"JEREMY KANE" now on Kindle.

'Pleased to say, another of my printed books has now been also published in a Kindle edition.
"JEREMY KANE: A Canadian historical adventure novel of the 1837 Mackenzie Rebellion and its brutal aftermath in the Australian penal colonies."
See it here:www.1837rebel.info

LIVE REMEMBERING YOU WILL DIE ONE DAY

The late great, Steve Jobs left many a thoughtful observation, but perhaps his most universal piece of invaluable advice to each of us is this:
"Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life.
Because almost everything -- all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure -- these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important.
Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart."
-- Steve Jobs.

Feeling sorry for yourself?

If you think your life is tough
-- read some history books.
                          -- Bill Maher.

A Sobering View Of Democracy

According to Alexander Fraser Tyler,

a British contemporary of George Washington:

"A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government.

It can exist only until the voters discover they can vote themselves

largesse (defined as a liberal gift) out of the public treasury. From that

moment on, the majority always votes for the candidate promising the most

benefits from the public treasury, with the result that democracy always

collapses over loose fiscal policy, always to be followed by a dictatorship."

102 Minutes: The Unforgettable Story of the Fight to Survive Inside the Twin Towers

U.S. GOVERNMENT IGNORED FBI AGENTS' WARNINGS

OF TERRORISTS TRAINING AT ARIZONA FLIGHT SCHOOLS AND MISSED THE OPPORTUNITY TO PREVENT TRAGEDY.

Two months before September 11, 2001, when Islamic terrorist attacks destroyed New York City's Twin Towers, a Federal Bureau of Investigation agent in Phoenix, Arizona, named Kenneth Williams sent a memorandum to senior FBI officials in New York and Washington, DC.

The agent warned about an unusually large number of Muslims taking training at American flight schools.

He wrote: "This is to advise the Bureau and New York authorities of the possibility of a coordinated effort by [UBL] Usama bin Laden's Al-Qaeda to send students to the United States to attend civil aviation universiities.

The Phoenix office has observed an inordinate number of individuals of investigative interest who are attending or have attended civil aviation colleges in the state of Arizona.

The large number of such individuals attending these types of of schools, and fatwas issued by UBL, gives reason to believe that a coordinated effort is underway to establish a cadre of individuals who will one day be working in the civil aviation community around the world. These individuals will be in a position in future to conduct terror activity against civil aviation targets ..."

Agent Williams' warning was ignored at the highest levels of the American intelligence community and government; possibly as consequence of arrogant belief that Moslems were incapable of launching a sophisticated form of attack.

Today, on this sad 10th. anniversary of destruction of the Twin Towers and horrific murder of 2,752 innocent men, women, and children, we can only hope there will never be a repeat of this official failure to respond preventively against the enemies still among us. 

CANADIAN SOLDIERS SAY "ADIOS, AFGHANISTAN!"

Pleased to say, Canadian troops are being withdrawn from Afghanistan, as of today -- July 8, 2011. After 10 years of service there, and suffering 157 dead Canadian soldiers, our part in that lousy, stupid, futile war is at an end. Complete waste of good lives, waste of good money, and absolute waste of time.

Was Hiram Maxim's invention of the
machine-gun sparked by a boyhood accident caused to his mother?

Countless millions of people have been killed by the machine-gun since its design by the American inventor, Hiram Maxin, in 1884. Improbable as it may seem, his idea for the weapon was literally sparked by an accident during his childhood. Late in life, Maxim reminisced about the incident: "When I was quite a small boy, my mother wanted to shoot an owl she saw in a tree in the garden. So she got a gun from the house, an old flint-lock musket and loaded it, but it would not go off. I was siezed with the idea of applying a hot coal to the powder while my mother aimed the gun. So I rushed into the house, returning triumphantly with a piece of hot cinder in a pair of tongs. This I held to the gun, and as I did so, the owl flew off and the red-hot cinder fell and set fire to my mother's dress, burning her badly. This so upset me that I vowed I would invent an automatic gun which would fire itself."

The spin doctors view of WW II

Recently, I watched a re-run of a National Geographic TV documentary called The Bombing Of Germany. While emphasising the Allied aerial bombing campaign against Germany in WWII, the programme completely omits the context of it – the Nazi’s preceding merciless air-attacks against Warsaw, Belgrade, London, and virtually every other European country.

