A Short Clip from “Band of Brothers”

The Stephen Spielberg-Tom Hanks miniseries production of Band of Brothers impressed me as one of the best depictions ever of American fighting men in WWII. The men of Company E of the 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment of the 101st Airborne Division had an amazing experience during WWII. They jumped into Normandy during D-Day, June 6 1944, jumped into combat again September that year at Eindhoven in Holland, and then were called upon in December to defend Baston in the Battle of the Bulge. After all that, they caught an incredible break at the end of the war: on VE Day, May 8 1945, they had just occupied Hitler’s HQ “The Eagle’s Nest” in Bertha’s Garden in Bavaria, where they helped themselves to the contents of Herman Goering’s liquor cabinet.

It was a wonderful film about some extraordinarily fine men, and there was one small bit which I wonder if most viewers missed: At one point, when the 101st has entered Germany, one of the paratroopers spies a very attractive young German farm girl and calls out to her, “Hey Fraulien! I got nylon stockings!” She runs off, and he takes off in hot pursuit. He returns and his buddy asks, “How’d you do?” He replies, crestfallen, “Ah, she slapped me cross the face.” No doubt he soon was looking for a young lady with more of a dedication to fashion.

The reason that vignette stays with me is that if there were ever a large group of young American men who could have misbehaved spectacularly with very little fear of consequences, it was when the US army entered Germany in 1945. Those young men had guns and the police were either dead, in captivity or in hiding. True, some US soldiers did commit terrible crimes, and some of them suffered court martials, and in some cases were even executed. And of course, that sort of crime is frequently unreported. However, anyone with any sense of proportion would be well advised to read Cornelius Ryan’s book The Last Battle for a description of how Red Army soldiers behaved as they entered Eastern Germany around the same time. At Vienna, the Red Army insisted on erecting a statue of a red army soldier in that city’s main square. The locals, to this day, refer to it as “the statue of the unknown rapist.” In another part of Germany, the French Moroccan troops were so notorious that German civilians coined the term “to Moroccanate,” a synonym for gang rape. Anyone who wants a better idea of how French Muslim troops behaved might want to observe Sophia Lauren’s Oscar-winning performance in “Two Women.”

One more small tribute to the men of Easy Company: for the benefit of lifelong civilians, if you want to know what kind of men become paratroopers, consider this: a paratrooper is a man who **volunteers** to make a living repeatedly jumping out of perfectly well-functioning aircraft at heights hundreds of feet off the ground to expedite their arrival at a firefight where they can expect to be outnumbered, outgunned, and surrounded.

Letter to England: W. Horton

I occasionally correspond with an English attorney: it’s frequently useful to get a completely different perspective on current events. So anyone interested on a completely different perspective on American affairs, kindly read on.


Dear Glyn,
A while back I asked you if you’d ever heard of the Willie Horton case, and you said you hadn’t. Well it’s like this: clear back in 1974, 3 young punks decided to rob a filling station. Who would’ve believed that 14 years later, it would be the decisive factor in an American presidential election? The filling station attendant, a terrified 19 yr old named Joseph Fournier quickly gave thugs all the cash in the register, which totaled, $60. However, they felt the need to stab him 19 times and stuff him into a garbage container, where he bled to death. As one of the criminal geniuses walked away with his $20 take, he commented, “That’s another dead honky.” All three were arrested and convicted. One of those three men was 21-year-old Willie Horton. He was sentenced to life in prison without possibility of parole.

That’s exactly where Horton’s life story should have ended. However, because he had the luck to commit his crime in the commonwealth of MA, he soon became eligible for a weekend furlough program (that is not a misprint, in MA, even prisoners serving life without parole can get furlough on weekends). In 1987, Horton decided not to go back to prison and managed to remain at large for 6 months until he was arrested several hundred miles south in Maryland for raping a woman and pistol-whipping her fiancé. I once read an interview in The Nation magazine in which Horton maintained his innocence. I guess it’s just extraordinary bad luck on his part that when he was arrested, he was driving his victim’s car. After a MD jury convicted him of aggravated rape, aggravated burglary, aggravated assault, and grand theft auto, the MD judge sentenced Horton to life in prison w/o possibility of parole. The MA requested that MD extradite H back to them so he could continue serving his life sentence, but the MD judge indignantly denied their request. So Willie Horton is still in prison 23 yrs later, and his chances of ever being released are slim to none with slim out of town.

