Mary Cronk Farrell's Blog, page 2
January 16, 2023
Two Terrific Books Add Context to Ukrainian War
Two great books for you today!
Both historical novels for young people feature Ukrainian protagonists and are based on true events during and prior to WWII.
Working on the book Irena's Children , I learned for the first time the extent of the Nazi war crimes against the Polish people. The total lives lost in Poland during WWII is estimated at least five million most of whom were civilians, about 17% of the population. And now I learn that a similar number of Ukrainians died in the conflict.
Approximately every fifth Ukrainian was killed during the Second World War. Only 3% of all those called up to military service for the summer of 1941 survived. The good news behind these horrendous statistics is the incredible human spirit of those who survived, their courage to rebuild their communities and their country.
It definitely adds context to the endurance of Ukrainians today. This morning I woke up to this report from CNN: More than 500 civilians remain in Soledar as Russian and Ukrainian forces continue to struggle for control of the city, according to Pavlo Kyrylenko.
Speaking on Ukrainian television on Thursday morning, Pavlo Kyrylenko, head of the Donetsk regional military administration, said as of now, there are 523 people there. Most of the people left are over 50 years' old, he added, with "no information" that children are among their number.
Soledar, Ukraine, under attack by Russian's mercenary forces this week. Photo: News In Germany
"It will not be correct if I say that they do not want to leave now. We are doing our best to help people to leave,” said Kyrylenko, adding that evacuation is "just unrealistic" at the moment.
Evacuations will resume “when I know it is possible to get there by special transport and leave from there," he said.
The modern buildings falling to Russian shelling in major cities of Ukraine were constructed atop the devastation of WWII.
Kiev Pechersk Lavra – The main Dormition Cathedral, Kyiv 1941
"No European country suffered more from the deep wounds inflicted on their cities, their industry, agriculture, human power,”
wrote a reporter for the Saturday Evening Post after visiting Ukraine in 1945.
Yes, I am getting to my book recommendations, but first:
Author
Marsha Forchuck Skrypuch
says, "It's hard to write history when you're dead, which is one of the reasons there are so few novels that explore [WWII] from a Ukrainian or Polish perspective.
The Silent Unseen , by Amanda McCrina explores WWII through the viewpoints of both. A young Ukranian boy, Kostya and a Polish girl, Maria. The sixteen-year-olds meet while making their way home after the war and the story dramatizes the ethnic violence between the Poles and Ukrainians as they both fought the Nazis and Soviets.
I really enjoyed this book and highly recommend it. Maria and Kostya are both compelling, sympathetic characters and based on historical research. I turned page after page in hopes they would overcome the divisions between them.
According to the publisher the story is "Tightly woven, relentlessly intense, [and] depicts an explosive entanglement of loyalty, lies, and love during wartime."
Irresistible, right? I listened to the audio version available through my local library.
Just out this past September is another novel highlighting Ukranian history. Winterkill by Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch is a meticulously researched novel about the Holodomor, Stalin's man-made famine of 1932-1933 designed to erase the Ukrainian people and culture.
From the publisher:
Nyl is just trying to stay alive. Ever since the Soviet dictator, Stalin, started to take control of farms like the one Nyl’s family lives on, there is less and less food to go around.... Alice has recently arrived from Canada with her father, who is here to work for the Soviets…
[The girls] realize something is very wrong.
Desperate, Nyl and Alice come up with an audacious plan that could save both of them—and their community. But can they survive long enough to succeed?
Though written for young people, Winterkill and The Silent Unseen are enjoyed by adults as well. The authors' research into less-well-known history and their grasp of beautiful language and knowledge of the human heart bring context to the events unfolding in Ukraine today.
Sources
https://guideme.com.ua/10-facts-about-ukraine-in-the-second-world-war/
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/24/world/ukranian-ww2-survivors.html
https://globelivemedia.com/world/what-happened-in-ukraine-during-world-war-ii/
https://www.amazon.com/product-reviews/0374313555/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_paging_btm_next_2?ie=UTF8&filterByStar=five_star&reviewerType=all_reviews&pageNumber=2#reviews-filter-bar
Both historical novels for young people feature Ukrainian protagonists and are based on true events during and prior to WWII.
Working on the book Irena's Children , I learned for the first time the extent of the Nazi war crimes against the Polish people. The total lives lost in Poland during WWII is estimated at least five million most of whom were civilians, about 17% of the population. And now I learn that a similar number of Ukrainians died in the conflict.
Approximately every fifth Ukrainian was killed during the Second World War. Only 3% of all those called up to military service for the summer of 1941 survived. The good news behind these horrendous statistics is the incredible human spirit of those who survived, their courage to rebuild their communities and their country.
It definitely adds context to the endurance of Ukrainians today. This morning I woke up to this report from CNN: More than 500 civilians remain in Soledar as Russian and Ukrainian forces continue to struggle for control of the city, according to Pavlo Kyrylenko.
Speaking on Ukrainian television on Thursday morning, Pavlo Kyrylenko, head of the Donetsk regional military administration, said as of now, there are 523 people there. Most of the people left are over 50 years' old, he added, with "no information" that children are among their number.
Soledar, Ukraine, under attack by Russian's mercenary forces this week. Photo: News In Germany
"It will not be correct if I say that they do not want to leave now. We are doing our best to help people to leave,” said Kyrylenko, adding that evacuation is "just unrealistic" at the moment.
Evacuations will resume “when I know it is possible to get there by special transport and leave from there," he said.
The modern buildings falling to Russian shelling in major cities of Ukraine were constructed atop the devastation of WWII.
Kiev Pechersk Lavra – The main Dormition Cathedral, Kyiv 1941
"No European country suffered more from the deep wounds inflicted on their cities, their industry, agriculture, human power,”
wrote a reporter for the Saturday Evening Post after visiting Ukraine in 1945.Yes, I am getting to my book recommendations, but first:
Author
Marsha Forchuck Skrypuch
says, "It's hard to write history when you're dead, which is one of the reasons there are so few novels that explore [WWII] from a Ukrainian or Polish perspective. The Silent Unseen , by Amanda McCrina explores WWII through the viewpoints of both. A young Ukranian boy, Kostya and a Polish girl, Maria. The sixteen-year-olds meet while making their way home after the war and the story dramatizes the ethnic violence between the Poles and Ukrainians as they both fought the Nazis and Soviets.
I really enjoyed this book and highly recommend it. Maria and Kostya are both compelling, sympathetic characters and based on historical research. I turned page after page in hopes they would overcome the divisions between them.According to the publisher the story is "Tightly woven, relentlessly intense, [and] depicts an explosive entanglement of loyalty, lies, and love during wartime."
Irresistible, right? I listened to the audio version available through my local library.
Just out this past September is another novel highlighting Ukranian history. Winterkill by Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch is a meticulously researched novel about the Holodomor, Stalin's man-made famine of 1932-1933 designed to erase the Ukrainian people and culture.
From the publisher:Nyl is just trying to stay alive. Ever since the Soviet dictator, Stalin, started to take control of farms like the one Nyl’s family lives on, there is less and less food to go around.... Alice has recently arrived from Canada with her father, who is here to work for the Soviets…
[The girls] realize something is very wrong.
Desperate, Nyl and Alice come up with an audacious plan that could save both of them—and their community. But can they survive long enough to succeed?
Though written for young people, Winterkill and The Silent Unseen are enjoyed by adults as well. The authors' research into less-well-known history and their grasp of beautiful language and knowledge of the human heart bring context to the events unfolding in Ukraine today.
Sources
https://guideme.com.ua/10-facts-about-ukraine-in-the-second-world-war/
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/24/world/ukranian-ww2-survivors.html
https://globelivemedia.com/world/what-happened-in-ukraine-during-world-war-ii/
https://www.amazon.com/product-reviews/0374313555/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_paging_btm_next_2?ie=UTF8&filterByStar=five_star&reviewerType=all_reviews&pageNumber=2#reviews-filter-bar
December 31, 2022
She Spied on Jefferson Davis in the Heart of the Confederacy
Hundreds of women spied during the Civil War, but as far as we know, only one gathered intelligence inside the house of Jefferson Davis, the Confederate president.
Mary Elizabeth Bowser, born enslaved to the prominent Van Lew family in Richmond, Virgina, worked with one of the Union Army's most intricate spy rings. It was operated by a shrewd Richmond society woman pretending to have lost her mind, so as to escape suspicion among the city's pro-slavery upper crust.
Elizabeth “Crazy Bet” Van Lew started unofficially spying for the North while bringing food and medicine to Union prisoners housed in Richmond, passing notes and helping the men with plans to escape.
As Elizabeth Van Lew expanded her espionage, she saw great possibilities for Mary Browser.
Confederate White House, Richmond, Virginia. Photo courtesy Library of Congress We know only the basic outlines of Mary Browser's life. There are
no photographs of her
, but... one of her nicknames was "Little Mary" and she was reported to be sarcastic and humorous.
Born enslaved to the wealthy hardware merchant John Van Lew, Mary was freed as a three-year-old when John died and the Van Lew women freed all their slaves. John's daughter Elizabeth Lew had been educated in Philadelphia where she formed abolitionist views. When Mary was old enough, Elizabeth sent her to Philadelphia to be educated, a rare opportunity for southern blacks at the time.
By the start of the Civil War in 1861, Mary had returned to Richmond and soon Elizabeth recruited her as a spy and helped her get work as a domestic in the home of President Jefferson Davis and First Lady Varina Davis.
It must have been galling for Mary, a free and educated woman, now having to act like a less-than-bright and slightly unbalanced servant. But this allowed her to listen in on important conversations between President Davis, his staff, generals and politicians.
Her housekeeping chores gave her access to Davis's desk and his papers, including correspondence, troop movements, war plans and economic information.
"A mole in
Jefferson Davis's house"
Mary worked full time in the Davis household, cleaning and serving meals for nearly the entire war. One of her contacts to which she passed information was Thomas McNiven, a Scottish-American baker whose deliveries took him throughout the city providing him great cover for meeting and talking to people.
He wrote in his memoirs, Mary "had a photographic mind. Everything she saw on the Rebel President's desk she could repeat word for word. Unlike most colored, she could read and write. She made the point of always coming out to my wagon when I made deliveries at the Davis' home to drop information."
Jefferson Davis knew he had a mole in his house, for there was a steady trickle of intelligence dripping from the confederate's highest echelon. Of course, he wouldn't suspect a black woman whom he considered a dim-witted, less-than-human. 
Former Confederate States of American president Jefferson Davis and family, photographed at his home, Beauvoir, by Edward Livingston Wilson, circa 1885. Photo Public Domain As a black servant woman, Mary was able to pass intel to Elizabeth Van Lew without suspicion. In addition, Elizabeth managed about a dozen spies in Richmond, who sometimes used invisible ink, which only revealed its secrets when milk was poured on the paper. 
Elizabeth Van Lew, Virginia Historical Society Elizabeth wrote in her diary, “When I open my eyes in the morning, I say to the servant, ‘What news, Mary?’ and my caterer never fails! Most generally our reliable news is gathered from negroes, and they certainly show wisdom, discretion and prudence, which is wonderful.”
And Mary was not the only African American working to thwart Confederate strategies. "The chief source of information to the enemy," said General Robert E. Lee, commander of the Confederate Army, in May 1863, "is through our negroes."
It's difficult to trace Mary's life after the war, but we know, like many freed blacks she struggled to find employment. She started a school for blacks in Georgia in early 1867, teaching all the students herself, days, evenings and Sunday school, to children and adults.
There's evidence she traveled around using aliases and telling her story. The clipping below appeared in a column of General City New between Collison in the Harbor and Robbery in Twelfth-Street, September 10,1865, in The New York Times.
The U.S. Government inducted Mary Elizabeth Bowser into the Military Intelligence Corp Hall of Fame in 1995 to honor her service in the Civil War.
And what about Elizabeth Van Lew? Apparently, when the war ended, she recieved personal thanks from Union General Ulysses S. Grant. “You have sent me the most valuable information received from Richmond during the war,” he reportedly told her.
But in her hometown of Richmond, Elizabeth was "shunned her like the plague," according to Van Lew's family doctor and she was taunted by children who called her a witch.
Elizabeth Van Lew poses for a photograph in the late nineteenth century. Valentine Richmond History Center She was appointed to postmaster of Richmond, in 1869, by U.S. President Ulysses S. Grant as a reward for her wartime espionage. She used her position to help improve the city's postal system and to give jobs to blacks. She also opened a library for Blacks in Richmond and supported woman suffrage.
Both of these intelligent and enterprising women were not able to fully realize their potential within the limits of 19th Century America, but what they did with the opportunities they made for themselves was remarkable. Remembering their courage and ingenuity can inspire us to push the limits of our 21st Century societal norms.
Sources
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/slaves-freedmen-spied-on-south-during-civil-war/
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/elizabeth-van-lew-an-unlikely-union-spy-158755584/
https://www.history.com/news/female-spies-civil-war-mary-bowser-elizabeth-van-lew
https://www.theroot.com/mary-bowser-a-brave-black-spy-in-the-confederate-white-1790859146
https://encyclopediavirginia.org/902hpr-4228645a0a78156/
Mary Elizabeth Bowser, born enslaved to the prominent Van Lew family in Richmond, Virgina, worked with one of the Union Army's most intricate spy rings. It was operated by a shrewd Richmond society woman pretending to have lost her mind, so as to escape suspicion among the city's pro-slavery upper crust.
Elizabeth “Crazy Bet” Van Lew started unofficially spying for the North while bringing food and medicine to Union prisoners housed in Richmond, passing notes and helping the men with plans to escape.
As Elizabeth Van Lew expanded her espionage, she saw great possibilities for Mary Browser.
Confederate White House, Richmond, Virginia. Photo courtesy Library of Congress We know only the basic outlines of Mary Browser's life. There are
no photographs of her
, but... one of her nicknames was "Little Mary" and she was reported to be sarcastic and humorous.Born enslaved to the wealthy hardware merchant John Van Lew, Mary was freed as a three-year-old when John died and the Van Lew women freed all their slaves. John's daughter Elizabeth Lew had been educated in Philadelphia where she formed abolitionist views. When Mary was old enough, Elizabeth sent her to Philadelphia to be educated, a rare opportunity for southern blacks at the time.
By the start of the Civil War in 1861, Mary had returned to Richmond and soon Elizabeth recruited her as a spy and helped her get work as a domestic in the home of President Jefferson Davis and First Lady Varina Davis.
It must have been galling for Mary, a free and educated woman, now having to act like a less-than-bright and slightly unbalanced servant. But this allowed her to listen in on important conversations between President Davis, his staff, generals and politicians.
Her housekeeping chores gave her access to Davis's desk and his papers, including correspondence, troop movements, war plans and economic information.
"A mole in
Jefferson Davis's house"
Mary worked full time in the Davis household, cleaning and serving meals for nearly the entire war. One of her contacts to which she passed information was Thomas McNiven, a Scottish-American baker whose deliveries took him throughout the city providing him great cover for meeting and talking to people.
He wrote in his memoirs, Mary "had a photographic mind. Everything she saw on the Rebel President's desk she could repeat word for word. Unlike most colored, she could read and write. She made the point of always coming out to my wagon when I made deliveries at the Davis' home to drop information."
Jefferson Davis knew he had a mole in his house, for there was a steady trickle of intelligence dripping from the confederate's highest echelon. Of course, he wouldn't suspect a black woman whom he considered a dim-witted, less-than-human.
