Category: History

Wrong Kind Of Heroes

Heroism, History

Charles Lindbergh was the first to cross the Atlantic Ocean by air non-stop, in 1927.

Wrong: the first nonstop crossing of the Atlantic by air was by John Alcock and Arthur Brown, some eight years earlier.

Yet while we all remember Lindbergh, Alcock and Brown aren’t acknowledged often, not even by their own country on the centenary of their achievement:

Two WWI heroes made the first transatlantic flight fuelled only by sandwiches, a flask of coffee and raw courage to win £10,000 Daily Mail prize. So why 100 years on is Britain doing nothing to remember these magnificent men?

Oh, please.  I can think of several reasons.

  • White men
  • Worse yet, heterosexual  White men
  • War veterans mongers
  • Didn’t even try  to recruit female- or POC crew members
  • Leaving from a country stolen from the native peoples by colonialist oppressors
  • Using an aircraft once used as a weapon of war to bomb helpless civilians
  • Burning countless gallons of fuel, i.e. a leaving a massive carbon footprint
  • Showing up less brave, less able people by a pointless act of so-called “heroism”
  • Their sandwiches contained meat, and their coffee wasn’t “Fair Trade”.

I could go on, but I think you get the point.  I’m just surprised that their existing monuments haven’t been destroyed by now.

Taken Too Young

History

When I grow up, I want to be like the recently-deceased historian John Lukacs, who has often been labeled an “iconoclast” (i.e. someone who destroys icons and sacred cows).  I think John Willson’s description fits him perfectly:

“John Lukacs is well known not so much for speaking truth to power as speaking truth to audiences he senses have settled into safe and unexamined opinions.”

No better example was when Rudi Giuliani compared the spirit and endurance of 9/11 New Yorkers to 1940s-era Londoners, which the irritated historian called nonsense — he thought (with plenty of justification) that the Blitzed Londoners had had it far worse than New Yorkers.

In addition to all that, Lukacs was an unashamed fan of BritPM Sir Winston Churchill, which is yet another reason to respect him.  When pomo historians attempted to downplay Churchill’s wartime achievements, Lukacs shot them down like RAF Spitfires did Nazi Heinkels.

We need more historians like John Lukacs:  many, many more.  For those who want to read his stuff, I can absolutely recommend two works in particular:  Five Days In London and The Legacy of World War II.  I’ve read his Budapest: 1900 three times.

Lukacs was 95 when he died, so I have thirty years’ work to do, and I’m going to set myself a goal of reading a “new” Lukacs book (i.e. ones I haven’t already read) every six months.

Definitely No Snowflake

History, Military

Yikes.  Try this wilting flower for size:

Virginia Hall was fluent in French, Italian and German when she went to work for the US foreign service before World War II but was invalided out of the service after a hunting accident in Turkey.
Her shotgun slipped from her grasp and as she grabbed it, it fired, blasting away her foot.
By the time she got to a hospital, gangrene had set in. To save her life, the surgeon had to amputate her left leg below the knee.
Always able to see the funny side of things, Miss Hall immediately named her wooden leg Cuthbert.
…
When the Nazis invaded France in 1940, she fled to London, and with her language skills, was soon recruited by the SOE.
After training in the clandestine arts of killing, communications and security, she went to Vichy France to set up resistance networks under the cover of being a reporter for the New York Post.
After the November, 1942, North Africa invasion, German troops flooded into her area and things became too hot even for her.
She hiked on her artificial leg across the Pyrenees in the dead of winter to Spain.
During the journey she radioed London saying she was okay but Cuthbert was giving her trouble.

…and then she got really serious about doing bad things to Nazis.  Read the whole thing.

WHM III

History

When the history of the world is explored at some time far into the future, historians will scratch their heads at the collapse of an entire culture and civilization, and wonder how a society so successful, so prosperous and so advanced could have fallen into disrepair and decay, this little footnote may shed some light on the topic.

Now as we all know, today’s grannies are generally not the same as grannies of yore.  Here’s yore:

…and here’s today:

   

Sadly, however, this modern-day ageless sexiness seems to have washed away the modesty and reserve for which grannies were once renowned, and one arrives at this sad conclusion (warning: link contains extreme nausea risk):

A grandmother and self-proclaimed ‘prolific cougar’ who has dated hundreds of toy boys believes bedding men under 30 is the key to keeping young.
Gaynor Evans, 57, from Enfield, North London, has dated more than 200 younger men since she had a fling with a 23-year-old after divorcing her second husband in 2010.
The author, agony aunt and businesswoman never dates exclusively and said she has no intention of her love life slowing down – despite being a grandmother of four.

…and there you have it.  “Agony aunt” indeed.

WHM II

History, Politics

Yesterday we looked at a woman whose place in history was made by taking off her clothes.

Today we’ll be looking at a woman who took on the foul labor unions of Britain and the industries once nationalized by the socialist BritGov of the late 1940s (and denationalized them, saying “To cure the British disease with socialism was like trying to cure leukaemia with leeches”).  And for good measure, she kicked the shit out of the Argies when they tried to invade and hold the Falkland Islands.  A political foe once described her as having “breasts like Monroe and eyes like Stalin”, and he was right.

We all know who I’m talking about, of course:  the Iron Lady herself,  Margaret Thatcher.

Needless to say, the Commies in the UK (i.e. a substantial proportion of the population) hated her guts because in her time, she constantly flayed the monster that was “democratic socialism” both by her words and by her deeds.

Britain needs her today more than ever:  I cannot imagine that the pantywaists in the EU government and the “Remainers” at home would last more than a couple hours against her — but lamentably, she can’t be there.  And her words, most of which were said over thirty years ago, ring all the more true today:

“Left-wing zealots have often been prepared to ride roughshod over due process and basic considerations of fairness when they think they can get away with it. For them the ends always seems to justify the means. That is precisely how their predecessors came to create the gulag.”

“Do you know that one of the great problems of our age is that we are governed by people who care more about feelings than they do about thoughts and ideas.”

“The choice facing the nation is between two totally different ways of life. And what a prize we have to fight for: no less than the chance to banish from our land the dark, divisive clouds of Marxist socialism and bring together men and women from all walks of life who share a belief in freedom.”

I miss her, and so should (big- and small-c) conservatives everywhere.

One Hundred Years On

History, Military, Patriotism

At 11.00am on this day in 1918, the guns at last fell silent.

Of course, the armistice came too late for millions upon millions.

For the Fallen by Robert Laurence Binyon

With proud thanksgiving, a mother for her children,
England mourns for her dead across the sea.
Flesh of her flesh they were, spirit of her spirit,
Fallen in the cause of the free.

Solemn the drums thrill: Death august and royal
Sings sorrow up into immortal spheres.
There is music in the midst of desolation
And a glory that shines upon our tears.

They went with songs to the battle, they were young,
Straight of limb, true of eye, steady and aglow.
They were staunch to the end against odds uncounted,
They fell with their faces to the foe.

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.

They mingle not with their laughing comrades again;
They sit no more at familiar tables of home;
They have no lot in our labour of the day-time;
They sleep beyond England’s foam.

But where our desires are and our hopes profound,
Felt as a well-spring that is hidden from sight,
To the innermost heart of their own land they are known
As the stars are known to the Night;

As the stars that shall be bright when we are dust,
Moving in marches upon the heavenly plain,
As the stars that are starry in the time of our darkness,
To the end, to the end, they remain.