“The temperature was below zero when I returned home a few
nights ago. My apartment building
was surrounded by emergency vehicles with lights flashing. The reason, l soon learned, was a
broken water pipe. Three
apartments close to mine had been flooded and were uninhabitable. As I walked down the hall toward my
apartment I wondered if mine would be the fourth. Would I have to move elsewhere to get in out of the
cold? Fortunately, my apartment
was warm and dry. I was indeed
grateful.”
“What’s going on, Curmudge? Is this a personal or educational blog? In Kaizen Curmudgeon we are supposed to
teach something to our readers.”
“This is a historical look-back, Julie. Most people these days—unless they are
homeless—have little appreciation of how bad it is to really feel cold. Even within my lifetime, cold weather
has been a critical factor in history.
Personally, I have been spared.
When my sons were in Boy Scouts they (and some fathers) went camping in the winter. If they spent a night in a tent in the
snow, they became a member of the Polar Bear Club (Doc Mack did this many times). Of course, they had the option of
moving into a nearby warm cabin.”
“I
understand that you Polar Bear’ed once, Old Guy. You said you used three sleeping bags.”
“In
wartime, the warm shelter option often did not exist. The plight of Washington’s soldiers at Valley Forge has
faded into the distant past, but I do know that my great-grandfather froze his
feet digging saltpeter (potassium nitrate) to make gunpowder for the
Confederate Army in the Civil War.
He and his unmarried daughter (Aunt Molly) subsequently raised my mother
after my grandmother’s early death and my grandfather’s remarriage. Too bad that my mother didn’t tell me
more about him.”
“It’s
really unfortunate, Curmudge, that we tend not to share enough oral history
with our children.”
“In
contrast, the winter wars of the 20th Century are imbedded in my
memory. I was too young to
participate, but in one case only by a few years. Here at home we learned of these actions in the nightly
radio news, and the details came out later.”
“For
us youngsters and non-history buffs, tell us about the events that are frozen
in your memory.”
“This
is from the history books, not my personal memory. The Battle of Stalingrad was fought in the winter of 1942-3
by the Germans and Russians with a million men on each side. This quote from a German soldier’s
letter clearly depicts his suffering from the cold: ‘The little finger of my
left hand is gone and the three middle fingers of my right one are frozen.’ “
“There
were also people whom you knew personally who fought the weather as well as the
enemy in that war (WWII).”
“My
cousin’s husband, now deceased, was an officer in the Army and was captured by
the Germans in the Battle of the Bulge in December of 1944. It’s hard to imagine choosing between
staying above ground in the snow or jumping into a wet foxhole. I was ten years old then, and I still
shiver at the thought.”
“You
missed the Korean War by only a few years. Right, Curmudge?”
“I
was 16 in late 1950 when the U.N. forces were retreating from the Chosin
Reservoir. A personal friend, also
deceased, was there as a Marine officer.
The Communist Chinese entered the war with about 200,000 men against
20,000 U.N. forces. The 1st
Marine Division lost 12,000 wounded, most of which were frostbite injuries
inflicted by the severe cold.”
“Let’s
end on a less serious note with a vignette from a much more recent war.“
“When
Doc Mack arrived in Afghanistan with the 101st Airborne, his unit
was sent to forward operating base Howz-E-Madad. (To read a personal account of the war in Afghanistan, go to the Curmudgeon’s Wastebasket
blog starting at the 8/11/10
posting.) Mack’s gear was delayed,
and he arrived before his sleeping bag.
The nights were chilly, so Mack spent the nights sleeping in a body bag. He noted with interest that body bags
don’t have zippers that will allow them to be opened from the inside.”
“That
figures. So what’s the bottom line
of our historic look-back, Curmudge?”
“There
are several, Julie. First, war is
horrible, and waging war in the winter can make it intolerable. Second, we should share our oral
histories—most of which are unique—with our children and grandchildren. And finally, I need to note that I
don’t mind the cold, I just hate being cold. So much so that at the end of my days I want to be like Sam
McGee in the Robert W. Service poem…cremated.”
Kaizen
Curmudgeon
Link to posting from blog archives: Mistakes—mnemonics, sleep deprivation—4/01/10 http://kaizencurmudgeon.blogspot.com/2010/04/mistakes.html