Former Confederate States of American president Jefferson Davis and family, photographed at his home, Beauvoir, by Edward Livingston Wilson, circa 1885. Photo Public Domain As a black servant woman, Mary was able to pass intel to Elizabeth Van Lew without suspicion. In addition, Elizabeth managed about a dozen spies in Richmond, who sometimes used invisible ink, which only revealed its secrets when milk was poured on the paper. Elizabeth Van Lew, Virginia Historical Society Elizabeth wrote in her diary, “When I open my eyes in the morning, I say to the servant, ‘What news, Mary?’ and my caterer never fails! Most generally our reliable news is gathered from negroes, and they certainly show wisdom, discretion and prudence, which is wonderful.”And Mary was not the only African American working to thwart Confederate strategies. "The chief source of information to the enemy," said General Robert E. Lee, commander of the Confederate Army, in May 1863, "is through our negroes."
It's difficult to trace Mary's life after the war, but we know, like many freed blacks she struggled to find employment. She started a school for blacks in Georgia in early 1867, teaching all the students herself, days, evenings and Sunday school, to children and adults.
There's evidence she traveled around using aliases and telling her story. The clipping below appeared in a column of General City New between Collison in the Harbor and Robbery in Twelfth-Street, September 10,1865, in The New York Times.
The U.S. Government inducted Mary Elizabeth Bowser into the Military Intelligence Corp Hall of Fame in 1995 to honor her service in the Civil War.And what about Elizabeth Van Lew? Apparently, when the war ended, she recieved personal thanks from Union General Ulysses S. Grant. “You have sent me the most valuable information received from Richmond during the war,” he reportedly told her.
But in her hometown of Richmond, Elizabeth was "shunned her like the plague," according to Van Lew's family doctor and she was taunted by children who called her a witch.
Elizabeth Van Lew poses for a photograph in the late nineteenth century. Valentine Richmond History Center She was appointed to postmaster of Richmond, in 1869, by U.S. President Ulysses S. Grant as a reward for her wartime espionage. She used her position to help improve the city's postal system and to give jobs to blacks. She also opened a library for Blacks in Richmond and supported woman suffrage. Both of these intelligent and enterprising women were not able to fully realize their potential within the limits of 19th Century America, but what they did with the opportunities they made for themselves was remarkable. Remembering their courage and ingenuity can inspire us to push the limits of our 21st Century societal norms.
Sources
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/slaves-freedmen-spied-on-south-during-civil-war/
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/elizabeth-van-lew-an-unlikely-union-spy-158755584/
https://www.history.com/news/female-spies-civil-war-mary-bowser-elizabeth-van-lew
https://www.theroot.com/mary-bowser-a-brave-black-spy-in-the-confederate-white-1790859146
https://encyclopediavirginia.org/902hpr-4228645a0a78156/
December 5, 2022
Yes! Answers from the Oracle of Delphi
Now, for my long-promised story about my visit to the site of the Ancient Greek Oracle of Delphi. Before I left on my vacation to Greece, I told friends I would be visiting the oracle and jokingly asked what wisdom they would like me to seek for them.
For are we not much the same as people who lived 10,000 years ago? We have some dilemma, some question or uncertainty that we long to resolve. And wouldn't it be great, if there was someone we could ask who had the wisdom to give us a definitive answer?
Over the centuries many have turned to religious faith for certainty. And in fact, scholars believe Delphi probably originated as a sacred site to worship the Goddess of Earth, Gaia, the ancestral mother of all life back in, oh, about 1600 BCE!
It was profoundly moving to walk the paths of a place that has been sacred ground for 36 centuries. The wisdom I heard there is sobering and also, freeing. And as relevant today as in ancient times. The archeological site of ancient Delphi perches high on the slopes of Mt. Parnassos, in central Greece, overlooking the Gulf of Corinth and slopes of olive groves.
View to the east from the archeological site of Ancient Delphi. So as the story goes, Zeus, king of all the Greek gods, first marked this as special place. Desiring to discover the center of all the earth, he sent two eagles to fly around the world in opposite directions. They met at Delphi, establishing the omphalos,or "bellybutton" of the world.
Later, when Apollo came along, a terrible earth serpent, Python, lived here. Apollo battled it to the death and claimed the oracle. The oracle was a woman called the Pythia, or rather a series of women over the centuries, who communed directly with Apollo.
Delphi reached its heyday between the sixth and the fourth centuries BC. The oracle became so influential heads of state, or their emissaries, journeyed from throughout the known world seeking wisdom concerning matters of politics and war. Ordinary people, too, asked the oracle's advice on matters of family, business and love.
A number of temples on the site were destroyed by fire and earthquake. The remains we see today in the photo below were uncovered in the first excavation of the site in n 1892. Evidence suggests a a golden statue of Apollo stood at the center, before the hearth of an eternal fire where pilgrims offered their sacrifice.
Ruins of the Temple of Apollo at Delphi. (Photo by Mike Farrell) In a room built under Apollo's temple, the Pythia sat on stool directly over a fissure in the rocks breathed in vapors that put her in a trance. Priests met visitors arriving at the temple and relayed their questions to the oracle.
She answered with a dazed voice sometimes chanting, singing or speaking in poetry. Often her message was obscure, puzzling or ambiguous. The priests then interpreted her words to the questioner waiting for guidance.
In the words of Heraclites, an ancient Greek philosopher from the 6th century, "The oracle neither conceals, nor reveals, but indicates."
The intermediary priests gathered intel, as visitors traveled from all corners of the ancient world, which helped them speak with knowledge and authority that could have believably come from the gods.
At this time in history, the area we know as Greece was a collection of city states, as many as 1000, and they were constantly at war with each other, eventually leading to the Peloponnesian War (431–404 BCE).
Leaders of these city states came to Delhi, not only to ask for advice, but to celebrate their victories with offerings and tithes from spoils of war. The Greed states like Athens, Sparta, Corinth, Thebes and many more built chapels, statues and treasuries for their riches.
Part of the Athenian treasury still stands. It was one of the biggest and fanciest. Amid these warring factions of ancient Greece there were forces at work fostering human progress, encouraging development of the body, mind and spirit. Delphi played a large role in promoting this evolution.
Our tour guide, Penny Kolomvotsou explained that as people from all over the known world gathered, enemies and allies, there was a constant interplay between complex social, political and religious ideas and how those were manifested.
Penny was an amazing font of knowledge, not only the facts of the archeological site, and the history of the oracle, but philosophy, a deep understanding of the relevance of Delphi today as well as in ancient times.
I smile for the camera with our guide Penny Kolomvotsou.(Photo by Mike Farrell) I was fascinated. I could have listened to her all day. When I admitted that I would forget most of what I'd learned, Penny said, "You have been here. You have walked on this ground and now it's a part of you. That's what's important."
It was amazing to stand in the theater at Delphi, which seated 5,000 people and try to imagine the sights and sounds that once filled this space.
During the 6th century BCE Delphi started hosting a Pan-Hellenic (or "all-Greek") festival offering a stage for artistic endeavors. There were competitions in music, poetry, dancing, painting, which gave rise to theatrical competitions.
Later, the festivals were combined with the Pythian Games, which like the Olympics were an effort to promote peace and harmony in Ancient Greece. Every four years Greeks representing the many city states came to Delphi to lay down their weapons and compete in games to show their skill and strength.
A bit from the Ovid, The Metamorphoses, references the Pythian games, "In these the happy youth who proved victorious in the chariot race, running and boxing, with an honored crown of oak leaves was enwreathed."
The sports stadium for the Pythian games is built into the hillside above the temple with seating for some 7,000 spectators.
Penny pointed out ancient Greek script on the base of the Athenian treasury, where one could see letters spelling Marathon, probably indicating Athenians had been here touting their victory over the Persians in that
famed battle in 490 BC.
Phrases carved over the gateway to the ancient temple at Delphi give us more clues to the wisdom the oracle was dishing out. You may have heard these bits of advice yourself.
"Know thyself," is attributed to Socrates. Were these words carved before or after the oracle proclaimed Socrates the wisest man in Greece? I don't know. But Socrates took the oracle's words as an affirmation of his agnosticism. According to Plato, Socrates defended himself on trial, saying, "If I am the wisest man alive, it is for I know one thing, and that is that I know nothing."
Two more maxims carved at Delphi: "Surety brings ruin," and “Nothing in excess.”
"Always, it is about balance," Penny explains. "The Oracle at Delphi had to do with war, peace, morals and ethics. The answers are not necessarily yes or no, but they require discussion and debate."
One of the stories... is about the king who feared he was about to be attacked by an enemy in the land across the river. He asked the oracle; shall I dig in my defenses or make the first strike?
The oracle replied, if you step one foot across the river, a kingdom will fall. He attacked and was defeated, his own kingdom falling.
With a prophecy from the oracle, Penny says, there is a choice to be made. "You see how beautiful that is? My future is not dictated by any god, but if it is not, then who am I, where am I? I must become responsible for my own outcome."
In essence, Penny says, "Become the hero of your own life."
The wisdom of Delphi seems to be that keeping an open mind may be more important than finding a single answer.
The Gulf of Corinth, a view toward the west end of the valley from our terrace in Delphi. (Photo by Mike Farrell) Modern geologists have discovered that almost directly under the Temple of Apollo lie two intersecting geographical fault lines. This explains the propensity for earthquakes in the region.
Also, under the temple, modern scientists have detected gases emanating from a crack in the rocks, including ethane, methane, ethylene, and benzene. Enough to put anyone into an altered state and might explain reports of the varied states of the Pythiai, including at different times being ecstatic, agitated, bounding and leaping about, or fainting. Sometimes the Pythia died.
The Oracle of Delphi prophesied for many centuries, influencing major events and personal love stories. Directing leaders of the Greek city states, the oracle played a role in political reforms that continue to impact the western world today.
The riches at Delphi were plundered many times over the centuries, but the oracle remained. The Pythia gave her last advice around 393 CE when the Roman emperor Theodosius ordered the closure of all pagan sanctuaries.
In the years to come it was preserved by an earthquake, only discovered again in the first modern excavation in 1892.
“Archeologists always make decisions on which layer to keep and which layer to damage,” says Penny. “When they first came to Delphi and didn’t have the big equipment, they made the wise decision to leave it as it is. In 1939, archeologists had to go back to fix broken stones, which gave them the opportunity to dig and they accidentally found "g old-and-ivory statues of Apollo, his sister Artemis and their mother Leto.”
A statue of a charioteer was discovered still standing, looking down over the temple of Apollo.
The charioteer it is the only figure to survive from a larger grouping of four horses and a groom. It's eyes of inlaid stones and its eye lashes remain for visitors to see in the museum at Delphi which holds many of the artifacts found during excavation.
Thank you for your kind attention. This may be more than you ever wanted to know about Delphi!
But if not, you can see more of the artifacts discovered at the site at the museum website here...
For are we not much the same as people who lived 10,000 years ago? We have some dilemma, some question or uncertainty that we long to resolve. And wouldn't it be great, if there was someone we could ask who had the wisdom to give us a definitive answer?Over the centuries many have turned to religious faith for certainty. And in fact, scholars believe Delphi probably originated as a sacred site to worship the Goddess of Earth, Gaia, the ancestral mother of all life back in, oh, about 1600 BCE!
It was profoundly moving to walk the paths of a place that has been sacred ground for 36 centuries. The wisdom I heard there is sobering and also, freeing. And as relevant today as in ancient times. The archeological site of ancient Delphi perches high on the slopes of Mt. Parnassos, in central Greece, overlooking the Gulf of Corinth and slopes of olive groves.
View to the east from the archeological site of Ancient Delphi. So as the story goes, Zeus, king of all the Greek gods, first marked this as special place. Desiring to discover the center of all the earth, he sent two eagles to fly around the world in opposite directions. They met at Delphi, establishing the omphalos,or "bellybutton" of the world. Later, when Apollo came along, a terrible earth serpent, Python, lived here. Apollo battled it to the death and claimed the oracle. The oracle was a woman called the Pythia, or rather a series of women over the centuries, who communed directly with Apollo.
Delphi reached its heyday between the sixth and the fourth centuries BC. The oracle became so influential heads of state, or their emissaries, journeyed from throughout the known world seeking wisdom concerning matters of politics and war. Ordinary people, too, asked the oracle's advice on matters of family, business and love.
A number of temples on the site were destroyed by fire and earthquake. The remains we see today in the photo below were uncovered in the first excavation of the site in n 1892. Evidence suggests a a golden statue of Apollo stood at the center, before the hearth of an eternal fire where pilgrims offered their sacrifice.
Ruins of the Temple of Apollo at Delphi. (Photo by Mike Farrell) In a room built under Apollo's temple, the Pythia sat on stool directly over a fissure in the rocks breathed in vapors that put her in a trance. Priests met visitors arriving at the temple and relayed their questions to the oracle. She answered with a dazed voice sometimes chanting, singing or speaking in poetry. Often her message was obscure, puzzling or ambiguous. The priests then interpreted her words to the questioner waiting for guidance.
In the words of Heraclites, an ancient Greek philosopher from the 6th century, "The oracle neither conceals, nor reveals, but indicates."
The intermediary priests gathered intel, as visitors traveled from all corners of the ancient world, which helped them speak with knowledge and authority that could have believably come from the gods.
At this time in history, the area we know as Greece was a collection of city states, as many as 1000, and they were constantly at war with each other, eventually leading to the Peloponnesian War (431–404 BCE).
Leaders of these city states came to Delhi, not only to ask for advice, but to celebrate their victories with offerings and tithes from spoils of war. The Greed states like Athens, Sparta, Corinth, Thebes and many more built chapels, statues and treasuries for their riches.
Part of the Athenian treasury still stands. It was one of the biggest and fanciest. Amid these warring factions of ancient Greece there were forces at work fostering human progress, encouraging development of the body, mind and spirit. Delphi played a large role in promoting this evolution. Our tour guide, Penny Kolomvotsou explained that as people from all over the known world gathered, enemies and allies, there was a constant interplay between complex social, political and religious ideas and how those were manifested.
Penny was an amazing font of knowledge, not only the facts of the archeological site, and the history of the oracle, but philosophy, a deep understanding of the relevance of Delphi today as well as in ancient times.
I smile for the camera with our guide Penny Kolomvotsou.(Photo by Mike Farrell) I was fascinated. I could have listened to her all day. When I admitted that I would forget most of what I'd learned, Penny said, "You have been here. You have walked on this ground and now it's a part of you. That's what's important."
It was amazing to stand in the theater at Delphi, which seated 5,000 people and try to imagine the sights and sounds that once filled this space.
During the 6th century BCE Delphi started hosting a Pan-Hellenic (or "all-Greek") festival offering a stage for artistic endeavors. There were competitions in music, poetry, dancing, painting, which gave rise to theatrical competitions. Later, the festivals were combined with the Pythian Games, which like the Olympics were an effort to promote peace and harmony in Ancient Greece. Every four years Greeks representing the many city states came to Delphi to lay down their weapons and compete in games to show their skill and strength.
A bit from the Ovid, The Metamorphoses, references the Pythian games, "In these the happy youth who proved victorious in the chariot race, running and boxing, with an honored crown of oak leaves was enwreathed."
The sports stadium for the Pythian games is built into the hillside above the temple with seating for some 7,000 spectators.
Penny pointed out ancient Greek script on the base of the Athenian treasury, where one could see letters spelling Marathon, probably indicating Athenians had been here touting their victory over the Persians in that
famed battle in 490 BC.
