"Z" is for Zenobia

Zenobia was the legendary Queen of the East.

I know this because a few days ago, my 8-year-old daughter brought me her well-worn copy of Andrea J. Buchanan and Miriam Peskowitz's The Daring Book for Girls, which I had originally bought for her twelve-year-old sister's eighth birthday, for us to read together. Out of all the crafts, activities, history and biographies of great women, she decided we'd read the story of Zenobia, the 3rd century B.C. warrior Queen of Palmyra, in modern-day Syria.  She was a beneficent ruler, whose kingdom at one time stretched across the entire Levant, until she rebelled against Rome and was overthrown.

My Daring Girls

Fast-forward a couple of millenia. When I found out our first child would be a girl, I was thrilled.  When I found out our second and most likely last, was a girl, I let out a slow breath and then proceeded to be equally happy.  And I decided from the very beginning that I would do everything I could to raise them strong and independent and believing in their limitless potential.  No, I would not try to make them into the boys I'd never have.  Why would I want to do that?  I was glad to have girls, and other than feats of sheer strength and certain functions for which testosterone and hard-wired aggression uniquely fit men, girls can do anything.  (If God had rested after making the first man, I'd have judged humanity to be a bit of a shoddy piece of workmanship, but happily, He wasn't finished yet.)  Whatever vestiges of male chauvinism still clung to me as a young man were pretty much knocked off by my beautiful, precious daughters.

The Daring Book and a companion

Anyhow, In an age when what's considered de rigueur for girls and women is dispensed by a society that belittles motherhood and seems hell-bent on robbing girls of their childhood as quickly as possible for maximum profit, The Daring Book for Girls is a refreshing step backwards.  In 106 delightful articles, girls can learn everything from How to Whistle with Two Fingers to How to Negotiate a Salary, to Books That Will Change Your Life.  Had The Daring Book come out long enough ago, Annie Oakley, Jo March and Idgie Threadgoode would have had it.  My tomboy wife would have had it. Grandpa might have bought it for my mom, and Atticus Finch might have bought it for for Scout.

The Daring Book for Girls is a perfect gift for daughters and granddaughters, as would be your time spent reading it and doing its activities with them.

Oh, and Zenobia?  Accounts differ on what became of her after she was captured and taken to Rome.  But in a book like this, it's fitting that the ending is left up to the girl's imagination.

Quickie Book Recommendation - Haslam's Valley by Gerald Haslam

I'm only 60 pages into Haslam's Valley, the short story collection by California fiction and nonfiction author Gerald Haslaam, but it's more than enough to declare it essential reading for anyone who lives or grew up in or around Oildale, CA and is proud or fond of that fact, or anyone who wants to discover the "Other California" between the two big cities.  Haslam has been writing and winning awards for decades, so I'm somewhat abashed that I'm just now discovering him, but better late than never.  I'll make this a full-blown review when I'm finished, but didn't want to waste any time in recommending it.  Bakersfieldians can find it at Russo's Bookstore in the Marketplace.

Book Review: Brothers in Arms, The Epic Story of the 761st Tank Battalion, WWII’s Forgotten Heroes

Book Review: Brothers in Arms, The Epic Story of the 761st Tank Battalion, WWII’s Forgotten Heroes

In the flush of outrage and patriotism in the days and months following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Americans by the hundreds of thousands volunteered to serve in our nation's armed forces. It was no different for black Americans, who were ready to fight for their country, even one that still treated them as decidedly second-class citizens.  Eager to maintain the support of black citizens for the war effort, the government attempted to placate them by accepting blacks into the still racially segregated armed services in support roles such as cooks, mechanics, quartermasters (supply troops) and the like, while never actually intending to let them fight.  This is well-known, but to this day, a myth persists that no blacks fought in combat during World War Two, except perhaps in isolated instances such as the famed Tuskegee Airmen of the 332nd Fighter Group.  But in fact, driven by the urgent need for combat replacements in the last year of the war, tens of thousands of black soldiers fought and were killed and wounded in front line combat, mostly in all-black units.  The 761st Tank Battalion was just such a unit.

With Brothers in Arms, The Epic Story of the 761stTank Battalion, WWII's Forgotten Heroes, NBA Hall of Famer and historian Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Author of On the Shoulder of Giants: My Journey Through the Harlem Renaissance, and co-author Anthony Walton, finally do justice to the remarkable but almost completely unknown story of the 761st Tank Battalion, whose motto was "Come Out Fighting!"

