Where the Birds Never Sing and the Liberation of Dachau By Jack Sacco 2003 336 pg

 

       The True Story of the 92nd Signal Battalion and the Liberation of Dachau – A First-Hand Military Biography from Normandy to Dachau's Liberation 20/2/26

60 years after the war they were recognized as the Greatest Generation. War is the worst of man's creations. Senator Bob Dole wrote the  Forward.

They fought their was across Europe and reach Dachau where the made the Nazi's stop killing people in April 29th 1945. Good must always find a way to overcome evil. The liberators were boys barely out of their teens in the 92nd Signal battalion. Joe Sacco was the only child of immigrant parents. When Jack was a kid his father Joe had shown him the album of pictures and ones he had taken in Dachau.

Life is not a given, it is a gift. On a farms near Birmingham . Alabama there was a large Sicilian community in this area and in a smooth part of the valley was an airport. He was always surrounded by uncles singing Italian songs. His father was a decorated soldier in WW2 from the Italian army. Italians were not very welcome there even though there was no mafia by the KKK and Rednecks. There were only certain places where Blacks , Jews , Italians Catholics could live and hard work saw them through the Great Depression which brought them closer together. He received a letter as did hundred of others and started the journey that would lead him to the greatest conflict in recorded history.

First taken to Fort McClellan Alabama. where his health was rated AI and sworn into the US Army. Then Fort McPherson , Georgia. where he took an aptitude exam. Sent to Camp Crowder Missouri to be in the 92nd Signal Corps. and received basic training. They were fed extremely well with plenty of meat vegetables, fruit and milk. Napoleon is quoted as saying an army marches on its stomach. Patton " If you are properly trained you will survive to tell your grandchildren about the war." Proper meals and mail call were the best activities of the day and they had 3 proper meals a day, unless activities caused them to eat horrible C-rations. The army had censors and they had to watch what they wrote. Saturday was  a half day and Sunday was free time and he went to Mass. March 19th is St Josephs day the Patron saint of Sicily. 

Fort Polk, Louisiana was where they were in authentic battles. Ten men in a tent was their squad.3 or 4 squads make a platoon. In training lights are out at 9pm and Reveille is at 4am. They learned the technical aspect of the signal corp. military logistics and maneuvers, setting up communication for the infantry, stringing up cables in the trees. The heat  of this area was bad with flies, gnats and mosquitoes. Some were taught driving and truck the were to use. 

They enjoyed making fun of Silverman because he was a Jew but the tough guy Chandler an ex con from Joliet Prison, Illinois was illiterate and it was Silverman he went to for help in reading and writing his letter and who taught him some reading. So Chandler became his protector. 

He had a 2 week furlong and back home the whole extended family came to see him. He had missed his grandfathers funeral and now understood the saying that "funerals are for the living"

Camp Maxey, Texas. They were now issued with steel helmets but nobody knew if they were going to Europe or the Pacific. They preferred Europe as it was considered safer and more familiar. They were taken by train to Camp Shanks, NY. across the Hudson north of NY City, the staging point for embarkation. They were given a chance to spend Christmas and explore the city. This was the first time many of them saw the sea or a ship. They did not need to know where they were going as "loose lips sink ships" His father had described the Statue of Liberty when he arrived in 1921.

George S Patton "You can't run an army without profanity"

They joined a convey of 35 ships. Each was given 2 cartons of Raleigh cigarettes but if they wanted a better brand could buy. A full moon meant great submarine weather and so is dangerous. After 10 days they arrived at Liverpool where the goods and troops were unloaded but they were taken to Belfast  Northern Ireland. They were taken to a camp at  Lurgan  He knew that most of their priests were from Ireland. At 15.30 it was pitch dark, they did not realize that at the high latitude the day is so short with sunrise only at 10am. Plus blackout made it darker. It is always cold and damp. They were served powdered eggs which tasted awful these became prominent in the 1930. They always seemed to get beef and potatoes. There always seemed to be more girls, here than GIs. Patton came to inspect the troops in Lurgan.

From Lurgan they were taken to the port of Lame and a ferry to Stanrear in Scotland and  from here to a camp in Carlisle where they saw hundreds of rabbits in the fields eating grass. By train to Oxford, this was considered an Open City so was Cambridge . There were a lot of hospital here  and around Oxford.   This concept was unofficial.  Bamberg, Heidelberg, Marburg, and Konstanz, in Germany  survived largely intact due to limited strategic military value,

Here they set up a campsite and General Patton with , General Simpson, Haislip and Cook visited. Patton gave a pep talk. -That they have been well trained to fight, all real men love a fight, Americans despise cowards and play to win. The real hero fights even though he is scared and the enemy is just as frightened. 

