Too Big to Forget: World War II Anniversaries

 
On the cold first day of January 2015, I stood on the tarmac at the Birmingham, Alabama, airport at 10:24 a.m. Like a colt in a bare, winter meadow, the wind blew freely around the runways. The Delta personnel on the ground passed around earplugs to each of our small group of about 10, explaining that when the plane turned off the runway to pull into its slot, it would be loud. We spotted the plane coming in for a landing from the east. My sister was on that flight in order to join our group; when she boarded in Atlanta, she introduced herself to Major Choi as instructed. They would be the only passengers to exit the plane until the ceremony ended.

 
 
The flight was bringing the remains of my father’s first cousin, Major Peyton Mathis, Jr., home at last after being MIA and presumed dead for 70 years. Major Choi was on the flight to escort those remains, to be transferred to the family with the Honor Guard on the ground, in a formal ceremony, as the Delta passengers watched from their windows. (See the previous post for details leading to this Homecoming.) This formal military ceremony was structured, yes, but very moving and emotional; members of our small group were not the only ones to fight back tears.

The military Honor Guard, with Major Choi, transport Mathis’s remains from the plane, to be transferred to the waiting family.

,
I wondered, “This is the first day of the 70^th anniversary of the end of World War II. Could this New Year’s Day ceremony for Peyton be the first event of this anniversary year?”
 
Many Alabama news outlets ran this bitter-sweet story of a U.S. flyer returning to his home to be laid to rest after 70 years hidden on Guadalcanal; it also ran in a few national print publications. But none remarked on its place in the context of this year’s anniversary.
Oh, yes, anniversaries of all stripes come and go and come and go. Some anniversaries go out with a whimper; some, like one’s birthday, simply end. Some are simply too big to be ignored; they should arrive as a supernova, having built up over the eons like those mega-dense white dwarf stars in our Universe that carry a dense mass disguised by its camouflaged power. I hope that the next five years of World War II anniversaries do not pass unwatched until we look around only to realize we have lost all those veterans and sufferers and survivors and wives and support workers who link us to such a monumental history lesson. I hope fervently that my granddaughters, who will be young adults when the 100^th Anniversary of World War II arrives, will feel deeply their direct connection to that history.

 
 
To have even childhood memories of World War II, you have to have been born before about 1938. My father returned home in 1945; I was short of two. Even Baby Boomers, born between 1944 and 1964, could have only indirect memories, and it’s frightening to think how few of that group will still be around to celebrate the 75^th and 100^th anniversaries.
World War II -- its history, its lessons for humanity, its survivors and its fallen -- is simply too important to fade into a misty past.
 

Auschwitz
If only one event could stand for all the lessons the War holds for humanity, it would be this one:
On January 27, a weather event in the northeast captivated the media and their viewers/listeners for hours and days while a truly monumental event was taking place in Poland. That day marked the 70^th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz and Birkenau Nazi death camps. Some 300 survivors were there, and many expressed their sorrowful recognition that fewer and fewer will be able to attend future anniversaries. Many expressed their greatest fear – not that they would not be able to attend future anniversaries, but that humanity could forget.
Seventy years ago that day, a contingent of the Russian Army arrived at Auschwitz not knowing what they were going to find. What they found was beyond gruesome, beyond horror, beyond human.
Survivor Roman Kent presented his moving account of his experience with his call to remember:

I am often asked how long I was in Auschwitz. My answer is I do not know. But what I do know is that one minute in Auschwitz was like a day; a day was like a year; a month, an eternity. How many eternities can one person have in a single lifetime. I don’t know that either.
“Remember”: this was the work my father frequently uttered to me during the Holocaust. . . . How can I ever forget. . .? I wondered if the cries from youngsters [torn from their mothers] ever penetrated Heaven’s Gate. . . .We survivors DO NOT WANT OUR PAST TO BE OUR CHILDREN’S FUTURE. . . .

Kent quoted from Primo Levi’s excruciating Survival in Auschwitz (1947), as he repeated the need to never forget.
Levi defined how Auschwitz should be remembered in a 1986 interview with The New Republic:

The war can be explained, but Auschwitz has nothing to do with the war; it was not an episode in it, nor an extreme form of it. War is always a terrible fact, to be deprecated; but it is in us, it has its rationality, we “understand” it. There is no rationality in the Nazi hatred. It is a hate that is not in us; it is outside man, it is a poison fruit sprung form the deadly trunk of fascism, although outside and beyond fascism itself. If understanding is impossible, however, knowledge is imperative, because what happened could happen again. Conscience can be seduced and obscured again: even our consciences.

 
Other Resources:
The 2005 PBS “Frontline” presentation Memory of the Camps, created from footage found in stored in a vault of London's Imperial War Museum, can be viewed on line here.
HBO’s “Night Will Fall,” made from the original footage taken by British film makers, under the direction of Alfred Hitchcock, is currently running; check for local airing times. We must remember.

 

BuzzNet Tags: Peyton Mathis,crash site,Honor Guard ceremony,Auschwitz liberation,WWII MIA,Night Will Fall,WWII anniversaries,Roman Kent,Survivor in Auschwitz,Primo Levi

WWII Hero, MIA for 70 Years, Comes Home

Special Introduction: I’ve shared a several posts over the past couple of years about the discovery of my father’s WWII P-51 fighter plane high atop a Tyrolean glacier. That story began 70 years ago in Feb 1945; dad bailed out, succeeded in descending the mountain, was cared for by some villagers in the valley below, and spent the rest of the war in a German prison camp. His story reached a resolution of sorts this past summer when my sister and I visited the valley, got a view of the crash site and met with villagers who remember dad.