Phrases carved over the gateway to the ancient temple at Delphi give us more clues to the wisdom the oracle was dishing out. You may have heard these bits of advice yourself."Know thyself," is attributed to Socrates. Were these words carved before or after the oracle proclaimed Socrates the wisest man in Greece? I don't know. But Socrates took the oracle's words as an affirmation of his agnosticism. According to Plato, Socrates defended himself on trial, saying, "If I am the wisest man alive, it is for I know one thing, and that is that I know nothing."
Two more maxims carved at Delphi: "Surety brings ruin," and “Nothing in excess.”
"Always, it is about balance," Penny explains. "The Oracle at Delphi had to do with war, peace, morals and ethics. The answers are not necessarily yes or no, but they require discussion and debate."
One of the stories... is about the king who feared he was about to be attacked by an enemy in the land across the river. He asked the oracle; shall I dig in my defenses or make the first strike?
The oracle replied, if you step one foot across the river, a kingdom will fall. He attacked and was defeated, his own kingdom falling.
With a prophecy from the oracle, Penny says, there is a choice to be made. "You see how beautiful that is? My future is not dictated by any god, but if it is not, then who am I, where am I? I must become responsible for my own outcome."
In essence, Penny says, "Become the hero of your own life."
The wisdom of Delphi seems to be that keeping an open mind may be more important than finding a single answer.
The Gulf of Corinth, a view toward the west end of the valley from our terrace in Delphi. (Photo by Mike Farrell) Modern geologists have discovered that almost directly under the Temple of Apollo lie two intersecting geographical fault lines. This explains the propensity for earthquakes in the region.Also, under the temple, modern scientists have detected gases emanating from a crack in the rocks, including ethane, methane, ethylene, and benzene. Enough to put anyone into an altered state and might explain reports of the varied states of the Pythiai, including at different times being ecstatic, agitated, bounding and leaping about, or fainting. Sometimes the Pythia died.
The Oracle of Delphi prophesied for many centuries, influencing major events and personal love stories. Directing leaders of the Greek city states, the oracle played a role in political reforms that continue to impact the western world today.
The riches at Delphi were plundered many times over the centuries, but the oracle remained. The Pythia gave her last advice around 393 CE when the Roman emperor Theodosius ordered the closure of all pagan sanctuaries.
In the years to come it was preserved by an earthquake, only discovered again in the first modern excavation in 1892.
“Archeologists always make decisions on which layer to keep and which layer to damage,” says Penny. “When they first came to Delphi and didn’t have the big equipment, they made the wise decision to leave it as it is. In 1939, archeologists had to go back to fix broken stones, which gave them the opportunity to dig and they accidentally found "g old-and-ivory statues of Apollo, his sister Artemis and their mother Leto.”
A statue of a charioteer was discovered still standing, looking down over the temple of Apollo.
The charioteer it is the only figure to survive from a larger grouping of four horses and a groom. It's eyes of inlaid stones and its eye lashes remain for visitors to see in the museum at Delphi which holds many of the artifacts found during excavation. Thank you for your kind attention. This may be more than you ever wanted to know about Delphi!
But if not, you can see more of the artifacts discovered at the site at the museum website here...
July 6, 2022
They Sent Their Kids to Nazi Summer camp, right here in America
Who knew the innocence and fun of summer camp could be twisted into something dark, hateful and dangerous? Read on for the astounding and little-known story of how Nazis planted the seeds of white supremacy in America.
In the 1920s and 30s, German-Americans disaffected by WWI and the Great Depression found support in a group called the Friends of New Germany. Most all members were American citizens, but they pledged loyalty to Adolf Hitler. Members had to swear they were of pure Aryan blood with no Jewish ancestry. In 1936, a new group absorbed these people, the Amerikadeutscher Bund, commonly known as the Bund.
These organizations worked to preserve German Culture. As you will see, they had a much more potent agenda.
Nazi Youth at a German American Bund Camp in 1937, courtesy AP Camp Nordland, possibly the first Nazi camp organized in America, set on the shore of MacDonald Lake and spread over some 200 acres in the countryside of Andover Township, New Jersey. Supporters of Adolf Hitler founded the weekend summer camp for adults in 1934, the year after Nazis came to power in Germany.
Below: Nearly 1,000 uniformed men wearing swastika arm bands and carrying Nazi banners parade through Camp Nordland in Sussex County, New Jersey on July 18, 1937.
Over the next several years Camp Nordland hosted Italian-American fascist leaders and held joint rallies with the Klu Klux Klan. In the evenings campers danced, drank beer and listened to anti-Semitic, white supremacist lectures.
But the prime reason for the founding of Camp Nordland was to assess public opinion in New Jersey. Would the locals accept Nazi activity?
New Jersey citizens eventually protested Nazi gatherings and tried to pass laws banning the dissemination of Nazi propaganda, but in 1934 local citizens took little notice of Camp Nordland.
Six weeks later, some 150 boys arrived at Camp Wille und Macht (Will and Power) at Griggstown, NJ., five miles from Princton. Boys slept in tents, picnicked, hiked, learned camping skills, plus the art and practice of goose-stepping. Dressed in Hitler Youth brownshirts and jackboots they turned out for required paramilitary training, including handling and firing rifle
The boys above are campers Camp Wille und Macht (Will and Power) at Griggstown, NJ in 1934. Notice the portrait of Paul von Hindenburg, Germany's president 1925-1934 who appointed Adolf Hitler as German chancellor in 1933. (Bettmann Archive / Getty) By 1937, nearly two dozen Nazi summer camps welcomed boys and girls from around the country, including a third in New Jersey, Camp Bergwald, The Deutschhorst Country Club in Pennsylvania, Camp Highland in New York and Camp Hindenberg in Grafton, Wisconsin.
Most of the camp attendees were children or grandchildren of German immigrants and naturalized American citizens. Families connected with the Bund often kept their children isolated from mainstream culture.
Nazi camp for girls in Chicago, ca. 1936. American Civil Liberties Union Records. The video below from the National Archives shows children enjoying innocent-looking summer activities. Don't believe your eyes.
Evening songs around the campfire for both youngsters and adults often included a Nazi anthem with the chilling lines: “When Jewish blood drips from the knife, then will the German people prosper.” The flagship Nazi summer camp was located near Yaphank, Long Island, fifty miles east of New York City. Camp Siegfried was named for a medieval Germanic warrior and mythic hero popular in Nazi culture.
Every summer Sunday, the Long Island Rail Road ran a Camp Siegfried Special from Penn Station to Yaphank. Hundreds of passengers disembarked from the train to columns of men in Nazi uniforms giving the Nazi salute. Speakers denounced Jews and heralded an Aryan master race.
The German-American Settlement League in Yaphank, invited German-Americans to visit the camp on weekends for camaraderie, political discussion and special celebrations, one of which marked George Washington's birthday. They called the first US president the “first Fascist” and claimed he doubted democracy would work.
The man in charge at Camp Siegfried, Fritz Kuhn, headed the Bund and was known as the American Fuehrer. A naturalized citizen of the United States, he met personally with Hitler in Germany and was de facto representative of the German Nazi party in America.
Hitler's regime provide the camp with teachers, textbooks and uniforms. Young people from Camp Siegfried traveled to Germany, once in 1936 for the Olympics. The purpose was to indoctrinate Aryan children and prepare them as future leaders of America.
Leaders taught eugenics right along with training in physical fitness and outdoor skills, including hunting and shooting. The camp affiliated with the National Rifle Association.
According to a New York Times headline a crowd of twenty-five thousand people gathered August 39, 1937, for German Day festivities at Camp Siegfried. The newspaper reported they celebrated with marching and much Speechmaking. The headline declared: 50 BLACK SHIRTS ATTEND.
Men Women and Children Supporters give the Nazi salute at Camp Siegfried on August 29, 1937. Bettmann/Getty Images Organizers at camp Siegfried offered entertainment to keep visitors coming over the summer months. Nobody could misunderstand as they entered under a fluttering Nazi flag and walked streets named Adolf Hitler Street, Goebbels Street, and Goering Street. 
American Nazi Bund Rally near Yaphank, New York, in 1937. (Bettmann/Getty Images) German Day at Camp Siegfried nearly doubled attendance tforty-thousand the following year, August 1938, the New York Times headlined noted: About 2,000 uniformed Ordnungsdienst (Jewish Ghetto Police) storm troopers kept order.
Choosing to locate Camp Siegfried at Yaphank was not coincidence according to Jill Santiago, an educator at the Suffolk Center on the Holocaust, Diversity, and Human Understanding.
She told the Long Island Press “You have to understand that at the time, during the 1920s and 1930s, one out of every seven residents living in the area was a supporter of the Ku Klux Klan. So, you can say that by choosing Yaphank they figured they are not going to face too much of a resistance from the local community.”
Fritz Kuhn and the German-American Bund continually argued they had no direct connection to Hitler's party in Germany. But FBI investigations found evidence that German government officials funded Bund members travel to Germany where they met with Hitler, Hermann Goering, Joseph Goebbels, and other high-ranking Nazis.
Camp Siegfried, Yaphank, New York, courtesy of Longwood Public Library, Thomas R. Bayles Local History Room The Bund's strength lay in the northeastern US, but the organization divided the county into three geographic areas, and one of the most active centered in Los Angeles, California.
Camp Sutter, a youth camp of the Jugenschaft or "Community of Youngsters" modeled after Hitler Youth was held at Hindenburg Park, now called La Crescenta County Park.
"There were forced marches in the middle of the night to bonfires where the kids would sing the Nazi national anthem and shout 'Sieg Heil.' Nazi propaganda was plentiful at these camps as well," according to Arnie Bernstein, author of Swastika Nation: Fritz Kuhn and the Rise and Fall of the German American Bund
Raising the Swastika at German Day Celebration, Hindenburg Park, April 1936. (Special Collections and Archives, Oviatt Library, California State University, Northridge) The Bund members gathered to celebrate at the Deutsches Haus hall, restaurant and tavern, raising a stein to Third Reich advances, like th "liberation" of Sudetenland and the "Anschluss" of Austria.
The Bund celebrated Adolf Hitler's birthday in April 1935 with a torchlight parade attended by more than 2000 people.
The Nazi summer camps were for the most part protected by the 1st Amendment until Germany declared war on the US in December 1941 and it became illegal to swear allegiance to Germany.
Though many were closed earlier when local authorities nationwide raided the Nazi summer camps and shut them down after hearings by the House Un-American Activities Committee and investigation by the FBI.
In 1939 Fritz Kuhn was convicted and imprisoned in New York for tax evasion, forgery and embezzling thousands of dollars from the Bund. The Bund officially disbanded when Germany declared war on the US in December 1941.
A good number of organizations resisted Nazi activities and intolerance throughout the 1930s, including the Hollywood Anti-Nazi League for the Defense of American Democracy. That is another story!
I'll end with words from President Franklin D. Roosevelt's final 1940 campaign speech which sound relevant today: We Americans. . .are characters in the living book of democracy. But we are also its author. It falls upon us now to say whether the chapters…to come will tell a story of retreat or. . .of continued advance.
In the 1920s and 30s, German-Americans disaffected by WWI and the Great Depression found support in a group called the Friends of New Germany. Most all members were American citizens, but they pledged loyalty to Adolf Hitler. Members had to swear they were of pure Aryan blood with no Jewish ancestry. In 1936, a new group absorbed these people, the Amerikadeutscher Bund, commonly known as the Bund.
These organizations worked to preserve German Culture. As you will see, they had a much more potent agenda.
Nazi Youth at a German American Bund Camp in 1937, courtesy AP Camp Nordland, possibly the first Nazi camp organized in America, set on the shore of MacDonald Lake and spread over some 200 acres in the countryside of Andover Township, New Jersey. Supporters of Adolf Hitler founded the weekend summer camp for adults in 1934, the year after Nazis came to power in Germany. Below: Nearly 1,000 uniformed men wearing swastika arm bands and carrying Nazi banners parade through Camp Nordland in Sussex County, New Jersey on July 18, 1937.
Over the next several years Camp Nordland hosted Italian-American fascist leaders and held joint rallies with the Klu Klux Klan. In the evenings campers danced, drank beer and listened to anti-Semitic, white supremacist lectures.But the prime reason for the founding of Camp Nordland was to assess public opinion in New Jersey. Would the locals accept Nazi activity?
New Jersey citizens eventually protested Nazi gatherings and tried to pass laws banning the dissemination of Nazi propaganda, but in 1934 local citizens took little notice of Camp Nordland.
Six weeks later, some 150 boys arrived at Camp Wille und Macht (Will and Power) at Griggstown, NJ., five miles from Princton. Boys slept in tents, picnicked, hiked, learned camping skills, plus the art and practice of goose-stepping. Dressed in Hitler Youth brownshirts and jackboots they turned out for required paramilitary training, including handling and firing rifle
The boys above are campers Camp Wille und Macht (Will and Power) at Griggstown, NJ in 1934. Notice the portrait of Paul von Hindenburg, Germany's president 1925-1934 who appointed Adolf Hitler as German chancellor in 1933. (Bettmann Archive / Getty) By 1937, nearly two dozen Nazi summer camps welcomed boys and girls from around the country, including a third in New Jersey, Camp Bergwald, The Deutschhorst Country Club in Pennsylvania, Camp Highland in New York and Camp Hindenberg in Grafton, Wisconsin.
Most of the camp attendees were children or grandchildren of German immigrants and naturalized American citizens. Families connected with the Bund often kept their children isolated from mainstream culture.
Nazi camp for girls in Chicago, ca. 1936. American Civil Liberties Union Records. The video below from the National Archives shows children enjoying innocent-looking summer activities. Don't believe your eyes.
Evening songs around the campfire for both youngsters and adults often included a Nazi anthem with the chilling lines: “When Jewish blood drips from the knife, then will the German people prosper.” The flagship Nazi summer camp was located near Yaphank, Long Island, fifty miles east of New York City. Camp Siegfried was named for a medieval Germanic warrior and mythic hero popular in Nazi culture.
Every summer Sunday, the Long Island Rail Road ran a Camp Siegfried Special from Penn Station to Yaphank. Hundreds of passengers disembarked from the train to columns of men in Nazi uniforms giving the Nazi salute. Speakers denounced Jews and heralded an Aryan master race.
The German-American Settlement League in Yaphank, invited German-Americans to visit the camp on weekends for camaraderie, political discussion and special celebrations, one of which marked George Washington's birthday. They called the first US president the “first Fascist” and claimed he doubted democracy would work.
The man in charge at Camp Siegfried, Fritz Kuhn, headed the Bund and was known as the American Fuehrer. A naturalized citizen of the United States, he met personally with Hitler in Germany and was de facto representative of the German Nazi party in America.
Hitler's regime provide the camp with teachers, textbooks and uniforms. Young people from Camp Siegfried traveled to Germany, once in 1936 for the Olympics. The purpose was to indoctrinate Aryan children and prepare them as future leaders of America.
Leaders taught eugenics right along with training in physical fitness and outdoor skills, including hunting and shooting. The camp affiliated with the National Rifle Association.
According to a New York Times headline a crowd of twenty-five thousand people gathered August 39, 1937, for German Day festivities at Camp Siegfried. The newspaper reported they celebrated with marching and much Speechmaking. The headline declared: 50 BLACK SHIRTS ATTEND.
Men Women and Children Supporters give the Nazi salute at Camp Siegfried on August 29, 1937. Bettmann/Getty Images Organizers at camp Siegfried offered entertainment to keep visitors coming over the summer months. Nobody could misunderstand as they entered under a fluttering Nazi flag and walked streets named Adolf Hitler Street, Goebbels Street, and Goering Street. American Nazi Bund Rally near Yaphank, New York, in 1937. (Bettmann/Getty Images) German Day at Camp Siegfried nearly doubled attendance tforty-thousand the following year, August 1938, the New York Times headlined noted: About 2,000 uniformed Ordnungsdienst (Jewish Ghetto Police) storm troopers kept order.Choosing to locate Camp Siegfried at Yaphank was not coincidence according to Jill Santiago, an educator at the Suffolk Center on the Holocaust, Diversity, and Human Understanding.
