First stop as a tourist.

The battlefield is like a battlefield. Some plains, a hill, a nice cemetery, and memorials. This one is interesting from the standpoint that the side that won the battle got to write most of the content even though the memorial is administered by the losing side’s parks service. About half of Custer’s army was born in Europe. And I’m wondering, after they killed their horses in order to give themselves something to take cover behind, how much optimism remained among Custer’s troops.

Custer's Last View (might have looked different then).

Also: There were a lot of bikers in the area. I guess the Sturgis thing started over the weekend. If you’re 70 years old, I’m not sure that wearing a jolly Roger bandanna makes you bad ass. Not entirely sure is all.

bkd

This was the “follow up” to With the Old Breed, which is the greatest first-person account of war I’m aware of. It was written by the same guy, Eugene Sledge. Unfortunately, it turns out that 100 pages of musings about sitting around in China after the war isn’t quite as gripping as actual war narrative.

This is going to be a short post.

• They should have taken the last 20 pages of China Marine, when Sledge actually gets to go home, and put it at the end of With the Old Breed.
• And then the rest of it they could have posted on his website or whatever.

The last 20 pages or so were very cool and brought satisfying closure to the overall story that began with With the Old Breed. Just that the China that filled the first 80 pages was pretty bland. A lot of discussion of how it was annoying to still be in some amount of danger even though the war was over as well as talking about food and walking around Beijing.

Endut.

bkd

And for as extremely polite as they are to your face, southerners are the most impolite drivers in the country. There, it’s been said.

Meanwhile, cool battlefields and cemeteries:

This is an artillery piece from the Yorktown National Battlefield. For as important a battle as it was (it was the last major action in the Revolutionary War), there wasn’t a whole lot to look at. OTOH, the movie was informative and didn’t make me hate George Washington like Mt. Vernon’s did.

Some monument commemorating the battle. The setting is pretty, fwiw. I’d rather have died of a musket shot here than most places.

This artillery is from the Petersburg National Battlefield. There was a lot to see there. It was sort of the South’s last hope at keeping the North out of their one industrial center in Richmond. Was struck by how similar the tactics here were to those employed in World War I (a lot of trenches, stalemates, and unfortunate runs across no-man’s lands). Also thought that the whole thing with the Pennsylvanian miners digging tunnels under the Confederate lines in order to blow them up with dynamite was pretty cool, even if it wasn’t decisive or anything.

On a side-note, Petersburg is as run-down a town as I’ve ever visited, but otoh lunch specials at the Chinese place in town were under $6. There may be a correlation.

Here’s what the Blandford Cemetery looks like:

It was kind of cool. The church there was, after the war, turned into a “memorial chapel”. The Tiffany Company donated stained glass windows for it, with one window for each state that was aligned with the South (including Missouri and Maryland). I pointed out to the tour guide that the windows’ backgrounds corresponded with the actual direction you were facing (e.g., the western windows had mountains in the background, eastern had ocean), which apparently had never occurred to her. Maybe they don’t get many visitors.

Her: That *could* be what it is.

Me: Well, the sun is rising over the ocean in the eastern windows.

Her: Or is it setting?

Me: Assuming that’s the east, I hope it’s rising.

Although it’d be interesting if the earth started spinning the other direction. Kudos to her for keeping that dream alive.

Jefferson Davis’s grave:

Seems weird he was buried in Richmond rather than in Mississippi, where he was a senator. I dunno, whatever. He moved around a lot.

The cemetery is called the Hollywood Cemetery. There are some CSA generals buried there, IIRC, and a couple of forgettable US presidents as well. They also have this:

You just don’t hear much about the Jewish Confederate experience.

Monroe and Tyler Too were the presidents. I guess there are more forgettable ones out there.