They were aware that D day and Operation Overlord was on as ambulances starting arriving at the hospital in Oxford. They were moved by train to Southampton. Very little news came from the front but they heard that they would be sent to set up communication a week later. V 1 rockets were being launched by Germans in France. but most were falling in fields north of the town. From the ships they had to climb down netting with their heavy loads into Higgins boats.

Omaha beaches was next to Calvados. The first landing the were stopped at a sand bar and the sailor told them to get back in and moved to a place they could land. On land they moved towards Cherbourg via Isigny-sur-Mer  and Ste-Mer-Eglisa a destroyed village, then  in forest they got to Montabaur. Then the battle of Cherbourg which the Germans had sabotaged before they left. 

They now moved south to Barnesville, where they saw V1s flying that were a plane without a propeller, later understood they were missiles. They came across a US army unit baking fresh  for the troops and got hot loaves a luxury. Some of the 92nd hit landmines with that killed and injured them. In the sky they saw 3,000 bomber moving to attack Germany. Then Saint Lo , Periers.are still in Normandy and the bocage with hedgerows 6ft. high and 4ft. thick, that  even armillary could not open.

Fogeres Brittany from here the infantry opened a corridor to Laval where the Germans were retreating but regrouping for counter attacks. Once it rained the muddy roads were impassable as they sunk in. They moved to Argentan and the Falaise Gap which was blocked by  German Panther units, this was a headache for the Generals.  A German soldier said he wanted to give up and also 5 Russian soldiers wondered into their camp wanting to defect.

They did not know about the wider story of the war situation. Longny, Normandy, the infantry was moving fast and they could barely keep up string up the telephone and moving in the direction of Paris. Headquarters were now set up at Dreux on the Blaise River, They supplies arrived with the Red Ball Express , this was a division of black soldiers who drove  trucks non stop from the ports to the front lines and back.

At Mantes la Jolie they came to the Sein River. There were a few US planes captured by the German using them to surprise their enemy. The  Americans wanted de Gaul's French troops to have a major role in the liberation of Paris. In Paris at the same time as the people were celebrating the arrival of the allies they were shaving the heads and painted swastikas on women who collaborated.

Fontainebleau  55km south of  Paris, then north to Roznay en Brie then to Sens and Troyes and Neutchateau in Champagne. Then Alsase- Lorraine where many could speak German as it was on the German border. At Charms they were entertained by Bob Hope ,Bing Crosby and Dinah Shore. One of their squad knew Dinah from school in Nashville and they all got to meet her personally.

Lanesville Lorraine on the Moselle River. Here snipers shot at them from the church tower and they got the artillery's to bomb it. This had been hastily evacuated by the Nazis who left behind field glasses and a few dozen bottles of cognac. Eisenhower , Patton and Bradley and Hislop had a 4 hour meeting here, they knew about this before as one of them was operating the phone switchboard. From  grilling German a POW  they found out location of enemy guns adn destroyed them.

 Sarrebourg and Severna in  Alsace- Lorraine  here they found hidden in the woods 2 crying German 16 year old soldiers there were another 3 kids who were wounded and they got them to the medics.

1944 December the coldest winter Europe had in decades. They were issued with Parkers, underwear and woolen socks, Insulated boots wool helmet linings and gloves and they always searched out abandoned farms or stables to shelter in. If it wasn't snowing it was  raining.

The Battle of the Bulge they were informed that they were American Germans who had come to fight for Hitler had infiltrated them and they must be wary and use code words. They Germans were not as well outfitted as many had lost equipment. The German blitzkrieg had cut and surrounded the American in Bastogne. Then the sun came out and Allied  planes took over and the destroyed the Germans.

1944 Christmas day, they spent the day connecting and repairing switchboards, circuit boards amplifiers, cables and phones. They were offered a cow barn that they could set up  residence in by a family. In Alsace Larraine the people could speak German and one of their group had learn German from his grandmother.  Joe fell in love with the daughter Monique and could speak to her in Italian as her mother was Italian.

Fenetrange, Alsace. He was wounded and in hospital and Monique visited him. After he recovered he and 2 others had been assigned to go to an officers school in England but they did not want to, however Jack was promoted to corporal. On March 17 they were getting ready to push into Germany and entered at Zwelbrucken in Rhineland-Palatinate, then on to Kaiserslautern and Ludwigshafen. Near Worms they found a cellar of bottles of Campaign and sent 16 trucks to load it up. By the time the had past threw Worms it was ashes.

