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Praetorium Honoris

Thursday, October 20, 2022

1941 Comes to an End

(Source)
His mother was in the kitchen, after telling his parents what it was that he intended to do, her eyes had gotten a faraway look. She had gone to the kitchen muttering that she would have to start getting dinner ready. It was obvious that she didn't want to, or perhaps couldn't, talk about the subject at hand.

He had come home to the small family ranch just outside Divide, Colorado when school had finished. He had talked to the principal at his high school, who was very supportive of what the young man wanted to do. The principal had also mentioned that the young man probably had enough credits to receive his high school diploma early, if he was insistent on his desired course of action. But the older man, a World War I veteran, had insisted the boy talk to his parents first, without their blessing he couldn't go forward until his 18th birthday.

Though his mother hadn't really taken it hard, it was obvious that she was upset. Rather than make a scene, she had retreated to her domain. She needed to stay busy, she didn't want to think at the moment what this might mean for her oldest child.

His father had nodded as his mother withdrew, "I somehow knew that you would want to do this. It is what I would do, were I a younger man. But it is war mi hijo,¹ I have seen war, it is nasty, it is brutal, and it could mean your death. You know that, yes?"

"Sí padre, lo sé.² But this is something I must do, this country has been good to us, she has been good to me. If I don't do this, I could not live with myself."

The father looked at his oldest child, his son, "I know Stephen, I know. When I changed your name from Esteban, it was meant to mark you as an American. You were born a Spaniard, now you are an American. You have my blessing, I will sign whatever it is that must be signed. Your mother knows that this is the right thing to do, but still she is sad. She knows war as well as I do. You were so young when we left Madrid, we tried to shield you and your sisters from what was going on, but you witnessed some of the horrors, even though you never spoke of it. We got out before things got really bad."

"Yes Father, now the Germans and the Japanese want to inflict upon the world what Franco inflicted upon Spain. I know that I must fight this evil, I cannot wait."

Hector Hernandez nodded sadly, he had raised his son a certain way, he was proud of the boy, but he would miss him terribly.

Seven days later, Stephen Hernandez enlisted in the United States Army.


Nathan Paddock, a plebe at the United States Military Academy at West Point, was anticipating the Christmas holiday. His last class was over and he could start packing so he would be ready for the train ride to New Hampshire in the morning. He looked forward to seeing his family. He also needed to have a serious conversation with his father.

Should he stick with West Point? Something deep inside of him wanted to leave the school and enlist immediately. But as his roommate had said, why leave now, it was going to be a long war, better to go as an officer than as an enlisted man.

Paddock wasn't so sure, he read the papers, he saw the numbers of men volunteering for service. He almost felt like a shirker being at school when the rest of the country was going to war.

He thought, Dad will know what to do, I'm sure Uncle Bill will have a lot to say as well.

Uncle Bill was his Dad's oldest brother, he'd been a Marine in the Great War. Wounded in the Argonne fight, he would have good advice. Then again, so would his father, he had been too young to go to war in 1917, but he was well-read and loved history.

He would speak of this to no one until he'd talked to them.

For now, he would enjoy the Christmas holiday.


"What the f**k did you just say?" Johnnie Mastriano said as he threw his cigarette into the gutter.

"I said I'm gonna enlist Johnnie, the country's at war, or ain't ya been paying attention?" Flavio Gentile was short and dark, the neighborhood kids liked to say that he was as wide as he was tall. He knew that his decision wouldn't go down well with the guys he ran with.

"Go off to war with those other suckers? I thought you were smarter than that paisan."

Gentile stood up and poked Mastriano in the chest, "This is my country paisan, I was born here, unlike you."

Mastriano bristled, he'd been born in Naples, Napoli as his parents called it, but he had come to America when he was a baby. "This is my country too, don't forget that. I just don't want to go fight the Germans or the Japs, or anybody. Life's too good here in Philly. Why you gotta leave?"