And then driving out of Richmond, I cruised down Monument Boulevard, which includes monuments to six of Richmond’s favorite sons (most of whom were not from Richmond):

• (Gen.) Robert E. Lee
• (Gen.) J.E.B. Stuart
• (Pres.) Jefferson Davis
• (Gen.) “Stonewall” Jackson
• Matthew Fontaine Maury (renowned oceanographer (?!) and Confederate “Chief of Sea Coast, River and Harbor Defences” in Virginia)
• Arthur Ashe (the tennis player)

One of these kids is not like the others. Nice houses on the street, though. A lot of statues of guys on horses. One statue of a guy with a tennis racket.

bkd

That’s the White House of the Confederacy. The exterior is pretty unprepossessing. The side shown above is actually the back — the front is plainer. Supposedly the back was done up more because it’s the side that faces the (James) river and the place where guests would have hung out. Richmond city planners didn’t exactly go out of their way to preserve the “sanctity” of the location. The brick hospital that surrounds it on all sides is one of the uglier hospital complexes I’ve ever seen in my life.

For that matter, Richmond’s an aesthetically disappointing city generally. The topography should lend itself to something cool, but it hasn’t happened. Probably because all the good stuff got destroyed in the war (although they’ve had 145 years to recover).

The white house is a nice mansion. The stuff inside was cool. Plenty of smoking parlors, very tasteful. George Eastman and I could’ve hung out there and felt at ease, although I guess we both probably would’ve been weirded out by the slaves there. The tour guide looked like he was half-man, half-bloodhound, but he knew the heck out of that mansion, Richmond, Jefferson Davis, and the Confederacy. And fwiw, Davis didn’t really live here very long. Three years IIRC.

It  also didn’t cost much compared to less historically-relevant mansions (I think the museum + mansion ticket was $12; I mean, not *cheap*, but not hilariously awful either).

The museum was all right-to-good. It didn’t hammer home the Civil War story of the Confederacy like I thought it would — mostly just short write-ups on key battles posted next to displays of flags and uniforms. They had some cool artwork that I liked though. I think this is the most famous Confederate painting that exists:

Depicts the last meeting of Generals Lee and Jackson — before Jackson died from pneumonia at Spotsylvania.

My favorite part of the museum, though, was the more proletariat-focused art. Like this:

These are just a couple of pencil sketches done by some confederate soldier. I’m guessing they’re depicting one of the better days in camp (fishing with your buddies, hanging out by the fire smoking your pipe), but I think it explains a whole lot more about the Civil War experience than does Stonewall’s revolver — not just in terms of content, but in terms of perspective. It also supports my thesis on humanity that even the most horrendous situations become normal to people over time. Yep.

bkd

Of those two areas, I think I dug the early years part the most, maybe just because it’s a more-forgotten time. It covered a lot of “expansion era” Marine Corps activities, where the Corps acted as an expeditionary force in securing colonies in, frex, the Philippines.

Like the rest of the museum, these new areas do some cool stuff to help the visitor experience the history they’re viewing. Like in the Philippines occupation area, you walk through this “tent” and through one “wall” of the tent, you can see shadows of marines hanging out by the fire, wearing expedition hats, whittling sticks, and smoking pipes. It’s simple and not very data-rich, but it’s ingenious in its ability to convey how it might have felt to actually be a marine stationed in the Philippines at the turn of the century (minus the heat and humidity). No plaque could have conveyed that.

Photo:

The World War I exhibit was also strong, although it started off with a short, made-for-museum video loop of a kid dressed up like in the old days hawking newspapers on an in-studio streetcorner. Hated that. The kid actor was terrible, like he was trying to channel Meeno Peluce. Children should *never* be allowed to act. I don’t know why I’m the only person who seems to have realized this universal truth. I guess this kind of intro might appeal to blue-hairs, but man it was tacky and over-the-top. To me.

The rest of World War I was good, though. They had a short Belleau Wood reenactment video (yes, made-for-museum) that I liked a lot. They did with it what I always thought every war movie always should have done (but did the opposite instead) in that I think they saturated the colors on the film. Most (recent) war movies (e.g., Private Ryan, Band of Brothers) have de-saturated the color (= made the colors less vibrant) in order to give them an “authentic”, sentimental, old feel. OTOH, every first-hand account of front-line warfare that I’ve read has expressed that, in battle, combatants’ senses have been in overdrive. In that sense, it seems to me like an over-saturated color palette would best convey the image of warfare and I think that’s what they did here. (I can’t prove that they saturated the colors, but they definitely didn’t de-saturate.)

