Stoneage Ramblings

By John R. Stone

With the recent events in Israel and Gaza, and Ukraine as well, we probably have a right to be nervous about what might be coming, especially in the Middle East which appears to be on edge.

My current reading project is about events in Europe and Pacific Ocean in 1943, 80 years ago. It is an interesting comparison to today.

In 1943 Nazi Germany had taken over France, Eastern Europe, was bombing England and also invading Russia. Japan had attacked Pearl Harbor, was invading China and capturing islands throughout the Pacific.

The United States was being pressured to get involved in Europe and was already involved in helping England fight the Germans in North Africa. It was also being pressured to do more in the Pacific by helping China fight off the Japanese. And the Japanese had taken over part of the Philippines and taken U.S. troops captive. Russia was seeking U.S. help wanting the U.S. to land troops in France which would cause Germany to lessen its pressure on Russia.

Things were a mess.

In 1939 the U.S. Army had fewer than 200,000 personnel and little had been spent on the navy since WWI. Many troops needed to be recruited or drafted and they needed to be trained. Aircraft were going to be a big factor in what was coming so the U.S. needed aircraft for its own defense while England was seeking aircraft and ships to protect itself and bomb Germany while the whole pacific theatre needed aircraft as the only efficient way of covering large distances along with more ships to fend off the Japanese navy.

Everybody wanted everything at once.

And yet the nation worked through all of the issues. Men and women were recruited and trained for military services, construction of ships, aircraft, artillery, jeeps, trucks and more were undertaken in great volumes.

The need for all these things stretched out the war. Military leaders, for example, wanted to invade France to push Germans back as early as 1942 but the lack of manpower and equipment postponed that until June of 1944.

The same issue applied to the war in the Pacific, that and the fact that war was spread out over thousands of miles and hundreds of islands in that ocean.

Eighty years ago the tools of war were much different. There were no missiles that could hit a target with pinpoint accuracy, jet fighters, drones, nuclear bombs (until 1945 and then only the U.S. had them) and more. Communication was much more limited, there were no satellites to beam signals or take images from above.

German V1 rockets were flying bombs without currently sophisticated guidance systems, their engines would quit when a counter determined they had covered the preset distance, which meant they dropped somewhere in a 31-mile circumference. That was later improved to seven miles.

What was the same as previous conflicts were the men and women on the ground who confronted the enemy face to face, the ugliest part of warfare.

It seems strange now to look back at our current relationships with Russia and China and to think that at one time they desperately needed our help and we gave it to them. Japan and Germany are now a couple of our strongest allies.

WWII physically devastated many countries and killed or wounded millions or combatants and civilians. I don’t think any of us would want to go into something like that again, even though most of us were not around for WWII or were too young to remember much.

Let’s hope and pray that level heads prevail and these issues can be resolved without more conflict. That will take some doing, but we’re capable of it if we can sit down and work our way through it.

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The walnut harvest is nearing its end, thankfully. Our single black walnut tree has yielded over 330 gallons of walnuts so far.