She told the Long Island Press “You have to understand that at the time, during the 1920s and 1930s, one out of every seven residents living in the area was a supporter of the Ku Klux Klan. So, you can say that by choosing Yaphank they figured they are not going to face too much of a resistance from the local community.”
Fritz Kuhn and the German-American Bund continually argued they had no direct connection to Hitler's party in Germany. But FBI investigations found evidence that German government officials funded Bund members travel to Germany where they met with Hitler, Hermann Goering, Joseph Goebbels, and other high-ranking Nazis.
Camp Siegfried, Yaphank, New York, courtesy of Longwood Public Library, Thomas R. Bayles Local History Room The Bund's strength lay in the northeastern US, but the organization divided the county into three geographic areas, and one of the most active centered in Los Angeles, California.Camp Sutter, a youth camp of the Jugenschaft or "Community of Youngsters" modeled after Hitler Youth was held at Hindenburg Park, now called La Crescenta County Park.
"There were forced marches in the middle of the night to bonfires where the kids would sing the Nazi national anthem and shout 'Sieg Heil.' Nazi propaganda was plentiful at these camps as well," according to Arnie Bernstein, author of Swastika Nation: Fritz Kuhn and the Rise and Fall of the German American Bund
Raising the Swastika at German Day Celebration, Hindenburg Park, April 1936. (Special Collections and Archives, Oviatt Library, California State University, Northridge) The Bund members gathered to celebrate at the Deutsches Haus hall, restaurant and tavern, raising a stein to Third Reich advances, like th "liberation" of Sudetenland and the "Anschluss" of Austria.The Bund celebrated Adolf Hitler's birthday in April 1935 with a torchlight parade attended by more than 2000 people.
The Nazi summer camps were for the most part protected by the 1st Amendment until Germany declared war on the US in December 1941 and it became illegal to swear allegiance to Germany.Though many were closed earlier when local authorities nationwide raided the Nazi summer camps and shut them down after hearings by the House Un-American Activities Committee and investigation by the FBI.
In 1939 Fritz Kuhn was convicted and imprisoned in New York for tax evasion, forgery and embezzling thousands of dollars from the Bund. The Bund officially disbanded when Germany declared war on the US in December 1941.
A good number of organizations resisted Nazi activities and intolerance throughout the 1930s, including the Hollywood Anti-Nazi League for the Defense of American Democracy. That is another story!
I'll end with words from President Franklin D. Roosevelt's final 1940 campaign speech which sound relevant today: We Americans. . .are characters in the living book of democracy. But we are also its author. It falls upon us now to say whether the chapters…to come will tell a story of retreat or. . .of continued advance.
June 6, 2022
The All-But-Forgotten Bravery of Black Soldiers on D-Day
I had no understanding until recently of "barrage balloons" nor their importance in the success of the Normandy invasion.And further, I had no idea of the crucial D-Day role played by black soldiers landing on Omaha Beach.
This bit of forgotten history was brought to my attention by long-time newsletter reader Norm Haskett. Norm is the creator of the incredible website The Daily Chronicles of WWII , possibly the most thorough collection of WWII information on the web.
Who better to fill in for me this week while I'm on vacation? Thanks so much, Norm, for giving us this opportunity to remember D-Day, the brave men who gave their lives, and those who survived the brutal landings on Normandy beaches.
Of the 57,500 U.S. soldiers who landed on Normandy’s Omaha and Utah invasion beaches in Northwestern France on June 6, 1944, fewer than 2,000 were African Americans.
Unique among these black servicemen were 621 men who, from their complement of 1,500 black soldiers and 49 white officers, comprised the initial assault force of the First U.S. Army’s 320th Barrage Balloon Battalion.
The 320th Barrage Balloon Battalion’s extraordinary service was to defend Normandy’s fragile beachheads from enemy low-level strafing and bombing aircraft.
The balloons forced enemy aircraft to fly at higher altitudes making them better targets for larger caliber anti-aircraft gunfire. The cables that anchored the balloons to the ground were very difficult to see and posed a risk to any aircraft that flew into them. An aircraft caught in a cable could be slowed down enough to stall and crash or have a wing torn off.
The men of Headquarters Company and Battery A began landing on Omaha Beach at 9 a.m., a little more than two hours into the June 6, 1944, Allied invasion of German-occupied France. Battery C began splashing onto adjacent Utah Beach on the same day.
Their work began after dark when a dozen bullet-shaped, steel-cable-tethered, lighter-than-air barrage balloons were quickly filled with hydrogen gas and floated over Omaha Beach.
Shot out of the sky by German artillery, none survived the morning. Later that second invasion day Battery B landed at Omaha with new barrage balloons, and the next evening were more balloons hovering over both invasion beaches. Their numbers swelled and swelled.
This photo was taken a few days after the initial landings on Omaha beach, shows barrage balloons flying over ships and landing craft disgorging fresh stocks of men, materiel, and munitions needed for expanding the Normandy beachhead. The nucleus of D-Day’s 320th balloon flyers started training in December 1942 in the U.S. Jim Crow South. Sadly, in the early 1940s the U.S. Army was highly segregated. Black servicemen at the time were chiefly relegated to support roles in non-combat units where they served with honor, distinction, and courage as stevedores, truck drivers, and maintenance men.By 1944, 50,000 out of 700,000 black soldiers who entered the Army wound up serving as frontline troops: for example, on the ground as tankers in Lt. Gen. George C. Patton Jr’s Third U.S. Army’s all-black 761st Tank Battalion (“Black Panthers”) and in the air as the celebrated Tuskegee Airmen of the 332nd Fighter Group and 99th Fighter Squadron.
Below is a rare daytime close-up photo of the 320th Barrage Balloon Battalion in action. Battery A Cpl. A. Johnson of Houston, of Texas, with help from two men in his 3-man crew, walks an inflated 125-lb, 35-ft-long VLA (very low altitude) balloon toward a 50-lb winch that will float the balloon over Omaha Beach.
The barrage balloons were made of two-ply cotton fabric impregnated by vulcanized or synthetic rubber and coated with aluminum. Most balloons were raised at night after Allied planes had returned to their bases in England.By June 21, 141 silvery orbs dotted the skies. This is how Normandy’s invasion beaches are remembered in the popular imagination.
Sadly, the role of the segregated 320th Barrage Balloon Battalion never made it into cinematic retellings like Darryl F. Zanuck’s The Longest Day (1962) and Steven Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan (1999).
Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, Supreme Allied Commander Allied Expeditionary Force, lavished praise on the all-black balloon flyers who “proved an important element of the [U.S.] air defense team.”
“I commend you and the officers and men of your battalion,” he wrote,” for your fine effort which has merited the praise of all who have observed it.”
Barrage balloons fly overhead as the American flag flies at half-mast nearby one of the first American cemeteries created for those lost on Omaha beach. NARA 342-FH-3A16622-3A16622 A newspaper reporter on Omaha Beach, referring to the 320th balloon crews’ floating minefield of barrage balloons, told his American audience that one of the Allies’ more unusual lines of defense was “one of the most important missions of the war.”Norm will feature a more in-depth article on the 320th Barrage Balloon Battalion on his website The Daily Chronicles of WWII . That goes live on June 7th. Here's the direct link: https://ww2days.com/all-black-battalion-raises-barrage-balloons-over-d-day-beaches.html. Clicking the link before June 7 will produce an error.
Thanks again, Norm! Great story!
A long-overdue retelling of D-Day’s black heroes appears in print and audiobook in Linda Hervieux’s Forgotten: The Untold Story of D-Day’s Black Heroes, at Home and at War.
Just 7 days after D-Day more than 300,000 Allied troops, 50,000 vehicles, and over 100,000 tons of materiel had landed in France, and the five invasion beaches were fully under U.S., British, and Canadian control. Allied casualties on the first day were at least 10,000, with 4,414 confirmed dead.April 11, 2022
A Dark Forest, Evil Forces and a Fairy Tale Ending
Coincidence, Karma or Miracle? This story will make you wonder. It begins in a small village near present-day Ukraine amid war crimes committed by the German Nazis. A time in history, that does not feel so long ago given the current news of war crimes in the region.
Near that village lies the dark primeval Białowieża Forest, straddling the borders of Poland and Belarus. Though it's described as “hauntingly beautiful” its tall trees and seemly endless marshlands have witnessed the harshest of evils.
At the outbreak of WWII, Miriam Rabinowitz lived in the small Polish town of Zhetel, (sometimes called Zdzięcioł) with her husband Morris and two daughters, Tania and Rochel.
Christians and Jews had lived peacefully in Zhetel for nearly 400 years, while the town was variously under the control of Belarus, Russia and Poland. In 1939, the population was roughly 4,600 and 75 percent were Jewish.
The Morris family, left to right: Rochel, Miriam, Morris, Tania and two unnamed companions, Courtesy Rebecca Frankel & Yahoo News The Nazis arrived in the fall of 1939. They shipped skilled workers to workcamps and eventually to death camps. With the help of local police, they slaughtered most of the remaining Jewish residents, men women and children, in two consecutive mass shootings in the spring and summer of 1942.
Today a memorial stands on the remnants of the old Jewish cemetery, a fenced collective grave, in which the bodies of about two thousand people are buried, shot in this place by the Nazis on August 6, 1942.
Photo courtesy of https://shtetlroutes.eu/en/dzyatlava-... Shtetl Routes. Vestiges of Je1wish cultural heritage in cross-border tourism in borderland of Poland, Belarus and Ukraine One of the Nazis' first orders of business was to mark off a section of Zhetel and construct a ghetto. The small neighborhood was partly fenced by wood and barbed wire and eventually guarded by soldiers. In late February of 1942 the German occupiers ordered the Jewish population into a ghetto.
The true terror began for the Rabinowitz family, two months later on April 30,1942. They woke to the sound of gunfire, barking dogs and shouts calls to evacuate.
Morris and Miriam Rabinowitz threw on their clothes and then quickly dressed their young daughters. They crowded into the street and were told to report to the Marketplace in the center of town. Jewish police officers whom the Nazi's had charged to keep order assured the frightened people the Nazis just planned to check papers.
But as the Rabinowitzs progressed with the crowd nearer to the Marketplace, Miriam saw the towering SS officer in his black, leather trench coat and a "giant dog leashed at his side," she understood this the situation was desperate.
"It was a selection: Those who were sent to the right would be killed and those to the left would live. The dawning understanding incited a fresh wave of terror, turning the scene into barely contained pandemonium. Anyone who hesitated or intervened was shot on the spot.
As [the SS officer] made this decisive motion with his finger—to the right, to the left—the contrast of his steady demeanor against the human hysteria unfurling around him seemed almost irrational. His immaculate black boots, shining with polish, were the height of disregard."
All quotes in today's article are from the book INTO THE FOREST: A Holocaust Story of Survival, Triumph, and Love by Rebecca Frankel.
Zhetel Marketsquare, January 1, 1938. Photo courtesy Jan Bułhak. Miriam had been a healer in Zhetel, with a small shop selling natural remedies. Considered a nurse, she had work papers which she carried to the Marketsquare that morning. Her husband Morris, a former lumber worker, also had a coveted yellow certificate. In the crush of the crowd Miriam and her girls became separated from him.
"All around the Marketplace, families with and without working certificates were being ripped apart. One man was sent to the left, but when his wife was pushed to the right, he ran after her and was shot in the head. Bodies began to pile up; blood colored the ground."
In the mayhem an eleven-year-old boy, Philip Lazowski, approached Miriam. “Please,” he begged. “I don’t have anyone here. Will you take me as your son?”
"Miriam looked at the young boy, taking in his thick shock of hair and desperate eyes. It took her but a moment to decide.
“If the Nazis let me live with two children,” she told him, “they’ll let me live with three.” She offered the boy her free hand and Philip, relieved, gripped it tight."
When Miriam and the children reached the SS officer, it was with great relief that she spied her husband standing safely to the left.
“Das ist mein Mann!” [she said] pointing to Morris who shouted back, “Das ist meine Frau!”
The officer inspected Miriam's work certificate and pointed left. She rushed into her husband's arms, all three children in tow. The boy, Philip Lazowski could hardly believe he'd escaped death and ran from the Marketplace, not even pausing to thank Miriam or ask her name.
A world war and nearly a decade would pass before an extraordinary coincidence would bring the Morris family and Philip together again.
Philip Lazowski in 1945. Courtesy People Magazine The second Zhetel massacre started on August 6, 1942, and lasted for three days, the ghetto was liquidated, 2,000 to 3,000 Jews were shot and buried in three mass graves in the Jewish cemetery.
The Rabinowitz family hid with 20 others in a shelter dug below a garage at the edge of the ghetto, hearing Nazi boot steps above. Undiscovered, they were able to crawl out and flee for their lives into the ancient Białowieża Forest. But Philip and his family were trapped in the ghetto when the Nazis returned to massacre Zhetel's remaining Jews.
"As his mother pushed him from a window to help him escape death, she told her son, "Tell the world what happened."
Philip escaped to join hundreds of Jewish civilian refugees scattered in the Białowieża Forest, along with a force of more than one hundred Jews partisan fighters. Soviet partisans also operated out of the huge forest.
It's difficult to imagine, but the Rabinowitz family survived two years hiding in the forest. They suffered freezing winters with waist-high snowdrifts, outbreaks of typhus, struggled to find food, shelter and medical care. All while avoiding Nazi raids into the woods and coping with a combination of boredom and anxiety.
In July 1944, the Red Army marched in and liberated the Bialowieza forest and its nearby towns and villages. Miriam, Morris and their girls were among the few survivors. The Rabinowitz's went back to Zhetel, but the home and community they had known was gone. The town had become Soviet territory and today, called Dziatlava, it is within the borders of Belarus.
Hoping to emigrate to Palestine, the family made an arduous crossing over the Alps into Italy, joining Jewish refugees waiting in coastal cities for visas. They began to recuperate, but not until 1948 did a way open for them to move forward.
Beryl Sakier, Tania, Miriam, Rochel, Morris, and Luba Rabinowitz after arriving in Santa Maria di Leuca, Italy. Photo Courtesy of The Langerman and Lazowski Families, Rebecca Frankel and PBS. Sponsored by Morris' relatives in the US, the Rabinowitz family obtained visas and moved to Connecticut to build a new life. The girls Americanized their names to Ruth and Toby.
But what of Philip Lazowski?
He, too, had been one of the fortunate ones to survive the war hiding in the forest, and also moved to the US to start anew in Brooklyn, NY. He'd been in the US five years, studying at Brooklyn College and Yeshiva University when he was invited to a friend's wedding.
At the reception, Philip started talking to a young woman who had spent time in a refugee camp in Italy.
"She told him the story of how her friend’s mother had risked her own life and the safety of her two young daughters to keep the boy from death during the first ghetto massacre in Zhetel.
"As he listened, Philip’s heart began to pound—he already knew this story. “That was me,” he told her. “I am that boy.”
He got Miriam Rabinowitz phone number and immediately called her.
"I'm so happy to hear that you are alive!" she told him over the phone.
Lazowski wrote to her the next day: "I didn't and couldn't forget you...I was looking all over to find you, but as the Talmud says, 'The day will come,' and the day did come."