The Germans had bombed the bridges but the Engineering corp was construction new ones.

The Air Corps had bombed Mannheim and Blenheim in anticipation of their arrival and at Darmstadt the saw hundreds of Germans marching towards them with white flags trying to surrender.

1945 March 27th Aschaffenburg Germany General Haislip sent US armored vehicles through the town tell the public to evacuate if they wanted to live, and then heavy artillery bombardment began, later planes flew over also dropping bombs. German adults were not keen on seeing US troops but children liked the Hershey bars that soldiers carried in their packs to give them quick energy. Many of the children were orphans.

Lohr and deeper in Bavaria to Bad Bruckenau where the found a dead soldier only 12 years old  All dying young soldiers call for their mamas. However a retreating army could be a dangerous one.

Bamburg, Bavaria They could not get a smile out of the local population. A snipers bullet came from the church steeple and mortars' shot the top of the steeple off and a woman fell out. Erlangen, Bavaria. Nazi SS troops decided to fight to the death and airplanes bombed the SS troops and hospitals to rubble. Nuremburg Bavaria, the Donauworth, Swabia  on the Danube River in southern Germany.

Dachau was in their zone and they were told that when they capture the notorious concentration camp nothing is to be disturbed. An international commission will come and investigate. The first thing when they got there was to ask" What is the smell?" an infantryman there said Welcome to Hell. They walked into the camp and saw dead women children , old men and babies beaten starved stabbed shot butchered and left to rot. There were open railway cattle trucks with dozens of lifeless bodies that looked like they had been starved to death emaciated mouths agape and eyes staring vacantly. One of the squad started snapping photos and said these will be historical one day get it on film and had spare film to give Joe. The inmates realized that the American's had taken over the camp and started coming out. "These are the ones well save. "the looked like walking dead.

Most of the regular German soldiers had fled before they came  but they captured Nazi SS troops who remained vowing to fight to the death. They were lined up against the wall sneering and we executed them. One ran away and they chased him and caught him and pushed him in to the gate with the inmates and they all crowded around and beat him to death.

A special group of soldiers doctors, nurses  were assigned to give the prisoners food drink and emergency medical treatment. Some died trying to eat other so weak the died within hours of liberation. The ones who had arrived recently were healthier .  There were some prisoners speaking to a few US soldiers in Italian and he went to investigate. They told him about them about an infirmary where they found prisoners tied to steel tables, where medical experiments had been done on them. 

Some German doctors refused to assist the dying Jewish prisoners and they were arrested and led away by the US military. There were cages with 80 vicious dogs mostly Dobermans and German Shepherds paced around they had been trained to kill inmates. Infantrymen came and shot them through the fence. They saw huge mounds of shoes as well as striped clothes. The next morning the whole town of Dachau was marched through the concentration camp, by the US military the people were emotionally shocked at the carnage. After a years combat we finally understood why destiny had called us to travel so far to a place abandoned by God.

Satzburg, Austria on the way there thousand of surrendering German troops carrying white flags, the entire army except for a few rogue SS. The Americans now had permission to turn on headlights. In Salzburg they were welcomed by the population. They took over a house that belonged to a Nazi officer and found the officer , wife son and daughter dead in the parlor. So they then moved to another Nazi officer house. Here they had to man the telephone companies in the different town suitable for the armies needs.

1945 May 5th President Harry Truman announced in an important speech that President FD Roosevelt had died. In Salzburg the SS capitulated on its own. In the Austrian Alps the decided to visit the Eagles nest Hitler hideaway nearby to Berchtesgaden, even though it had been repeated bombed was still intact. There in Hitler's study a red flag with a black Swastika and a boatsful painting of the Fuhrer. The Russians entering Austria did not get as good a reception as the Americans.

Joe now returned to Fenetrange with his new sergeant stripes on his arm hoping to marry Monique and take her to Alabama. Her parents showed him her grave. 3 German soldiers had come out of the forest raped and murdered her. American caught the Germans and killed them.

Fresh replacements were being sent out from the States to replace them, married soldiers were being sent home first. When he landed in Boston the people there were cheering and waving flags to welcome them home. On arriving at Fort McPherson , Georgia, the major said to him you  were all over Europe did you ever run into Patton. Yea I used to see him every day. He then found out that "the army gave exceptions for only children and farmhands. You didn't know that ?" Children asked him if he killed any Germans. With his parents they pointed out that he was only 21.

50 years after the war these American were called the Greatest Generation  that gave so much and asked so little from Tom Brokaw's book The Greatest Generation in 1998.