Mr H never would have achieved a fraction of his notoriety except for the fact that he committed his second crime after the MA state legislature had passed a law excluding inmates serving life without parole form the furlough program and Governor Mike Dukakis. After the MD incident, Fournier’s family spoke out publicly about their outage that their son’s killer had been eligible for a furlough program. At that point, Mike Dukakis might conceivably have saved his electoral chances by meeting with the family, apologizing, and ending the furlough system. Instead he declared the furlough system had been “99% successful.” The next year, Dukakis won the Democratic nomination for President. During primary season, Senator Al Gore was the first to bring up the Willie Horton fiasco, and in the final months of the campaign, the Bush camp harped on it nonstop. The democratic response was predictable: since Willie Horton is black and both his murder victim and his rape victim are white, they screamed racism, racism, racism 24/7.

Usually that mantra works. It certainly did not this time. Election night 1988 was a nightmare for democrats. Horton is now in his 60s, serving in a maximum security prison in MD in solitary since he was responsible for the end of furlough programs in MD as well as MA, he’s not going to win any popularity contests with his fellow inmates.

An Echo in the Onion Field

Anyone who read Joseph Wambaugh’s book or saw the film based on it is unlikely to ever forget it. March 9, 1963, two plainclothes LA police officers made what they thought was a routine traffic stop when one of the suspects, Gregory Powell, put a gun to the back of Ian Campbell, one of the officers, and ordered his partner Carl Hettinger to disarm. Powell and his accomplice, Jimmy Smith, took the two officers hostage and drove them to an onion field far outside the city where Powell shot Campbell to death. Officer Hettinger managed to escape.

Horrible as the events of that night were, LAPD’s treatment of Officer Hettinger was even worse. They attempted to make him an example of exactly what an officer should not do in a hostage situation. Hettinger was later fired from LAPD after being arrested for shoplifting. Anyone who has taken a single course in freshman psych could see that he was a deeply wounded individual who needed support and understanding rather than persecution and contempt from his comrades. Hettinger ultimately drank himself into an early grave. This whole episode appalled and intrigued a young vice cop called Joseph Wambaugh, who later wrote the account. Jimmy Smith was parolled from prison in 1982 and lived another 10 years without once managing to stay out of prison more than 12 months at a time. He was a man destined to “do life on the installment plan.” This past March 9 marked the 48th anniversary of Powell’s arrest. He is still incarcerated and is unlikely to ever be paroled.

I sometimes wondered what could cause a person to become such a cold-blooded murderer as Gregory Powell turned out to be, and in reading Wambaugh’s book, I got a partial answer. In the process of interviewing Powell, J W learned that in the first 30 years of Powell’s life he spent 17 of them incarcerated in one institution or another. He also learned that at 13, Powell was raped by a priest (my opinion, any adult who has sexual relations with a 13-year-old is committing rape, regardless of whether or not it is forcible). At this point, I’d like to point out that I do not believe Powell deserves a pass because of his early experience, nor am I alleging that all priests or clergy are child molesters. I would like to say that I wish the priest who molested Powell had spent the last 48 years sharing his cell.

Housework (Among Other Things)

A dear friend of mine of long acquaintance once told me what some might regard as a “chick joke”. It’s the story of a woman handing an attractive man a 100-dollar bill and saying “Paint my house.” OK ladies, yuck it up, but I say to my friend, “Maybe you just don’t know the right guys.”