A parallel story about dad’s first cousin Peyton Mathis has been developing over those same 70 years. His story began a few months before dad’s plane went down, and now comes to its resolution this week. My first cousin Emory Kimbrough has done the research and made the contacts with the people involved in this story. Here it is:

 

By guest writer, Emory Kimbrough

 

World War II pilot, Major Peyton Spottswood Mathis, Jr., USAAF, will be returned home to Montgomery, Alabama, after seventy years as MIA on Guadalcanal. On the morning of January 1, 2015, the plane carrying Mathis’ remains will land in Birmingham, where a special escort will release the casket in a ceremonial transfer to the family and funeral director. An escorted motorcade to Greenwood cemetery in Montgomery will follow the transfer.

 

Mathis will be laid to rest next to his father and near his mother and step-mother in a formal military burial ceremony at 2 p.m., January 3, 2015, at Greenwood cemetery.

 

 

As commanding officer of the 44^th Fighter Squadron, Mathis was returning with his squadron on June 5, 1944, to Kukum Field on Guadalcanal, after a bombing mission on Japanese facilities was recalled. Mathis suffered an engine failure in his P-38J. After jettisoning his two 500-pound bomb clusters into the sea, he instructed his squadron to land ahead of him.

Mathis on Guadalcanal

Mathis flew over the airfield and turned into a landing pattern. For unknown reasons he aborted his final turn and flew south. He was last seen from the airfield disappearing behind hills. Another pilot flying an A-24 saw Mathis’ fighter flip on its back and crash into a ravine. The squadron’s maintenance and engineering officer led a search party in a difficult four to five hour push through the jungle to reach the crash site. They found the aircraft nose-down in a swampy creek with only the tail booms exposed. Pvt. G. H. Hanna swam down six to eight feet to reach the submerged cockpit, but was unable to free Mathis. Exhausted and lacking tools, the search party returned to the airfield.

On February 10, 1949, a Graves Registration company attempted to locate and recover the remains, but the crash site could not be found. The P-38 had likely settled into the swamp, and the crash site was lost to history.

The mystery remained for seven decades until a farmer clearing land for planting saw some metal sticking up out of a swamp. The farmer, Eddy Aku, contacted Anders Markwarth, an Australian resident of Guadalcanal known for recovering military artifacts. Eddy led Markwarth to the swamp at night to keep the site secret from anyone who might harvest the metal without permission or respect for the pilot’s remains.

Aku and his cousin found remains at the site, and within days, the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command (JPAC) arrived, beginning a year-long procedure to definitively identify the remains found in and near the cockpit. With the aid of local Solomon Islanders, JPAC constructed sandbag dams to pump out water for investigation and recovery. The remains were transferred to Hawaii. Evidence from forensic anthropology and military records would be investigated, along with DNA testing against a sample from a relative of Mathis’ mother, Laura Davis Mathis.

                                                       The JPAC team working at Maj. Peyton Mathis’ crash site on Guadalcanal

Mathis had no children, but Peyton Mathis III, of Montgomery, whose father was Mathis’ half-brother, is named in his honor. He has been searching for over a decade for more substantial information about the war hero he was named for. Mathis had been awarded a Distinguished Flying Cross and a Silver Star in North Africa before his tour in the Pacific.

Personnel who helped in the planning for Mathis’ return to Alabama include Karen Johnson with Mortuary Affairs at Fr. Knox, KY, and Major Robert Tindall, Casualty Assistance Officer, Ft. Benning, GA. According to Mathis III, the JPAC team was more thorough than he could have anticipated, explaining why the process took a year to complete.

“It is now quite clear why the I.D process and notification of the family is such a lengthy process. They are so thorough and meticulous that it is almost miraculous that we got our results as quickly as we did. We were given a bound report that documents all of the steps in the discovery and identification process and chronicles the events that started on the day of the crash, June 5, 1944 through basically the present, and Karen literally went through it page by page for our benefit,” said Mathis.

JPAC’s mission is to bring America’s fallen soldiers home, no matter the difficulty or cost. Their teams may go to the jungles of Vietnam and Laos, the deserts of North Africa, Europe, and Korea. These recovery missions sometimes require complex diplomacy, are often difficult, and sometimes dangerous.

Anderson Cooper recently aired a piece on 60 Minutes dealing with a WWII aircraft’s crash site and the pilot’s remains, as well as featuring the group that researches such sites.

 

                                        JPAC recovery missions sometimes require complex diplomacy, are often difficult, and sometimes dangerous.

                                                                                          

The New Year will begin the 70^th Anniversary of the end of WWII, and the year will bring numerous memories, events, memorials, stories, and finally, celebrations. Unhappily, at the same time, the United States is losing its WWII veterans at a high rate. Estimates put the number at 1,000 a day. Some 16 million Americans from all walks of life served in the war to bring an end to the scourge of Hitler’s and Japan’s oppressive forces worldwide.

 

Photos provided by Emory Kimbrough (who restored the oldest pictures), Anders Markwarth, and the JPAC team.

 

 

Technorati Tags: Major Peyton S. Mathis,WWII MIA,WWII crash sites,Guadalcanal,Kukum Field,44th Fighter Squadron,Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command,JPAC

The Liberation of Stalag VII at Moosburg, Part One

 

 

 

 

NOTE: This  account of the liberation of Stalag VIIA at Moosburg, Germany, on April 29, 1945, was posted by Glenn M. Strong nine years ago on the armyairforces.com site  (http://forum.armyairforces.com/Liberation-of-Stalag-VIIA-April-291945-m75144.aspx?high=Stalag+VIIA ) honoring the 60^th Anniversary of the Liberation. An amalgamation of various sources, accounts, conversations, Strong’s piece captures the intense pandemonium, jubilation, and joy of that day. His father was among the POWs liberated. My father, Lt. John Cravey, was also liberated that day. Spittin’ Grits thanks strong for permission to re-post and will run Part Two tomorrow.

 

 

 

It is 0600, 29 April. The attack of Combat Command A is due to be resumed at this moment. The command post is located in Puttenhausen, Germany.