Brave Companions, portraits of history by David McCullough’s 2022 232 pg.

 

 A historic subject is always many subjects combined.  Below are the most important people and issues mentioned in this book.    26/1/26

1804 The painter Charles Wilson Peale, a young German explorer bachelor  aged 30. Journeyed through Central South America. He had read every book he had seen . In Virginia he worked on teeth of a mammoth that he had discovered in the Andes.

 Alexander von Humboldt born in Berlin 1769 to 1859 can be regarded as the high priest of 19C science. He had been a government inspector of mines in Prussia.  His travels through South America overshadowed the Lewis and Clark expedition

(1804 – 1806 the Lewis and Clark Expedition journeyed over 3,700 miles sent out by Jefferson, just after the Louisiana purchase in 1803)

Due to an outbreak of typhoid were put off at Cumana on the coast of present day Venezuela. There is a connection between the Orinoco and the Amazon Rivers. They classified more plants than any other explorer  before them. He kept the most copious notes imaginable on tides , soils , petroleum , chocolate , rubber and missionaries. His description of the earthquake in Caracas. Darwin would confide that Humboldt's description of the tropics had inspired his whole career . From Venezuela Humboldt and Ponpland sailed for Havana Cuba in 1800 where he saw the institution of slavery and considered in the greatest of all evils.

They went overland to Bogota. In 2 years the toured Colombia Ecuador and Peru. They went over the Ades by foot and cris crossed it, and recorded the plant life according to the elevation. Hecanbe regarded as an early ecologist and in Quinto Equador the spent time sorting their collective they had gathered. The ingenuity of the Inca Road was way above any roman road and later became the present day Pan American Highway. In Lima he made notes on the local use of guano that was still unknown in Europe. He is known for the Humboldt Current.  he was the first European to sense the scale and greatness of the ancient civilization. Later the Maya temples of Yucatan were written about.

In Philadelphia the first mammoth skeleton was mounted in America by  Charles Wilson Peale. Humboldt went to Monticello and founded a lifelong friendship with Jefferson. He spent the  next 32 years and his personal fortune to publish 30 volumes of his tours of 1799 to 1804. Amongst other things in discussed the ships canal connecting the Atlantic and Pacific and named 5 likely routes for this. He was convinced that there was no difference between the level of the 2 oceans only the difference in tides. This was confirmed in 1850. He also wrote that the felling of trees would bring a disaster in the future. He was the first to recognize that the physical features and the planets affect on the weather. He laid the foundation for  descriptive geography. Observed the Earths magnetism and vulcanism in the role of mountain building. Simon Bolivar sought   him out to talk on political freedom . Charles Lyll the great English geologist had a long interview. with him. In 1851 his books were big sellers and Emerson considered him the greatest living man.

Louis Agassiz born in Switzerland 1807 to 1873. became a doctor and research the Alpine glaciers. In 1840 published a study on Glaciers. He spent 13 years in the US and published a series of lectures. Charles Lyell was most influenced by his lectures. America was in the throes of an educational awakening. Libraries were being established and schools were training teachers. 1847 he got the chair of natural history at the Lawrence School of Science. he did not see     any reason for excluding young women. He said facts are stupid things until brought into conjunction with a  law. You have to works out things without a teacher. On an expedition to lake Superior the Indian guides would sing the same 2 or 3 songs over in French. He coauthored Principles of Zoology his first publication in the US. He contributed to American Geology and a guide to the birds and fish of Lake Superior.. On the death of his first wife he remarried and sent for his 3 children. His wife opened a private school for girls on the top floor of his house. He wrote 10 volumes of the entire natural history of the USA. he announced he planned to open a museum of Comparative Zoology the cornerstone was laid in 1859, the same year that \Origen of Species was published  in England. Agassiz who was not a church goer denounce the book and its theory as atheism. The study of nature was considered a study of the works of God. In 1869 he embarked on a venture around Cape Horn and to California on a coastal survey. He was not alone in being mistaken on his views of evolution. 

Calvin Stowe 1802 to 1886  This is the story of the family of Harriet Beecher Stowe who wrote Uncle Tom's Cabin. 

 

The Real West Teddy Roosevelt had set up a ranch in the North Dakota badland and the winter of  1886 was so sever that with the spring of 1887 the carcass  of dead cattle surged downstream like cordwood. The French Canadian trappers had been here a 100 years before and called this les mauvalses terres a traverser - bad lands to travel across. Custer on the way to Little Bighorn in 1876 called this worthless country. However the grass  was all free for the taking and there was water. So why not put a beef packing plant where the cattle were  and avoid the Chicago middlemen. The French Marquis bough up al the land he could and equipment for packing. Lots of cattle sheep bought. Roosevelt wanted to become a cattle baron.

