Frank Buckles laid to rest

Frank Buckles was buried Tuesday with the pomp and ceremony befitting the man who outlived 4.7 million other Americans who served in World War I.

His flag-draped casket was carried to his gravesite at Arlington National Cemetery on a caisson led by seven horses. A seven-man firing party fired three rifle volleys and a bugler played "Taps" as hundreds of onlookers saluted or held their hands to their hearts.

At the end of the graveside service, soldiers from the Army's vaunted "Old Guard" folded the flag as an Army band played "America the Beautiful." Army Vice Chief of Staff Gen. Peter Chiarelli presented it to Buckles' daughter, Susannah Flanagan.

"To our comrade in arms, Frank Woodruff Buckles, our nation bestows military honors," said Lt. Col. Keith N. Croom, an Army chaplain. "In life, he honored the flag. Now, the flag honors him."

Buckles lied about his age to enlist at 16. He died last month at his Charles Town, W.Va., home, at age 110.

Before the burial, his body lay in honor inside Arlington's Memorial Amphitheater Chapel, guarded by an Old Guard soldier in full dress uniform. Hundreds of visitors filed by silently to pay their respects and snap pictures.

Around 3 p.m., after the public viewing was over, President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden arrived by motorcade to pay their respects. They spent about 10 minutes inside the chapel and offered their condolences to Flanagan.

Flanagan had wanted her father to lie in repose in the U.S. Capitol, but Congress failed to approve that plan as politicians clashed over how best to honor Buckles and other WWI veterans. The last person to lie in the Capitol rotunda was President Gerald Ford.

Flanagan and other invited guests at the burial did not speak to reporters.

Buckles' grave is on the side of a hill ringed by cedar trees with views of the Washington Monument, Capitol dome and Jefferson Memorial to the north. At the crest of the hill, 50 yards away, sits the grave of Gen. John Pershing, under whose command Buckles served, along with a plaque commemorating the 116,516 Americans who died in World War I.

A few hundred people attended the burial, including dozens of veterans from the Patriot Guard Riders and Rolling Thunder who rode through the cemetery on rumbling motorcycles. Six Native American veterans, in uniform and full headdresses, stood at attention and held flags at the gravesite.

Dignitaries in attendance included Army Secretary John McHugh, Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki and Sens. John J. Rockefeller and Joe Manchin of West Virginia.

Buckles had devoted the last years of his life to campaigning for greater recognition for his former comrades, prodding politicians to support a national memorial in Washington.

Only two known WWI veterans remain worldwide: 110-year-old survivors Florence Green in Britain and Claude Choules in Australia.

Born in Missouri in 1901 and raised in Oklahoma, Buckles visited a string of military recruiters and was repeatedly rejected before convincing an Army captain he was 18. He served as an ambulance driver in England and France, and after Armistice Day, he helped return prisoners of war back to Germany. He returned to the United States in 1920 as a corporal.

During World War II, he was working as a civilian for a shipping company in the Philippines when he was captured as a prisoner of war. He spent more than three years in Japanese prison camps in Santo Tomas and Los Banos.

Among those who filed by Buckles' casket was Dale E. Smith, 88, a retired fighter pilot who served in World War II, Korea and Vietnam.

"I've been through three wars," Smith said. "They were easy compared to what he went through."

From sfgate.com

State of the Militaria Hobby from the JAG File

From the JAG File Blog by John Adams-Graf of Military Trader Magazine

Having just returned from the Show of Shows (SOS), I have fielded several questions about the health of hobby. The economic doldrums, the instability of Mideast, rising unemployment only outpaced by rising fuel costs and a general sense of apprehension have many asking, “What’s the health of the hobby?”

I certainly don’t have any special view, but I guess my position does afford me the opportunity to overhear a lot of conversations and to observe several patterns. Before drawing any conclusions, however, I have to ensure that I don’t let my own collecting successes and failures color my observations.

The first thing I will report about the SOS is that it remains the largest all-militaria show in the United States. With more than 1,600 tables, the show is sold out months ahead of the late February date and there is a long waiting list of collectors and dealers who want tables. Public attendance is generally in the 5,000-6,000 range over three days. This year was no different.

I had four tables covered with what I considered “Wal-mart” collectibles. Not great stuff, just general WWI and WWII items priced very low. This seems to be a formula that works for me: Quantity, solid quality (that is, no fakes, questionable items clearly indicated on labels), low prices marked on the items (nothing drives me away from a table faster than not seeing prices on items!), and having bins and tubs of small items to search through. I rarely had a chance to sit down from Wednesday night setup through Sunday afternoon teardown. Folks love bargains and the thrill of possibly discovering something the guy standing behind the table didn’t recognize.