 
The 47th Tank Battalion is eight miles to the southeast where it halted operations at 2300 last night. Lieut. Col. Bob E. Edward's 68th Armored Infantry Battalion is three miles north of the command post, having run into hard resistance late the preceding day and having been ordered to halt in Mainburg to avoid running into a known night ambush.

 
Soon now, reports should arrive that the battalions are moving, and the guns of Joseph J. Murtha's 500th Armored Field Artillery Battalion should be heard. At one minute before 0600 a strange group strode into the headquarters of Combat Command A, to meet Brig. Gen. C. H. Karlstad, Combat Commander. It consisted of a German Major, representing the commander of the Moosburg Allied Prisoner of War Camp, Col. Paul S. Goode of the United States Army and a Group Commander of the British Royal Air Force, the senior American and British Officers respectively, imprisoned in the Moosburg Camp; a Swiss Red Cross representative; and Lt. Col. James W. Lann. The German Major brought a written proposal from his commander for the creation of a neutral zone surrounding Moosburg, all movement of Allied troops in the general vicinity of Moosburg to stop while representatives of the Allied and German Governments conferred on disposition of the Allied Prisoners of War in that vicinity.

The German proposals were rejected and the party was given until 0900 to return to Moosburg and to submit an unconditional surrender offer - or receive the American attack at that hour; a CCA staff officer was dispatched to General Smith.

German SS troops moved outside the city and set up a defense perimeter. They opened the fight.

 
By 1030 the SS were lying dead in the fields and along the roads, grey-white faces and open mouths, twisted and staring sightlessly at the cold, blue sky above; and American medium tanks were roaring through the cobbled streets of the ancient city.

 
The 47th had split in two columns, one led by Maj. Kirchner and the other by Col. Lann; and Gen. Karlstad went into the city with the 47th. Gen. Karlstad picked up a German officer as guide, and with Lieut. Joseph P. Luby and Lieut. William J. Hodges took off for the prison camp proper.

 
The jeep mounted a .30 caliber machine gun; as it swung up, there were several score armed German guards outside. Luby rolled into their midst, his jeep stopped, and with his hand on the gun called: "Achtung!" The group surrendered.

General Smith arrived at the camp shortly thereafter; an American flag was raised.

Official estimates of the total Allied prisoners freed at Moosburg were 110,000, including an estimated 30,000 Americans, officers and men. Besides a series of seven prisoner of war camps, the Division captured a German garrison of 6,000 men at Moosburg.

 
Once the sharp, pitched battle by the SS was over, the German defenses crumbled. The 600-man 47th Tank Battalion took 2,000 prisoners; the 600-man 94th Reconnaissance Squadron took 2,000 more. Division total for the day was set at 12,000.

 
Scenes of the wildest rejoicing accompanied the tanks as they crashed through the double 10-foot wire fences of the prison camps. There were Norwegians, Brazilians, French, Poles, Dutch, Greeks, Rumanians, Bulgars. There were Americans, Russians, Serbs, Italians, New Zealanders, South Africans, Australians, British, Canadians - men from every nation fighting the Nazis. There were officers and men. Twenty-seven Russian Generals, sons of four American Generals. There were men and women in the prison camps - including three Russian women doctors. There were men of every rank and every branch of service, there were war correspondents and radio men.

 
Around the city were thousands of slave laborers, men and women.

 
All combined to give the 14th the most incredible welcome it ever received. The tanks were finally slowed to five miles an hour as they went through the camps - the press of men in front of them was so great. Men, some of them prisoners five years, some American Air Corps men prisoners two years, cried and shouted and patted the tanks.
"You damned bloody Yanks, I love you!" shouted a six-foot four Australian and threw his arms around a jeep driver.

 
A weary bearded American paratrooper climbed on a tank and kissed the tank commander. Tears streamed from his cheeks. The women had flowers, and they threw the flowers on the tanks and in the jeeps. Italians and Serbs, tired and drawn, jammed around the vehicles, eagerly thrusting out their hands to touch their liberators, weeping.
An American Air Corps lieutenant kissed a tank. "G*****n, do I love the ground forces," he said. "This is the happiest day of my life!" "You were a long time coming, but now you are here!" There were no words to express the feelings of these men.

As the German guards were formed in columns of four and marched away, each man carrying two or three loaves of black bread, some of the tankers took the bread from them and tossed it over the fences to the Allied prisoners.

Tec/5 Floyd C. Mahoney of C-47 freed his own son, a lieutenant in the Air Corps.

Part II, tomorrow’s post.

 

The Allied Command at Liberation

 

 

Other sites: http://www.moosburg.org/info/stalag/indeng.html,

 

Technorati Tags: Moosburg POW Camp,WWII Stalag VIIA,Liberation of POW Camp,WWII

January 28, 1945: A Cold Day in Italy

 

Today I can say with the clearest perception of reality and un-metaphorically (out, out damned cliché) that I am snowed under. Another wad of Arctic air has shoved its way into the U.S. all the way to the Gulf Coast. Right now I'm looking out my window at snow falling, and the temperature is about 20 degrees (F) with a wind chill that makes it seem like 10 degrees. My 9-month-old all-black kitten, who was rescued from a city culvert last June, is berserk, not knowing whether to fly out the cat door into this unknown white land or run around the house, stopping at a window or two to chase her own tail.

 

To many people in the U.S. and around the world, this kind of weather is less than no news at all. But it's news in Alabama. Traffic is stalled everywhere from here in Tuscaloosa to the coast. We’re waiting for Joanna Leigh’s #40 school bus to finally get her to the bus stop after the school system dismissed classes because of the weather.