Fred Remington born in Kansas City. Enrolled at Yale School of Fine Arts 1879 on the death of his father dropped out of Yale and returned to Kansas. His success was sudden and extraordinary. and established himself as a magazine illustrator in NY. He received a commission to illustrate Theodor Roosevelt articles. By 1890 he was the best known artist in America. Illustrated Longfellow's Song Of Hiawatha. The pictures convinced the public they was authentic about the west. His endurance was tested when he rode with the cavalry and documented what he saw. Willa Catcher books documented the west. With the frontiers disappearing he went west to chase the disappearing past. The Virginian  by Owen Wister 1902  was the first true Western in US literature.

He was very much against immigration and said the countries was being flooded with trash, he hated Jews, Italians, Huns. In 1897 he sailed to Cuba to cover the rebel uprising on assignment for Rudolf Hearst and what he saw he described as horrible hopeless, bloody bodies and helpless suffering. He painted the charge of the Rough Riders at San Juan Hill.

With photography his painting could now be published in color. He now realized that the days of the cowboys were over and build a big statue of a Cowboy on Horseback at Fairmount park Philadelphia in 1908.

Panama Railroad completed in 1855. Later we had saw the completion of the Suez Canal 1869, the Union Pacific 1869, the Brooklyn bridge 1883.

In 1850 as a result of the California gold rush a railway line was started in Panama. This cost more per mile in human life and money, than any railroad ever build, later the canal followed this route. 1846 the Bidlack Treaty was the basis for US involvement. Today a railroad still goes from Panama City to Colon, it is different to the original one which was covered by the Getun lake and it is an hour and a half ride. In the 47.5 miles(76.4 Km) it has 170 bridges over 12 feet ling. Swamps had to be bridged or filled. It took 6 days to walk across the isthmus though clouds of insects and pack mules sinking into the mud. Stephens was the president of this wholly US owned stock company. Panama was still part of Colombia or New Granada as its name was then. American troops were used to prevent the transportation of Colombian troops adn a local junta created the Republic of Panama. They found a gap in the mountains only 275 feet above sea level. The sea level on both side of the isthmus are the same but the tides are different. Men began to sicken and die from Charges fever a variety of malaria. Also dysentery , sunstroke, cholera and Yellow jack (later identified that it was fever carried by mosquitos   The work force came from many places West Indies, Colombia , Ireland Italy , China, India and US. Colombian were best adapted to conditions. About 6000  men died and there was a thriving trade of taking bodies with unknown kin and putting pickling the bodies in barrels and selling them to medical schools. around  the world. This finance the railroad hospital at Colon. In these conditions clothes never got dry and the scorpions, sand flies ticks and bad food were all killers. To ease the plight the company brought in opium for the Chinese labourers. There were construction gangs from both ends. Steamship passengers arrived in the morning and could be on a ship at eh other side before dark.

In 6 years the railway covered all outlay costs, and in NY this was the highest listed stock. A ride cost $50 and this was the most expensive rail ride in the world. Walking instead would cost $10 for right of way. 1881 the company was bout outright by Compagnie Universelle du Canal inter oceanique for $20 million. In 1912 the line was move to make way for the canal.

Brooklyn Bridge  A German trained in Berlin and was the first to perfect a suspension wire bridge to carry a railway at Niagara Falls.

1876 labourers were paid bonanza wages for working in the pneumatic caissons, they worked 10 hour days 6 days a week. Only men except for Emily Roebling. The was the East River Bridge or New York Bridge or Roebling Bridge. This was a turning point in US history. Roebling was caught on the ice on Brooklyn ferry and envisioned this in 1852. He owned a steel wire factory. 

Roebling suspension Bridge in Cincinnati over the Ohio river was only completed after the civil war in 1867.  This completed he went to German to study  pneumatic caissons. The men could come and go without loss of pressure. The average age of the engineers hired to build this was 31.  The illumination was  candles or limelight and when a fire broke out in 1870 the compressed air cause such a conflagration Roebling was in the caisson 20 hours directing extinguishing it till he felt paralysis caused by the onset of the bends or the mystery caisson disease. One caisson hit bedrock at 44 feet, another one at 78 + feet and when 3 men already died they decided to stop as it was hardpack sand.