Highly trained, but manning poorly-designed Sherman tanks that were in many ways mobile death traps and were in all ways under-armored and outgunned by the vaunted German Panzers, the 761st fought their way over 2,000 combat miles from the hedgerows of Normandy to the concentration camps of Mauthausen.  You could say they had to fight a two-front war - not only against the best Nazi Germany could throw at them, but also the worst to which some of their own countrymen could subject them. Both in stateside training and European combat, they fought to overcome indifference, stereotypes, outright racism and even violence.  They struggled against mistrust, disrespect, disdain, ignorance, doubting leaders, poor leadership and tactics, neglect and exhaustion.  They dealt with the ambiguous and contradictory feelings toward them personified in their erstwhile commander General George S. Patton, who had made it plain in past writings that he thought blacks couldn't think quickly enough for armored warfare, yet was willing enough to have their support in critical battles.  They fought for weeks and months without more than a day's break from combat, adequate winter clothing or even a change of uniform. To drag a wounded comrade to safety under fire or to scout ahead or attack German positions on foot was nearly an everyday occurence.  Rather than being part of a self-contained armored division staffed with infantry trained to support tank operations, the 761st Battalion was a detached unit (known to themselves and the rest of the Army as a "bastard" battalion) that was shuffled around different armored or infantry units according to need or the whim of commanders.  They would be placed alongside an all-white unit whose reactions to them ranged from caution to outright contempt, and win most of them over with their courage, skill, dedication and humanity, demolishing stereotypes that blacks weren't brave or intelligent enough fight or lead.  Then they would be abruptly bounced to another unfamiliar unit and have to start again from scratch, suffering the crushing indignity of going from heroes and life-savers one day to "n----r tankers" the next.

Through it all, they fought with unheralded but unexcelled valor and determination, and often with conspicuous gallantry.  And when they returned home, sure that their bravery and sacrifices in blood and lives would open America's eyes to their worth as men and finally gain them full participation in American life, they found a country mostly eager and determined to go on as if they had never even set foot overseas.  Their status as an unattached unit hampered record keeping, as did "lost" commendations and paperwork and old stereotypes, to the extent that even other black Americans refused to believe that they had fought at all, let alone from inside the iconic Sherman tank. Their skill in maneuvering thirty-two ton tanks through difficult terrain and demolishing German fortifications and machine gun teams with 75mm armor-piercing shells did little to prepare them for the postwar workforce and the reluctance of white managers to hire them, even after some obtained college degrees.

It would have been little wonder had they given up and retreated into bitterness and disillusionment.  But instead, we see in almost all of them a determination to start families and make new lives for themselves.  (We also see that men whose courage had been forged in bitter fighting against elite German armored units and SS troops were not easily intimidated by jeering crowds and phalanxes of police with nightsticks, dogs and fire hoses).  What is surprising is that so many people had to work so long and hard for them to receive the recognition that should have been theirs from the beginning.

While not without minor flaws, such as the need for more maps, the thoroughly researched and well-written "Brothers in Arms" illuminates an important part of black history and American history (including the history-shaping involvement of one John Roosevelt Robinson with the unit).  The experience of the black serviceman in World War II is an important prelude to the Civil Rights struggles of the '50s and '60s.  It's hard to read this account knowing that what they went through was part of a fight that would stretch on for another two decades. It's hard, knowing they thought they had won peace for their children, but their children would have to continue the struggle.

"Brothers in Arms" also retells an important part of military history.  The flawed and bloody campaign for the Saar, a low point in Patton's career, has been almost completely overshadowed by the Battle of the Bulge and the final drive through Germany (in both of which the 761st also fought) and receives deserved attention here.

But I recommend "Brothers in Arms" simply because the men of the 761st Tank Battalion, as well as all black WWII veterans, deserve for their story to be told.



Book Review: Descent into Darkness Pearl Harbor, 1941 (The True Story of a Navy Diver)

August 21, 2010

The standard narrative of World War II in the Pacific long engraved on the American psyche moves from the devastation at Pearl Harbor to the dark days of Bataan and first good news of the Doolittle raid.  From there, the tactical defeat but strategic victory at the Coral Sea, the stunning turning point of Midway, the Marines' savage struggle for Guadalcanal, fighting in the jungles of New Guinea, and the bloody island-hopping campaign.