 

News value aside, it's a good day to think about this day 69 years ago, when my father, Lt. John T. Cravey, landed at San Severo Airdrome, Italy, in 1945. January 1945 was still the in the throes of the coldest winter on record in Europe, and the famous Battle of the Bulge in the Ardennes was only a month-old memory. Those troops who managed to survive that battle would never forget it. In these last 69 years, that World War II conflict has become a legend and a symbol of the Allies' determination to prevail.

 

I don't know how cold it was that January 28 at San Severo Airdrome, but records show that the US Army Air Corps personnel did a lot of playing in the snow, having serious snowball fights, in January and February. P-51 sorties were at a minimum. It was likely muddy or frozen mud, so there wasn't a lot of flying over the Tyrolean Alps into Austria en route to Munich and the surrounding area to bomb targets, mostly railroads, oil depots, factories, and any infrastructure that the Third Reich was barely holding on to at that point in World War II.

 

Way Across the Pond

 

Dad as an instructor at Key Field before leaving for Europe in 1945

We are not sure when dad left Key Field in Meridian, Mississippi, to be transported someway -- we aren’t sure how -- to New York, where he would board an unknown ship, cross the Atlantic, enter the Mediterranean, and land somewhere -- we’re not sure where -- and get to the San Severo Airdrome to begin his tour as a P-51 Mustang fighter pilot flying tactical and escort missions over the Alps into Germany to finish off the Nazi War Machine. He must have spent Christmas somewhere en route to his destiny. The trip to the air bases in Italy took a month or more.

 

Our scrapbook indicates that my mother never heard from him after he left her until Western Union called her in June with the telegram from him saying he was in New York and would be home in a week or so. He must have been a sight – having lost about 50 or 60 pounds off his 6-foot, 3-inch frame. None of the other communications, including letters from the POW camp or his commanding officer, arrived in Montgomery, Alabama, until after he returned home. Skinny but alive.

 

As he stepped onto the muddy ground in San Severo, he was not likely wondering what his future was going to be. He was there to do his job. Besides, the guys were probably in a major snow fight. The rain of the past several days had turned to snow.

 

Unbearable cold, snow, ice, and near starvation awaited him. About three weeks after he arrived at San Severo, he would take off from the pierced steel “runway” as the wing man for Capt. Roger Zierenberg, head for the Munich area, bomb and strafe, head home, and not be able to get back.

 

Fortune was standing on the top of Zuckerhutl alpine mountain, calling him down. How he survived that bailout, treacherous descent, transport to Balzano (Bozen), Italy, then to the POW records unit, his wintery march southward to the camp, and the starvation conditions he and the others faced is still a mystery to us. The odds said he should not have survived.

Dad’s POW photo taken at the POW distribution center

 

 

 

Found: A Cravey

About 18 months ago, I got the initial cold-contact e-mail from an unknown Austrian man who had been looking for a Cravey family member for some years. When I finally decided it was not a hoax e-mail and responded, he sent the next e-mail telling me that he and some other mountaineers/hikers had found dad’s crash site on a glacier in the northern Italian Tyrol. About ten years earlier.

 

The production plate from his P-51 peeking out of the snow and ice led to the identification of the plane’s being dad’s Mustang. That incredible and shocking e-mail has sent me, my sister, Susan, and our first cousin, Emory Kimbrough, on our own journey searching through records, the Internet, scrapbooks, pictures -- everywhere we can think of – to piece dad’s story together. We will succeed. Dad’s story will be told.

 

Left: The crash site debris field in the Alps. Below: Dad’s P-51 production plate.

 

Now, Roland (the Austrian), other crash site “archaeologists, U.S. family members of other survivors, historians, and others communicate regularly. Roland has become a dear friend.

I am hoping to get to Lienz, Austria, this summer to see the place where dad’s story played out.

 

Meanwhile, Joanna Leigh’s bus finally arrived about an hour late. She came in, threw her backpack down, put on boots, and headed for the snow. That lasted about 10 minutes. We’re slurping hot chocolate with marshmallows.

 

How dad survived in something like -20 degrees for two or three nights on a mountain in the Alps seems like the plot of a fantastical myth. It was, however, reality to the max.

 

See also: http://spittingrits.blogspot.com/2013/02/wont-you-please-come-home-for-reasons.html and http://spittingrits.blogspot.com/2013/11/veterans-day-2013-saluting-two-lt.html

 

Technorati Tags: P-51 Mustang,Lt. John T. Cravey,San Severo airdrome,US Army Air Corps,Tyrolean Alps

Veterans Day 2013: Saluting Two Lt. Craveys

Lt. John T. Cravey: Facing the Storm
Sixty-nine years ago, an unknown pilot took this picture of my father, Lt. John T. Cravey, flying his P-51 Mustang. Look closely and you’ll see a second person behind him. This must have been autumn 1944, when he was a flight instructor at Key Field in Mississippi shortly before he boarded some ship somewhere that would take him across the Atlantic, likely to North Africa. From there he would probably fly to his home base destination, the U.S. airdrome in San Severo, Italy. He arrived in January 1944 at the height of the coldest winter in European history. What became known as The Battle of the Bulge was not yet finished in the Ardennes.
 

The mission of the fighter pilots at the airdrome was primarily to escort bombers to targets in Germany, where they were to bomb Nazi infrastructure. The fighters had their own targets as well, mostly in Bavaria around Munich, and those were often termed “freelancing.” In order to reach those rendezvous with the bombers and targets, the fighters flew over the southern Tyrol into Austria, near Innsbruck, and headed left toward Munich.
 
