Stanislaw Maczek’s Vindication

Stanislaw Maczek was born in 1892 in what was then the Austro-Hungarian Empire.  Ethnically, he was a Pole and when Poland became an independent country again in 1919 (after more than a century hiatus), he joined the Polish Army.  By 1939, he was commander of the only mechanized infantry regiment in the Polish Army.  When the Germans attacked his country in September of that year, his was almost the only unit in the Polish Army that could fight against German troops on with the benefit of modern weapons.  At the end of the campaign, he and the survivors of his unit managed to make it across the border to Hungary where they were interned before ultimately making their way to France. In 1940, Maczek and his men again fought resolutely against the Germans, but soon found that the entire French Army was disintegrating all around them. So Maczek and his surviving troops once again had to withdraw through Vichy, France, then Spain to reach Portugal where they ultimately made it to the United Kingdom.  There they joined the Polish army in exile.  Over the next 4 years, Maczek’s command was organized into the first Polish armored division.  They received the latest tanks and equipment and trained hard in the hopes that they would be able to fight their way back to Poland.  In the Normandy campaign, the men of Maczek’s division had the extraordinary good luck of being almost the only Poles who had a chance to fight against the Germans on anything like even terms.  After the victory in Normandy, Maczek’s command managed to liberate the Dutch City of Breda with a minimum of civilian casualties.  For that fete, Maczek received honorary Dutch citizenship.  The war did not end happily for the Polish army in exile.  Stalin imposed a puppet regime of Polish communists in power.  Those Polish quislings declared the Polish army in exile to be traitors and counter-revolutionaries, and 99.5% of those men chose to remain in the west rather than to live under communist rule.  Now, how’s that for a statistic?  When the Polish army was demobilized in 1947, Maczek found himself a 55-year old exile with no pension.  Granted Maczek was a great deal luckier than a great many of his contemporary polish officers; thousands of whom were shot and buried in Soviet mass graves.  Even so, I can only imagine the sadness he must have felt knowing that, for all of his courage and sacrifice, he was destined to spend his old age working as a bartender in Edinboro. 

Ironically enough, General Maczek managed to outlast the communists.  The General was 97 when the Polish communist government lost power in 1989 and, in 1994, at the age of 102 — only a few months before he died — he received Poland’s highest decoration: the Order of the White Eagle.

Phan Thi Kim Phuc

You almost certainly don’t know her name, but you’you've seen her.   Back in 1972, South Vietnamese Aircraft dropped napalm onto her village and some of the napalm landed on her back.  She tore her clothes off and ran down the road to get help.  The picture of Phan running down the road naked won photographer Nick Ut a Pulitzer Prize. 

She was so badly burned that, at first, the doctors did not think she would survive.  However, she did recover; although it took 17 months of hospitalization and 17 different surgeries to do the job. Her fame made her a favorite of the Vietnamese Communist Regime, affording her privileges unknown to her fellow-Vietnamese.  In 1992, she married and was allowed to honeymoon in Moscow.  At some point in her world travels, the plane she and her husband were on landed in Canada and the young couple took advantage of the opportunity to defect. Phan Thi Kim Phuc is now the mother of two children and living in Canada.

A True Happy Story

This is a story I share with my fellow-lawyers at Juvenile Court. I asked them if they want to hear a “True Happy Story.” 

Once upon a time, there was little girl named Barbara who grew up in Pennsylvania in a family that was huge both numerically (3 sisters and 4 brothers for a total of 8 kids strikes me as a very large family) and physically (Barbara grew up to be 6’ tall barefoot and I hear that she’s the runt of the litter).  Sadly, Barbara’s father was, from everything I’I've heard, a total no-goodnick (there are quite a few other terms that come to mind, but whenever I talk about Barbara, I really try not to swear).  Barbara has told me that her most vivid memory of her father is running and hiding from him because he would beat his wife and children.   I note that this guy didn’t even have the alibi of being a drunk or a druggy.  A great many women from that sort of family grow up and spend the rest of their lives marrying carbon copies of their abusive fathers.  Barbara proved a dramatic exception. I kid Barbara frequently that, if I could convert her life-choices into a chemical formula, I’d put it in the water supply for the entire world.