Roebling had a house where he could watch the construction and sent his wife out to give instructions and he ran things from his sickroom. Only when the bridge was finished did he emerge with improved health. The grand opening was in 1883. The US president Chester A Arthur(1881 to 1885) as was as Governor Grover Cleveland were there. The bridge had cost double the original estimate and it cost 27 lives.

 Crossing Brooklyn Ferry by Walt Whitman proceeds completion of the bridge but anticipates future generation in the bridge.1856

Hart Crane's "To Brooklyn Bridge" describes it as a  marvel of engineering connecting city life. written in 1930

The Bridge Plan 1969  Because of a problem on the bridge Francis Valentine was set to search for the plans of the bridge. He found the plans in the cities carpentry shop and the each had the initial WAR on them and he realized they were Washington A Roebling own signed drawings. There were 70 draws of them and it cost $15,000 , to clean up by had 65 of these drawing and they were first put on display to the public in 1976 with great success. Brooklyn Bridge once was the most celebrated bridge on earth. Every component was custom made often the very first of its kind, from the masonry of the towers to the manhole covers. All sorts of machines were custom build like hoisting apparatus, compressed air pumps, cable making equipment all custom build for this project. 64 draughtsman and engineers are represented being clearly named. Some the best of their profession and specific parts they played in this 14 year ordeal. Roebling also wrote a book on cable making. Many highly skilled crafts men were illiterate and could not read the plans.

This bridge was a redemption for the "Tweed years" and "Grant years" a period of corruption in New York  the US and the US  after the Civil War.

Long Distance Vision In the 1920s a new breed of pilot as pioneers all in their twenties developed in flying the new airmail service. They flew in every kind of weather by instinct not  instruments. 6 were lost before Charles A Lindbergh flew non stop 3,610 miles NY to Paris in 1927. Many of them proved to be writers Lindbergh wrote 7 books including The Spirit of St Louis while his wife Anne co-pilot and aviator wrote North to the Orient. Antoine de Saint Exupery a mail pilot over the Sahara and Andes wrote Night Flight and other books . Beryl Markham of Kenya who flew the Atlantic  wrote West with the night. Nevil Shute an English pilot who became a well known writer. Flying had stirred them to write like the sea moved  Melville and Conrad to write.

This era was from the mid 1920 to 1937 with Hitler bombing of Spanish city of Guernica and Amelia Erhardt attempting to fly around the world and was lost in the Pacific near the Marianas also in 1937.

Lindbergh was given red carpet treatment and toured the aircraft factories and flew the latest fighter planes in Germany and was given a medal by Goering. Beryl Markham went back to her fathers racing horse trade. Neville Shute left England for Australia and wrote On the beach about a nuclear holocaust.

 Harry Monroe Caudill The first known white man to settle in Kentucky was in 1792 James Caudill and he was the progenitor of a large widespread mountain family. Caudills own lumberyards run for judge, mine coal, win scholarships etc. Lack of jobs causes many to leave, and the word Appalachia is synonymous for inadequate education and few jobs.  Harry Monroe Caudill a great-great-great grandson of the original  Caudill, has spent years fighting for what remains of the Cumberland mountains. In Whitesburg(population 1800) where he worked as an attorney. He had attended the University of Kentucky on the GI Bill. He has written books, articles and lobbied on TV and Washington. In 1968 in at a Senate Committee, he pointed out that in the US there is a crises of destruction of the land.

Big Corporation from outside of Kentucky like National Steel , US steel Bethlehem Steel appoint local operators to do strip mining. This is an extremely profitable business with more power stations needing quality coal. Coal was once a seasonal commodity now it is in demand all year round for air-conditioning.  Those left with the ravaged land get no share of the coal or money made from it. 

They strip off the topsoil, clay and rock that cover the coal and dump it aside smashing an d smothering every tree and leaving a spoil bank.  3Access acres are destroyed for every acre mined. This leaves a danger like the Aberfan, Wales disaster in which 116 children and 28 adults were killed.in 1966. Here thousands of Kentucky creeks and streams are dead nothing lives in them. Abandoned strip pits and used as dumping grounds for garbage and  used cars.

1965 he founded the Appalachian Group to save the land and the people,

Caudill has collected stories about the mountain country for as long as he can remember. Night comes to the Cumberlands 1963 this can be compared to Steinbeck Grapes of Wrath. In the area there used to be enormous maples hickories , beeches, ashes , black gums, pines and hemlocks in abundance. By the 1930 all the virgin trees were gone. 

The loss of the trees was minor  compared to what happened with the coal. After the railways arrived it was possible to take this out.

The mineral buyers came to purchase not the land but the minerals beneath it. They all though this was easy money and put their cross on the broadsheet deed. This authorized the grantees to do what ever was convenient or necessary to extract those substances.