It reminded me of the controversial "official" history of the RCAF - The Crucible of War, 1939-1945. Written by Brereton Greenhous and a gaggle of other trendy historians linked with Canada’s Department of National Defence, it included the assertion that Royal Canadian Air Force flyers in WWII were “terrorists.”

The book re-awoke bitter controversy over a CBC-TV series, The Valor and the Horror. All three of these revisionist viewpoints claimed that Allied bombing of Germany in the latter stages of the war was "terror" bombing designed to break civilian morale. The obvious anti-British bias of the V&H series by Brian and Terry McKenna left the impression that there wasn't much difference between how our side and Germany waged war. They claimed that massive air raids ordered by Air Marshal "Bomber" Harris (whom the McKennas renamed "Butcher" Harris) had little effect on German war production and was mostly aimed at civilians.

At the time, many veterans and others took exception to the McKennas' view. Unquestionably there was an aspect of revenge in the RAF bombing raids -- getting even for the indiscriminate bombing blitz on London and Coventry and many other British cities, aimed at crushing the British will to resist -- part of Adolf Hitler’s spoken promise of waging “total war.” Luftwaffe attacks killed 65,000 British civilians, but only strengthened British resolve and morale.

Revisionists’ favourite resentment against Allied bombing of Germany focuses on the RAF/USAAF bombing of Dresden on Feb. 13-15, 1945, which killed approx. 25,000 Germans. This figure was concluded after a five-year research study conducted by the (German) Dresden Historians Commission, and confirmed the estimated casualty report by Dresden’s chief of police in 1945. This figure is far less than the 500,000 death-toll often claimed by far-left groups and sensationalist writers to this day.

The fact is that British and German people share certain valiant characteristics, including that neither nationality collapses easily under pressure or adversity. So it should have been predictable that bombing German cities and inflicting an horrendous 600,000 civilian casualties would not completely break Germany's spirit to continue fighting on, even after it was obvious their defeat was inevitable.

But as Hitler's minister of War Production, Albert Speer later pointed out that, while bombing didn't prevent German factories from producing guns and tanks, it reduced their numbers.  Air-raids also resulted in over 19,000 awesome 88-mm. flak-guns produced in 1942-44 being allocated for anti-aircraft defence of the Fatherland, instead of being used on the battle-fronts. And the need to defend cities against air-raids absorbed a million troops who would otherwise have been fighting at the front.

The Allied bombing war on Germany in World War Two cost the lives of 50,000 Royal Air Force crew-members (including 10,000 Canadians) and 50,000 American flyers. A terrible toll, but it did save the lives of countless American, British, Canadian, Russian, and other Allied soldiers. No amount of attempts to re-write history can ever diminish their sacrifice and the rightness of the cause in which they died.

The proliferation of e-mail that has almost done away with hand-written letters could have a harmful effect on the future of military history records. Newspaper columnist Naomi Lakritz makes a thoughtful comment on this:

“A couple of years ago, while wandering through a military museum, I stopped to chat with a soldier who was working on renovations to a gallery. He said the biggest problem museums face is being caused by new technology. Vast archives of private letters and photos will not exist for future displays, because these days nobody saves digital photos and e-mails. This will leave a huge gap in knowledge for future researchers and historians.”

A sobering and disturbing thought.

 NAZI SABOTEURS CAME

TO BLOW UP AMERICA

On June 13 and June 17, 1942, two groups of German sabotage agents landed from U-boats on shores of Long Island and Florida, as part of a German Abwehr mission, codenamed Operation Pastorius. The mission was named by Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, chief of Abwehr, the German military intelligence organization, a sardonic reference to Francis Daniel Pastorius, leader of the first organized settlement of German immigrants to America.

Subsequent events of the sabotage attempt were summarized later in a 1943 report written by British Secret Service agent Victor Rothschild who was sent to United States to be briefed on the incident. His report covered the Nazi mission's objectives; The German personnel sent on the mission; information about the training the German agents received at sabotage school; and the equipment to be used during the operation.

During the first few months after the United States officially entered World War II, America's major contribution to the war was industrial. America was able to produce and supply weapons, ammunition, equipment, and supplies to Britain and other nations already fighting against Germany. This infusion of U.S. arms production so stung the Nazi war machine, that the German high command ordered direct aggressive action to reduce American war supply output. However, with the Atlantic Ocean separating Germany from U.S. facilities, the enemy's ability to use conventional military tactics was limited. So German Intelligence decided that sabotage would be the most effective means available to interrupt American production.