He visited the family and
He told PEOPLE magazine in February 2022,"I felt in my heart that she is the one for me, because she went through so much that I did."
In the same interview, Ruth said, "I liked his looks, he was very friendly and I fell in love."
Philip and Ruth Lazowski, courtesy Lozowski Family The couple married in 1955. They raised three sons and now have seven grandchildren.
Coincidence, Karma or Miracle? Maybe it's simply love. The inexplicable power of love.
You can read the whole story in INTO THE FOREST: A Holocaust Story of Survival, Triumph, and Love by Rebecca Frankel , called one of The Ten Best History Books of 2021 by Smithsonian Magazine.
Sources
Into the Forest: A Holocaust Story of Survival, Triumph and Love , by Rebecca Frankel. (St. Martin's Press, 2021) https://www.thehistoryreader.com/worl...
https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/conten...
https://people.com/human-interest/man...
https://news.yahoo.com/woman-kindness...
https://www.npr.org/2021/09/07/103473...
https://www.wunc.org/2022-01-21/a-fam...
https://shtetlroutes.eu/pl/zdzieciol-...
https://www.ajwnews.com/shoah-survival/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WyPnn...
https://forward.com/culture/475252/in...
A Detailed History and Memorial to the Jewish Community of Zhetl (Dzyatlava, Belarus)
Near that village lies the dark primeval Białowieża Forest, straddling the borders of Poland and Belarus. Though it's described as “hauntingly beautiful” its tall trees and seemly endless marshlands have witnessed the harshest of evils.
At the outbreak of WWII, Miriam Rabinowitz lived in the small Polish town of Zhetel, (sometimes called Zdzięcioł) with her husband Morris and two daughters, Tania and Rochel.
Christians and Jews had lived peacefully in Zhetel for nearly 400 years, while the town was variously under the control of Belarus, Russia and Poland. In 1939, the population was roughly 4,600 and 75 percent were Jewish.
The Morris family, left to right: Rochel, Miriam, Morris, Tania and two unnamed companions, Courtesy Rebecca Frankel & Yahoo News The Nazis arrived in the fall of 1939. They shipped skilled workers to workcamps and eventually to death camps. With the help of local police, they slaughtered most of the remaining Jewish residents, men women and children, in two consecutive mass shootings in the spring and summer of 1942. Today a memorial stands on the remnants of the old Jewish cemetery, a fenced collective grave, in which the bodies of about two thousand people are buried, shot in this place by the Nazis on August 6, 1942.
Photo courtesy of https://shtetlroutes.eu/en/dzyatlava-... Shtetl Routes. Vestiges of Je1wish cultural heritage in cross-border tourism in borderland of Poland, Belarus and Ukraine One of the Nazis' first orders of business was to mark off a section of Zhetel and construct a ghetto. The small neighborhood was partly fenced by wood and barbed wire and eventually guarded by soldiers. In late February of 1942 the German occupiers ordered the Jewish population into a ghetto.The true terror began for the Rabinowitz family, two months later on April 30,1942. They woke to the sound of gunfire, barking dogs and shouts calls to evacuate.
Morris and Miriam Rabinowitz threw on their clothes and then quickly dressed their young daughters. They crowded into the street and were told to report to the Marketplace in the center of town. Jewish police officers whom the Nazi's had charged to keep order assured the frightened people the Nazis just planned to check papers.
But as the Rabinowitzs progressed with the crowd nearer to the Marketplace, Miriam saw the towering SS officer in his black, leather trench coat and a "giant dog leashed at his side," she understood this the situation was desperate.
"It was a selection: Those who were sent to the right would be killed and those to the left would live. The dawning understanding incited a fresh wave of terror, turning the scene into barely contained pandemonium. Anyone who hesitated or intervened was shot on the spot.
As [the SS officer] made this decisive motion with his finger—to the right, to the left—the contrast of his steady demeanor against the human hysteria unfurling around him seemed almost irrational. His immaculate black boots, shining with polish, were the height of disregard."
All quotes in today's article are from the book INTO THE FOREST: A Holocaust Story of Survival, Triumph, and Love by Rebecca Frankel.
Zhetel Marketsquare, January 1, 1938. Photo courtesy Jan Bułhak. Miriam had been a healer in Zhetel, with a small shop selling natural remedies. Considered a nurse, she had work papers which she carried to the Marketsquare that morning. Her husband Morris, a former lumber worker, also had a coveted yellow certificate. In the crush of the crowd Miriam and her girls became separated from him."All around the Marketplace, families with and without working certificates were being ripped apart. One man was sent to the left, but when his wife was pushed to the right, he ran after her and was shot in the head. Bodies began to pile up; blood colored the ground."
In the mayhem an eleven-year-old boy, Philip Lazowski, approached Miriam. “Please,” he begged. “I don’t have anyone here. Will you take me as your son?”
"Miriam looked at the young boy, taking in his thick shock of hair and desperate eyes. It took her but a moment to decide.
“If the Nazis let me live with two children,” she told him, “they’ll let me live with three.” She offered the boy her free hand and Philip, relieved, gripped it tight."
When Miriam and the children reached the SS officer, it was with great relief that she spied her husband standing safely to the left.
“Das ist mein Mann!” [she said] pointing to Morris who shouted back, “Das ist meine Frau!”
The officer inspected Miriam's work certificate and pointed left. She rushed into her husband's arms, all three children in tow. The boy, Philip Lazowski could hardly believe he'd escaped death and ran from the Marketplace, not even pausing to thank Miriam or ask her name.
A world war and nearly a decade would pass before an extraordinary coincidence would bring the Morris family and Philip together again.
Philip Lazowski in 1945. Courtesy People Magazine The second Zhetel massacre started on August 6, 1942, and lasted for three days, the ghetto was liquidated, 2,000 to 3,000 Jews were shot and buried in three mass graves in the Jewish cemetery.The Rabinowitz family hid with 20 others in a shelter dug below a garage at the edge of the ghetto, hearing Nazi boot steps above. Undiscovered, they were able to crawl out and flee for their lives into the ancient Białowieża Forest. But Philip and his family were trapped in the ghetto when the Nazis returned to massacre Zhetel's remaining Jews.
"As his mother pushed him from a window to help him escape death, she told her son, "Tell the world what happened."
Philip escaped to join hundreds of Jewish civilian refugees scattered in the Białowieża Forest, along with a force of more than one hundred Jews partisan fighters. Soviet partisans also operated out of the huge forest.
It's difficult to imagine, but the Rabinowitz family survived two years hiding in the forest. They suffered freezing winters with waist-high snowdrifts, outbreaks of typhus, struggled to find food, shelter and medical care. All while avoiding Nazi raids into the woods and coping with a combination of boredom and anxiety.
In July 1944, the Red Army marched in and liberated the Bialowieza forest and its nearby towns and villages. Miriam, Morris and their girls were among the few survivors. The Rabinowitz's went back to Zhetel, but the home and community they had known was gone. The town had become Soviet territory and today, called Dziatlava, it is within the borders of Belarus.
Hoping to emigrate to Palestine, the family made an arduous crossing over the Alps into Italy, joining Jewish refugees waiting in coastal cities for visas. They began to recuperate, but not until 1948 did a way open for them to move forward.
Beryl Sakier, Tania, Miriam, Rochel, Morris, and Luba Rabinowitz after arriving in Santa Maria di Leuca, Italy. Photo Courtesy of The Langerman and Lazowski Families, Rebecca Frankel and PBS. Sponsored by Morris' relatives in the US, the Rabinowitz family obtained visas and moved to Connecticut to build a new life. The girls Americanized their names to Ruth and Toby.
But what of Philip Lazowski?
He, too, had been one of the fortunate ones to survive the war hiding in the forest, and also moved to the US to start anew in Brooklyn, NY. He'd been in the US five years, studying at Brooklyn College and Yeshiva University when he was invited to a friend's wedding.
At the reception, Philip started talking to a young woman who had spent time in a refugee camp in Italy.
"She told him the story of how her friend’s mother had risked her own life and the safety of her two young daughters to keep the boy from death during the first ghetto massacre in Zhetel.
"As he listened, Philip’s heart began to pound—he already knew this story. “That was me,” he told her. “I am that boy.”
He got Miriam Rabinowitz phone number and immediately called her.
"I'm so happy to hear that you are alive!" she told him over the phone.
Lazowski wrote to her the next day: "I didn't and couldn't forget you...I was looking all over to find you, but as the Talmud says, 'The day will come,' and the day did come."
He visited the family and
He told PEOPLE magazine in February 2022,"I felt in my heart that she is the one for me, because she went through so much that I did."
In the same interview, Ruth said, "I liked his looks, he was very friendly and I fell in love."
Philip and Ruth Lazowski, courtesy Lozowski Family The couple married in 1955. They raised three sons and now have seven grandchildren.Coincidence, Karma or Miracle? Maybe it's simply love. The inexplicable power of love.
You can read the whole story in INTO THE FOREST: A Holocaust Story of Survival, Triumph, and Love by Rebecca Frankel , called one of The Ten Best History Books of 2021 by Smithsonian Magazine.
SourcesInto the Forest: A Holocaust Story of Survival, Triumph and Love , by Rebecca Frankel. (St. Martin's Press, 2021) https://www.thehistoryreader.com/worl...
https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/conten...
https://people.com/human-interest/man...
https://news.yahoo.com/woman-kindness...
https://www.npr.org/2021/09/07/103473...
https://www.wunc.org/2022-01-21/a-fam...
https://shtetlroutes.eu/pl/zdzieciol-...
https://www.ajwnews.com/shoah-survival/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WyPnn...
https://forward.com/culture/475252/in...
A Detailed History and Memorial to the Jewish Community of Zhetl (Dzyatlava, Belarus)
April 7, 2022
Latest media coverage: Close-up On War
If these are too small to read on your screen, you may be able to access
The Spokesman-Review E.edition here.
.. April 6, 2022, pages D7 & D8
February 28, 2022
Standing Up Against Hate by making Music
It could be a huge shock for black army women from Northern states to report for duty south of the Mason Dixon Line. They knew prejudice but had not experienced the brutality of Jim Crow Laws.
When Women's Army Corps member Ernestine Wood was sent to Ft. Oglethorpe, GA, she feared for her safety.
“When we would parade down the streets, the whites would throw rocks at us and the adults would jeer," she said. "When it was time for me to order my officers uniform, I had in a squad car and the manager of the store had to meet me at the door and escort me from counter to counter to pick out my clothes."
As Black History Month comes to a close, I've pulled out my research for the book Standing Up Against Hate to tell you more of the story of Ernestine Woods. She figures in Chapter 4, Black Women Persist.
She was sworn into the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps with a group of recruits from the Washington Military District at a public ceremony at the Cordoza High School January 7, 1943.
I believe Ernestine Woods is second from the right. Courtesy Library of Congress. Ernestine went through basic training at Ft. Devens, MA. Afterward, she was disappointed not to be assigned to the motor corps or administrative school. At her first duty post she initially worked "activating" barracks.
That meant going to the warehouse loading beds and bedding onto trucks, then setting them up in barracks. Her cohort of Black WAACs activated three barracks, including unloading, setting up and making 60 beds in each barrack.
She had not signed up for manual labor and was happy later when sent to Ft. Oglethorpe for officer candidate school. There she found herself one of nine black women among 900 WAACs.
White civilian employees at the base had walked off the job when the black women arrived. They refused to serve blacks, and so the black WAACs were banned from the PX, service club, theater, telephone bar and chapel. They were to go directly to and from their classes.
“It was hard to swallow and as we walked back to our barracks, we wanted to cry. We felt so helpless, and this is my first time being in the South," Ernestine said.
"When My mother found out I was in Georgia, she told me to come home because I did not know how to act in the south. Bless her heart, she did not realize I could not leave."
Many of the white WAACs on base supported the black women and shopped for them at the PX. However, by the end of officer training school, Ernestine was the only black women who remained and graduated.
"When I walked up on stage to receive my commission, the crackers [sic] in the audience stood up on their chairs." Ernestine said, "I just knew I was going to be lynched. I was so frightened and so alone. I never wanted to experience anything like that again."
Black women persevered at posts throughout the country and made significant contributions to the war effort. They learned skills and leadership they later put to use in civilian life. But serving in a segregated army, they had to find ways to survive the constant feeling they were second class citizens.
Ernestine was one of a small group able to find a sense of belonging through music.
White WAACs had a marching and concert band at Ft. Des Moines, Iowa, but no black women who auditioned were ever selected to join. Even those who had worked as music teachers and performers at the graduate school level and others who were professional musicians.
A group of black women got permission to organize their own band, though it would be all volunteer and unlike the white band members, each woman would continue her regular duties.
An amateur musician, Ernestine became one of the commanding officers of the 404th American Forces Service marching and concert band.
“I don’t think anybody ever heard of a black women’s military band before, and that to us was really something," Ernestine said. "As a matter of fact, most people had never seen black women in uniform before.”
404th all-black Army band prepares for a concert. Courtesy Chicago Public Library. The women of the 404th rode in an uncomfortable Army bus with instruments piled in the back, crisscrossing the state of Iowa. They played music in the bandstands of small-town squares, sometimes three concerts in one day.
As the musicians’ tune-up notes soared into the air, townspeople emerged from nearby buildings or drove up and parked to listen. After noontime concerts citizens shared a picnic lunch with band members. Many of the towns where black band played had no black residents.
Later in the war, the 404th traveled throughout the Midwest, performing in Chicago, Sioux Falls, Omaha, Kiwanis, Chamber of Commerce, American Legion Auxiliaries and churches who requested them.
The bands largest audience gathered in July 1944, during the Thirty-Fourth Annual Conference of the NAACP in Chicago. The women proudly marched in a parade down South Parkway (now Martin Luther King Drive) and performed an outdoor concert downtown. Up to half a million people watched and listened to their music. 
The 404th AFS Band marching in Chicago. After their trip to Chicago, they received the shocking news that the African American WAC band would be dissolved, its members reclassified and sent to different units. The army claimed there were not enough personnel stationed at Fort Des Moines to warrant two bands.
Band members started a letter-writing campaign protesting deactivation of the band. They targeted both black and white leaders at the local and national level. For fear of reprisals, they left the fort to mail their letters in the city of Des Moines.
Black newspapers supported their efforts. Letters and phone calls flooded the war department demanding the army reactivate the band and restate its members or allow black WACs in the white band. Unwilling to integrate musicians, the war department re-activated the black WAC band, mentioning its importance in boosting morale.
Along with raising morale, the 404th raised funds to support the war. Wherever they played there were speeches asking citizens to purchase war bonds. When the band appeared in Chicago, 450,000 worth of war bonds sold.
Captain Ruth L Freeman and Lieutenant Ernestine L. Wood (far right) presenting a check for money raised in a war bond drive, Chicago, Illionois, May 1945. National Archives for Black Women's History Band members said audiences all over the Midwest received them graciously.
“They made us feel like celebrities. Many of the young girls sought our autographs as if we were famous,” said Clementine McConico Skinner of Illinois, who played the French horn and trumpet.
"You learn to do your best, and you learn how to honor whatever it is that you’re doing," said Ernestine.
After leaving the army at the end of WWII, Ernestine spoke enthusiastically about her service, saying it was good preparation for life.
Sources
https://www.loc.gov/item/2017695726/
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/histor...
Bands of Sisters: U.S. Women's Military Bands During World War II by Jill M. Sullivan
NABWH_038 Series 4 Box 2 folder 1, Memo
NABWH_038 Series 3 Box 2 Folder 7, Letter from Ernestine Woods to Putney, August 4, 1992
When Women's Army Corps member Ernestine Wood was sent to Ft. Oglethorpe, GA, she feared for her safety.