 
Historic Mission

On February 22, 1945, he took off on a mission into southern Germany to fly with the bombers and do as much damage to rail lines and other targets as possible. As it turned out, this was a historic turning point in the War. The headline and body copy in a United Press report from London printed in a newspaper I can’t identify, said:

9,000 Planes Pound Nazi Rail Lines: Greatest Air Fleet of War Deals Kayo Blow. In a massive coordinated attack, planned and mapped to the last detail, warplanes from all the air forces in the European theater blasted rail lines in western German and [other sites]. . . One Air Force spokesman said the unprecedented strike was aimed at ‘crippling German communications’. . . . Every kind of plane at the disposal of the Allied air chiefs was thrown into combat
 
The article notes that when the Russian Red Air Force planes over the Eastern Front were counted, the total in the air that day would be closer to 11,000 planes. After this air offensive, World War II was all but over.
Hitting the Silk
My dad’s first problem that February afternoon about 2 p.m. was that he took flak and had to turn back toward home base. The officer for whom he was wing man, Capt. R.H. Zierenberg, was accompanying him. He watched the whole thing. Dad’s second problem was that his P-51 engine conked out, and by now they were over the Tyrolean Alps. His third problem was that he had to bail out onto a 10,000-foot mountain peak. And his fourth problem, the most life-threatening, was the extreme cold.
In April, Capt. Zierenberg wrote my mother a long letter telling her everything he knew about dad’s bailout. At the end of the letter, he hand drew a map of the area where dad went down (pictured below). That was all he knew. And that was all mom knew. She spent the next few months relentlessly chasing information, much of which is preserved in the scrapbook she eventually put together.

 
His story is one of dedication, determination against all odds, and survival. How he survived his descent from Zukerheutl, the mountain he landed on, and the following few months in a forced march in the continuing cold to the German POW camp, Moosberg, remains as astonishing as it is unlikely. Nevertheless he survived.

 
My father’s POW picture
taken by the Nazis at a POW processing center

My sister’s and my story of discovering details of his survival and return to the United States and home in June 1945, which began only a year ago, is also as astonishing as it is unlikely.
Those are stories for another day. On this day I want to remember my father and my brother. Dad survived; my brother, Lt. John James Cravey, did not. His name is one of the 53,000 on the Viet Nam Memorial. I miss them deeply.

Technorati Tags: Veterans Day,P-51 B,World War II,Tyrolean Alps,bailout,German POW,Moosberg,two Craveys,San Severo airdrome

A Remembrance

Today, the 10th anniversary of the horrendous Sept. 11, 2001, airline hijackers’ destruction of New York’s World Trade Center Towers, Washington’s Pentagon, and their failed third attempt thwarted by the heroic efforts of the passengers on the airliner, we remember the nearly 3,000 lives lost to such insane fanaticism. We remember where we were and what we were doing. We praise the efforts of all the first responders and other heroes who helped save many lives.

Let us also take time to look into tonight’s sky and the beautiful September full moon. Maybe there is balance in the Universe. I hope for that, as well as the ability to keep moving forward away from 9/11/01.

Several home projects are luring me away from Spittin’ Grits. I feel the need to get them done. I will therefore be the Wayward Blogger for a while. I hope to return by October 1. I hope you will bear with me and also return.

Grieving with a Classmate

Anchorage High School 1961 classmate Dave Barnett and his wife Diane have suffered an unspeakable loss, and sadness hovers so thick, I feel I can barely breathe. On Saturday, July 30, a mid-air collision of two float planes over Anchorage took the lives of their daughter, her husband, and their two children.

The wake will be held tomorrow and the visitation and memorial service will be held Friday.
Dave and Diane were among our classmates who took the cruise up the Inside Passage, having flown out from Anchorage to Vancouver to board the ship and return to Anchorage for the 50^th reunion; I was able to spend time getting reacquainted. I am simply unable to know what to say or do that would convey my wish to offer comfort at a horrific time like this.

May their daughter Hetty, her husband Corey, and their two children rest in peace. May Dave and Diane find some way, through faith, family, and friends, to survive this awful loss. They are in my mind and heart.

Familiar Chant

“We’re Number 1, We’re Number 1!”

What a familiar chant this is around The University of Alabama and in the state: National football championships, national gymnastics championships, and even debate team championships. Fans will yell this even when it’s not close to reality.

Now this chant takes on new meaning.

A reporter for the (Athens, Alabama) News Courier, Kelly Kazek, wrote a story that has been run on Web sites and in news outlets in Alabama and nationally: Alabama, the state, is now No. 1 nationally for the occurrence of EF5 tornadoes, outstripping Oklahoma, Kansas, and Texas.

Hooray.

According to Kazek’s story, the upgrade of an EF4 April 27, 2011, tornado brings Alabama’s total of the most severe tornadoes to seven, breaking the tie with Texas, Oklahoma, Iowa, and Kansas.

That day was a bad day, not just for Alabama. The Storm Prediction Center’s report on storms for that day prove it; tornadoes are represented by red dots. NOAA’s National Weather Service Weather Forecast Office in Birmingham posted an assessment of that day: “April Severe Weather Events Set New Tornado Records for Alabama.”

This time, being Number 1 ain’t what we had in mind.

Technorati Tags: Number 1,Crimson Tide,Alabama tornadoes,Storm Prediction Center,NOAA National Weather Service,April 27 tornadoes

Ear Popping and Hair Raising in the Operating Room

What do you do if you’re in the operating room, May 22 at 5:41, working on a patient at St. John’s Regional Medical Center in Joplin, Missouri, when an F4 tornado hits your town?

A view of the devastated interior of St. John’s Regional Medical Center, Joplin, MO. More pictures here.

This seems like a stupidly outrageous question. It probably wouldn’t even work as fiction, let alone reality. Except, it happened, an event that answers the outrageous question. Of all the incredible tornado stories to come out of the month-long super tornadoes outbreak, this story stands out, even in the large field of stories of heroism and amazing survival.

As a resident of Tuscaloosa, Alabama, which suffered an almost identical day a month ago, April 27, this story is hair-raising and made more so by the fact this all happened to a close friend’s son.

