I try to be amused…
History may not repeat itself, but it rhymes
– Mark Twain
A newsletter about the moments the news, life, times and absurdities rhyme with the past or, stranger still, the present
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Babe Ruth’s World War I Draft Registration
Despite the hoarding habits of certain federal officials, the National Archives still has a big inventory. Military history stuff. And baseball stuff. It marked the start of spring training, for example, by publishing Babe…
World War II’s Guests: Enemy Soldiers Living in the U.S.
Like, 425,000 of Them I’ve been talking to book clubs and groups about “Something Like Treason,” which, of course, is about some pro-German U.S. soldiers during World War II. Until climate change became evident to enough people, World War II…
The strange allure of World War II and meat-grinding
One Man’s War is another Man’s Movie I do love World War II. No, not the meat-grinding blood, torture, cruelty, death, and heartache that it was. But let some character seem to die or spy in a war book, movie…
Only SOMETHING like treason?
I thought I had settled on a good book title. Among other things, however, it also seemed to produce an apparently irresistible urge for people to ask, “why was it only something like treason.” World War II was well before…
Flattery always enthusiastically embraced
When I was researching the book, I ran across a really interesting military historian named Fred Borch. I cited some of his work in “Something Like Treason.” Now I’m ready to do something modest like worship at his feet because…
The Disloyal Misfits Camped Next To The 10th Mountain Division
And a new generation of literally cold warriors It’s less bizarre this time, but the Army is buying “skis, snowshoes, large tents and other equipment to train troops on cold-weather survival” again. This time it doesn’t have to share a…
Chaplain Arrested by Military Police
The Army Times called it “in a perfect encapsulation of 21st century life on Kuwait’s Camp Buehring, a Pennsylvania Army National Guard chaplain was handcuffed and hauled off by military police.”