They might have shifted things a little to the blue, too.

And for the sake of playing copy editor (how fun!), they had a sign there that referred to German soldiers calling the marines “teufelhunden” (sic). That’d be capitalized in German and pretty sure it should’ve been on the sign, too.

Also watched the museum movie this time (I guess I didn’t last time — it was totally new to me). It’s a great, engaging, and moving ten-minute branding video that hits everything it should and does it without feeling too sentimental, although it did include senators John Glenn and John Warner saying (in effect) that without the Marine Corps, they wouldn’t have become senators, which to me seems like a case *against* the Marine Corps. The Marine Corps: we make politicians! Yikesnothankyou, etc. IMHO. Perhaps Sens. Warner and Glenn also appropriate(d) funds for museums, which doesn’t lessen the problem.

The Marines are still really good at telling stories and this is still very possibly the most cogent, most nailed-it museum I’ve been to. With the new galleries, it’d be kind of a long day to go all the way through in one shot. I’m not sure who my audience is for this post.

Ending so with,

bkd

Stated Reasons for Continuing the War:

• Because “The Surge” is working. (Seriously, this was presented as an actual reason to continue the war in a Wall Street Journal opinion article.)
• In order to spread democracy to Iraq. (So how come we’re not invading Russia and spreading democracy there? Oh, right, because they’re already democratic — sort of like the German Democratic Republic was, I guess.)
• Because of 9/11. (?)
• To stop the terrorists.
• To establish a strong relationship with another oil-rich nation.

Stated reasons for ending the war:

• Because it’s an imperialist, racist war.
• Because too many Americans and Iraqi civilians have died.
• Blood-for-oil is wrong.
• Because we’re just encouraging the terrorists and ruining our international reputation.
• Because it’s illegal.

The problem with all of these reasons is that none of them get down to the details that matter. Instead, they’re all just bumper sticker-quality sound bites that seem to serve only to unite the masses within their respective teams. Ugh: humanity. It’s not about your team, it’s about good decision-making.

The only valid reason for continuing the war in Iraq is the belief that, from this point forward, the benefit to waging the war outweighs its cost. The only valid reason for pulling out of Iraq is the belief that, from this point forward, the cost of waging the war outweighs the benefit. While many of the above reasons hint at benefits and costs, none of them glance at the other side of the balance or are considered to the point of actually understanding the details from which to derive an actual value. If we’re going to argue mindlessly with opinions rooted only in our environmental and cultural biases, at least we could argue to those specifications.

Or, better yet, we could seek rational figures and probabilities that would help us determine the best course of action. It’s not hard to reduce the value of the Iraq war from this point forward to a mathematical equation in order to weigh the benefit against the cost: it’s just a net present value (NPV) evaluation. All we need to do is understand and quantify the costs (from this point forward) and then understand and quantify the benefits (form this point forward).

“From this point forward” because everything that’s already happened is a sunk cost and can’t be changed at this point.

Post over.

bkd

(Re-read this after doing the thing about posts I hadn’t posted yet and there-during impressed myself. It’s still relevant enough, I guess — and there’s always Afghanistan.)

Biggest Question: How did they manage to hang out together for a month (longer?) without either of them ever learning a word of the other’s language?

Too Long By: 20 minutes.

Haiku Synopsis:

On island marooned,

Old enemies become friends

And then they blow up.

Grade: 7/10 (loses a full point for the ending).

bkd

As a result of this remembrance the United States has:

• Created two wars.
• Estranged itself from its allies (as a result of those wars).
• Encouraged its enemies (as a result of those wars).
• Significantly endangered the strength of its economy (government spending as a % of GDP is at its highest level since World War II and some day we’re going to have to pay for that — and, yeah, this is the *biggest* problem with those wars even though no one in the MSM has thought to talk about it (because it’s much more entertaining to “remember 9/11″)).
• Forfeited formerly rightful claims to morality and ethical behavior (as it applies to prisoners and intelligence gathering).
• Given the FBI sweeping powers of surveillance — does anyone else think it’s interesting that “police state” has a *negative* connotation?
• Instituted the practice of warrantless searches (seems like maybe there should be something in the Constitution about that — oh wait, there is…).
• Reduced the ability of the judicial branch to limit the powers of the state.
• Reinforced unconstitutional power assertions of the executive branch.
• Turned domestic air travel into a festival of harrassment (from having to disrobe at security to having to pass the “no fly list” test to having to get to the airport two hours early to not being able to park or stop a car near an airport terminal to…).
• Infuriated foreign tourists by treating each of them as a would-be criminal at customs.
• Accepted having a choice limited to one big-government party and another big-government party.
• Etc.

The “remembrance” of 9/11 is a place where Idiot Planet — this would be Earth — really shows its true colors. We are screwing ourselves in return for screwing ourselves. Way to remember, guys!

Some time soon I’m going to post about the Hindenburg. You’ll see.

bkd

They Drew Fire

You couple this collection with some first-hand accounts and I think you’d probably be 80% of the way there (where “there” is as far as someone who wasn’t there can be to comprehending there).

Some relevant-to-the-holiday samples:

• Jungle
• Landing on Tarawa
• Fighting on Tarawa
• The Last Full Measure
• Ebb Tide
• The Price
• USS Missouri

For full effect, though, view the whole series on the website. There’s sort of a cumulative thing that happens.

bkd

7. The nice thing about the Irish armed forces is that everything moves at such a relaxed pace — not even the helicopter rotors are in a hurry. It’s concerning that the medics are so deliberate, but — well, it’s not like the Irish are getting shot at all that often anyway.

6. India is a very straightforward culture. How many other countries can recruit soldiers by showing them getting shot and killed? (This was the only country *I* found.)

5. Crucially, this Lebanese ad points out that there are some good looking women in Lebanon. Assuming they’re not actresses from Syria (although Syrian actresses *in* Lebanon would still count). And I’m guessing the soldier in the ad would prefer they give him a *different* kind of salute. (Wouldn’t we all…?)

4. Taekwondo in the rain? Inspecting delivery trucks while wearing haz-mat suits? I’m in! I like that the Czechs don’t promise too much. I don’t get the impression they’re expecting to take over the world, they’re just trying to — I dunno — pick a side and see how it goes I guess.

3. And if the Finns took on the Irish, that’d be the slowest war in history.

2. Join the Russian army and you’ll get hot chicks and go dancing. Things are hard in Russia — in the US you get the same reward just for drinking the right brand of beer. And if this is how Russian soldiers are treated by the hot-looking locals, why are they all turning up in Liberty City? (Because Liberty City is Ukranians. I know.)

Every time I watch that one, I’m hoping she’ll push him over the railing and into the water. But she never does.

1. Say what you will for the Israeli army, they know how to speak the international language: awkward shame.

That’s it. Tune in next time when I point out the flaws in how Webster defines “insouciant”.

bkd

• Not that many enlisted personnel enjoy being in the navy.
• Officers seem pretty okay with it. (So did the NCOs for that matter — but were they happy because they were NCOs or did they become NCOs because they were happy?)
• Navy fighter pilots are frat-boy braggarts — the flight wing’s CO and XO made Top Gun seem true-to-life, at least in terms of the over-the-top egotism of its main chars.
• It seemed like most of the officers were in favor of the war, while enlisted personnel were more split.
• Most of the naval personnel who talked about the war in Iraq and the “War on Terror” had opinions no more erudite or well-considered than anyone else’s.
• Most naval personnel seemed to regard the navy as a job.
• Based on what was shown in the series, marines on the other hand view the Marine Corps as a way-of-life (and their opinions on the war seemed more deferential: “I’m a marine, it’s my job to obey orders, not to have opinions”).
• There are some sucky jobs in the navy. Looks like if you find yourself enlisting you should get language put into your contract that prevents them from ever making you a cook, a janitor, or a grease monkey.
• Getting catapulted off the carrier deck looked pretty fun. Rendezvousing with a tanker to refuel looked pretty irritating.
• For all the griping in the show, it didn’t by a long shot kill the romantic notion of navy-as-adventure.