Dr. Dusty Smith, son of Dr. Jay Smith, a dermatologist in Montgomery, Alabama, is an orthopedic surgeon in Joplin. That infamous day, Dusty was performing emergency surgery when St. John’s took a direct hit moments after a staff member said, “My ears are popping.”

Here’s the rest of the story.

This amazing story has lots of facets, some obvious, some less so. But it reminds me the heroic effort that airline pilot Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger made in landing his disabled U.S. Airways airliner into the Hudson River in New York, saving every one of the crew and passengers. A modest man, he credits his experience and training in keeping his cool under such pressure.

Dusty has a few words about the value of good training.

If I could tell the residents of Joplin one thing, it would be that driving through all the devastation even a month later is very hard, very anxiety-ridden, even depressing. I think it will be like this for a long, long time

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Tuscaloosa, Alabama: Shocking Vistas

So, what’s next for our city ravaged by the April 27, 2011, Mutant Tornado.

That’s easy: Disaster relief, disaster relief, disaster relief.

Once the National Guard began to open up the hardest hit areas of the city, I went to sites to shoot video; I wasn’t sure why at the time. Now I think it was for two reasons: catharsis and the need to appeal – for some time to come – for disaster relief.

I interviewed several survivors along Crescent Ridge Road and Holt, arguably the hardest hit. Until I went to shoot video, and even though I had been using that road for decades, I had no idea the reason for the name of the road. Almost immediately, the question was answered. Once the Mutant Tornado went through and took almost everything, shocking vistas opened up.

I was standing on a ridge. From that ridge I could see for miles and miles, southwest over devastated Alberta City toward town until the hospital and football stadium finally blocked the view; and northeast all the way over Brookwood to Jim Walter Mine #7, according to one survivor, 35 miles away, until the next ridge blocked the view.

Christmas Future

Tuscaloosa will need all the help it can get for the long haul. The amount of debris, closely equivalent to the amount of debris left at the site of the World Trade Center after the 9/11 terrorist attack, tells the story. (See the previous post.)

The 5,000 – 7,000 damaged or destroyed structures in the city tell the story. Many, many people are in dire need of the most fundamental supplies – food, shelter, clothes, school supplies, children’s toys, hygiene products – name it.

This need for the most basic supplies will continue well into the future. The clean-up is likely to take a year. Who knows how and when structures and housing will be rebuilt.

Too soon the need will be for Christmas presents for Tuscaloosa’s displaced children.

The Odor

Finally, it was the odor, the stench, on the ridge that drove home to me the extent of the devastation. As far as I know, by the time I shot video (about five days after the tornado), all the human bodies had been found and retrieved, but there could easily have been remains of people whom no one knew to report as missing. The odor was certainly the animals and pets that were killed and covered up by debris.

It was not rotting food. Rotting food alone (which I admit I’ve had in my refrigerator from time to time) does not smell like that. It was bodies.

Hints

When I turned onto Crescent Ridge, the scene only hinted at what was to come: broken tree limbs, trees with too few leaves, entire oak trees that have been sawed and piled on the side of the road, twisted road signs, mail boxes in yards, homes with odd lettering and numbering spray-painted on the front, huge root balls of trees sucked up from the ground. Then damaged structures and blue tarps.

Survivors tell their stories about the April 27, 2011 Tuscaloosa tornado

Then the shocking vistas where people and their lives had been. Then some survivors -- the few who were able to stay in their damaged homes or a small number of people standing dazed on what used to be their property.

Then I met one man, who pointed out Jim Walter Mine #7 in the far distance, some family members, and a mother dog with about five puppies; they are living under an open-type tent and in his storm shelter, about 12-feet below ground, which saved their lives. There was nothing left on the cement slab that was his front porch, living room, and house. They were cooking on a grill.

For some distance, there was a strange stillness up there, broken only by birds’ chirpings and songs. Then As I neared the area of a direct hit, I began to hear all the heavy equipment working to bulldoze or pick up debris into piles of like materials. Cars and trucks, drain gutters, bikes and other metal stuff in a pile. Tires and man-made materials in piles. Pieces of wood and housing materials in a pile. Huge tree trunks and large branches in a pile. Root balls in a pile. Unidentifiable stuff in piles. Ice cream and popsicle trucks. Toys. What was left of swimming pools, filled with trees and belongings. Lone cement stair steps leading to nothing.

I saw this for miles until the scene became countryside with an odd wide path cut out where whole forests had been standing five days before.

Finally the remains of my favorite gardening nursery. And then Holt Elementary School. All gone.

Disaster Relief

Tuscaloosa will need all the help it can get for the long haul. And frankly, the best, most needed, donation is good ole MONEY. Following are some agencies, churches, and places where donations and money can be made, and there are many more besides these.

Agencies and Organizations

The United Way of West Alabama disaster donations

The Salvation Army of Tuscaloosa, and here, disaster relief; 1-800-SAL-ARMY

The Red Cross of Tuscaloosa, Disaster Online Newsroom; 1-800-REDCROSS

Tuscaloosa Disaster Relief Fund

Tuscaloosa Emergency Services, 205-758-5535

Samaritan’s Purse

West Alabama Chamber Foundation, which you can donate to through Joe Namath’s “Broadway Joe” site.

Aid for Tuscaloosa’s three elementary schools destroyed by the tornado

Catholic Social Services Tuscaloosa, 205-759-0168

Churches

St. Mark United Methodist Church, 2605 Skyland Blvd. E., 205-553-4929

Hargrove Road Memorial United Methodist Church, 1812 Hargrove Rd. E., 205-553-7271

Woodland Forrest Baptist Church, 6701 Hargrove Rd. E., 205-553-1494

Church of the Nazarene, Hillcrest, 340 Patriot Pkwy., 205-758-3297

I will post these disaster relief agencies and sites on and off on Spittin’ Grits for months to come. It’s what I can do for my city.