Underground mining men worked 10 hour days and died of black damp methane, cave in explosions or like Caudills father or brother they were crippled for life, but wages were good by Kentucky standards. The unemployment of the 1930 was replaced by good wages in the war years till 1947. With automation and hard time came enormous migration and 250,000 left the mountains between 1950 to 1970. 

Strip mining the farmers were informed that the bulldozers were to rip open the land. When they objected the broad form deed that their grandfathers had signed were brought out and courts ruled in favour of the mining industry. Local started sniping at the bulldozers and even blew up a company ware house with the dynamite they found there.  Strip mining is safer less men to mine more coal faster and men do not get killed in them, A retired man was warned unofficially not to sleep in the room of his house facing the spoil bank. He took the matter to court with  Caudill. The problem of acid mine damage was a thing that the Federal Government did not know how to deal with. Coal operators now said that Caudill and others who speak against them were Communists. They accused outsiders of coming to Kentucky to make trouble the fact that they most strip miners were "outsiders" never occurred to them. The mines claimed they were providing the country with energy by making worthless land pay and providing jobs. Free enterprise implied freedom from moral responsibility.

Caudill claimed that as a shortage of free land grows more serious all this magnificent country will have a value surpassing that of coal. A campaign was set up to stop the Red River Gorge from being build. Justice William O Douglas led a hike through the area and the gorge was saved. The press wrote that Caudill is a good man he is the one person who stayed and everyone know that the strip mining damage is wrong.

Mirriam Rothschild 1908 - 2005 she was an acclaimed scientist of entomology and botany who never had a formal education in science and was a mother of 6.  the first female President of the Royal Entomological Society and a Trustee of the Natural History Museum.

Extraordinary Times  by 1980 the WHO World Health Organization declared that Smallpox had been totally eradicated. This was considered one of the greatest word health achievements. Science had transformed the way we live and how long we live.

In 1936 the dictionary did not contain the words zip code and jet lag. The US army numbered 165,000 men and  reserves it was 21st in size in the world, behind Argentina and Switzerland. The Pentagon had not yet been built on began in Sept 1941. In Peenemunde the Germans started experimenting in rockets this was led by Werner Von Braun. After the war 12 rocket engineers were brought from there to America.

 At  Copenhagen Institution of Theoretical Physics Niels Bohr who got the Nobel Prize in 1922 was working on making energy from atoms and fled to the US.  Roosevelt with the British started the Manhattan Project in August 1942.

In WW2 Russia suffered 7 million deaths in battle. 10 million humans were exterminated factory fashion of the 6 million were Jews. The word "Genocide" coined by Polish lawyer Raphael Lemkin in 1944 in his book Axis Rule in Occupied Europe.

Harry Truman increased the power of the US presidency, he was  a lifelong student of history and changed history as few other presidents did. Established NATO sent US troops to Korea. The GI Bill made collage education for millions of veterans who could never have afforded it. A new Federal interstate highway program came about and TV arrived.

President Eisenhower in his farewell address in 1961 warned to beware  of the military industrial complex and warned to public to be vigilant to preserved democracy. WW2 produced a crude form of the computer. WW2 also brought radar and jet aircraft. 1950s the Polio vaccine put an end to most of this scourge. The new geological theory of plate tectonics came in the 1960 from studies of the ocean floor.

Russia sent up  Sputnik into Space in 1957 and in 1961 President Kennedy asked Congress to allocate money to send a man to the moon before the end of the decade. This was Apollo 11 and it cost $25 billion.

1986 saw the failures of technologies the  Challenger shuttle in the US and  Chernobyl atomic power station disaster in Ukraine of the Soviet Union.  However Vietnam showed the limits of US military power when the fled Saigon in 1975. 1975 also saw another Genocide in Cambodia  when 2 million were murdered. Today there are more dictators in that world than 1936.

In 1948 Mahandas Ghandi was assassinated later John F Kennedy(US President) 1963,  Anwar Sadat 81 (Egypt), Indira Ghandi 1984 (India),  Yithak Rabin 1995 (Israel), Benazir Bhutto 2007(Pakistan), and Park Chung Hee1979 (South Korea) Olaf Palmer 1986 Sweden.

Worlds Human population passed 1 billion in 1986

 

The Scapegoat by Daphne du Maurier.1957 348pg

12/7/25

The novel opens in Le Mans where our narrator, John, an English academic, is on holiday. his new friend is a French count, Jean de Gué. taking all of John’s clothes and possessions with him and leaving his own in their place. Jean’s chauffeur Gaston arrives, ready to drive him home to his château. de Gué.

