On May 3, 1915, shortly after losing a friend in Ypres, Belgium, a Canadian doctor, Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae wrote his now-famous poem after seeing poppies growing in battle-scarred fields.
Alexis Helmer, a close friend, was killed during the battle on May 2. McCrae performed the burial service himself, where he noticed how poppies quickly grew around the graves of those who died at Ypres. The next day, he composed the poem while sitting in the back of an ambulance at an Advanced Dressing Station outside Ypres.
In Flanders fields, the poppies blow Between the crosses, row on row, That mark our place; and in the sky The larks, still bravely singing, fly Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the Dead. Short days ago We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow, Loved and were loved, and now we lie In Flanders fields.
Take up our quarrel with the foe: To you, from failing hands, we throw The torch; be yours to hold it high. If ye break faith with us who die We shall not sleep, though poppies grow In Flanders fields.
As the Nazis did in Europe, the Japanese Imperial Army had concentration camps in the Pacific. The Asian camps were nearly as horrific as the European ones, and the conditions were inhumane, nonetheless.
This is just a side note, but I did notice, while researching, none of the Pacific camps were referred to as camps in occupied countries. For example, the Tjideng camp was stated as being in the Dutch East Indies, not the occupied Dutch East Indies.
For this piece, I am focusing on those camps in the Dutch East Indies (presently named Indonesia).
Throughout East Asia, the Japanese set up concentration camps, also called Jap Camps. The Japanese in the Dutch East Indies detained approximately 42,000 soldiers and 100,000 civilians. Families were separated; the men were placed in different camps from the women and children. Malnutrition, disease, and abuse caused tens of thousands of casualties. More than ten per cent of the Allied citizens (mainly British, American, and Dutch) in Japanese captivity—died.
During the Japanese occupation of the Dutch East Indies from March 1942 to August 1945, Dutch soldiers were interned as prisoners of war in camps at Batavia, Bandoeng, and Tjimahi. The military prisoners of war can be divided into two categories: those who remained in captivity in Java, Sumatra, and Madura, and those who were deported as forced labourers to Thailand, Burma (Myanmar), and Japan. Internment can be further divided into two other categories: civilians and military.
For the Japanese, your status in society did not matter. Among the victims were a great number of Dutch nobility.
The internment by the Japanese of European citizens in the Dutch East Indies was not the same everywhere. In the Outer Regions, quite soon after the occupation began, the entire European civilian population was interned in camps, the men separated from their wives and children.
In Java, the internment issue was more complicated because of the large number of Europeans living there. There, the confinement in camps proceeded in stages. First, in March and April 1942, Dutch civil servants and people from the business community – insofar as they were not necessary for the maintenance of public life – were interned.
In April 1942, all Dutch citizens on Java who were older than 17 years had to register. During registration, a distinction was made between full-blooded Dutch people, the so-called totoks, and Dutch people of mixed descent, the Indo-Europeans or Indos. Almost all of the totoks were eventually interned. The majority of the Indo-Europeans on Java remained free, although many Indonesians also ended up in a camp sooner or later.
Initially, there were large and many small camps scattered all over the archipelago; later the civilian internees were increasingly concentrated in a few very large camps. Urban districts, prisons, barracks, schools, monasteries, and even hospitals were set up as internment camps. Here began a period of internment that would last for many for almost three years or more, during which living conditions deteriorated. Nearly 13,000 people died during the internment.
Tjideng was a camp for women and children during the Second World War, in Batavia (today known as Jakarta, Indonesia).
Batavia came under Japanese control in 1942, and part of the city, called Camp Tjideng, was used for the internment of European (often Dutch) women and children.
Initially, Tjideng was under civilian authority, and the conditions were bearable.
But when the military took over, privileges (such as being allowed to cook for themselves and the opportunity for religious services) were quickly withdrawn. Food preparation was centralised and the quality and quantity of food rapidly declined. Hunger and disease struck, and because no medicines were available, the number of fatalities increased.
The area of Camp Tjideng was over time made smaller and smaller, while it was obliged to accommodate more and more prisoners. Initially, there were about 2,000 prisoners and at the end of the war, there were approximately 10,500, while the territory had been reduced to a quarter of its original size. Every bit of space was used for sleeping, including the unused kitchens and waterless bathrooms.