Technorati Tags: Tuscaloosa tornado,April 27 tornadoes,survivors stories,mutant tornado,Tuscaloosa Alabama,disaster relief,tornado disaster aid

Tornado Morphing

Tornadoes don’t have names, as Atlantic, Gulf of Mexico, and Pacific hurricanes do. April 27, 2011, probably explains why: There aren’t enough names, and names are too nice for tornadoes of that magnitude. That day, in Alabama alone, at least 38 twisters ripped up more than 1,000 miles of cities, towns, and countryside, killing nearly 240 people and countless animals; injuries are in the thousands. The state isn’t even 1,000 miles long.

But I have a name for the monster that devastated Tuscaloosa – Mutant.

Images of the mutant thing abound. Just search “Tuscaloosa tornado.”

Even from its inception southwest of the Tuscaloosa city limits, it was almost a mile wide; it had tentacles; it swallowed another twister or two to enlarge itself. Structures and things in its path that should have impacted its momentum seemed to feed it. It was a singular presence, without the usual rain wall or extended blackness to disguise it. The countryside forests and woods, the cityscape, the green spaces – none of these hid it from view. It just kept coming and coming and coming. Television meteorologists lost their composure and were all but screaming for everyone to take cover.

The world saw the images of the Mutant’s destruction for days afterwards. President Obama, as well as some entertainers, came in person. Obama’s shock was visible. “I’ve got to say, I've never seen destruction like this,” he said.

The Mutant directly and significantly affected about a quarter of the city’s residents. It destroyed or severely damaged at least 5,000 buildings in the city. Ironically, it destroyed Tuscaloosa’s Emergency Operations Center, as well as the Salvation Army building, Red Cross building, police station and fire station buildings and vehicles, the city’s garbage trucks, a water treatment operation, several schools, and on and on and on. The clean-up will likely cost more than $100 million.

The emotional toll is not countable.

Normal Destruction

All this is simply numbers. Here’s another: It has created somewhere between 1.5 and 2 million cubic yards of debris.

Who, other than experts, knew that debris is measured in cubic yards or in tons? Ordinarily, who cares? Certainly not me. So I tried to get some perspective on this kind of meaningless number.

First, our Tax Day Tornado less than two weeks earlier, which I reported in the April 20 post, created about 15,000 cubic yards of debris. That one was sort of a normal tornado, so that otherwise meaningless number may be kind of “normal” for tornadoes. Frankly, those numbers still didn’t really mean anything.

So I tried to find out how many cubic yards of debris were created from the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center and from hurricane Katrina 2005. What I found was likely “ballpark” figures, as totals were different in different sources.

Mutant Destruction

Many of us remember the images. From those memories, we can make meaningless numbers more real.

One report: “Even though it was a terrible site, the P&J team didn’t feel the effort would be insurmountable. They estimated that Ground Zero looked to have about a million cubic yards of debris; we had handled four times that much following Hurricane Andrew.”

Another: “By comparison, the disaster debris generated after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on New York City was approximately 1.4 million tons (2.8 million CY).”

Finally: “He cut short critics of the slow hurricane relief effort by offering statistics on the magnitude of the disaster. While the destruction of the World Trade Center created 1 million cubic yards of debris in New York, he said, hurricanes Katrina and Rita created 45 million cubic yards of debris in Mississippi alone.”

These numbers tell us that the Tuscaloosa debris is comparable to the debris from the destroyed World Trade Center. Discovering this was shocking.

For several reasons, I spent time, after the National Guard opened the worst affected areas, shooting video, some of which I will edit and put on YouTube. What I saw and what survivors told me was emotionally draining. I will deal with their stories in upcoming posts.

Suffice it to say right now that the Mutant did one more thing besides destroying and killing: it created new and shocking vistas. All that debris used to be something; it’s now gone, leaving huge open spaces where people, pets, trees, gardens, vehicles, swimming pools, and ordinary life used to be.

 

Technorati Tags: April 27,2011,April 27 tornadoes,Tuscaloosa tornado,Alabama tornadoes,tornado damage,cubic yards of debris,World Trade Center debris

How It Becomes Personal

We see and can get glued to the ravages of a disaster. The images are often horrendous. Sometimes we’re thankful, even relieved, when another news story replaces the disaster.

But here’s how a major disaster becomes all too personal:

As the monster tornado entered the city, my husband and I were watching James Spann at ABC 33-40 in Birmingham who was showing it on the tower cam. It was so huge that Spann lost his composure. Then we grabbed our dog Maggie and dove into our laundry room in the center of our house.

Later that evening I got a text from a young woman who helps me with Joanna Leigh on weekends. She was on the balcony of the Links apartment complex in south Tuscaloosa, only a short distance from where the tornado entered the city limits. She took this photo, then ran for the bathroom.

The photographer later understood how dangerous it could have been.

Early Thursday morning, when I knew there had been massive damage in the city but knew little else, my son, who had been watching the news from Texas and keeping us informed, called extremely upset. He had just learned that a friend of his whom he had played football with at The University of Alabama had found out about 1 a.m. that his daughter had been killed by the tornado. I think I must have caved. I packed up Joanna Leigh and myself and left for Montgomery where I had family and friends. I knew I’d be able to get gas on the way out.

While I was there, a friend sent me a picture of the entrance to Windsor Drive.

I lived for 25 years on Windsor Drive in the Alberta City area of Tuscaloosa. Alberta City was where President Obama walked to see the damage up close, and it was so ravaged by the April 27 tornado that I could not recognize where in Alberta City he walked. Even a week later we are still disallowed to enter that area.

Those who have never seen Windsor Drive might not know from the picture how extensive the damage is, but the picture bears no resemblance to the neighborhood entrance I knew so well. The picture (below) was the first indication of how hard it would be to come home and see the damage with my eyes.