"I just have to, you might understand some day ..."

Two days later Flavio Gentile enlisted in the United States Army. Two weeks after that,  Giannini "Johnnie" Mastriano enlisted in the United States Marine Corps.


"Frohe Weihnachten, Herr Leutnant.³" Unterfeldwebel Georg Hansen raised his canteen cup. Somehow the platoon's horse holder, Schütze Phillip Dessauer, had acquired a bottle of cognac. Von Lüttwitz suspected it had come from an officers' mess, but probably not within the regiment and certainly not within the battalion. Dessauer was very good at "acquiring" things the platoon needed.

Von Lüttwitz lifted his cup and said, "Prosit!⁴"

It was a quiet day before Leningrad. The Russians were conserving their ammunition, the intelligence von Lüttwitz was given was that a large Russian attack northeast of the city was expected, across the frozen Lake Ladoga. Russian efforts within the encirclement would most likely be directed at the German lines in that direction.

He couldn't complain, they might have a day of peace, even if the cold was enough to freeze your piss before it hit the ground.

It was his third Christmas at war, but the first that he had not been able to go home. He had written his family to let them know not to expect him. The letter he had received from his uncle, his mother's oldest brother, told him just how proud the family was of him. They understood the sacrifices he was making for the Reich.

His uncle had actually referred to Germany as "the Reich," not the Fatherland, not Germany, but by the term Hitler liked to use. Well, at least he hadn't referred to it as the "Thousand Year Reich," that would have been too much, even for his Uncle Otto.

The two men looked up as Schütze Max Ober came into the dugout, a brief gust of wind, laden with snow, came in with him.

"Snowing again, Max?"

"A complete white out, Herr Leutnant, I couldn't see my hand in front of my face. It started just moments ago. The Major was going to come this way, 'celebrate Christmas with my boys,' he said, but he might stay at headquarters if this keeps up."

"Sit down Max, have a drink."

The three men sat in companionable silence, listening to the wind and the distant crump of artillery, each man lost in thoughts of home and better times. Praying that this madness would end some day, sooner rather than later.


End of Part One


¹ My son (Spanish)
² Yes Father, I know. (Spanish)
³ Merry Christmas Lieutenant. (German)
⁴ Cheers! (German)

44 comments:

  1. As for the broader picture: Christmas 1941:
    December 25, 1941 (Thursday)
    The Battle of Hong Kong ended in Japanese victory. The Japanese occupation of Hong Kong began.
    The Japanese invasion of Davao ended in Japanese victory.
    Sir Alan Brooke became Chief of the General Staff.
    Rudolf Schmidt was appointed Commander of the 2nd Panzer Army, replacing the sacked Heinz Guderian.
    In a coup de main, Free French forces overthrew the pro-Vichy government of Saint Pierre and Miquelon off Newfoundland.
    The British destroyer Thracian ran aground at Hong Kong and scuttled.
    The American submarine USS Sealion was scuttled at Cavite Navy Yard to prevent her from becoming useful to the Japanese.
    Dutch submarine K XVI was torpedoed and sunk west of Kuching by Japanese submarine I-66.
    The stage musical Banjo Eyes with music by Vernon Duke, lyrics by John La Touche and Harold Adamson and starring Eddie Cantor premiered on Broadway at the Hollywood Theatre.
    Died: Blanche Bates, 68, American actress
    December 26, 1941 (Friday)
    The Battle of the Kerch Peninsula began.
    The Allies withdrew from the Malayan city of Ipoh.[3]
    British Commandos launched Operation Anklet, the raid on the Lofoten Islands.
    Winston Churchill addressed a joint meeting of U.S. Congress. He predicted that at least 18 months would be required to turn the tide of the war and warned that "many disappointments and unpleasant surprises await us."[56]
    The musical film Hellzapoppin' starring the vaudeville comedy team of Olsen and Johnson was released.

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    1. The review of the world on "that" day was really good, thanks!