Former UK Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg’s mother, Hermance, was in Camp Tjideng in Batavia, with her mother and sisters. She remembers having to bow deeply towards Japan at Tenko, “with our little fingers on the side seams of our skirt. If we did not do it properly we were beaten.”
Another punishment, head shaving, was so common that the women would simply wrap a scarf around their bloodied scalp and carry on.
From April 1944, the camp was under the command of Captain Kenichi Sone, who was responsible for many atrocities. After the war, Sone was arrested and sentenced to death on 2 September 1946. The sentence was carried out by a Dutch firing squad in December of that year, after a request for pardon to the Dutch lieutenant governor-general, Hubertus van Mook, was rejected.
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Levie Peper was a son of Abraham Peper and Margaretha Rood. He was born in Amsterdam on 24 June 1874, and he earned his money as a hawker. On 30 March 1905, he married Johanna (Naatje) Vos in Amsterdam, who was born there on 22 April 1871 to her parents Joseph Vos and Marianna Aron Tailleur.
Levie Peper lived with his wife Johanna Vos at Korte Houtstraat 7 second floor in Amsterdam. The couple had six children in total, of whom two died in childhood, Abraham, who died on 11 March 1906, only 1 month old and Joseph on 12 August 1911, just 4 months old. The other members of the Levie Peper family were murdered during the Holocaust.
Both Levie and his wife Johanna were murdered in Auschwitz on 7 December 1942.
All that was left of Levie and his wife was the inventory list of their possessions.
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I watched All Quiet on the Western Front, last night. I thought that November 11 would be the perfect date to watch a World War I movie. It is a very powerful retelling of the story. Although I thoroughly liked the movie, this is not going to be a review of it, suffice to say I do recommend it.
This post is going to be about the man who wrote the book, Im Westen nichts Neues, which was translated into English as All Quiet on the Western front Erich Maria Remarque was born as Erich Paul Remark, his life was everything but quiet. it is also a reflection of how little regard the Nazis had for their World War I heroes.
Remarque was born on June 22nd, 1898, in Westphalia. After a local school and university education, he was drafted aged 18 and sent to Flanders on June 12, 1917.
Remarque was wounded five times within a month of being on the western front, the last during the third battle of Ypres. He began writing in a military hospital about his experiences, supplementing them with stories of fellow injured soldiers.
Remarque was the third of four children of Peter and Anna. His siblings were his older sister Erna, older brother Theodor Arthur (who died in early childhood), and younger sister Elfriede. The spelling of his last name was changed to Remarque when he published All Quiet on the Western Front in honor of his French ancestors and to dissociate himself from his earlier novel Die Traumbude (which he started writing at the age of sixteen and completed, but it was not published, until 1920). His grandfather had changed the spelling from Remarque to Remark in the 19th century.
In 1929, Remarque scored his greatest success with All Quiet on the Western Front. The novel, a lasting tribute to Germany’s “lost generation” that perished in the Great War, became an immediate international bestseller. In Germany alone in 1929, the book sold almost one million copies. It was translated into more than a dozen languages, including English, Chinese, and Dutch.
All Quiet on the Western Front earned Remarque accolades generally from the liberal and leftist press for the work’s pacifist stance. The Nazis and conservative nationalists immediately called it an assault on Germany’s honor, a piece of Marxist propaganda, and the work of a traitor.
That same year, German-born Hollywood producer Carl Laemmle, acquired the rights to make a film of the book. In May 1930, the American film premiered in Los Angeles and won Academy Awards for Best Picture and Best Director. That summer, audiences in France, Britain, and Belgium flocked to the film and it received popular acclaim.
Nearly immediately the Hollywood-made movie ran into trouble in Germany. When it was proposed for showing, a representative of the German Ministry of Defense demanded that its screening be rejected on the grounds that it damaged the country’s image and shed a bad light on the German military. In response, the Berlin censorship office requested Laemmle to edit the film, which was done. Remarque’s former boss, the press and film magnate, and outspoken German nationalist, Alfred Hugenberg, indicated that because of the movie’s alleged anti-German bias it would not be shown in any of his theaters. He subsequently petitioned German president, Paul von Hindenburg, to ban the film.