After graduating from high school, Barbara went off to college and earned a degree. Then, relatively late in life, she enlisted in the United States Navy.  At this point, I’m sure many of my readers are wondering when her handsome prince is going to show up. Ironically enough, she hooked up with a guy who used to brag about how ugly he was.   One of Uncle Sam’s Misguided Children. USMC.  It is common knowledge that United States Marines have a well-deserved reputation for being very tough customers; Barbara hooked up with a guy who was known to be The.Guy.You.Did.Not.Mess.With. PERIOD.  After they became an item, they acquired the unofficial nickname of the Beauty and the Beast. Barbara had achieved many a tall girl’s dream: a significant other she could wear her high heels with.  The best joke I heard about them was, that when Barbara was a little girl she was badly frightened by a grizzly bear.  So, when she had a suitor that grizzly bears were scared of, how could she pass that up?  I have heard that at first the Sergeant told her, “Let’s not get too serious about this;” three months later he was proposing.  Barbara did not rush into anything; she made him propose three times.  She told me that what sealed the deal was when the Sergeant took her home to meet his mom and dad and she discovered that the Sergeant’s father was what I would call a XXXL teddy bear.

Some of the people with whom I have shared this story say that any man that proposes only three months after meeting a woman is crazy.  To which the Sergeant replies, “Crazy? Crazy like a fox!”  I’m happy to report that this next Valentine’s Day will mark their 31st anniversary, and they have three completely off-the-charts terrific children (the youngest of whom is about to graduate from San Diego State).  

I heard that while planning their wedding, Barbara told her fiancé that she did not want to invite her father to the wedding.  When her fiancé asked why, she explained what a dreadful parent that man had been. The Sergeant considered this for a moment then asked, “Do you want me to straighten him out?”  It’s a good thing for her father that Barbara is a kind, gentle, forgiving and absolutely exemplary Christian woman.   If she were not, her nasty old father would have gotten a Book of Revelations ass-whooping.

J.D. Tippit

J.D. Tippet was a Dallas police officer who got a radio call shortly after noon on November 22, 1963 to be on the lookout for a white male of about 30; 5’10” tall approx. 150 lbs., named Lee Harvey Oswald.  When he saw a 24-year old white man who was 5’9” and weighed 150 lbs., he stopped to investigate.  When Tippit stepped out of his car, that man drew a pistol and shot him three times in the chest.  As Tippit lay on the pavement bleeding, the man walked over to him and fired a forth shot directly into his right temple.  J.D. Tippet left a wife and three children.

In less than half an hour later, Dallas police arrested Lee Harvey Oswald in a movie theater, which Oswald had entered without buying a ticket.  Oswald had drawn a 38 caliber pistol and almost certainly would have shot another policeman, but he was overpowered and disarmed.  By the evening of the 22^nd, five different witnesses had identified Oswald as being a man they’d seen by the crime scene in possession of a pistol (only one of them had actually seen the shooting).  By the next day there were five additional witnesses. Speaking as a defense attorney, I would have not envied the task of any lawyer tasked with defending Oswald on the charge of murdering officer Tippet.  I am not prepared to argue with JFK conspiracy theorists on every bit of Dallas minutia, but I fail to see how any reasonable person can doubt that Lee Harvey Oswald was a cop-killer and almost certainly a presidential assassin as well. 

Khrushchev’s Kid

In 1960, Nakita Khrushchev, then in his late 60s, declared that, as old as he was, he hoped to see communist rule be established throughout the world.  Then Vice President Nixon retorted that Americans could hope that Khrushchev’s grandchildren would live long enough to see freedom.

In September of 1971, the man who said to the west, “We will bury you,” died and is buried in the Novodevichy Cemetery in Moscow.  Two decades after that the world buried the Soviet Union (editorial comment: good riddance!!!)

P.S. Khrushchev’s son, Sergei Khrushchev, is a professor at Brown University in Rhode Island.