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    2. To give little more sweeping image of the week:
      https://youtu.be/UKcE4syxZms While Germans were desperately holding the line near Moscow, Japanese were basically sweeping everything before them in the Pacific... Wake, Phillipines, Hongkong, Malaya...

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    3. Though the Germans stalled, it seemed that the Japanese were going to take over everything in their path.

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  2. A bit of change of pace with visits to the home front Sarge.

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    1. Well, the backstories on everybody in the first book was the original mission. With the US now in the war, it seemed the right time.

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  3. My father enlisted in the Army Air Corp very early 1945 before graduation. His high school principle provided him his high school diploma shortly thereafter. Different times back then...
    Good stories and good background.
    -Barry

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    1. Second instance of "principle" used where "Principal" was required (your early paragraph, Sarge). I suspect gulag did that as I tend to blame gulag regardless.
      Good summary, Sarge! I was wondering how far you were gonna go with the "prequel".
      Boat Guy

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    2. I did fix both earlier.

      This is the end of Part One of the Prequel, I'm going to cover 1942 through 1944 up to D-Day (at least I think so). But I need to take a break and go back and incorporate all the edits I received on the first book. Once that's done I'll look into publishing it.

      As I was researching the American characters for this post, I had to make sure I had their stories straight from the first book and honestly, I really enjoyed reading the old stuff, so I need to get it out there, for the world.

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    3. Yes you most certainly do.
      BG

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  4. I never thought as Christmas 1941 as a sort of pause or turning point, but it kind of was in a way. Thanks Sarge.

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    1. Definitely a sea change, especially for America. I remember the stories my parents told of those days.

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  5. Powerful story! Emotional....

    If it was my kid I'd tell him being an officer was going to be a better choice

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    1. Depending on which branch, I guess. 2LTs in the infantry and in the Corps had a pretty high attrition rae.

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    2. CM - 2LTs in the combat arms have a very high rate of attrition, especially in the infantry. In WWII the life expectancy of a replacement 2LT was 6 to 9 days, according to the 103rd Inf Div WW2 Association's website.

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    3. The life expectancy of any replacement was measured in days. Living conditions and creature comforts were generally better for officers; but performance expectations were/are considerably more.
      My Dad enlisted as soon as he graduated HS in Jan 45. The Nagasaki bomb was his 18th birthday present.
      Boat Guy

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    4. Now that's quite a birthday gift. For a lot of guys it meant they'd live to see another!

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    5. It certainly meant life for him - and thus for me.
      BG

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  6. Replies
    1. Argh! (I'll fix it, when I was typing this last night, my brain kept yelling at me that something was wrong. I should have listened!)

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  7. I'm not well versed in Castilian Spanish, but down this way, the term would be mi'jo. It just runs together. Lots of that down this way. And some other funny stuff, too. Mira means look, I've heard "watcha" used the same way... bastardization is all over english and spanish down here.

    High school buddy's dad, Mr. Graves, rode up to the bus station in Lubbock on an Indian motorcycle. Left if running by the curb as he left for the Marine Corp in 1944. Millions of stories like that, and it's a privilege to know of a couple.

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    1. Spanish in Madrid would be very different from the American Southwest, and Mexico for that matter.

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    2. Very different, indeed Sarge. I speak barrio-gutter SW Mexican to an extent and "Spanish Spanish" was almost as difficult as Portugese.
      BG

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    3. Guys I know who learned the Spanish spoken in the Americas told me they had a similar experience.

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  8. End of Part One. Well done. It may be hard to stop spinning yarns, but you gotta do what you gotta do to make the book work. Thanks for creating the "beginning" of the equally well written "later" story. Now, I bet the muse is off somewhere conspiring to fill your head with a short series of post war events on how the warriors coped with the return of somewhat peaceful and "normal" life in a greatly changed world. I eagerly await that series. Hint, hint!