In December 1930, when the edited and dubbed version of the film was shown to the general public in Berlin, the Nazis sabotaged the event. The Party’s leader in Berlin and its propaganda chief, Joseph Goebbels, organized a riot to disrupt the showing. Outside, SA Stormtroopers intimidated moviegoers, while inside they released stink bombs and mice and harangued the audience. At subsequent showings, the Nazis carried out violent protests. In response to these actions and conservative attacks on the film, the government banned the film. Liberals and socialists condemned the action, but the prohibition lasted until September 1931, when Laemmle produced a more censored version for German audiences.
Remarque left Germany for Switzerland in 1932.
Once in power, Goebbels banned all Remarque’s works, stripped him of his citizenship, and let his Nazi rumor mill claim the author’s birth name, Remark (his grandfather dropped the French spelling), was a reversal of his real, Jewish, name: Kramer. On May 10, 1933, pro-Nazi students consigned his works to the flames during the fiery book-burning spectacles staged throughout the country. Remarque’s writing was publicly declared as unpatriotic and was banned in Germany. Copies were removed from all libraries and restricted from being sold or published anywhere in the country. The 1930s version of cancel culture.
In 1943, the Nazis arrested his youngest sister, German: Elfriede Scholz, who had stayed behind in Germany with her husband and two children. After a trial at the notorious Volksgerichtshof (Hitler’s extra-constitutional “People’s Court”), she was found guilty of “undermining morale” for stating that she considered the war lost. Court President Roland Freisler declared, “Ihr Bruder ist uns leider entwischt—Sie aber werden uns nicht entwischen” (“Your brother is unfortunately beyond our reach – you, however, will not escape us.”) Elfriede was beheaded on 16 December 1943. The bill of 495.80 Reichsmarks was sent to her surviving sister, Erna. Remarque later said that his sister had been involved in anti-Nazi resistance activities.
In exile, Remarque was unaware of his sister Elfriede’s fate until after the war. He would dedicate his 1952 novel Spark of Life (Der Funke Leben) to her. The dedication was omitted in the German version of the book, reportedly because he was still seen as a traitor by some Germans
In 1944, Remarque wrote a report for America’s Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the country’s foreign intelligence organization and the forerunner to today’s Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). In it, he urged the Allies to adopt a systematic policy for re-educating the German population after the war. Germans, he believed, had to be exposed to Nazi crimes and evils of militarism.
When you watch the movie, and I hope you will, or read the book then please remember it is not just a bit of cultural history, but also something that is still current. That hate has never left, it just came back in different configurations.
(Many thanks to John Davis for pointing out the story to me, and Jackie Frant for doing some research on it)
I am passionate about my site and I know you all like reading my blogs. I have been doing this at no cost and will continue to do so. All I ask is for a voluntary donation of $2, however if you are not in a position to do so I can fully understand, maybe next time then. Thank you.
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[First published 14 March 2022—Updated 25 March 2023]
Last week the Six Nations Rugby tournament finished. Ireland won the tournament and the grand slam. The previous champion France came second.
I came across a story of a former French Rugby player, I am surprised that so little is known about him.
Allan Muhr was murdered on December 29 1944, he was starved to death at Neuengamme Concentration Camp near Hamburg.
Born to a wealthy Jewish family in Philadelphia in 1882, Allan, who had recently come of age, travelled on his own to France around the turn of the century. “Allan Muhr planned to fully devote himself to sport in Europe,” explains Fréderic Humbert, an expert in rugby history and the curator of the World Rugby Museum who has researched what happened to Allan Muhr. “He could afford to do that as he lived off his family’s assets and never needed to work. Sport, therefore, became the central element in his life.”
He appears in the 1900 US Census but made a rapid impact on his adopted homeland.
A profile written in 1907 recorded that the newly arrived Muhr enrolled at the prestigious Lycee Janson—taking elementary French classes—purely for the purpose to play rugby, but injured his shoulder during his first match. Despite this setback, he was rapidly a force at Racing Club, playing second row or prop and earning the nickname “The Sioux” for his origins and distinctive profile.
Evidently, he had the time and money necessary to devote himself to a range of sporting activities. While his professions are listed as translation and sporting journalism, he does not appear to have been encumbered by the pressing need to earn a living. That 1907 profile reported that “He amazes us because he is not the slave of any bureau chief or other boss or editor, still less of the rulers of the USFSA (the French sporting authorities of the time). He does what he pleases when he pleases.”