Bryant’s Columbus “Twin”

Yesterday marked the birthday of Bryant Edward, the son of some dear friends of mine, who gives a whole new meaning to the word highly intelligent (I can no longer refer to that young gentleman as a kid, since he’s about to graduate from San Diego State and has reached the midway point between 6’ tall and 7’).  

Several years ago, I represented a defendant in juvenile court who, I learned when I looked at my client’s information sheet, shared Bryant Edward’s birthday.  That particular young fellow was appearing before a judge on his 18th birthday after he had already plead guilty to having repeatedly fired a nine millimeter pistol into an inhabited trailer.  I thought to myself that my client was fortunate that he was not facing at least one murder charge.  When I asked my client what he’d been thinking of to do such a thing, his reply was, “the girl I was with told me I could only get a couple of months of reform school.”  I did not bother asking my client from which law school his paramour graduated.  Almost three years later, I again represented that fellow.  He had been “permed” to the department of youth services and was just short of his 21st birthday. I managed to get him out a few months early and actually established a fairly good report with him.  When I asked him if there was anything else he wanted, he replied, “Yes.  Can you help me find a job?” I said, “Buy a long sleeve shirt that will cover up those tattoos on your forearms, buy a necktie and learn how to tie it, get some long pants that fit you and not Dumbo the elephant, wear dress black loafers rather than basketball shoes, lose the nose ring, lose the doo-rag, and shave!”  I thought that was some pretty decent advice, but I pretty much suspect he will spend most of the rest of his life making license plates anyway.  

I’m passing this story along to Bryant Edward’s parents to remind them that, while I’m sure their son has, on occasion, gotten on their last nerve, he is an outstanding young gentlemen and I am very pleased to be his honorary “Uncle.”

A Mitzvah at a Bar Mitzvah

For my readers not fluent in Hebrew, Bar Mitzvah is the ceremony a Jewish boy undergoes on the first Sabbath after his 13th birthday, accepting him as a member of the Jewish community.  A Mitzvah, can mean a commandment of Jewish law or it can mean a meritorious act.  I am happy to report that a while back I performed a Mitzvah at a Bar Mitzvah,

Several years ago a woman I’d met on Notre Dame’s summer London Law Program invited me to her son’s Bar Mitzvah in Miami, Fl.  

I went and had an absolutely wonderful time.  Hedy is a great lady.  She’s married to a fine gentlemen and they have two wonderful children, Rachel and Alexander (who I call Alexander the Great.  He is Alexander, he is great, so who says he isn’t Alexander the Great?).  At the reception that evening, I discovered that they had laid out an absolutely incredible buffet, which included bowls of shrimp.  It went through my mind that somebody might take Hedy to task for her choice of refreshments.  For what it’s worth, I want to advise anyone that, regardless of your race, creed, national origin, sexual orientation, party registration, astrological sign, alma mater or brand of toothpaste — if anyone says an unkind thing to Hedy, I'm likely to kick someone’s tuchus.  It went through my mind that it might be a bad thing that there would be some Jewish folks being tempted to violate Jewish dietary laws.  I thought to myself, “I am a Gentile and really try to be a righteous one, so is there anything I can do to help in this situation” and then I thought, “Jews will not be tempted to eat shellfish if I eat it first.”  So I am not just eating like a pig at a buffet (tell me Rabbi, is it a bad thing to eat like a pig at a Bar Mitzvah?) I went after those shrimp with even more gusto than I usually do at the prospect of free food.  (I keep forgetting: is it 18 shrimp per handful or is it 20?).  After half an hour, the ocean called and said they were running out of shrimp.  After an hour Stephen Spielberg called to see if I wanted to play the shark in the next remake of Jaws.  By the time I made my exit, I could imagine some friend of Hedy’s saying, “I can’t believe you would serve shrimp at your son’s Bar Mitzvah.”  To which I would replay, “WHAT shrimp?”

“It was on the table over there.”
Me: “What table?”
“There was a table over there a minute ago.”
Me: “Belch!”

P.S. I want to take this opportunity to make an ecumenical statement to all my Jewish friends.  If you are confronted by temptation in the form of shrimp, scallops, lobster or bacon, call me 24/7 and I will do everything in my power to assist you.