STORY GIST 247

 Secretary of the Navy Carlos Del Toro announced last week that the future Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer DDG-142 will be named USS Charles J. French, after Navy Mess Specialist 1st Class Petty Officer Charles Jackson French. Known for his heroic actions in the Pacific Theater of World War II, French saved 15 of his shipmates after their high-speed transport was sunk in combat during the Battle of Guadalcanal. Hailed as the “Human Tugboat” and “Hero of the Solomons,” Charles French was an African American man born in Foreman, Arkansas, Sept. 25, 1919.  He joined the Navy as a mess attendant before the United States formally entered World War II, and served four years aboard the Hawaii-based heavy cruiser USS Houston (CA 30). French left the service after his tour aboard Houston, but reenlisted four days after the bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941. He was assigned to USS Gregory (APD 3) in March 1942. On the night of Sept. 4, 1942, in the vicinity of the Solomon Isl...

 The Farmer Remembers the Somme’ When trawling through libraries that bulge with books chronicling the Great War, it’s always a treat to undercover a piece of writing that truly moves me.  And this rare writing possesses the qualities of: sober clarity; simple words to conjure up strong imagery; telling insights into the human condition; and the ability to immerse you in its narrative.  Vance Palmer’s ‘The Farmer Remembers the Somme’ possesses all these qualities. I still remember feeling winded when I first read its final verse:  ‘I have returned to these: The farm, and the kindly Bush, and the young calves lowing; But all that my mind sees Is a quaking bog in a mist - stark, snapped trees, And the dark Somme flowing.’ An aspiring writer, Palmer enlisted in the AIF in 1918, but never saw active service. He returned home and penned his verse in 1920.  It acutely captured the mood of returning veterans ‘not being able to settle down’ or ‘having a go at everything...

 The Hand that Fate Deals.’ Robert Archer was in a bad way. It was September 1917, and the battle raged all around him, as he lay, wounded, in the Passchendaele mud.  His injuries were serious: shrapnel had tore into his temple, leg and arm.  The two German prisoners tasked with carrying him to an aid station had bolted back to their own lines.  He lay out there for two days, until a fellow soldier reported that ‘Bob Archer is out there and still breathing.’ It prompted three mates to rescue him. Yet it was too late save his sight. He was completely blind. Both eyes were removed and he was sent to St Dunstan’s in England to recover. But it could have been worse. Robert’s leather wallet had stopped a bullet. Here, his daughter Joan Matthews peers through the bullet-hole shot through the image of her aunt.  After returning to Australia, Robert remained close friends with his battlefield rescuers, and Joan later married Jim, the son of one of the rescuers, Reuben M...

 Two former Ravensbrück concentration guards were hanged at Hameln prison in Germany on this day in 1948. They were Emma Zimmer and Ida Schreiter. Emma Anna Maria Zimmer was born Emma Mezel on the 14th of August 1888 at Haßmersheim in Germany. In 1938, she became an Aufseherin (guard) at Lichtenburg concentration camp at Prettin, near Wittenberg in Saxony, which housed female prisoners from 1937 to 1939, when they and she were transferred to the new camp at Ravensbrück. In 1941 Zimmer selected mentally ill prisoners for euthanasia at the Bernberg Euthanasia Center, where they were gassed with carbon monoxide.  In October 1942 she became assistant camp leader (SS-Stellvertretende Oberaufseherin) at Auschwitz II (Birkenau).  Normally Aufseherinnen had to retire at 45 but Zimmer was allowed to stay on until January 1945, when she was dismissed, either due to her age or her alcoholism. Zimmer was convicted of maltreating prisoners and making selections for the gas chamber at ...

 Execution by cannon in Shiraz, Iran, circa 1890s. The prisoner is generally tied to a gun with the upper part of the small of his back resting against the muzzle. When the gun is fired, his head is seen to go straight up into the air some forty or fifty feet; the arms fly off right and left, high up in the air, and fall at, perhaps, a hundred yards distance; the legs drop to the ground beneath the muzzle of the gun; and the body is literally blown away altogether. "Blown from a gun" was a punishment often used by colonial powers against locals who believed their body parts must be together to enter the afterlife.  It was reserved as a special punishment when just death wasn't enough. Local feral dogs would usually eat the pieces of the dead that could be found. Related Top 15 most evil men in history  2. Adolf Hitler Hitler was Chancellor of Germany from 1933 to his death in 1945, becoming Germany’s Fuhrer. Before he gained power, he wanted to be an artist, but he failed...

 John Sparshott - hanged for sodomy. 19 year old John Sparshott (or Spershott) was the son of the village miller, John Sparshott Snr.  He was the third to last person hanged for the offence of sodomy in England and Wales.  He had been convicted of an “unnatural offence” committed at Mid Lavant near Chichester in West Sussex.   It would appear that in reality the crime was a homosexual rape of nine year old George Howard and this is why the case was taken so seriously. Sparshott was tried and convicted at the Sussex Assizes at Lewis on Monday the 10th of August 1835 before Mr. Justice Park.  The newspapers of the day reported the conviction and sentence but stated that “the evidence is unfit for publication”, as it was considered too revolting. At noon on Saturday the 22nd of August 1835, Sparshott and 33 year old Richard Sheppard who had been convicted of three counts of burglary, were hanged on the “New Drop” gallows set up on the gatehouse roof of Horsham...

 Gassed: In arduis fidelis (Faithful in difficult times), by Gilbert Rogers, 1919. Today 108 years ago, on April 22, 1915, the Second Battle of Ypres began, marking the first use of poisonous chlorine gas in warfare.  Since 1914 the Germans had been experimenting with chlorine gas and its potential of breaking the trench stalemate on the Western Front. They planned to use it for the first time at Ypres, where it was hoped a breakthrough would be achieved. The attack was also meant to divert Allied attention from the Eastern Front. On April 22, 1915, following a brief artillery bombardment, the Germans released 168 tons of chlorine gas on the Allied lines at Ypres, held by French Algerian and Moroccan troops. They thought the gas was a smokescreen and were therefore taken completely by surprise when the gas reached their trenches. Some 10,000 French troops were gassed, half dying within 10 minutes, and survivors blinded. In panic the soldiers fled their positions, opening a 7 k...