 The glassworks is facing financial ruin. John says he had years of training in French and spoke the language and had studied the history. John had told Jean that his life was empty, Jean had lent me his name, his possessions, his identity.

When Jean gets back to his chateau his wife Francois and sister Blanche had thought he was not coming back from Paris as he had not phoned them. They do mention that his hands are cleaner and he smells different.  Marie Noel the daughter is worried that she may have measles that could cause harm to the unborn baby. Now we learn that Jean and Francois had married soon after liberation. The relationship with his sister Blanche is difficult.

Jean insists on them opening the presents he brought from Paris  at the table but this is an error as one to his brother in law is an elixir against impotence and in Blanches is a message for Bele his mistress. Marie Noel was very happy with her gift a  book The Little Flower  1897 about St. Theresa the making of a saint. Part of this family were devout Catholics.

Jeans mother tells him that her late husband was always in a better mode after he returned from his mistress and so encourages him to keep a mistress.

First he tell them he got a good agreement from Carvelet and then phones Paris and discovers that the only contract he can get they results in  producing at a loss. He knows Blanche heard the conversation on her phone extension.

He goes to the bank to learn about the family assets which are in minus but has  seen the family papers in the bank safe. That If Florence produces a son the Inheritance comes to the family head and if Florence dies the same. The verrerie(glassware factory) was important for the status of the family and the jobs of the workers.

1952 They mention rabbits dying with the plague of myxomatosis this was caused by a French physician, Paul-Félix Armand-Delille, released infected rabbits on his estate as a form of pest control, causing massive decline of rabbit numbers in Europe.

This is 15 years after the German occupation. Jean goes into the master house at the verrerie and sees it just left frozen in time after the death of Maurice Duval. the almanac is showing 1941 and furniture and boxes of books. Duval was taken in the middle of the night and shot by his own country' men, cut to pieces and thrown in the well. Julie tells him that she was accused of being a collaborator as she helped a young German boy soldier launder his uniform so he would not get into trouble about a stain on it. Jean de Gue had been an officer in the underground but left people like Julia to cope with the Nazi's.

His watch strap broke and he threw it into the fire and retrieved it suddenly and  burned his hand so that he could avoid taking part in the hunt the next day. The hunt is led by his brother and amongst other thing Jean is there and has no control of Cesar who ran into the forest and sent the birds up prematurely, wrecking the hunt and then  it rains and not many come to the gathering afterwards.

 Marie Noel had  disappeared and gone down the well but Cesar had stayed with her and one of the workmen saw the dog and realized to bring the sleeping child up with little glass articles she found.

Florence his wife died falling over the balcony and it was considered suicide but the daughter Marie Noel hung over the balcony to retrieve the locket that Jean had given Florence so it was  an accident. At the hospital the doctor told Jean he would have had a son. The countess appears to be pleased at the death of her daughter in law. The Countess had become an opium addict. Jean tells her that she must stop the opium as he need her to  take over running the house. She immediately get stuck in to inviting guest to the funeral. 

Bela had bandaged his burned hand and now Blanche also. He saw the old photos of themselves as children and Maurice Duval was a finer person than Jean. Maurice was killed through jealousy not because he was a collaborator with the Germans as many decent  French were collaborators to stay alive.  With the armistice murder of him was seen as heroic. Papa had given Maurice the position of master of the verrerie and Blanche was attracted to him.    Blanche he tells to move to the masters house and take over running the foundry she is the  capable one. She can be artistically innovative and open it to tourists instead of delivering scent bottles at a loss to Carvalet.

 Paul and Renee can go and live their lives. Paul had taken over the foundry as he felt responsibility to the family business.  Even  Marie Noel says that now that Mamam died everyone is getting what they want.  

" I haven't been saddled with a baby brother and have you to myself. "

A phone call from Jean de Gué who saw the death of Florence in the press. Only a week has passed since Jean left John drugged asleep in the hotel bedroom. John meets Jean at the masters house at the foundry, John says he loved Jeans family. Jean says unlike England their country was invaded by the enemy.   John and Jean change clothes. John gets his car back.  He visits Bele who tells him she realized he had changed.                                                           Jean explains that John hasn’t been whistling to César in the correct way and this is why he hasn’t been obeying his commands.

 What if John and Jean weren’t doubles after all?

 Jean tells John that he has emptied John’s bank account, sold his flat and furniture in London and resigned John’s position as university lecturer – in other words, destroyed John altogether, because John never really existed and is no longer necessary.