At the same time, the profile noted, he was “a slave to his passion for rugby,”, besides which his enthusiasms for motoring and tennis were mere pastimes. That passion was rewarded when he was chosen for France’s first-ever test match—against the All Blacks on New Year’s Day 1906. Muhr appears at the back of the French team picture, a skull-capped figure alongside touch judge Cyril Rutherford, the Scot who played such a huge part in the early development of French rugby.
At the same time, Allan was a successful tennis player – even participating in the French championships in 1909. In February 1913, he was an active founding member of the International Tennis Association in London. He also took part in car racing as an amateur and played in a Parisian soccer club. Allan even attempted to establish baseball in France, but this was unsuccessful.
Playing second-row alongside the French Guyanese Georges Jerome, one of two black players in the team, Muhr did well enough in the 38–8 defeat to retain his place for France’s first-ever match against England, on March 22 that year. France lost again, 35–8, but Muhr claimed France’s first try against the old enemy, crossing after brilliant work by Stade Francais centre Pierre Maclos.
During World War I, Allan led a voluntary unit of ambulance drivers who transported the wounded soldiers from the front to the American Ambulance Hospital, which had been founded by Americans in Paris when the war broke out. When the USA entered the war in 1917, this organization was integrated into the US Army, and so Allan also became an officer in the American armed forces.
In 1920, Allan ended his career as an active sportsman and dedicated himself to organizing international competitions and developing the French teams in rugby and tennis. He became the vice chairman of the first European Omni Sports Club, Racing Club de France, and captain of the French “Davis Cup” tennis team, which led to international success. He also managed the rugby department of the Racing Club and selected the players for the French national rugby team. When the Olympic Games were hosted in France in 1924, Allan was responsible for organizing the competition and conducting international negotiations.
When war came again in 1939, Muhr reprised his volunteer role with the Red Cross. He was 57 at the time and was married to his Belgian wife, Madeleine Braet.
After the USA entered the war in 1941, he had to go underground to flee from the German occupying forces. He took his son. Philippe with him. Together with other US citizens and members of the French Resistance, they stayed in Sayat, a small village in the Auvergne, for a year before being captured by the Nazis on 21 November 1943. They were taken to the camp at Compiegne where they were interrogated. Allan and Philippe were deported to the Neuengamme in May 1944, where Allan had been starved to death, and died on 29 December 1944. His son Philippe survived the war.
Allan’s services to France were not forgotten. After the war, he received a posthumous award of the Legion d’Honneur—the least he merited for a life which, while it ended under unspeakably grim circumstances, was one of the most varied and eventful in rugby’s annals.
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Les Morts Dansant is a 1984 song by Magnum. from their classic album “On a Storytellers night” The song was initially called “Cannon”, this Tony Clarkin composition is about one of the horrors of war. In World War I, a surprising – some would say disgraceful – number of British soldiers were executed by firing squad for cowardice. Many of these men were in fact suffering from shell shock.
Although it is about World War I, I believe it applies to all wars, past and present.
” Cannons roared, in the valley they thundered While the guns lit up the night Then it rained and both sides wondered Who is wrong and who is right?
On the wire like a ragged old scarecrow Bloody hands and broken back When they fire, see him pirouette solo Jump in time to the rat-a-tat
What a night though it’s one of seven What a night for the dancing dead What a night to be called to heaven What a picture to fill your head To fill your head
By the wall in silhouette standing Through a flash of sudden light Cigarette from his mouth just hanging Paper square to his heart pinned tight
Gather ’round, reluctant marksmen One of them to take his life With a smile he gives them pardon Leaves the dark and takes the light
What a night though it’s one of seven What a night for the dancing dead What a night to be called to heaven What a picture to fill your head To fill your head.
They dispatch their precious cargo And knock him back right off his feet And they pray may no one follow Better still to face the beast
When the field has become a garden And the wall has stood the test Children play and the dogs run barking Who would think or who would guess?