"The task of the saboteurs was to slow down production at certain factories concerned with the American war effort," Rothschild wrote in his report. "The sabotage was not to be done in such a way that it appeared accidental," he noted. "The saboteurs were however told that they must avoid killing or injuring people as this would not benefit Germany."

The saboteurs selected for the mission were eight Germans who had spent time in the United States, and two were American citizens. They were trained at a sabotage school near Berlin, where they studied chemistry, incendiaries, explosives, timing devices, secret writing, and concealment of identity. The U.S. targets planned for their mission included: hydroelectric plants at Niagara Falls, Aluminum Company of America's plants, Ohio River locks, the Horseshoe Curve railroad pass near Altoona, PA, Pennsylvania Railroad's rail yards, a cryolite plant in Philadelphia, Hell Gate Bridge in New York; and Pennsylvania Station in Newark, New Jersey.

The first batch of saboteurs arrived by U-Boat U-202, at Amagansett, Long Island, New York. They wore German military uniforms, so that if caught they would be handled as POWs and not as spies. The second batch came aboard U-boat U-584 and landed at Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida.

The first group included George John Dasch. Victor Rothschild perceptively wrote in his report, "It is abundantly evident that the leader of the first group of saboteurs, George John Dasch, had every intention of giving himself up to the American authorities and compromising the whole expedition, probably from the moment it was suggested to him in Germany that he should go to the USA on a sabotage assignment."

Dasch did exactly as predicted, promptly going to Washington, DC, to turn himself in to FBI headquarters. He simply telephoned FBI headquarters from his Washington hotel room and waited for Federal agents arrived to take him into custody. The FBI at first treated Dasch as if he was mentally unstable, until he showed them $84,000 he was given to fund the operation. His co-operation helped lead to the other seven saboteurs being taken into custody over the next two weeks.

They were put on trial before a secret military tribunal comprised of seven U.S. Army officers appointed by President Roosevelt. The trial was held in the Department of Justice building in Washington. The prosecution team was lead by Attorney General Frances Biddle and the Army Judge Advocate General, Major General Myron C. Cramer. The Defense team was lead by Colonel Kenneth C. Royall, who later became Secretary of War under President Truman, and Major Lausen H. Stone, the son of Harlan Fiske Stone, the Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court.

All eight would-be sabotage agents were found guilty of espionage and sentenced to death. However, because of their cooperation, President Roosevelt commuted the sentences of Peter Burger to life in prison and George Dasch to 30 years in prison. On August 8, 1942, the other six were executed in an electric chair on the third floor of the District of Columbia jail. Their bodies were buried in a cemetery potter's field called Blue Plains in the Anacostia region of Washington.

In 1948, President Truman granted Burger and Dasch executive clemency, and they were deported to the American Zone of then still-occupied Germany.

HISTORICAL IGNORANCE

My favorite incidence of historical ignorance was told by my late friend, ex-Chief Master Sergeant Lucien Thomas DFM, (ex-RAF, USAAF, USAF)
Lucien had treated his two daughters to expensive university educations (including -- alas -- Berkeley, London School of Economics, and the Sorbonne.)
One of his daughters and another mid-20s young woman came into the room while Lucien was watching a TV movie about the bombing of Nagasaki.
"Who would do such a horrible thing?" his daughter asked.
Though stunned by her ignorance, Lucien said calmly, "America, of course."
"But why? she squealed. "What did the Japanese ever do to us?"
I would have given $50 to see Lucien's face that day ....

                KRUGER'S GOLD:

A novel of the Anglo-Boer War

by Sidney Allinson.

Reader's review, by Renee Cox:


Sidney Allinson's books are always surprises. They can start off unassumingly and build up to rip-snorting sagas of ceaseless adventure. In his finest work yet, Allinson doesn't even start off slowly. Kruger's Gold grips the reader at once and the pace never slows. As I read this action tale of the struggle a century ago between South Africa's Boers, and England and her "colonials," I was repeatedly struck with the idea this would be and should be a wonderful movie. Allinson's experience as a television producer may have given him that hot-shot cameraman's "eye" or it could simply be that any good yarn so stirringly told lends itself to theatre in the best sense.
On these pages, a segment of history that was soon obscured by two ensuing, bloodier world wars leaps to life. It is really the twilight of an era, with Europeans jostling for power and position and, in this case in particular, South African gold. Allinson fills in the historical perspective while following a Canadian soldier and his colonial troops who, late in the war, have been assigned to find the legendary government cache of gold that departing Prime Minister Paul Kruger was said to have stashed before leaving in 1900 for exile in Europe.
Allinson writes sympathetically of the brilliant Boer commandos fighting to retain their homeland and their way of life. His story is not overly revisionist: the Boers have seized this land from the native tribes, after all, and even the most principled among them want to keep the blacks and "coloureds" in their place, lest their
vast numbers overwhelm the white settlers. Even through a more politically correct prism, we must admire the self reliance of these men whose surprise tactics and talented marksmanship enabled them to strike at the enemy, melt away into the bush, and return to attack another day. Many if not most of the men have lost wives and children to the war; yet, while they can be ruthless, they treat surrendered prisoners with a decency and respect that arouses a sense of nostalgia in the reader. Their English counterparts do as well with their own prisoners, for the most part.
The story he includes of the concentration camps where stranded Boer families and prisoners were placed to wait out the war is not as happy a one. (Those places were not "concentration camps" in today's Nazi sense of death-camps. Rather the British camps were set up to litrally "concentrate" Boer civilians who had been forced off their farms.)
However, Allinson paints a grim picture of the horrors where women and children and some men languished in filthy conditions with poor diets and disease and death dogging every step. A few selfless medical workers do their best, but there are no facilities and their supplies are woefully inadequate. The camps were not England's finest legacy to the history texts.
The romances in the book provide a lusty and pleasing counterpoint. Even the horses get to play a heart-warming role. His thorough grasp of military affairs, cavalry warfare, and soldierly detail adds to the feeling of authenticity. And throughout the book, Allinson has peppered the story with fascinating historical minutiae, such as the Boer heroine not being allowed to play ragtime music, then the rage, because it was produced by black performers.
Read this book. It is a treat. http://southafricanwar.info





Soldiers don't start wars. Politicians start wars.
                              --- William Westmoreland

SEX SCENES IN MILITARY-THEMED NOVELS.

True, I included sex scenes in three of my military-themed novels, but without lingering on the obvious bodily details. I like to think my readers have sufficient imagination to understand what is going on.
However, some new, younger, literary agents seem convinced that no manuscript is acceptable unless it is slathered with numerous sex scenes described in excruciatingly gross detail. Typically, such “agents” are gormless, gauche, and quite unsuited to their job.
I treasure the memory of one such poor soul (female), who suggested that I change a WWII manuscript of mine to include a scene in which the soldier hero copulated with a woman war-correspondent aboard a landing-barge speeding through shot and shell while approaching an enemy shore fortress.
Evidently, the agent lacked my experience that when you are under fire, sex tends to be rather the last thing on your mind.
-- Sidney Allinson.


http://www.southafricanwar.info/



HOW TO CURE WIDESPREAD
IGNORANCE OF MILITARY HISTORY

Writers of military history and historical novels in general have a personal interest in encouraging public knowledge of history – and in rectifying the deplorably high level of historical ignorance. Fashionable anti-war posturing may lend social cachet in liberal circles, but nevertheless some knowledge of the history of warfare is essential to a broader understanding of all human history.

See here why the widespread extent of the problem is inexcusable, and some suggestions how knowledge of history could be made more appealing:

http://www.newsweek.com/2011/03/20/how-to-get-smart-again.html

-- Sidney Allinson.

BRITAIN'S VIEW OF THE ALLIED
AIR-STRIKES AGAINST LIBYA.

‘Turbulent world, lately, isn’t it? (2011)

To people my age, it seems quite like old times to see Libya in the news again. Benghazi, Tripoli, Tobruk ... Familiar scenes of WWII ding-dong battles back and forth between the British Army and the German Afrika Korps in 1941/42.
Interesting to see how the Allied forces' attack on Gadhaffi’s Libya is seen in Britain today:
http://bit.ly/iayP4w

ALLIED AIR-STRIKES AGAINST

GADHAFFI'S LIBYA.

Here we go again --- Western nations are once more allies in a thankless war. As we speak (March 20, 2010) a squadron of Canadian fighter planes is about to fly into harm’s way in Libya, alongside USAF, RAF, and French Airforce fighter-planes and naval ships that are already attacking Gadhaffi's forces.
I fear we have possibly just stumbled into yet another cataclysmic war. They all start with us busy-body-ing into “saving” a small nation -- Belgium, Poland, Iraq. Pray, Libya does not widen to pitchfork us into war with a resentful united Moslem world.