The entrance to Windsor Drive in Tuscaloosa

I then got an e-mail from a student friend of mine with a link to a video he had put together of what remained of his condo. I have had dinner at that condo. He was in a basement at a friend’s house, but his brother was on the condo’s kitchen floor with a metal pot on his head when it went over and sucked out nearly everything.

Then my first cousin called his mother (my aunt) in Montgomery; I was sitting there and he recounted his encounter with the tornado. I will post his account later, with unpublished pictures.

At some point I knew I had to return home and face what had happened.

Tuscaloosa is a small city of fewer than 100,000. Nothing that the tornado hit is far enough away from anyone to allow for distancing themselves from the damage. We will all have to drive through it for years to come.

And driving through some of it was the big step I had to take. I took video. Yet I know it is only a small bit of what is out there to have to see soon. The city is slowly opening up closed areas like Alberta City.

The day I shot video, May 3, was unseasonably cold and rainy, like a December day. The video footage I put together is on streets I drive to get anywhere, including picking up Joanna Leigh from her school. I will see it over and over and over.

On the radio in the background is WTXT, programming converted to call-ins telling what they need or volunteers telling what they have available and where. “You’re on the phone. How can we help you?” said the announcers over and over.

One woman from the decimated Cedar Crest area was expressing her gratitude for all the help. She then said that her cat, Peanut Butter, was still missing and that she believed she would find her. She asked that people let her know if they sighted a tortoise-shell cat with a brown blob on its head that looked like peanut butter.

The first half of the video shows the intersection of two main arteries serving the city: 15^th Street (east-west) and McFarland Boulevard, Highway 82, (north-south); I was driving north on McFarland and then back. Cozy landmarks, like Hobby Lobby, Big Lots, Tide Clean, Krispy Kreme, and many, many others are debris that will be loaded on dump trucks.

The second half is the route home from Joanna Leigh’s school, and you can hear her voice in the background: from 15^th Street (west of the main intersection) and turning south onto Hackberry/Hargrove Road, then making my way back to 15^th Street to turn east and go home.

On the Hargrove Road segment, you see Wood Manor, where my friend Nathan’s condo was; a little way up, you can look northeast and see the hospital several miles away, something I never imagined. There’s nothing to block the view now.

Video shot May 3, 2011

Emotional recovery will take a lot longer than the other kinds.

If there is any doubt what kind of monster could have done this damage, watch Mike Wilhelm’s raw footage on YouTube or here:

 

Notice the monster’s tentacles reaching out and down.

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Facing It

Right now, on May 2 in Alabama, it is 50 degrees and expected to fall into the low 40s. The strange temperature will likely break records for May 2-3. And thousands are without power, homeless, in damaged houses, in shelters, with no warm clothes.

I knew I had to face it, the devastation. I had to go to the pharmacy across the river, as my regular one in the Alberta City area of Tuscaloosa is inaccessible. Then I had to pick up Joanna Leigh at her school, very near the football stadium on The University of Alabama campus.

I took my video camera. I thought that trying to take video might distract me from the awful sight I knew I would see. I hope to post the video tomorrow or the next day.

When I rounded the curve on Hargrove Road heading east, I looked toward my friend Nathan’s condo. It was gone. I wanted to throw up.

From Hargrove road, I could see the hospital. That should have been impossible, against the laws of physics or something, but there it was, with nothing to block the view.

Tomorrow will be one week since the horrendous tornado that has torn our town into this disaster area. In places it looks like Lebanon looked at its low point.

And it will go down to 43 degrees tonight. In May, in Alabama. That’s supposed to be nearly impossible, too.

Technorati Tags: Tuscaloosa tornado,Alabama tornado damage

Just Meteorology in Tornado Alley Annex

It has been building up all day. Warm moist Gulf Air has been flowing into the state for days. A spring cold front (“cool” front, relatively speaking) has been sneaking in from the northwest – a set up for trouble.

When I went to pick up Joanna Leigh at school, I knew we were in for a stormy night, but I thought we had time to run to Ruby Tuesdays across highway 11, only a mile or two from our house, and grab supper. I kept looking toward the west and southwest as we waited for Papa. It was dark over there, and it was muggy.

We ate, paid, and headed for the door to get home. We opened the double doors and heard it – the dreaded sirens, loud, piercing. The wind had started blowing. Joanna Leigh and I ran for the car. Papa was getting her into the car seat as I hopped in and started the car. He got a call. I jumped out to go around and finish hooking up the seat belts. I ran back around to get in the front seat. As I opened the door, the wind nearly shut it back on me. Uh oh.

I looked over my left shoulder.

Oh, man, this ain’t good, I thought to myself. In a split second I decided no, we weren’t going anywhere.

I ran back around to Joanna Leigh’s door, unhooked her, snatched her up and grabbed Teddy. The wind was now blowing about 50 mph, we later learned. We ran for the door.

The manager was herding the patrons to the back, to the southwest wall near the restrooms. One of the waiters gave Joanna Leigh some colors and paper. “Why is the storm here?” she kept asking. Finally I said, it’s just meteorology.”

She colored and I watched the thing pass over us on my iPhone with the other patrons who were watching their weather app or getting text messages. One woman was texting with a fireman. She looked up and said, “He said just to hang on. It’s almost all the way over us and heading for Vance.”

Then the torrential rain. Usually that means it’s over, but I decided to stay and let this pass over us too. About 15 minutes later, we ran to the car.

“Oh, for crying in a bucket,” I exclaimed. I had left the car running when I jumped out to get Joanna Leigh out of her car seat.

Here’s a screen shot of the ABC 33/40 weather radar from their blog:

April is a cruel month in Mississippi and Alabama, Tornado Alley Annex. This happens way too often. The mess is heading for the Georgia line, but maybe it has blown off most of its steam.

Kudos to the staff at Ruby Tuesdays.

 

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