bkd

In the spirit of the day:

• Favorite WWII European Theater of Operations Book: Up Front, Bill Mauldin
• Favorite WWII ETO Movie: The Great Escape or Das Boot
• Favorite WWII ETO Airplane: P-51
• Favorite WWII ETO Video Game: Call of Duty 2
• Favorite WWII ETO Brand Identity: Free France
• Favorite WWII ETO Animal: Voytek the Polish soldier bear

Also, since we’re on it, my vote for the grimmest WWII ETO location –> Mittelbau Dora. If you’re ever in the area and you’re up for it, it’s worth the visit.

bkd

Schwarzkopf’s Victory (.wav file)
Schwarzkopf’s Victory (.m4a iTunes file)

Here’s the program:

1. Saddam’s Army Invades Kuwait – 0:00
2. The U.S. Denounces the Invasion and Vows to Assist the Sovereign Emirate – 0:42
3. European Allies Proffer Money and Arms to Support the Coalition – 0:54
4. The Coalition Gathers, SCUDs Fall, the World Awaits – 1:24
5. The Air Offensive Begins, Things Go Well – 2:15
6. The 24-Hour Ground War – 3:08
7. Though Defeated, Saddam Lives to Fight Another Day – 3:51

I sampled real artillery explosions to make it sound more lifelike. Man but I miss ScreamTracker.

bkd

(Yes, a colon in the title again.)

Also worth considering is that the US was a much smaller country (population-wise) in these earlier conflicts. The US population in 1940 was 132 million (less than half of today’s estimated population of 303 million). The US population in 1860 (just prior to the Civil War) was only 31 million.

If you need a finer point put on this: the number of American troops killed in our (almost) five-year adventure in Iraq is about the same as the number of American troops who died in the Battle of Antietam (Sharpsburg) IN ONE DAY. Given that today’s US population is just over 9x that of the 1860 population, the current Iraq conflict has about 1/15,000th the relative death intensity of the Battle of Antietam (= 1 / ((3654.0 deaths/day / 2.2 deaths/day ) * (303.1 million population / 33.4 million population)) = 1/15,072 ). Or, other way around, the Battle of Antietam was relatively 15,000 times as bad as the current Iraq war (in terms of death rate and impact on the relative population).

If we wanted to go deeper, I could figure out what the death rate for civilians between 18 and 25 has been during the years of the Iraq war and discount the rate accordingly — but I’d also have to do that for the other battles and wars and I’ve spent enough of my Saturday on this already.

My point: I think the media should be required to report all of the above any time they report the number of deaths in the Iraq War+Occupation to date. Even better, news consumers should DEMAND this (not that they ever would). But perspective should matter. The rational reason Iraq is a crappy situation has more to do with how we’re destroying our own economy for the sake of making everyone in the world hate us than it does with the ferocity of the fighting and dying. As war deaths go, Iraq’s been relatively gentle. Our country should be making its foreign policy decisions based on clear objectives, rational analysis, and items of statistical significance, not on the media’s unwillingness to disseminate reason.

Thanks,

bkd

(Virtually all figures are from Wikipedia and are sourced there.)

• With the Old Breed at Peleliu and Okinawa by E. B. Sledge — Painfully unaffected first-person account of two of the bloodiest campaigns of the Pacific. It’s like being there and it’s beautiful and it sucks. If you only ever read one book about the Pacific war, this one would get my vote.
• On the Canal by Ore J. Marion — Another first-person account, written long after the fact, about a rifle squad leader’s experiences on Guadalcanal. Brings in a lot more of the fraternity and fun of war that Sledge lacked (in no small part, I’m guessing to the facts that (a) it was told, as mentioned, *long* after the fact and (b) Guadalcanal was nowhere near as brutal as Peleliu or Okinawa).
• Up Front by Bill Mauldin — It’s short and has a lot of pictures (Mauldin was eventually a Purlitzer-winning cartoonist if you haven’t heard of him), but does a great job of conveying the day-to-day crappiness of the European Theater. Also, when juxtaposed with the content of all the Pacific Theater books I’ve read, gives a good idea of the differences between the WWII-era front-line army soldier and the same era’s front-line marines.
• The Old Breed: A History of the First Marine Division in World War II by George McMillan — Details the campaigns and actions of the First Division in such a way as to make the division feel like a living, breathing thing — and, IMHO, in so doing conveys a lot about the lore and mythology of the Marine Corps. Really beautifully and compellingly written (but a little hard to find unless you want to pay the most recent publisher $60 to send you one).
• Stay Off the Skyline by Laura Homan Lacey — Lacey gives an “oral history” of the Okinawa campaign by compiling parts of a number of interviews given by members of the Sixth Marine Division. The first-person recollections are fantastic and the author’s third-person, “outsider” perspectives on war, contexts, and warrior psychology made this especially useful for a civilian like myself. (It’s odd how so many other texts assume you know and understand everything about the military before you start reading — it can be kind of baffling trying to understand what’s being discussed.)