MOST YOUNG CANADIANS ARE IGNORANT

OF THEIR NATION'S MILITARY HISTORY
By Don Butler, Postmedia News March 14, 2011.

Most young Canadians know little or nothing about most of the wars and peacekeeping missions their countrymen have served in, according to a survey done one year ago for Veterans Affairs Canada.

While a bare majority of the 13-to-17-year-olds surveyed claimed to know at least a moderate amount about the Second World War, their knowledge fell off rapidly beyond that.

More than two-thirds said they knew very little or nothing at all about the First World War, and nearly as many were equally unaware of Canadian peacekeeping efforts since 1960.Their ignorance peaked with the Korean War, about which 82 per cent said they knew nothing or very little. Even for the best-known conflict, the Second World War, 37 per cent of the youth said they knew very little, and nine per cent knew nothing at all.
The 514 youth were surveyed last March by Phoenix Strategic Perspectives as part of a $47,600 project for Veterans Affairs designed to assess Canadians' awareness, engagement, and satisfaction with Remembrance Day programming.
"It's discouraging that young people don't know a lot about the events of our past," said Jeremy Diamond, director of development and programs with the Historica-Dominion Institute. But he said there's a real opportunity to use technology to bring these events back to life.
"We can do a lot more now, sharing those stories, than we could a generation ago. I think we're going to see that tide turn a little bit with young people's knowledge of Canadian history."
In the past 18 months, the Historica-Dominion Institute has recorded the stories of more than 2,000 Second World War veterans, Diamond said. It's the largest oral history project of its kind ever in Canada.
Students and others can listen to podcasts of the interviews at thememoryproject.com, Diamond said.He added they can also invite veterans to speak at their schools, which provides a personal connection between veterans and young people.
As well, the approach of the 100th anniversary of the start of the First World War, in 2014, provides a "great opportunity" to help young people learn — perhaps for the first time — about that conflict's important events and individuals, Diamond said.
The Phoenix survey found about eight in 10 of the youth participants expressed at least some interest in learning more about Canada's veterans, though their interest was likelier to be moderate than strong.
About 80 per cent said websites were a good way for them to get information about Canada's military history. Significant numbers also mentioned books, libraries, talking to people, newspapers or magazines, television or radio and social-media sites.
While the survey therefore cannot be considered representative of the youth population, Phoenix tried to ensure that the sample mirrored the regional, linguistic and gender characteristics of Canadian youth.
© Copyright (c) The Ottawa Citizen

http://bit.ly/gzb1Ly

MAX BRAND -- AMERICA'S MOST PROLIFIC NOVELIST

Max Brand [Frederick Schiller Faust] probably was the most prolific American novelist ever; author of 500 novels -- 30 Million words. A highly popular writer of westerns, his
books were also turned into movie-scripts, including the character of "Doctor Kildare."
In the Second World War, Brand became a war correspondent for Harper's Magazine, assigned to Italy. Within just a couple of weeks of arrival, he insisted on accompanying a platoon of American infantry going into an attack on the village of Santa
Maria Infante, because "I want to study men under fire." He was wounded in the chest by German shrapnel, and died before he could receive medical aid. Max Brand is buried in the American War Cemetery, Netuno, Italy.

Search Amazon.com for Max Brand  

COMBAT

"COMBAT" -- A NOVEL OF WWII.

Several American novelists who had served in WWII wrote only a single book, usually based on their war experiences. Van van Praag is a particularly good example. His 1949 novel "Day Without End" [retitled "Combat" in 1951] is an authentically-written story that follows a US Army platoon in Normandy, 1944. Its accuracy and characterizations are spot-on, unmistakeably a soldier's tale, more than likely based on actual incidents during the war.
Born in New York City in 1920, van Praag was a truck salesman, a World's Fair lecturer, before he volunteered for miltary service. Van van Praag spent five years in the United States Army, was promoted up through the ranks, and commissioned a 2nd Lieutenant. He fought in France as a platoon leader, was severley wounded, and returned home a
casualty.
I read "Combat" many years ago, and I still remember it vividly. It sold 500,000 copies, but far as I know, it was the only book van Praage ever wrote.