“When we would parade down the streets, the whites would throw rocks at us and the adults would jeer," she said. "When it was time for me to order my officers uniform, I had in a squad car and the manager of the store had to meet me at the door and escort me from counter to counter to pick out my clothes."
As Black History Month comes to a close, I've pulled out my research for the book Standing Up Against Hate to tell you more of the story of Ernestine Woods. She figures in Chapter 4, Black Women Persist.
She was sworn into the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps with a group of recruits from the Washington Military District at a public ceremony at the Cordoza High School January 7, 1943.
I believe Ernestine Woods is second from the right. Courtesy Library of Congress. Ernestine went through basic training at Ft. Devens, MA. Afterward, she was disappointed not to be assigned to the motor corps or administrative school. At her first duty post she initially worked "activating" barracks.That meant going to the warehouse loading beds and bedding onto trucks, then setting them up in barracks. Her cohort of Black WAACs activated three barracks, including unloading, setting up and making 60 beds in each barrack.
She had not signed up for manual labor and was happy later when sent to Ft. Oglethorpe for officer candidate school. There she found herself one of nine black women among 900 WAACs.
White civilian employees at the base had walked off the job when the black women arrived. They refused to serve blacks, and so the black WAACs were banned from the PX, service club, theater, telephone bar and chapel. They were to go directly to and from their classes.
“It was hard to swallow and as we walked back to our barracks, we wanted to cry. We felt so helpless, and this is my first time being in the South," Ernestine said.
"When My mother found out I was in Georgia, she told me to come home because I did not know how to act in the south. Bless her heart, she did not realize I could not leave."
Many of the white WAACs on base supported the black women and shopped for them at the PX. However, by the end of officer training school, Ernestine was the only black women who remained and graduated."When I walked up on stage to receive my commission, the crackers [sic] in the audience stood up on their chairs." Ernestine said, "I just knew I was going to be lynched. I was so frightened and so alone. I never wanted to experience anything like that again."
Black women persevered at posts throughout the country and made significant contributions to the war effort. They learned skills and leadership they later put to use in civilian life. But serving in a segregated army, they had to find ways to survive the constant feeling they were second class citizens.
Ernestine was one of a small group able to find a sense of belonging through music.
White WAACs had a marching and concert band at Ft. Des Moines, Iowa, but no black women who auditioned were ever selected to join. Even those who had worked as music teachers and performers at the graduate school level and others who were professional musicians.
A group of black women got permission to organize their own band, though it would be all volunteer and unlike the white band members, each woman would continue her regular duties.
An amateur musician, Ernestine became one of the commanding officers of the 404th American Forces Service marching and concert band.
“I don’t think anybody ever heard of a black women’s military band before, and that to us was really something," Ernestine said. "As a matter of fact, most people had never seen black women in uniform before.”
404th all-black Army band prepares for a concert. Courtesy Chicago Public Library. The women of the 404th rode in an uncomfortable Army bus with instruments piled in the back, crisscrossing the state of Iowa. They played music in the bandstands of small-town squares, sometimes three concerts in one day.As the musicians’ tune-up notes soared into the air, townspeople emerged from nearby buildings or drove up and parked to listen. After noontime concerts citizens shared a picnic lunch with band members. Many of the towns where black band played had no black residents.
Later in the war, the 404th traveled throughout the Midwest, performing in Chicago, Sioux Falls, Omaha, Kiwanis, Chamber of Commerce, American Legion Auxiliaries and churches who requested them.
The bands largest audience gathered in July 1944, during the Thirty-Fourth Annual Conference of the NAACP in Chicago. The women proudly marched in a parade down South Parkway (now Martin Luther King Drive) and performed an outdoor concert downtown. Up to half a million people watched and listened to their music.
The 404th AFS Band marching in Chicago. After their trip to Chicago, they received the shocking news that the African American WAC band would be dissolved, its members reclassified and sent to different units. The army claimed there were not enough personnel stationed at Fort Des Moines to warrant two bands.Band members started a letter-writing campaign protesting deactivation of the band. They targeted both black and white leaders at the local and national level. For fear of reprisals, they left the fort to mail their letters in the city of Des Moines.
Black newspapers supported their efforts. Letters and phone calls flooded the war department demanding the army reactivate the band and restate its members or allow black WACs in the white band. Unwilling to integrate musicians, the war department re-activated the black WAC band, mentioning its importance in boosting morale.
Along with raising morale, the 404th raised funds to support the war. Wherever they played there were speeches asking citizens to purchase war bonds. When the band appeared in Chicago, 450,000 worth of war bonds sold.
Captain Ruth L Freeman and Lieutenant Ernestine L. Wood (far right) presenting a check for money raised in a war bond drive, Chicago, Illionois, May 1945. National Archives for Black Women's History Band members said audiences all over the Midwest received them graciously.“They made us feel like celebrities. Many of the young girls sought our autographs as if we were famous,” said Clementine McConico Skinner of Illinois, who played the French horn and trumpet.
"You learn to do your best, and you learn how to honor whatever it is that you’re doing," said Ernestine.
After leaving the army at the end of WWII, Ernestine spoke enthusiastically about her service, saying it was good preparation for life.
Sources
https://www.loc.gov/item/2017695726/
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/histor...
Bands of Sisters: U.S. Women's Military Bands During World War II by Jill M. Sullivan
NABWH_038 Series 4 Box 2 folder 1, Memo
NABWH_038 Series 3 Box 2 Folder 7, Letter from Ernestine Woods to Putney, August 4, 1992
January 25, 2022
Gabriela Silang: Indigenous Philippine Joan d’Arc
This should not surprise me, researching a woman from the 18th Century and discovering a strong parallel to a woman fighting the same battle today. The more I looked into this story, the more painful it became. But in the end, I found hope.
This is one of my longer feature articles and I ask your patience as I wend my way through the story to reach "pag-ibig at pag-asa," Filipino for love and hope.
Gabriela Silang, a young Filipina who lived in the northwestern seaboard of Luzon in the mid-1700s is most commonly portrayed wielding a bolo knife.
There's little doubt Gabriela Salang was a fearless revolutionary against Spanish colonial rule, and her spirit continues to run in the blood of women today, who carry on the struggle for self-determination in the face of centuries of imperialism in the Philippines.
Monument of Gabriela Silang located in Manila's Ayala Triangle Gardens created by Jose M. Mendoza in 1971 That includes playwright and peasant organizer Amanda Echanis, arrested 13-months ago and imprisoned with her newborn baby, two of more than 600 political prisoners under the Rodrigo Duterte regime. 
Below, Linda Echanis demonstrates for the release of her daughter and grandson. Courtesy Pinoy Weekly Ferdinand Magellan, you may have learned in school led the first crew to circumnavigate the globe in 1522. What may not have stuck in your mind, is that he failed to actually make it around the earth with his shipmates, because he was killed by indigenous people in what we now call the Philippines.
Our heroine Gabriela Silang was the first woman who raised an army against the Spanish, and she led the longest-lasting revolt in 1763. Like a later Filipina leader, Corazon Aquino, she picked up the fight for freedom after her husband was killed for his resistance.
Indigenous people resisted Spanish colonization for the next three centuries, rising in at least 300 significant armed revolts. Not only did they fight to reclaim their land, but to overthrow the invaders who forced them into virtual slavery building their churches and government buildings, and the universally unbearable yoke of excessive taxes.
Gabriela Silang was honored on a Philippine postage stamp in 1974, interestingly enough, under the administration of dictator Ferdinand Marcos. It's a rare depiction of her without her bolo knife. Read on for the story of her knife-wielding days!
Gabriela was initially forced into marriage with a much older, wealthy businessman, but after his death three years later, she married a young rebel, Diego Salang.
When British forces occupied Manila in retaliation for the Spanish-French alliance in the Seven Year's War in 1762, Diego seized the opportunity. Martialing fellow revolutionaries in the Ilocano region on the northwestern coast of Luzon. His forces took control of the City of Vigan, planning to create an independent Ilocano nation.
The revolution was cut short when British-promised military aid failed to show, and a friend turned traitor assassinated Deigo Salang in his home. Gabriela fled for her life, setting up camp in the Abra Mountains to pull the resistance together.
After four months of guerilla attacks, she led her army on mission to recapture Vigan.
General Gabriela Salang's insurgent army assaulted a much larger Spanish force at Vigan. They were defeated and captured.
The Spanish executed as many as one hundred rebels, in public hangings along the coast as a warning to Ilocanos. Lastly, in September 1763, Gabriela was hanged in the public square in Vigan.
Numerous memorials in the Philippines portray her on a galloping horse brandishing a machete type blade used for centuries to cut through the tropical jungle.
Her brave legacy is also celebrated in performance art. One such event put on by
4Ever40 Sisterhood raised money to aid people in remote areas of the Philippines to become self-sufficient.
Marilou Tito played the role of Gabriela Silang, 2015. The people of the Philippines eventually defeated Spanish colonialism in 1898, only to begin a new anti-colonial struggle against the United States.
This month an international human rights monitor denounced the Rodrigo Duterte Administration's harassment of journalists and extrajudicial killings of activists, including labor and peasant organizers and environmentalists.
Today, 652 political prisoners are in custody in the Philippines, according to Pilgrims for Peace . More than 400 were arrested under the Duterte administration. Human Rights Watch stated, “The past six years of the Duterte administration have been an unmitigated disaster for human rights."
Below: protesters march outside Malacanang palace in Manila, Philippines, June 30, 2021. AP Photo/Aaron Favila, Courtesy Humans Rights Watch Two of those prisoners are Amanda Echanis and her 13-month-old boy. Authorities arrested the playwright and peasant organizer December 2, 2020, shortly after she'd given birth. They allege she possessed a M16 assault rifle, two hand grenades and assorted ammunition.
Amanda denies the charges and her lawyer says the arrest was illegal and baseless.
Many of the hundreds of political prisoners in custody face similar charges, which they also deny.
What sets Amanda apart, aside from her toddler being in prisoner with her, is that she herself was incarcerated as a two-year-old when her mother was arrested in 1990.
Below Amanda's mother, Erlinda Echanis is shown Christmas Eve, waiting and hoping for a video call from her daughter and grandson from the Cagayan Provincial Jail, Luzon. Courtesy Pinoy Weekly The family was happy and grateful they got to speak with each other over video for a short time on Christmas Eve. But the future of mother and baby remains precarious.
Amanda often thinks about Nelson Mandela’s words: "May your choices reflect your hopes, not your fears."
"You have to be strong," she told Lian Buan, reporting for Rappler. "That strength comes from understanding what it is you’re fighting for. It will always come back to the question of for what and for whom. If you know how to answer that, sacrifice is just a part of it."
Amanda's parents Randall and Erlinda Echanis took her to jail with them in 1990, when they were arrested because of their work as peasant organizers in rural areas. They faced similar trumped-up charges. Linda and her mother were freed after six months.
Things have gone much worse for her father Randal Echanis. The life-long activist was detained and tortured three times, by three different regimes in the past five decades. August 10, 2020, three months before Amanda was arrested, he was tortured and murdered in Quezon City.
She named her baby Randall Emmaunel, Randall after her father, and Emmanuel after her uncle, poet and playwright Emmanuel Lacaba, who was martyred during Ferdinand Marcos’ martial law in 1976.
Linda and Amada say they begin this new year, "puno ng pag-ibig at pag-asa" which is Filipino for full of love and hope. If they can do it, I can, too.
Thanks to these sources:
"The past is never dead. It's not even past" William Faulkner, Requiem for a Nun
http://4ever40sisterhood.org/famous-w...
https://www.liberationschool.org/07-0...
https://www.vigan.ph/history/diego-si...
https://www.hrw.org/news/2022/01/13/p...
https://pinoyweekly.org/2021/12/hello...
https://www.rappler.com/newsbreak/in-...
This is one of my longer feature articles and I ask your patience as I wend my way through the story to reach "pag-ibig at pag-asa," Filipino for love and hope.
Gabriela Silang, a young Filipina who lived in the northwestern seaboard of Luzon in the mid-1700s is most commonly portrayed wielding a bolo knife.
There's little doubt Gabriela Salang was a fearless revolutionary against Spanish colonial rule, and her spirit continues to run in the blood of women today, who carry on the struggle for self-determination in the face of centuries of imperialism in the Philippines.
Monument of Gabriela Silang located in Manila's Ayala Triangle Gardens created by Jose M. Mendoza in 1971 That includes playwright and peasant organizer Amanda Echanis, arrested 13-months ago and imprisoned with her newborn baby, two of more than 600 political prisoners under the Rodrigo Duterte regime. Below, Linda Echanis demonstrates for the release of her daughter and grandson. Courtesy Pinoy Weekly Ferdinand Magellan, you may have learned in school led the first crew to circumnavigate the globe in 1522. What may not have stuck in your mind, is that he failed to actually make it around the earth with his shipmates, because he was killed by indigenous people in what we now call the Philippines.Our heroine Gabriela Silang was the first woman who raised an army against the Spanish, and she led the longest-lasting revolt in 1763. Like a later Filipina leader, Corazon Aquino, she picked up the fight for freedom after her husband was killed for his resistance.
Indigenous people resisted Spanish colonization for the next three centuries, rising in at least 300 significant armed revolts. Not only did they fight to reclaim their land, but to overthrow the invaders who forced them into virtual slavery building their churches and government buildings, and the universally unbearable yoke of excessive taxes.
Gabriela Silang was honored on a Philippine postage stamp in 1974, interestingly enough, under the administration of dictator Ferdinand Marcos. It's a rare depiction of her without her bolo knife. Read on for the story of her knife-wielding days!
Gabriela was initially forced into marriage with a much older, wealthy businessman, but after his death three years later, she married a young rebel, Diego Salang.
When British forces occupied Manila in retaliation for the Spanish-French alliance in the Seven Year's War in 1762, Diego seized the opportunity. Martialing fellow revolutionaries in the Ilocano region on the northwestern coast of Luzon. His forces took control of the City of Vigan, planning to create an independent Ilocano nation.
The revolution was cut short when British-promised military aid failed to show, and a friend turned traitor assassinated Deigo Salang in his home. Gabriela fled for her life, setting up camp in the Abra Mountains to pull the resistance together.
After four months of guerilla attacks, she led her army on mission to recapture Vigan.
General Gabriela Salang's insurgent army assaulted a much larger Spanish force at Vigan. They were defeated and captured.The Spanish executed as many as one hundred rebels, in public hangings along the coast as a warning to Ilocanos. Lastly, in September 1763, Gabriela was hanged in the public square in Vigan.
Numerous memorials in the Philippines portray her on a galloping horse brandishing a machete type blade used for centuries to cut through the tropical jungle.
Her brave legacy is also celebrated in performance art. One such event put on by
4Ever40 Sisterhood raised money to aid people in remote areas of the Philippines to become self-sufficient.
Marilou Tito played the role of Gabriela Silang, 2015. The people of the Philippines eventually defeated Spanish colonialism in 1898, only to begin a new anti-colonial struggle against the United States.This month an international human rights monitor denounced the Rodrigo Duterte Administration's harassment of journalists and extrajudicial killings of activists, including labor and peasant organizers and environmentalists.
Today, 652 political prisoners are in custody in the Philippines, according to Pilgrims for Peace . More than 400 were arrested under the Duterte administration. Human Rights Watch stated, “The past six years of the Duterte administration have been an unmitigated disaster for human rights."