I didn’t get away from tables except for bathroom breaks so any observations were made on the fly. What I did observe, though, was that many tables had exceptional, high-quality items. When I did stop to take a closer look, I experienced a high degree of “sticker shock.” Items that should have cost $1,000 or $1,500 were marked $4,000 or $5,000. The same was truer for smaller items… if an item normally sold for $100, it was marked $400 or $500. What was going on? Was the world economy impacting our tight little fraternity?

I discussed this with several veteran collectors who stopped at my table to chat. The general consensus was this: As many collectors drift away from selling on eBay, they have dug into their collections to select and price items with the attitude, “if someone is stupid enough to pay this, I will sell it.” It was like a real-time “Buy it Now” price like we see on eBay… way beyond normal retail, but if someone really wants it…

The “big” buyers, that is, dealers buying for resale, generally reported that the show was really off. A couple saying, “Worst buying SOS in a long time.” Conversely, the same dealers did report, “Best selling SOS.” It seems buyers were there ready with cash. Quality items sold fast. “Wal-mart militaria” (like what I had on my tables) sold equally fast, but you have to sell a whole lot of buttons and Ike jackets to pay the expenses! What I did notice, however, was middle-of-the-road militaria, if priced at last year’s retail, sat on the tables unsold for the entire weekend.

In my observation, I would venture that non-U.S. attendance was down this year. Stands to reason, the Euro, Pound and Yen are just as weak as the dollar these days.

Curiously, I had several conversations about Internet collector forums. It would seem more and more veteran collectors are leaving forums or simply don’t make the time for them anymore. Several did discuss that they use Facebook to connect with small, tight communities of “their own kind” (be they helmet collectors, WWI nuts, Civil War image traders or reenactors”). It is far too early to predict the demise of forums, but there is a very obvious shift occurring.

Finally, one trend that has existed in the hobby from the beginning is changing. In the past, one might walk up to a dealer’s table full of unpriced items and select an object with the question, “How much?”, only to receive an answer that began with, “Well, I’ve got X dollars in it….” I have railed on this before: As I collector, I don’t care one bit what someone has in a particular object. Starting the negotiating with telling me how much a person has spent on an object usually implies to me that they think it somehow justifies the price they paid, whether it was too much or not. At this year’s SOS, I heard the same statement uttered many times, but it really seem to be restricted to the older, veteran dealers and collectors. The younger set seem to accept the fact that people paid way too much for stuff in the 1990s and 2000s and that the potential buyer is not responsible for those poor purchase decisions. Coincidentally, this is the same trend happening out in “the real world.” In my humble opinion, it is great to see the militaria hobby developing the same tolerances and expectations as the rest of the business world.

The SOS can set the tone for the entire show season, and it remains to be seen if this is true for 2011. If it is, we will continue to see great items emerge to market, at first for way too much money but then, slowly descend to realistic prices allowing new, significant collections to form. We are on the cusp of a new collecting age. The next couple of years will reveal if the hobby leaps forward or falls flat.

Be wise, be patient and prepared to buy when that great piece appears,

John A-G
Editor, Military Trader & Military Vehicles Magazine

Matterhorn Book Review

When "Matterhorn: A Novel of the Vietnam War" arrived in my mail for review from the Leatherneck editorial office in Quantico, a brief note was included. Publisher/Executive Editor Colonel Walt Ford, USMC (Ret) wrote: "We usually don't review novels in the magazine, but I thought this one was exceptional. Frankly, I was riveted from page one because it took me right back. The only things that the author changed or altered were the actual units and a few of the locations. Rarely has war fiction impressed me so much."

After reading the first few pages, any rough-and-ready who has experienced bullets whistling by and shells bursting all around will certainly agree.

Writing in the vivid, gritty tradition of Norman Mailer ("The Naked and the Dead"), James Jones ("The Thin Red Line"), and Mark Bowden ("Black Hawk Down"), Navy Cross Marine First Lieutenant Karl Marlantes immediately introduces us to young Marine Lieutenant Waino Mellas (obviously himself fictionalized) and his company as they maneuver into the mountain jungles of 1969 Vietnam.

Advancing as best they can in torrential monsoon rains and knee-deep mud, plucking off leeches and avoiding man-eating tigers along the way, the Marines find themselves surrounded and outnumbered by a North Vietnamese regiment. At that point, autobiography fuses with fiction to make for a stunning "let-me-put-you-there" 600-page read.

In reality, during the first five days of March 1969, Marlantes, serving as executive officer of Company C, 1st Battalion, Fourth Marine Regiment, Third Marine Division (Reinforced) of the Fleet Marine Force, faced the same kind of highly trained, solidly equipped unit just north of the infamous Rockpile, south of the DMZ and east of the Laotian border.