    I know you've hinted at a Pacific series, but frankly, that does not appeal too much to me. I'd rather see a return to some other era, like your frontier series, maybe the Whiskey Rebellion, or the War of 1812, or Mexican War. The Spanish American War is too little known, and the subsequent "under the starry flag, civilizing with a Krag" in the Philippines really should be better known. Likewise, our ill-advised involvement in the internal affairs of other nations is forgotten by us, but not necessarily by the Chinese where we had troops marching in their capitol in the 1899 Boxer Rebellion with bases in China until post WW2.

    Likewise, sending thousands of American troops (along with Brits, and a motley assortment of other nationalities augmented by local opportunists and corruptocrats) to Northern Russia 1918-1919. Ostensibly with a mission to protect the mountains of supplies in Murmansk and Archangel from falling into German hands, search for the almost mythical Czech Legion to reopen the Eastern front, and defend the White Russians against the nasty Bolsheviks.

    Mirroring that mission on the extreme opposite end of the trans-Siberian railroad, we had thousand of Americans and a similar polyglot cast of competing interests and forces operating out of Vladivostok 1918-1922. Americans may have forgotten these events, but the Bear probably has not. YOU could to them justice.
    John Blackshoe

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    1. Our involvement in Russia at the end of WWI is a very interesting time period. I'll look into that.

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    2. A real bummer for those guys was trading their Springfields (or maybe Enfields?) for Mosin Nagants
      BG

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    3. Seriously? Had to have been logistical issues then, serious ones. Oh wait, it's Russia!

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    4. Yup. Fer real. First to fight were some 50 or so sailors from USS Olympia (yes, Dewey's flagship at Manila Bay in the previous war--- and now barely preserved in Philadelphia). They got their Mosins on arrival in Russia from stockpiles there. The bulk of the "Polar Bear expedition" was the 339th Infantry raised mainly from the Detroit and northward area, along with the 310 engineers. The 339s briefly stopped in England and were redirected to Murmansk then Archangel, but swapped their M1917 Enfields for Mosins in August 1918 in the UK from undelivered inventory stranded there by the Russian revolution and repudiation of their contracts with Remington and New England Westinghouse. Thought was that everyone else in Russia would be using Mosins and plenty of ammo there so this would simplify logistics. U.S. troops hated them as "frequently jamming" but Russian conscripts using them in the next war were delighted to get on as only half the troops were armed, the rest told to pick up a rifle when a comrade is hit.

      The Americans sent to Siberia kept their M1903 Springifelds.

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    5. Yeah, JB again- forgot to include link to this article on the Olympia folks. Nothing like going off to war in your blues and peacoats and watchcaps. Slogging thru swamps and dense forests for 3 weeks. No "3 hots and a cot" for these guys, and they look it:
      https://www.usni.org/magazines/naval-history-magazine/2016/august/bluejackets-vs-bolsheviks

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  9. I wish we still had that sense of service and duty amongst our current countrymen. Today, after years of being told that our country isn't exceptional, that we're a racist nation, and with far too much narcissistic social media, not to mention the service themselves publicizing our own failings, service in the military is no longer desired by many of our young people today. My grandfather, despite having 5 children at home and having previously served, re-upped in Pearl Harbor on Dec 8th.

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    1. We've gone downhill since then, while there are still some who would have fit in back then, far too many do not.

      A fish rots from the head, we're there.

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  10. May be a quibble, Sarge, but shouldn't that be "what the Republicans inflicted upon Spain"?
    To-may-to, to-mah-to (I don't say either--I'm a hillbilly, I call em 'maters!
    --Tennessee Budd

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    1. Rather depends on one's political leanings, doesn't it?

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  11. ...A somber Christmas, for there was now war all across the world...

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  12. And now the USA gets involved. Wonderful writing, Sarge. I never read any WWII-based fiction, but I've read plenty of other, and this is just excellent. Well done, sir!

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Just be polite... that's all I ask. (For Buck)
Can't be nice, go somewhere else...

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