What a night though it’s one of seven Le mort dansant What a night for the dancing dead What a night to be called to heaven What a picture to fill your head To fill your head
What a night though it’s one of seven Les mort dansant What a night for the dancing dead What a night to be called to heaven What a picture to fill your head What a night
What a night though it’s one of seven Les mort dansant What a night for the dancing dead What a night to be called to heaven, heaven What a picture to fill your head
Growing up in the Netherlands there was a tradition on Good Friday. Every year on Good Friday the Dutch radio would play the ‘Top 100 of all time’, basically the greatest songs ever recorded. The majority would be rock songs.
The top 4 would always be ‘Child in Time’ by Deep Purple; ‘Stairway to Heaven’ by Led Zeppelin; ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ by Queen, and ‘Hotel California’ by The Eagles.
I would be totally happy with these 4 songs in the top spots, sometimes the sequence of the position would change but I didn’t care about that, because they also happened to be my favourite songs of all time. I would find it difficult enough to place them in a sequence of 1 to 4.
Then Metallica decided to release the album “… And justice for all” on the album was a track called ‘One’ of 7.27 minutes long. How dared they messing up my 4 favourite songs. Immediately after I heard the song for the 1st time, all the others were put in a shadows. Decades of finding the 4 perfect songs for me, destroyed.
Recently I went for a walk, as I would do for every walk I plug in my earplugs into the phone, select the music player, and listen to the music whilst on the walk. This time however, I was nearly home when ‘One’ came up on the player. it forced me to extend my walk by 7+ minutes. 7 minutes of missing out on a lovely cup of coffee.
That, ladies and gentleman. is why I hate ‘One’ by Metallica so much. Because the song is addictive and it is impossible not to love.
Even the video is so compelling to watch. It is intercut with scenes taken from the 1971 anti-war film ‘Johnny Got His Gun’.
In this tragic, dark, anti-war movie , a patriotic young American in WW1 is rendered blind, deaf, limbless, and mute by a horrific artillery shell attack, played by Timothy Bottoms. Trapped in what’s left of his body, he desperately looks for a way to end his life.
Metallica could have taken scenes from any other war movie but no they had to choose ‘Johnny Got His Gun’ ,written and directed by Dalton Trumbo.
Dalton Trumbo, the Oscar-winning screenwriter, arguably the most talented, most famous of the blacklisted film professionals known to history as the Hollywood 10. How did Metallica know that aside from music my other passion is History? How did they know I would be compelled to research that video? In a pre internet and Google era, that was not an easy task.
I am sorry to do this to all of you but I have no choice but to end this piece with that notorious piece pf music I hate so much, and yet I love it more then any other piece of music.
David Friedmann’s story is not just a story of dealing with the horrors of the Holocaust but also a story of a second chance and hopes despite immense grief and hardships.
The artist David Friedmann was born in Mährisch Ostrau, Austria (now Ostrava, Czech Republic), but moved to Berlin in 1911. In 1944, Friedman was separated from his wife and daughter, never seeing them again, and was transferred to Auschwitz-Birkenau. Friedman survived his internment at the extermination camp. After the war he married fellow survivor Hildegard Taussig. After living in Israel for five years, the family immigrated to the United States in 1954, eventually becoming citizens and settling in St. Louis, where he worked as a commercial artist for an advertising company, later retiring in 1962
But rather me telling his story ,it is much better if this story is told by someone who was very close to him. His daughter Miriam Friedman Morris.
I had some email correspondence with Miriam before the interview and had asked her a few questions. I would like to share her answers
“I would like to know though how he felt from being a decorated artist during WW1 and a well established and a renowned artist in Berlin, to having to flee his adopted hometown in 1938 because of the rise of Nazism?
David Friedmann’s talent for portraiture played a central role throughout his career and saved his life during the Holocaust. His art weaves a tapestry of the joys and horrors he experienced, witnessed, and chronicled. My father’s works are imbued with an added sense of historical accuracy, one made all the more resonate by his firsthand experience of some of the most important events in the 20th century. Numerous catastrophic interruptions took him away from his art. David Friedman painted for his life—from the trenches of World War I, under threat of Nazi SS officers and through his postwar journey from Czechoslovakia to Israel and finally, the United States. His work exemplifies defiance in the face of persecution, loss and tragedy. His art would not be silent. My father’s artwork shines a light on a dynamic life crushed by the Nazis and his indomitable inner strength to paint again.
What kept him going even after his first wife and child had been murdered?