That’s about it. I got a number of books that are still unread or are partially read, a few of which look (or have so far been) pretty dang good.

So anyway: Happy Veterans’ Day.

bkd

Pluses:

• Is actually from World War II. Vintage. Awakens ghosts.
• Has a bolt action! Spent shells sound cool as they fly onto the ground.
• Grants me libertarian Second Amendment cred.
• Endears me to rednecks.
• Is very loud.
• Teaches you what a “magazine cut-off switch” does.
• Holds up to five rounds.
• Cool Springfield Armory logo and date (1-42) stamped on barrel.
• Finally something onto which I can latch all my trigger locks!

Minuses:

• Expensive ammo — $15+ per 20-round box!
• Shoots high.
• Bruises shoulder.

VIDEO (Quicktime, 4.7MB): Alligator Creek

[amateur historical synopsis]

Essentially at the far western end of Red Beach is Alligator Creek, which is actually the Ilu River and is known to historians as the site of the Battle of the Tenaru (the name of another river with which the Ilu was confused). It was called Alligator Creek by US Marines because of the number of crocodiles that were seen swimming in it. Anyway — Red Beach was where D-Day happened on Guadalcanal, but it was a quiet D-Day with virtually no opposition. The Battle of the Tenaru was the first real battle of the campaign.

Prior to Tenaru, Japanese ground forces had been essentially undefeated. In fact, with the exception of the Japanese taking of Wake Island (where a small force of Marines managed to hold off an overwhelming Japanese force longer than they had any right to), there’d been no indication to the Japanese that anyone in the world had the courage to stop them. They’d taken Manchuria, parts of China, Singapore, and much of Southeast Asia without much effort. In the Philippines, at the close of the Battle of Bataan, a US and Filipino force of 75,000 had surrendered to fewer numbers of Japanese soldiers (and then endured the Death March for which Bataan is famous).

With that in mind, the Japanese were expecting to be able to re-take Guadalcanal from the Americans without much effort. Which helps explains the actions of the Ichiki Regiment. Commanded by Col. Kiyono Ichiki, a group of 800 Japanese soldiers started what they’d imagined would be a walkover battle in trying to cross the mouth of Alligator Creek. Given that these were soldiers seasoned by earlier battles in Asia and that the Americans were entirely untested, it was thought that the Japanese soldiers’ superior spirit and fighting know-how would carry the day. So, with USMC machine gun emplacements at the ready, they ran across the river attempting bayonet charge after bayonet charge.

Turns out machine guns are more effective at a distance of 5-100 feet than are bayonets. The result of the battle was the majority of the Japanese regiment getting killed. (Only a few dozen Marines died in the battle.) Just from a historical context, then, Alligator Creek is where the battle occurred where Japanese soldiers for the first time in the war realized that they were not invincible and where it became apparent that the establishment of the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere wasn’t necessarily a fait accompli.

[/amateur historical synopsis]

Man that was long-winded. The area around Alligator Creek was sort of pretty — at least there weren’t so many people living around there to generate the kind of garbage tossed into and around the Matanikau. Never saw any crocs there myself, though. Sadly. Maybe next time.

bkd

Red Beach on Guadalcanal was the Normandy of the Pacific — not in terms of battle ferocity, but in the sense that it was the location where the landing took place that turned the tide of the war. Um, not including Stalingrad I guess.

