action. So I used common techniques like inserts, pans, zooms, fades, and dissolves… in my first work on the Brooklyn Bridge in 1981, and then in The Civil War, which of course, only had still pictures.

Several years ago, Steve Jobs said “Come see what we’re working on.” He showed me a rudimentary application of these techniques in a program he was working on that he wanted to label the “Ken Burns Effect.” He and three other geeks were talking in technological terms way above my head. I said “Steve, I don’t do commercial endorsements.” Eventually we worked out a deal where he donated some gear to a charity that my wife is involved in, and he got to use the term.

2) I continued:

My second question relating to the power of pictures is about a question that was asked of me when I was visiting the Dachau Concentration Camp memorial years ago, and I mentioned to those who worked there that my father had liberated Dachau some 48 years before. They asked me a question, and what is remarkable is that they all asked the same question. The question was “Do you have any pictures?” I shared with them the website I created as a tribute to my father that had the pictures my father had brought back and his story. Since then there have been over 30,000 visitors to the site. And I still get phone calls and email from men who tell me, “I went on leave in Paris with your father,” or “I was with him when we liberated Dachau,” or “I was with him after the war in Austria.” Such is the power of pictures.

Ken Burns replied:

We deal with the holocaust at the end of the series, a particularly difficult section of the documentary.

Ms. Lynn Novick, his co-producer on many of his documentaries, added that when they started the research on the documentary they began at the National Archives with photos of the Holocaust. After having made so many films, it was easy to believe that they were somewhat inured to grueling scenes, but she noted that one of her interns — whose responsibility it was to collect and record the images that would later be used for this documentary — had to stop, as he could no longer take in all these images.

Such is the power of pictures.

To be continued…

Bill Petro, your friendly neighborhood historian
www.billpetro.com

HISTORY OF MARTIN LUTHER KING, Jr

Born on January 15, 1929, we celebrate a holiday in honor of a man who was not a president, nor an explorer, nor a saint, rather he was a Baptist minister and an American leader of the 1960s civil rights movement who was named after the Protestant Reformer Martin Luther. Though he was awarded by President Carter the Presidential Medal of Freedom posthumously in 1977, it was not until 1986 that a day was established on his birthday as a federal holiday.

The only other American federal holidays that honored individuals have been for Jesus, Presidents Washington and Lincoln, and Christopher Columbus.

Though Martin Luther King had an earned doctorate degree, he was also an ordained minister, the son and grandson of ministers. From his biblical roots came many of the metaphors of his talks, the text of his presentations, and the cadence of his speech. He served as a minister starting in 1954 in Alabama, where after he led the boycott against segregation on buses that lasted 382 days. During this time he was arrested, his house was bombed, and he suffered personal abuse.

It was his involvement in the American Civil Rights Movement that gave him his greatest visibility, as he began in 1957 non-violent civil disobedience, not unlike Ghandi’s in India. Marches and protests were an effective means of accomplishing many of his goals, culminating in 1963 with the the “March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom” and his most famous speech, entitled “I Have A Dream” which he delivered from the Lincoln Memorial in the Mall of Washington, DC.

The following year, in 1964 he received the Nobel Peace Prize, the youngest recipient. Though initially successful in the South, King also brought his movement to the North, specifically Chicago in 1966, out of which grew equal opportunity programs.

1967 saw King deliver a comprehensive statement against the Vietnam War in his speech in New York City’s Riverside Church entitled “Beyond Vietnam.” This was met with criticism from many activists and newspapers, though he argued that he was not merging the civil rights and peace movements.

Nevertheless, he continued in speaking out against the Vietnam War and in 1967 he spoke in Sproul Plaza at the school I would later attend, the University of California at Berkeley where he told students,

“You, in a real sense, have been the conscience of the academic community and our nation.”

In 1968, King gave a prescient speech called “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop” in which he said about God that:

“He’s allowed me to go up to the mountain! And I’ve looked over, and I’ve seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the Promised Land. And so I’m happy tonight. I’m not worried about anything. I’m not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the Glory of the coming of the Lord!”

The next day, on April 4, 1968, King was assassinated while standing on the balcony of his motel room in Memphis, Tennessee. National riots followed until five days later President Johnson declared a national day of mourning for King. 300,000 people attended his funeral. Since his death he has become a symbol of protest in the pursuit of racial justice, and as he said in his seminal speech “I Have A Dream” the majestic spiritual “soul force” rather than physical force.

As I write this on a snowy day from Colorado Springs, I am reminded of his charge at the end of that same speech,

“…from the snow-capped Rockies of Colorado… let freedom ring.”

Bill Petro, your friendly neighborhood historian
www.billpetro.com

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