My father wrote a diary for me when I was born. He begins with the loss of his wife and child. He had to overcome his crippling grief to build a new life. I turned the pages and saw carefully placed photos and newspaper articles in-between text with pointing arrows. He wrote about his first postwar art exhibition in Jan. 1946 and befriending a young woman named Hildegard Taussig. I learned the courageous stories of two heroes, my mother and father.
Undoubtedly he used his art as a way of therapy, but aside of his art did he talk about the horrors he witnessed to you and your mother?
No, for my father, it was too painful. He had locked his feelings in a kind of jail and closed the door. My mother told some info about my father’s first family, but mostly I learned about his life from his art. After my father’s death, my father’s diary was transcribed. I learned a great deal more about his life and even found clues to help in the search for lost artwork. The lost pieces of a renowned painter and graphics artist confirm the brilliant career the Nazis could not destroy.
After his retirement from commercial art in the early 1960’s, he returned to the Holocaust. Disturbed by the fact that people were forgetting the Holocaust, my father believed it was his obligation to make an indelible statement to all humankind. He wanted to impress upon their consciousness the ruthless persecution, torment, and atrocities practiced by the Nazis, so that it would never happen again. His tortured recollections would be transferred to paper and show the dehumanization and suffering of the Jew under Nazi rule. There would be no imagery or symbolism; his art would show the reality that only a victim could produce.
“I wish everyone had to take a good look at the artwork. They have to look at what persecution under the Nazi regime was, and it can happen again, for in America to be a Nazi, to be a Communist is not prohibited. Against an evil world I will work further and try to put my feelings down on canvas or paper against antisemitism, against race hatred of all people.”
Some of the paintings of ” the Because They Were Jews!” exhibition haunt me and are very powerful.
This is the response my father would have wanted to never forget the Holocaust”
On August 29,1944 David Friedmann was put on a transport from Lodz to Auschwitz Birkenau.
Painting by David Friedmann(courtesy of Miriam Friedman Morris)
It is the duty of all of us to never forget the Holocaust, because it can so easily happen again.
I believe it is very important to keep history alive, but unfortunately that is not free. However I will not ask to pay for subscription , but if you want to donate it is very much appreciated, but only of you can
This most be one of the most intriguing WWII stories,not is it only one of those rare positive WWII stories it also ties in to WWI and the effects of it still apply today.
We have no name for this hero, all we know him as is J.D. . We know of J.D is that he was a Polish immigrant who worked as a steel worker in the US. We also know he had Lymphoma which is a blood cancer that develop from lymphocytes (a type of white blood cell). He was terminally ill and did not have long to live. He was incased in tumors.
J.D was the first patient to be treated with a Chemotherapy.
Milton Winternitz at Yale, who had worked on sulfur mustards in WWI, managed to get a contract to study the chemistry of the mustard compounds from the U.S. Office of Scientific Research and Development. He approached two pharmacologists from the Yale School of Medicine, Louis S. Goodman and Alfred Gilman, to investigate potential therapeutic applications of chemical warfare agents.
Goodman and Gilman’s initial plan was to create anti dotes to mustard gas.They were afraid of a repeat of WWI. They discovered that soldiers who had been exposed to Mustard gas in WWI had a surprisingly low whit blood cell count.
They then reasoned that this agent could be used to treat lymphoma. Initially they set up an animal model by creating lymphomas in mice and showed they could treat them with mustard agents. Next, in co-operation with a thoracic surgeon, Gustaf Lindskog, they injected a related agent, mustine (the prototype nitrogen mustard anticancer chemotherapeutic), into the patient only known as J.D. He had volunteered for the test he had non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. He got his first injection on August 27 at 10.00 AM, 1943 They noticed a dramatic reduction in the patient’s tumor masses .Although the effect lasted only a few weeks, and the patient had to return for another set of treatment, it would the first step to the realization that cancer could be treated by pharmacological agents.
Although J.D’s life was only prolonged for a few months it had given him at least a few reasonably good months.
Although the study was concluded in 1943 , due to the secrecy associated with the war gas program, the results were not published until 1946.the publication of the first clinical trials was reported on October 6 1946 in the New York Times.
All the chemo therapies that followed work bascially on the same mechanism.
If it had not been for J.D. the treatment for cancer may have been completely different today. Therfore I believe he really was a WWII Hero.
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History of Sorts 
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