Below: protesters march outside Malacanang palace in Manila, Philippines, June 30, 2021. AP Photo/Aaron Favila, Courtesy Humans Rights Watch Two of those prisoners are Amanda Echanis and her 13-month-old boy. Authorities arrested the playwright and peasant organizer December 2, 2020, shortly after she'd given birth. They allege she possessed a M16 assault rifle, two hand grenades and assorted ammunition.Amanda denies the charges and her lawyer says the arrest was illegal and baseless.
Many of the hundreds of political prisoners in custody face similar charges, which they also deny.
What sets Amanda apart, aside from her toddler being in prisoner with her, is that she herself was incarcerated as a two-year-old when her mother was arrested in 1990.
Below Amanda's mother, Erlinda Echanis is shown Christmas Eve, waiting and hoping for a video call from her daughter and grandson from the Cagayan Provincial Jail, Luzon. Courtesy Pinoy Weekly The family was happy and grateful they got to speak with each other over video for a short time on Christmas Eve. But the future of mother and baby remains precarious.Amanda often thinks about Nelson Mandela’s words: "May your choices reflect your hopes, not your fears."
"You have to be strong," she told Lian Buan, reporting for Rappler. "That strength comes from understanding what it is you’re fighting for. It will always come back to the question of for what and for whom. If you know how to answer that, sacrifice is just a part of it."
Amanda's parents Randall and Erlinda Echanis took her to jail with them in 1990, when they were arrested because of their work as peasant organizers in rural areas. They faced similar trumped-up charges. Linda and her mother were freed after six months.
Things have gone much worse for her father Randal Echanis. The life-long activist was detained and tortured three times, by three different regimes in the past five decades. August 10, 2020, three months before Amanda was arrested, he was tortured and murdered in Quezon City.
She named her baby Randall Emmaunel, Randall after her father, and Emmanuel after her uncle, poet and playwright Emmanuel Lacaba, who was martyred during Ferdinand Marcos’ martial law in 1976.
Linda and Amada say they begin this new year, "puno ng pag-ibig at pag-asa" which is Filipino for full of love and hope. If they can do it, I can, too.
Thanks to these sources:
"The past is never dead. It's not even past" William Faulkner, Requiem for a Nun
http://4ever40sisterhood.org/famous-w...
https://www.liberationschool.org/07-0...
https://www.vigan.ph/history/diego-si...
https://www.hrw.org/news/2022/01/13/p...
https://pinoyweekly.org/2021/12/hello...
https://www.rappler.com/newsbreak/in-...
September 20, 2021
This Cheyenne Mother and Warrior Fought Custer
Yes, that Custer, General George Armstrong Custer killed in the 1876 Battle of the Little Big Horn.
We know the men, Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse, who whupped the general that day, but what of the women? The names and faces of the native women of the Great Plains are all but lost, erased from mainstream history.
That's why the story of Buffalo Calf Road Woman is so important. It gives us a glimpse into the lives of native women at the height of the "Indian Wars," the US effort to subdue and corral the Plaines Tribes or annihilate them.
There is no known photo of Buffalo Calf Road Woman. She may have looked similar to the unidentified Cheyenne woman in this photo, sometimes mistakenly identified as her.
Cheyenne Girl, Edward S. Curtis, circa 1905 The Northern Cheyenne kept a vow of silence for more than "100 summers" until 2005, when a tribal elder stood up and told how Buffalo Calf Road Woman attacked Custer. One incident in the life of a young woman, a mother, and a warrior, who faced enormous adversity trying to survive, defend her family, her homeland, and her culture.
Historians believe Buffalo Calf Road Woman was born some time in the 1850’s. Her life unfolded, beginning to end, amid the "American Indian Wars" (1854-1890), a series of battles, skirmishes, massacres and broken treaties on the Great Plains.
The stakes grew so high for the tribes on the northern plains, former enemies, the Lakota, Northern Cheyenne and Arapaho allied in a united front against white expansion. Under the leadership of Lakota Chief Red Cloud, they decisively defeated the U.S. Army and forced Americans to negotiate for peace.
Under the The Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868 , the Lakota, Northern Cheyenne and Arapaho agreed to settle on the Sioux reservation in what is now western South Dakota. In return, the US designated for the tribes unceded lands adjoining the reservation and extending past the corners of present-day Nebraska, Wyoming, Montana and North Dakota.
Cheyenne and Arapaho leaders meeting with members of the U.S. Indian Peace Commission, 1868. Fort Laramie, Wyoming Territory. Photograph by Alexander Gardner. National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution.
“From this day forward,” the Ft. Laramie Treaty began, “all war between the parties to this agreement shall forever cease.” It promised the land to the native tribes for their “absolute and undisturbed use.”
A Northern Cheyenne, Buffalo Calf Road Woman lived in this country with her husband Black Coyote, their daughter, and her brother, Comes In Sight. It was prime hunting grounds for what remained of the once-vast buffalo herds that had sustained Plains tribes for generations.
In the heart of this land lay Ȟe Sápa (the Black Hills of South Dakota) and when gold was discovered there, the peace agreement was doomed. The die was cast for Buffalo Calf Road Woman. The young mother would become a warrior.
Northern Cheyenne women scrape staked Buffalo hides. In the background by the tipis buffalo meat dries in the sun. (date unknown) Gold miners rushed to the Black Hills in violation of the Fort Laramie Treaty, and to avoid trouble, the US government sought to purchase the land from the Sioux. But the land fed and clothed them. The Sioux couldn't survive without the buffalo range. When they refused to sell, President Ulysses S. Grant launched
a secret, illegal war against the Sioux
and lied to Congress and the American people about it.
The Grant Administration ordered tribes wintering in their villages throughout the Unceded lands in Montana and Wyoming Territories to report to the Sioux reservation by January 1876, or the army would come after them.
Many bands including those led by Lakota chief Sitting Bull, Oglala chief Crazy Horse decided they would not retreat to the reservation where they feared their people would starve. In February, General George Crook marched his troops out to round-up reluctant natives.
A large number of Sioux and Cheyenne, including Buffalo Calf Road Woman's family had settled that spring in the Powder River and Little Bighorn valleys. When news came in mid-March that Crook’s soldiers had burned a Cheyenne village, they prepared for war.
With Crook on the move, the native warriors decided to strike first. They attacked and surprised the federal troops June 17 at Rosebud Creek in current-day eastern Montana just north of Sheridan, Wyoming.
Buffalo Calf Road Woman would prove her bravery, and her place in history, at the Battle of the Rosebud, which raged for six hours over a series of grassy ridges cut with deep ravines.
The Sioux charging Colonel Royall's detachment of Cavalry, June 17, 1876: Charles Stanley wood engraving in Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper, Library of Congress. In the frenzy of combat, a bullet struck down the horse carrying Cheyenne warrior Comes in Sight. His sister Buffalo Calf Road Woman saw his trouble and did not hesitate.
She charged into the fray, heedless of flying arrows and bullets. The young woman raced her horse alongside her brother, and Comes in Sight caught hold around the neck of her horse. Buffalo Calf Road Woman escaped the heat of the battle and keeping them both alive.
Below, a drawing contemporary to her time shows Buffalo Calf Road Woman rescuing her brother beneath the blazing guns of federal troops. It's part of a collection of native drawings on ledger paper attributed to Spotted Wolf-Yellow Nose, an Ute adopted by the Northern Cheyenne, who is believed to have participated in the battle at Rosebud Creek.
Courtesy of the Smithsonian Institution, National Anthropological Archives, Bureau of American Ethnology, ms. 166.032. A description from the book "We, the Northern Cheyenne People" explains the horse’s split ears indicates that it is a fast one. The drawing shows Buffalo Calf Road Woman in an elk tooth dress, and her brother, Comes in Sight, wears a war bonnet.
At Rosebud Creek, Sioux and Cheyenne warriors led by Crazy Horse made a surprise attack on General Crook’s force, both sides had roughly 1,200 fighters, making it one of the largest battles of the Plains. The tribes fought General Crook to a standstill, pulling back at sunset while the federal troops retreated to camp.
Known as the Battle of the Rosebud in history books, the Cheyenne remember it as the Fight Where the Girl Saved Her Brother.
After the battle, the Sioux and Cheyenne moved their families roughly 50 miles north to the banks of the river they called the Greasy Grass. The US Army called it the Little Big Horn. Eight days later, General George Armstrong Custer and the 7th Cavalry attacked the village.
“The Custer Right" C.M. Russell, 1903, Library of Congress. Buffalo Calf Road Woman joined the fight alongside her husband Black Coyote. Another woman at the scene reported, “Most of the women looking at the battle stayed out of reach of the bullets, as I did. But there was one who went in close at times. Her name was Calf [Road] Woman …[she] had a six-shooter, with bullets and powder, and she fired many shots at the soldiers. She was the only woman there who had a gun. She stayed on her pony all the time, but she kept not far from her husband, Black Coyote. ”
Custer and all his men died within an hour of the attack, though the fighting continued another day further east along the winding river. In total, 268 federal troops, including General Custer, died in what turned out to be US Army's worst defeat in the "Indian Wars." The exact circumstances of Custer's death have long been debated and his body was not discovered until two-days later.
But in June 2005, members of the Northern Cheyenne gathered to recount their tribe's oral history of that day. The story told names a female fighter, Buffalo Calf Road Woman, who knocked Custer from his horse amidst the battle, leaving him vulnerable to the two gunshots he suffered, one of which killed him.
At the 10-year memorial of the Battle of Little Bighorn, unidentified Lakota Sioux dance in commemoration of their victory over the United States 7th Cavalry Regiment (under General George Custer), Montana, 1886. The photograph was taken by S.T. Fansler, at the battlefield’s dedication ceremony as a national monument. (Photo by Transcendental Graphics/Getty Images) The Northern Cheyenne had never told their story before because they feared retribution from the U.S. government. And though The Battle of the Little Bighorn was a major victory for the indigenous tribes, reprisals did indeed come.
The U.S. Army doubled-down on its efforts to hunt all resisting Native Americans and within a year, most had been rounded up or killed. But the fight had not left Buffalo Calf Road Woman yet.
Two days after Custer and his men died, US troops arrived to reinforce the units still fighting and the Sioux and Cheyenne packed up their village and fled. Roughly 1000 Northern Cheyenne, including Buffalo Calf Road Woman and her family, eluded capture for nearly a year, hunting ever-decreasing game, and often fleeing their villages as soldiers attacked. During this precarious time, Buffalo Calf Road Woman gave birth to her second child. But the game had become so scarce, the Cheyenne were starving. Surrender seemed their only chance to survive.
They surrendered at the Lakota reservation in Nebraska where they thought they'd be safe. But U.S. soldiers forced them to march south, fifteen hundred miles in the summer heat to Fort Reno in Indian Territory (now Oklahoma) where they were locked up.
Conditions were horrible. Buffalo Calf Road Woman and her people barely survived on short rations handed out by the US government, and many were sick with malaria and dysentery. Two chiefs, Dull Knife and Little Wolf knew they must lead their people home to Montana Territory, or they would die.
In September 1878, 350 Cheyenne escaped Fort Reno and headed north. Knowing army troops were coming after them, they hid by day and traveled at night. One night they entrenched themselves in the bluffs above a creek at Punished Women's Fork near current-day Scott City, Kansas. This is the next footnote in history that names and locates Buffalo Calf Road Woman.
Site of the Battle of Punished Woman's Fork in NW Kansas. Photo courtesy Scott McGonagle. In this little valley they rested and hunted for food, and readied fortifications in a box canyon to ambush the troops on their trail. Soldiers attacked September 27, 1878. Children, the elderly and most of the women took refuge in a cave on the hillside. Buffalo Calf Road Woman joined the fight "[with] a gun in her hands, ready, the baby tied securely to her back."
The Battle of Punished Woman's Fork was fierce, the lieutenant colonel leading the army was mortally wounded, but the Cheyenne eventually had to run. Slipping away at night, heading north on foot, they heard the gunshots that killed their horses. They evaded US forces and reached familiar country in Nebraska. Winter was coming and not everyone was strong enough to continue walking north.
believed they could slip in and hide among the Lakota. The remaining 123, including Buffalo Calf Woman and her husband would winter over and resume their journey to the high plains of Montana Territory in the spring.
A blinding snowstorm soon hit Dull Knife’s band and they ran into an army patrol. From the soldiers they learned the Red Cloud Agency had been moved to the Dakota Territory, and all that remained was Fort Robinson. Reluctantly, Dull Knife surrendered and his people moved into the barracks.
In late February, with a break in the weather, Little Wolf’s people, including Buffalo Calf Road Woman again picked up their journey home. The army sent a man who had known and respected Little Wolf to intercept the band. Lieutenant William P. “Philo” Clark trailed the Cheyenne to the area of current-day Miles City, Montana, and convinced him to surrender.
I don't know, but can imagine, Buffalo Calf Road Woman, holding her children close and listening to Little Wolf surrender. Or perhaps she heard the news later. Little Wolf told Lt. Clark:
You are the only one who has offered to talk before fighting, and it looks as though the wind, which has made our hearts flutter for so long, would now go down. I am very glad we did not fight and that none of my people or yours have been killed.
Buffalo Calf Road Woman's people turned themselves in to nearby Fort Keogh in Montana , where some 300 Cheyenne were already in custody.
On March 27, 1879, at Fort Keogh, Little Wolf and his warriors surrendered their weapons to General Nelson A. Miles. Buffalo Calf Road Woman lived her final days at Fort Keogh. History notes that she died from diphtheria the winter after she arrived, 1879. At most, she would have been 29.
Today, children of the Northern Cheyenne nation learn about and remember their ancestors, men and women, who fought so courageously, defending their families, their land, and their culture. There are more than 12,000 enrolled tribal members, about 6,000 who live the Northern Cheyenne reservation in present day southeastern Montana.
Every winter a special event pays tribute to the group of Buffalo Calf Road Woman's people who ended their journey in army custody at Fort Robinson. Under pressure to return to Oklahoma, in 1879, about 130 starving Northern Cheyenne people, mostly elderly, women and children made a break from the fort, hoping to make it hundreds of miles to their homeland in Montana.
Pursuing soldiers massacred many that night and chased down another several dozen and killed them two weeks later. A small band led by Chief Dull Knife escaped and survived near starvation walking north in the dead of winter to arrive safely in Lame Deer, Montana, where the Northern Cheyenne Reservation would be created five years later.
Now, each January 9th, 0:30 at night, on the actual date and time of the Northern Cheyenne breakout of Fort Robinson, children retrace and understand the journey of their ancestors from Nebraska to Montana.
A child runs with the Northern Cheyenne flag in the final leg of the Fort Robinson Outbreak Spiritual Run, Northern Cheyenne Indian Reservation, Jan. 14, 2021. RYAN BERRY Billings Gazette Through blistering winds, rain, snow and subzero temperatures, Northern Cheyenne youth from elementary to high school age complete the 400-miles in legs, handing off their Nation's flag and an eagle feather staff.
Starting in Crawford, NE, they soon reach a snow-filled creek bed they call “The Last Hole.” In this desolate ravine, two weeks after the escaped from Fort Robinson, 32 men, women, and children, who had survived the initial massacre were hunted down and killed by US soldiers.
Cinnamon Spear first made the run as a high school senior. “Going to where everything happened, you’re standing where the blood of your ancestors was shed. Your feet are where their blood was. You realize you are breathing the air of the land that holds those stories....You cry for kids your age who were shot. But there’s also hope, because you realize their courage allows us to be here and do this. Their sacrifice brought us here.”
The run, five days and nights, continues passing a number of battle sites including The Little Bighorn Battlefield. It ends at a hilltop burial ground in Busby, MT, where their ancestors’ remains now lie, repatriated in 1994 from a Harvard University museum.
