Horst in Dresden

Lately, on a Sunday morning, I went down to the Starbucks inside the Safeway near me, and an old man (I am about to be 72, so I mean really old; I guess he was in his eighties) asked if he could sit at my table with me. I said yes, and, contrary to what I usually do in such situations--I am not trying to pick up men in coffee shops--I started talking to him.

First I noticed that he had a European accent, so I asked him what his native language was. German.

Next I said I was reading a book about World War II (I forget which one now, most likely fiction). He said he didn't have to read about it, he was in it, and that was enough for him.

Turns out he was a boy in Dresden when the British and American Allies bombed the city in four different raids between February 13 and 15, 1945, killing an estimated 22,700 to 25,000 people. 

My coffee-shop acquaintance was not outside during the bombing, but his younger brother, whose name I don't know, and his older brother Horst, were. Horst was killed, his parents had to bury what little of him they could find, and Horst's foot, still in his boot, was not found until a week later.

When the younger brother went back to the house, his mother asked him where Horst was, and the boy said, "Dead, I guess." My acquaintance used this as an example of how inured people get to  violence around them during wartime.

Of course, the bombing became controversial in 1953, and my acquaintance, who emigrated to the United States as a boy or young man, had probably already come to this country. While the people analyzing the command decisions of the Allied military said that the bombing was a strategic necessity, critics said that the city of Dresden was not an important target and, as a historic and cultural treasure trove of European civilization, should have been spared. 

War Stories

I kind of collect World War II stories that I run across or that people tell me about.

First, my own family's. My dad flew a TBF Grumman Avenger torpedo bomber with squadron VT-15 off the USS Essex in the Battle of Leyte Gulf, October 23-26, 1944. This battle was the largest naval battle of World War II and maybe the largest naval battle of all time.

By his actions and those of his mates, Japan "lost four aircraft carriers, three battleships, six heavy and four light cruisers, and eleven destroyers," according to the Wikipedia article, Battle of Leyte Gulf. For his actions in battle, he and his entire squadron were awarded the Navy Cross.

He shipped home soon after V-J (Victory over Japan) day, so in the case of the Navy discharging personnel, this would have to be September 2, 1945, Japan's signing of the surrender document, when World War II in the Pacific ended.

I was born about nine months later, on June 1, 1946.

My dad was a small-town boy raised in Santa Barbara and he went on to matriculate at the University of  California, Santa Barbara, and, later, Berkeley, graduating in 1942. Then he enlisted in the Navy and became a pilot, fulfilling a life-long dream. Family legend has it that, when he was a little boy, his mother had to arrange his string beans into an airplane shape before he would eat them.

In later years, he saved his Navy Cross, but felt ambivalent about it, because it was a reminder of how many people he had killed. The only other thing I know about that he saved from the war, besides a stray ribbon bar or two, was his map of the Pacific on a silk scarf, which airmen carried in case the plane went down.

But he suffered from what we now know as PTSD (Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder) until he died young of a household accident in 1970.

Blizzard

My plan was to write a post on the word "snow" (done) and then maybe do a series of posts on related words: "blizzard," "ice," "winter," and so on. But, as you may know by now, my plans "gang aft agley," and, in this case, that is because the etymology of "blizzard" is somewhat unclear and I spent some time trying to figure out how to write this up.

One thing we're pretty sure of is that "blizzard" is an American, not English, word. And, we're not certain, but it may be onomatopoetic (favorite word of newby English students), which just means that the word sounds like what it describes. So a bee makes a buzzing sound as it flies from flower to flower, and a blizzard makes a "blizzing" sound as high winds and snows lash the prairie.

A blizzard, as defined by the National Weather Service, is "a severe snowstorm characterized by strong winds causing blowing snow that results in low visibilities," or, as I would amend it, "low visibility," and helpfully adds: "The difference between a blizzard and a snowstorm is the strength of the wind, not the amount of snow."

Now, in my opinion, this definition could be clearer. "Blizzard" is defined as a "severe snowstorm," but, if you look up "snowstorm"in the National Weather Service Glossary, that word is not listed at all. A dead end. The kind of dead end a word nerd hates most of all.

At any rate, the Oxford English Dictionary claims that, although the word had appeared in print earlier from time to time, "blizzard" came into currency in the Dakota Territory during the winter of 1880-1881. O. C. Bates, of the Estherville, Iowa, Northern Vindicator newspaper, used the word "blizzard" on 23 April 1870 to describe the harsh snowstorms of that fall and winter.

Now we hit the jackpot. The winter of 1880-1881 is the long winter described by Laura Ingalls Wilder in her book of the same name, written in the 1930s and published in 1940. She uses the word "blizzard."

At the Big Slough on his farm, Pa observes that the muskrats have built the walls of their den extra thick and, soon after, at the general store in town, he encounters a Native American (or "Indian," as Pa calls him) who has come into town to warn the settlers of the impending harsh winter.

Pa decides to move his family into town, and it's a good thing, too. According to information in the National Archives, Eliza Jane Wilder moved to the town with her family, including her younger brother, Almanzo, who would become Laura's husband, and she reported that many families froze to death that winter.

One of Garth Williams's illustrations from the Long Winter.