Actually, Red Beach and Guadalcanal were arguably more important to the Pacific Theater than the Normandy landings on Utah and Omaha Beaches were to the European. The war in Europe was over by the time Normandy happened, nothing left there but to kill, get killed, and win.

Red Beach was the site of the first land invasion by the US in the war. Until Red Beach, US ground troops were entirely untested (the Navy had already fared well at Midway, though less well elsewhere). Most of the Marines who landed on Red Beach (purportedly 90% of them) had joined the service after the attack on Pearl Harbor — only eight months earlier. Guadalcanal is where the US — and, for that matter, Japan and the rest of the world — discovered whether it was a country whose people had a stomach for war.

Fortunately, this video of my walk down Red Beach a couple weeks ago isn’t as heavy-handed as those last three paragraphs. I don’t think.

VIDEO (Quicktime): Red Beach

I know, I should probably start compressing these videos. And stop narrating them.

Robin was a cool kid, although his coolness waned as the day progressed until eventually he got downright petulant when I only gave him S$100 for his time — that’s like a week’s wage there — then finally started begging for more money. Oh well.

Also, in case you care, Robin’s English in the video is a little better than that of most people I met in Honiara — but not necessarily by a lot. It was easy to communicate with people there; their pidgin has enough English in it that eventually American and SIer alike can understand each other pretty well.

bkd

If the Japanese had been able to cross the river, especially given the “cordon defense” employed
by the USMC in the early campaign, they would have had a clear shot to Henderson Field, the true objective of the campaign. Anyway, what I’m trying to get at is that the mouth of the Matanikau River was one of the absolute most important places in terms of turning the Pacific Theater in the Americans’ favor.

Since then, the Solomons’ capital of Honiara has been built on top of the old battlefields where most of the fiercest fighting on Guadalcanal occurred. Here’s what the mouth of the Matanikau looked like on July 3, 2007:

VIDEO (Quicktime): Mouth of the Matanikau

The route to the mouth of the river runs from the Kukum Highway (which was apparently known as “Highway 50″ when it was built by the US military after the campaign) through “Matanikau Village”. There was an original Matanikau Village that existed on this spot before WWII, but it was leveled probably by the naval bombardment that immediately preceded the USMC landing on the island (it had likely already been abandoned by the time that happened). Here’s what the current Matanikau Village looks like (the village is in the heart of The Big City, Honiara, with a population of 50,000; the country has a population of around 300,000):

VIDEO (Quicktime): Matanikau Village

(Apologies for the low quality and tiltyness — I was trying to be inconspicuous for some reason. And for some reason everyone I passed on the way in thought it was funny that I was there, but they didn’t seem to care when I was leaving.)

I guess one could conclude a few things here. A couple conclusions I made:

1. In the Solomons, sites that are held holy by US and Japanese military aren’t considered that way by the locals. At all.

2. The Solomon Islands is a poor country and, aside from the happy people, kind of a sad place.

BK

I’m also planning a trip to the Solomon Islands — no joke — so I can go to
Gauadalcanal and hike around in the jungle some. There’s some possibility
of having to learn to SCUBA dive in order to make the most of the trip,
althought that would require me to spend time in the water. That’s not my
natural element.

I’m thinking about getting a Springfield ’03. It’s kind of a pain trying to buy guns in California, most especially when the gun you’re trying to buy isn’t in California. But it sort of looks like the 03s are hard to come by (and that you therefore have to buy it online from someone outside the state and have it shipped to a CA dealer). And I doubt I’d shoot it more than once or twice in my lifetime. But still. For research.

I’ve also bought a lot of books and read the first 50 pages of each of them.
The only one I finished was the one that was 50 pages long. They’ve all been
sort of good, though. I imagine they’re even better when you finish them, but
not with my info-ADD in play. I paid $65 for one of them, about the 1st Marine
Division in WWII. FWIW, it’s the most telling of all the stuff I’ve bought.

Yeah, I guess that’s not worth all that much. I mean, much beyond the $65.

BKD