But while all this was happening, Pearl Harbor was a beehive of activity, and not just with the comings and goings of Navy ships and in-transit personnel.  Every day, civilian and Navy "hardhat" divers like Edward Raymer donned almost 100lb of bulky diving gear and descended into the blackness of the oil-covered waters of Pearl to undertake the important and hazardous task of salvaging what they could of the once-proud battleships sunk and damaged in the attack and refloating as many of them as possible so they could be repaired and sent to the fight that had been over for them almost as soon as it had begun.  In Descent into Darkness Pearl Harbor, 1941 (The True Story of a Navy Diver), retired US Navy Commander Edward C. Raymer (formerly an enlisted sailor and the first person to dive on the sunken U.S.S. Arizona) weaves a fascinating tale of a relatively unknown but important part of the war in the Pacific – the attempt to undo as much as possible the damage from the Japanese sneak attack on the Pacific Fleet.  In so doing, he brings to life a motley cast of ordinary but brave, dedicated and hardworking sailors who are a microcosm of the Greatest Generation who triumphed in World War II, and who, like the combat sailors, sometimes gave their lives in doing so.

The nature of the divers' work dictated that it be done alone and unsupervised.  The kind of officers that would normally try to micromanage things were only too happy to leave the terrifying work up to the enlisted divers once they experienced it themselves.  This work involved painstakingly moving through fully fueled and armed battleships that were ripped apart and strewn with wreckage and debris.  It was up to the individual divers to overcome countless problems and hazards that had never been encountered in peacetime salvage diving, whether it was jagged steel, the removal of 2,000lb high explosive shells from magazines or the deadly buildup of explosive gases.  And because the work was inside sunken ships in water covered and saturated in fuel oil and debris, it was all done in pitch darkness and had to be accomplished with the help of radioed directions from ship's plans and done completely by feel – a feel that was finely honed in the months and years they toiled in the inky blackness.  The cadre of divers were true pioneers who invented solutions and procedures that became adopted as standard later on.  And from the Publisher's Weekly review, "Raymer's memoir is useful above all as a case study of the hands-on, un-bureaucratized approach to problem-solving that the U.S. brought to WWII from the beginning."

Raymer hilariously relates off-duty antics as the divers ingeniously circumvented prohibition (of liquor) in order outmaneuver an entire island of soldiers, sailors and Marines to secure female companionship for a series of covert beach parties.  But he also sensitively treats the difficult subject of encountering the bodies of sailors still entombed in the ships.  Phobias – fears of the dark, confinement, drowning and being buried alive all came into play as every day brought new challenges to be overcome.  (Even arachnophobia was a problem in an incident that will either terrify or amuse, depending on one's feelings towards spiders).

Raymer and a fellow diver spent a hardly peaceful interlude in the jungles of Guadalcanal and the waters of "The Slot" between the Solomon Islands.  Dodging the nightly "Tokyo Express" of marauding Japanese cruisers and destroyers, the sailors worked to repair ships and resupply the Marines on the island, for whom they gained a profound respect after observing and sharing in some of their hardships.  A high point was doing underwater repair work in crystal clear sunlit waters – something they had not yet experienced in the war.  The low point was the torpedoing and sinking of their home away from home, the repair ship U.S.S. Seminole.

After a 30-day survivors leave in San Francisco, Raymer returned to his brother divers and continued the work at Pearl Harbor on the USS Arizona, Utah, West Virginia, California and Oklahoma. He served as a liaison to news reporters and even a tour guide of the Oklahoma to none other than First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt.  Some of the battlewagons were beyond saving – the Utah was scuttled and the Arizona remained at the bottom of the harbor, becoming a sacred monument and a tomb for more than a thousand sailors.  Others lived to fight again, like the lightly damaged Tennessee and the West Virginia, which was present at the Japanese surrender in Tokyo Bay on September 2, 1945, where the long, costly and bloody war was finally brought to a close.

If you're interested in history, curious about the "rest of" the Pearl Harbor story, love the salty vocabulary and tales of the Navy, are curious about working diving in canvas suits, weighted shoes and copper helmets in the days before SCUBA, wonder what it was like when important work wasn't weighed down with a web of nonsensical rules and regulations, or just want a good read, Descent Into Darkness is highly recommended.