It’s funny how my Aspergian memory ranges from being occasionally horrendous in the media present to being phenomenally clear for events that I’ve managed to “lock in”. One of my favorite memories was a visit I paid friends of mine in San Diego 20 years ago. When I walked in the door, as Barbara greeted me I couldn’t help but notice that in the living room her husband, who at the time was a marine drill instructor, was ironing one of his shirts. I asked does he always iron his shirts and she said, “Oh he won’t let me get near them.” (for the record, you could shave yourself with the creases in his uniform and use his spit-shined shoes for a mirror). That night at dinner (which was an out-of-this-world pasta dish), I kid Barbara that her husband probably decided to propose to her shortly after the same night she cooked for him the first time. Their two daughters, at that time aged 6 and 3, were doing the “eat like little girls routine,” the twirl your fork around on the plate, put down your fork, stick out your lower lip and wear an expression that says, "I am NOT hungry."

At this point, Dad said, “I want you girls to clean up your plate. Barb when you’re done eating if they haven’t cleaned up their plates they’re going to bed and don’t eat slowly to give them more time.” At this point I tried to do some discreet cheerleading for the girls: “Come on kids, Mom’s cooking in wonderful.” A few minutes later, when Barb had cleaned her plate, Erin (the six-year-old) had cleaned her plate, Seana (the 3-year-old) had cleaned her plate, and furthermore, **I** had cleaned up **mine**. And if anyone is snickering, you can knock it off, because if you had been there, you would have cleaned up your plate too.

The next day dad and I walked in the living room where the two kidsters had been playing with playthings strewn over a considerable portion of the living room. At this point dad says “Girls, you’ve made a mess on the floor.” At this point the three-year-old looks at the six-year-old, the six-year-old looks at the three-year-old, and they look back at daddy with an expression that seems to say, “So what daddy-o, that’s our job.” Dad then said, “You girls are not going to sea world until that mess is cleaned up.” In 12.4 seconds, the family living room was ready for a photo shoot for better homes and gardens.

That night, I once again got to enjoy Barbra’s cuisine, and when we were finished, Dad did the dishes as he had the previous night. I was mildly surprised and very politely asked Barbara if her husband always did the dishes. A voice from the sink replied, “No but I do more than my share, don’t I **dear**?” To which Barb replied “He does, he really does.” Pause. I guess I quite involuntarily raised an eyebrow at that bit of news, to which Barb got an almost dear in headlights look and said, “But he does them so much faster than I do!” Sorry folks, I had to chuckle at that one. Barb had got a husband an awful lot of women would envy, and she has to come up with alibis for her husband doing the dishes? Come on, that’s funny.

So what do you get when you have a husband who is conscientious about helping out with housework and keeping his kidsters on the straight and narrow? In this case, some absolutely beyond amazing children, and a marriage that lasts. This past Valentine’s Day, Barb and her husband celebrated their 28th wedding anniversary. Congrats to them, and may the next 28 years be even better.

What it Takes to Tick Me Off

In dealing with my clients and some of the opposing parties, I need to develop the hide of a rhinoceros and try to keep as sense of humor. Recently I represented a Mr. Mudd in his request for a protection order against his ex-girlfriend, a Ms. Hay. The judge denied his request, and I didn’t even receive a brick for my troubles. I recently had a client who wanted d protection order against her ex who, she informed me, had given her a VD that would seriously affect the health of the two children they had together. I refrained from asking her why she was associating with such a man, and if he had received a note to philander from his wife.

Anyhow, last month I had just gotten my client her ex parte order form the judge when the news came out that five OSU football players were going to be suspended for five games for having violated NCAA regulations against accepting gratuities. My client started jumping up and down and clapping with excitement, proclaiming, “Goody goody, I’m a Notre Dame fan!” I thought to myself, I’m about ready to either strangle her or throw her out the courthouse’s 3rd story window, or both. Instead, I refrained, and did not even bother telling her that if she ever dreamed that she would qualify for admittance to ND, when she woke up she had better call Tedd Hessburgh and apologize. I also refrained from admonishing my client for a woman of her obesity should not jump up and down on any level above the ground floor—it might have dire consequences. I was grinding my teeth so hard I feared I might need to make an emergency trip to the dentist.