I love night running,” said high school student Sharlyce Parker in January 2018. “I feel the presence of my ancestors. It’s like they’re running with me.”
A runner heads down the road during the final leg of the Fort Robinson Outbreak Spiritual Run Thursday, Jan. 14, 2021 along the road from Lame Deer to Busby. RYAN BERRY Billings Gazette In the past 25-years,
Fort Robinson Outbreak Run
has grown beyond honoring their ancestors and become an opportunity for healing and wellness; youth leadership and empowerment; cultural & language preservation; environmental justice; and creating social change in Cheyenne communities.
Each year about 100 youth participate, but due to covid in 2021 only 30 made the run. Check out their story with terrific photos click here.
Sources
https://helenair.com/news/state-and-r...
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/histor...
https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/5...
https://truewestmagazine.com/rosebud-...
https://www.ndstudies.gov/gr8/content...
http://montanawomenshistory.org/a-you...
https://www.astonisher.com/archives/m...
https://www.pameladtoler.com/ (Women Warriors)
https://www.jstor.org/stable/777193 (Yellow Nose Ledgers)
https://sova.si.edu/record/NAA.MS166032?
https://www.yellowbirdlifeways.org/fo...
https://indiancountrytoday.com/archiv...
https://billingsgazette.com/news/loca...
https://www.historynet.com/little-wol...
https://www.wyohistory.org/encycloped...
If you like the story of Buffalo Calf Woman please share with your friends and family.
We know the men, Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse, who whupped the general that day, but what of the women? The names and faces of the native women of the Great Plains are all but lost, erased from mainstream history.
That's why the story of Buffalo Calf Road Woman is so important. It gives us a glimpse into the lives of native women at the height of the "Indian Wars," the US effort to subdue and corral the Plaines Tribes or annihilate them.
There is no known photo of Buffalo Calf Road Woman. She may have looked similar to the unidentified Cheyenne woman in this photo, sometimes mistakenly identified as her.
Cheyenne Girl, Edward S. Curtis, circa 1905 The Northern Cheyenne kept a vow of silence for more than "100 summers" until 2005, when a tribal elder stood up and told how Buffalo Calf Road Woman attacked Custer. One incident in the life of a young woman, a mother, and a warrior, who faced enormous adversity trying to survive, defend her family, her homeland, and her culture.
Historians believe Buffalo Calf Road Woman was born some time in the 1850’s. Her life unfolded, beginning to end, amid the "American Indian Wars" (1854-1890), a series of battles, skirmishes, massacres and broken treaties on the Great Plains.
The stakes grew so high for the tribes on the northern plains, former enemies, the Lakota, Northern Cheyenne and Arapaho allied in a united front against white expansion. Under the leadership of Lakota Chief Red Cloud, they decisively defeated the U.S. Army and forced Americans to negotiate for peace.
Under the The Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868 , the Lakota, Northern Cheyenne and Arapaho agreed to settle on the Sioux reservation in what is now western South Dakota. In return, the US designated for the tribes unceded lands adjoining the reservation and extending past the corners of present-day Nebraska, Wyoming, Montana and North Dakota.
Cheyenne and Arapaho leaders meeting with members of the U.S. Indian Peace Commission, 1868. Fort Laramie, Wyoming Territory. Photograph by Alexander Gardner. National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution.
“From this day forward,” the Ft. Laramie Treaty began, “all war between the parties to this agreement shall forever cease.” It promised the land to the native tribes for their “absolute and undisturbed use.”
A Northern Cheyenne, Buffalo Calf Road Woman lived in this country with her husband Black Coyote, their daughter, and her brother, Comes In Sight. It was prime hunting grounds for what remained of the once-vast buffalo herds that had sustained Plains tribes for generations.
In the heart of this land lay Ȟe Sápa (the Black Hills of South Dakota) and when gold was discovered there, the peace agreement was doomed. The die was cast for Buffalo Calf Road Woman. The young mother would become a warrior.
Northern Cheyenne women scrape staked Buffalo hides. In the background by the tipis buffalo meat dries in the sun. (date unknown) Gold miners rushed to the Black Hills in violation of the Fort Laramie Treaty, and to avoid trouble, the US government sought to purchase the land from the Sioux. But the land fed and clothed them. The Sioux couldn't survive without the buffalo range. When they refused to sell, President Ulysses S. Grant launched
a secret, illegal war against the Sioux
and lied to Congress and the American people about it. The Grant Administration ordered tribes wintering in their villages throughout the Unceded lands in Montana and Wyoming Territories to report to the Sioux reservation by January 1876, or the army would come after them.
Many bands including those led by Lakota chief Sitting Bull, Oglala chief Crazy Horse decided they would not retreat to the reservation where they feared their people would starve. In February, General George Crook marched his troops out to round-up reluctant natives.
A large number of Sioux and Cheyenne, including Buffalo Calf Road Woman's family had settled that spring in the Powder River and Little Bighorn valleys. When news came in mid-March that Crook’s soldiers had burned a Cheyenne village, they prepared for war.
With Crook on the move, the native warriors decided to strike first. They attacked and surprised the federal troops June 17 at Rosebud Creek in current-day eastern Montana just north of Sheridan, Wyoming.
Buffalo Calf Road Woman would prove her bravery, and her place in history, at the Battle of the Rosebud, which raged for six hours over a series of grassy ridges cut with deep ravines.
The Sioux charging Colonel Royall's detachment of Cavalry, June 17, 1876: Charles Stanley wood engraving in Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper, Library of Congress. In the frenzy of combat, a bullet struck down the horse carrying Cheyenne warrior Comes in Sight. His sister Buffalo Calf Road Woman saw his trouble and did not hesitate.She charged into the fray, heedless of flying arrows and bullets. The young woman raced her horse alongside her brother, and Comes in Sight caught hold around the neck of her horse. Buffalo Calf Road Woman escaped the heat of the battle and keeping them both alive.
Below, a drawing contemporary to her time shows Buffalo Calf Road Woman rescuing her brother beneath the blazing guns of federal troops. It's part of a collection of native drawings on ledger paper attributed to Spotted Wolf-Yellow Nose, an Ute adopted by the Northern Cheyenne, who is believed to have participated in the battle at Rosebud Creek.
Courtesy of the Smithsonian Institution, National Anthropological Archives, Bureau of American Ethnology, ms. 166.032. A description from the book "We, the Northern Cheyenne People" explains the horse’s split ears indicates that it is a fast one. The drawing shows Buffalo Calf Road Woman in an elk tooth dress, and her brother, Comes in Sight, wears a war bonnet. At Rosebud Creek, Sioux and Cheyenne warriors led by Crazy Horse made a surprise attack on General Crook’s force, both sides had roughly 1,200 fighters, making it one of the largest battles of the Plains. The tribes fought General Crook to a standstill, pulling back at sunset while the federal troops retreated to camp.
Known as the Battle of the Rosebud in history books, the Cheyenne remember it as the Fight Where the Girl Saved Her Brother.
After the battle, the Sioux and Cheyenne moved their families roughly 50 miles north to the banks of the river they called the Greasy Grass. The US Army called it the Little Big Horn. Eight days later, General George Armstrong Custer and the 7th Cavalry attacked the village.
“The Custer Right" C.M. Russell, 1903, Library of Congress. Buffalo Calf Road Woman joined the fight alongside her husband Black Coyote. Another woman at the scene reported, “Most of the women looking at the battle stayed out of reach of the bullets, as I did. But there was one who went in close at times. Her name was Calf [Road] Woman …[she] had a six-shooter, with bullets and powder, and she fired many shots at the soldiers. She was the only woman there who had a gun. She stayed on her pony all the time, but she kept not far from her husband, Black Coyote. ”Custer and all his men died within an hour of the attack, though the fighting continued another day further east along the winding river. In total, 268 federal troops, including General Custer, died in what turned out to be US Army's worst defeat in the "Indian Wars." The exact circumstances of Custer's death have long been debated and his body was not discovered until two-days later.
But in June 2005, members of the Northern Cheyenne gathered to recount their tribe's oral history of that day. The story told names a female fighter, Buffalo Calf Road Woman, who knocked Custer from his horse amidst the battle, leaving him vulnerable to the two gunshots he suffered, one of which killed him.
At the 10-year memorial of the Battle of Little Bighorn, unidentified Lakota Sioux dance in commemoration of their victory over the United States 7th Cavalry Regiment (under General George Custer), Montana, 1886. The photograph was taken by S.T. Fansler, at the battlefield’s dedication ceremony as a national monument. (Photo by Transcendental Graphics/Getty Images) The Northern Cheyenne had never told their story before because they feared retribution from the U.S. government. And though The Battle of the Little Bighorn was a major victory for the indigenous tribes, reprisals did indeed come.The U.S. Army doubled-down on its efforts to hunt all resisting Native Americans and within a year, most had been rounded up or killed. But the fight had not left Buffalo Calf Road Woman yet.
Two days after Custer and his men died, US troops arrived to reinforce the units still fighting and the Sioux and Cheyenne packed up their village and fled. Roughly 1000 Northern Cheyenne, including Buffalo Calf Road Woman and her family, eluded capture for nearly a year, hunting ever-decreasing game, and often fleeing their villages as soldiers attacked. During this precarious time, Buffalo Calf Road Woman gave birth to her second child. But the game had become so scarce, the Cheyenne were starving. Surrender seemed their only chance to survive.
They surrendered at the Lakota reservation in Nebraska where they thought they'd be safe. But U.S. soldiers forced them to march south, fifteen hundred miles in the summer heat to Fort Reno in Indian Territory (now Oklahoma) where they were locked up.
Conditions were horrible. Buffalo Calf Road Woman and her people barely survived on short rations handed out by the US government, and many were sick with malaria and dysentery. Two chiefs, Dull Knife and Little Wolf knew they must lead their people home to Montana Territory, or they would die.
In September 1878, 350 Cheyenne escaped Fort Reno and headed north. Knowing army troops were coming after them, they hid by day and traveled at night. One night they entrenched themselves in the bluffs above a creek at Punished Women's Fork near current-day Scott City, Kansas. This is the next footnote in history that names and locates Buffalo Calf Road Woman.
Site of the Battle of Punished Woman's Fork in NW Kansas. Photo courtesy Scott McGonagle. In this little valley they rested and hunted for food, and readied fortifications in a box canyon to ambush the troops on their trail. Soldiers attacked September 27, 1878. Children, the elderly and most of the women took refuge in a cave on the hillside. Buffalo Calf Road Woman joined the fight "[with] a gun in her hands, ready, the baby tied securely to her back."
The Battle of Punished Woman's Fork was fierce, the lieutenant colonel leading the army was mortally wounded, but the Cheyenne eventually had to run. Slipping away at night, heading north on foot, they heard the gunshots that killed their horses. They evaded US forces and reached familiar country in Nebraska. Winter was coming and not everyone was strong enough to continue walking north.
Buffalo Calf Road Woman joined the fight '[with] a gun in her hands, ready, the baby tied securely to her back.' (click to tweet)The group split up. Those too weak to spend a Nebraska winter foraging for food and always on the lookout for soldiers would continue the short distance to the Red Cloud Agency. Dull Knife, nearly 70,
believed they could slip in and hide among the Lakota. The remaining 123, including Buffalo Calf Woman and her husband would winter over and resume their journey to the high plains of Montana Territory in the spring.
A blinding snowstorm soon hit Dull Knife’s band and they ran into an army patrol. From the soldiers they learned the Red Cloud Agency had been moved to the Dakota Territory, and all that remained was Fort Robinson. Reluctantly, Dull Knife surrendered and his people moved into the barracks.
In late February, with a break in the weather, Little Wolf’s people, including Buffalo Calf Road Woman again picked up their journey home. The army sent a man who had known and respected Little Wolf to intercept the band. Lieutenant William P. “Philo” Clark trailed the Cheyenne to the area of current-day Miles City, Montana, and convinced him to surrender.
I don't know, but can imagine, Buffalo Calf Road Woman, holding her children close and listening to Little Wolf surrender. Or perhaps she heard the news later. Little Wolf told Lt. Clark:
You are the only one who has offered to talk before fighting, and it looks as though the wind, which has made our hearts flutter for so long, would now go down. I am very glad we did not fight and that none of my people or yours have been killed.
Buffalo Calf Road Woman's people turned themselves in to nearby Fort Keogh in Montana , where some 300 Cheyenne were already in custody.
On March 27, 1879, at Fort Keogh, Little Wolf and his warriors surrendered their weapons to General Nelson A. Miles. Buffalo Calf Road Woman lived her final days at Fort Keogh. History notes that she died from diphtheria the winter after she arrived, 1879. At most, she would have been 29.Today, children of the Northern Cheyenne nation learn about and remember their ancestors, men and women, who fought so courageously, defending their families, their land, and their culture. There are more than 12,000 enrolled tribal members, about 6,000 who live the Northern Cheyenne reservation in present day southeastern Montana.
Every winter a special event pays tribute to the group of Buffalo Calf Road Woman's people who ended their journey in army custody at Fort Robinson. Under pressure to return to Oklahoma, in 1879, about 130 starving Northern Cheyenne people, mostly elderly, women and children made a break from the fort, hoping to make it hundreds of miles to their homeland in Montana.
Pursuing soldiers massacred many that night and chased down another several dozen and killed them two weeks later. A small band led by Chief Dull Knife escaped and survived near starvation walking north in the dead of winter to arrive safely in Lame Deer, Montana, where the Northern Cheyenne Reservation would be created five years later.
Now, each January 9th, 0:30 at night, on the actual date and time of the Northern Cheyenne breakout of Fort Robinson, children retrace and understand the journey of their ancestors from Nebraska to Montana.
A child runs with the Northern Cheyenne flag in the final leg of the Fort Robinson Outbreak Spiritual Run, Northern Cheyenne Indian Reservation, Jan. 14, 2021. RYAN BERRY Billings Gazette Through blistering winds, rain, snow and subzero temperatures, Northern Cheyenne youth from elementary to high school age complete the 400-miles in legs, handing off their Nation's flag and an eagle feather staff.
Starting in Crawford, NE, they soon reach a snow-filled creek bed they call “The Last Hole.” In this desolate ravine, two weeks after the escaped from Fort Robinson, 32 men, women, and children, who had survived the initial massacre were hunted down and killed by US soldiers.
Cinnamon Spear first made the run as a high school senior. “Going to where everything happened, you’re standing where the blood of your ancestors was shed. Your feet are where their blood was. You realize you are breathing the air of the land that holds those stories....You cry for kids your age who were shot. But there’s also hope, because you realize their courage allows us to be here and do this. Their sacrifice brought us here.”
The run, five days and nights, continues passing a number of battle sites including The Little Bighorn Battlefield. It ends at a hilltop burial ground in Busby, MT, where their ancestors’ remains now lie, repatriated in 1994 from a Harvard University museum.
I love night running,” said high school student Sharlyce Parker in January 2018. “I feel the presence of my ancestors. It’s like they’re running with me.”
A runner heads down the road during the final leg of the Fort Robinson Outbreak Spiritual Run Thursday, Jan. 14, 2021 along the road from Lame Deer to Busby. RYAN BERRY Billings Gazette In the past 25-years,
Fort Robinson Outbreak Run
has grown beyond honoring their ancestors and become an opportunity for healing and wellness; youth leadership and empowerment; cultural & language preservation; environmental justice; and creating social change in Cheyenne communities. Each year about 100 youth participate, but due to covid in 2021 only 30 made the run. Check out their story with terrific photos click here.
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