A few days later, that same client actually managed to **seriously** tick me off. I managed to get her consent degree from her former paramour and his girlfriend (which means eventually I will get paid) and at the last moment the new girlfriend insisted that the protection order include her unborn child who is due in a few more months. I was driving my client home when she proclaimed with the utmost vehemence, “I hope that baby dies!” At that point, I blew up. I yelled, “Sit down in the car and shut up. I do not want to hear **one** (expletive deleted) word out of you. I signed on to get you a protection order, and I signed on to driving you home, but I did not sign on to hear you use that kind of language on a newborn baby. Now if I hear one more word out of you I’m going to pull over and you can walk back.” She managed to say not a word on the way home. If I never see that hateful woman again it will be much too soon.

Thunderball’s Villain and the Wagner Act

Back in 1965, I was absolutely awestruck by Sean Connery’s performance in the James Bond adventure film Thunderball. Almost half a century later, I have a much different perspective. Granted, the plotline of an evil organization obtaining a nuclear weapon and holding a city hostage is a chilling one. What strikes me most today is that Thunderball’s villain Emilio Largo (played by Adolfo Celli) would have all kinds of complaints from the unions’ shop steward of Henchmans’ Local 217 for violations of the local Wagner Act (I guess that’s why Largo sets up his nefarious HQ in the Bahamas).

First off, he sends a single henchman to kill Bond in his hotel suite, a plot that predictably goes awry. When Bond sends him back to his criminal mastermind to report his failure, Largo demonstrates what en evil character is by having his other henchman throw the hapless underling into an enormous pool of sharks. When I think about that now, having studied Labor Law at Notre Dame, I can only imagine the shop steward’s indignation: “Now see here Mr Largo, our collective bargaining agreement clearly stipulates that hotel assassinations are a 2-man job. And then you throw the guy into a shark tank! This gives a whole new meaning to the term unlawful discharge!”

Even more egregiously, when Bond is attempting to infiltrate Largo’s HQ he is tackled by a Largo henchman and knocked into the residence’s swimming pool. When Largo shows up a few seconds later with a whole crowd of henchmen in tow, does he a) have his other henchman jump in to lend the first guy a hand in handling Bond, b) fire a warning shot to let 007 know the jig is up, or c) flip a switch to make a metal screen cover the pool and open a secret compartment connecting the shark tank to the swimming pool? It was c), never mind that this ensures another one of Largo’s henchman will certainly die as a result. (I’ve read that during filming, Sean Connery got a whole lot closer to one of the sharks than he wanted to, and he voiced his displeasure to the director). Again, I can just hear Largos’ builder saying: “Uh-huh, You want a passageway built from the shark tank to the swimming pool. You wanna explain your reasoning on that Mr. Largo? You really need to find another outfit because if our company did it, imagine the possibility for personal injury lawsuit.”

While Thunderball did have several moments that strike me as hokey, it’s still one of my favorite Bond films because it contains my all-time favorite Connery line: at the film’s climax, Largo is attempting to make his getaway in this yacht, the Disco Valente, which can take off at what seems to be 40 knotts (never mind that chasing it down would be a piece of cake for any aircraft or helicopter). Bond engages in a serious brawl in the ship’s pilot house with the ship’s captain, Largo, and another henchman, and does quite well fighting at 3:1 odds. However, he finds himself staring down the barrel of Largo’s pistol and with blood running down his face, it looks like Bond’s luck just might have run out. Then there’s a sudden thunk, Largo’s eyes glaze over, and he does a slow fall to the floor. When he’s fallen, we see there’s a spear gun projectile in his back, and Largo’s ex mistress, Domino (who’s taken up with Bond) steps over her ex-lover’s body and says, with breathy French accent, “I am glad I keelled heem.” With blood dripping from one corner of his moth, Connery replies, “**You’re** glad?”

A Visitor to Xenia

Many years ago I served in Company A of 1/166 infantry brigade of the Ohio National Guard in Xenia Oh, and the unit sometimes participated in Xenia’s 4th of July parade. I once cracked up my 1st sergeant by suggesting we invite actress Lucy Lawless to be the marshal of the parade. What could possibly generate better headlines than “Xena visits Xenia?”