Sustaining numerous casualties from mortars, rocket-propelled grenades, small-arms and automatic-weapons fire, the company was near obliteration. Marlantes combined and reorganized the remaining members of the platoons and led an assault up a mountain infested with fortified bunkers, manned by highly skilled, well-armed enemy soldiers.

Under withering fire from surprised North Vietnamese troops, he ran across the fire-swept hilltop to wipe out four enemy bunkers in succession. Although seriously wounded by now, Marlantes refused medical attention until the perimeter defense was established and the other wounded evacuated. His Navy Cross citation notes: "His heroic actions and resolute determination inspired all who observed him and were instrumental in a decisive rout with minimal casualties. By his courage, aggressive fighting spirit, and unwavering devotion to duty in the face of grave personal danger, First Lieutenant Marlantes upheld the highest tradition of the Marine Corps and the United States Naval Service.”

Such is the stuff "Matterhorn's" plot, characters and hero, Waino Mellas, are made of, to say nothing of how the terror and agony of fierce and vicious fighting matures each fictionalized personality. Note that any astute Marine who served during those months in “Bravo” Company's area of operation, and who knew the chain of command there, will place an easy fix on the actual names and locations.

Author Marlantes, who in addition to the Navy Cross was awarded the Bronze Star, two Navy Commendation Medals for valor, two Purple Hearts and 10 air medals, needed more than 30 years to complete "Matterhorn," originally a 1,600-page novel. No publisher or literary agent bothered to read it until recently when the unwieldy manuscript was reduced to its present size. The 31-page glossary of weapons, technical terms, slang and jargon alone is worth the price of the book.

It would be easy to hyperbolize "Matterhorn" with any number of glow-words from the reviewer's convenient arsenal of adjectives. But the high praise always remains the same: "Just go buy and read the classic-to-be for yourself."

From mca-marines.com

Japanese apologize to Australian veterans

Transcript from Lateline

TONY JONES, PRESENTER: It's taken 60 years, but Japan today finally apologised to Australian soldiers for the brutal treatment they received as POWs during World War II.

A group of five diggers, now aged between 85 and 94, was invited to Japan by the country's foreign ministry.

And today they met the minister, Seiji Maehara, who offered them an apology for their suffering.

Some say it's too late and too little and that the current generation of Japanese shouldn't be held accountable for the sins of their forefathers.

North Asia correspondent Mark Willacy reports from Tokyo.

MARK WILLACY, REPORTER: From Japanese prisoners of war more than 60 years ago to honoured guests of the foreign minister today in Tokyo. As men the Imperial Army failed to break, these old diggers came here on a mission and with a message, delivered by 94-year-old Rowley Richards.

ROWLEY RICHARDS, FORMER JAPANESE POW: The important thing to our members - there are many of them, as you know, are looking for an official apology.

MARK WILLACY: These men survived the worst of Japanese barbarity. From the horror of Singapore's Changi Prison to the hell of the Thai Burma railway.

But for some of these former prisoners, an apology is too little too late.

HAROLD RAMSEY, FORMER JAPANESE POW: This apology would be worthless. And if they got some bloke who would apologise now, it's not worth a pinch of effort, so ...

MARK WILLACY: But today, 66 years after Japan's surrender, the country's foreign minister, Seiji Maehara, uttered the words many former POWs have long waited to hear.

NORM ANDERTON, FORMER JAPANESE POW: It was deep and expressed great remorse for the suffering that was inflicted on us and it was a very moving experience. He said to consider it a formal apology from the government.

MARK WILLACY: Even those who'd expressed some scepticism about an apology were moved by the minister's remorse.

FORMER JAPANESE POW IV: We've waited a long time, but it was sincere and at much better time than I've seen before, in 1944, when they dropped the two bombs. So, this is really good.

MARK WILLACY: By inviting these former POWs to Japan and apologising for their brutal treatment, the centre-left government here in Tokyo is showing that it is willing to confront the terrible sins of Japan's war-time past. And for their part, these old men have also shown a remarkable capacity for forgiveness.

FORMER JAPANESE POW V: I believe very firmly if any individual holds bitterness, there's only one person who suffers. That's the person who is being bitter.

YUKIHISA FJITA, JAPANESE GOVERNMENT MP: I think in order to have better future, it's very important to put right what was wrong in the past.

MARK WILLACY: The Japanese government says it's now planning to invite more former Australian prisoners to visit, acknowledging that with each passing year, fewer of these remarkable men remain.

Modern Day Lybia and WWII Africa - Tank Terrain

The whipping sandstorms, low visibility, and stray camels make the five-hour car ride from Benghazi to the oil refinery town of Ras Lanuf a tense one even in normal times. But these days there is nothing normal going on in Ras Lanuf, which lies on the front lines of the clashes between Libya's volunteer rebel army and forces loyal to the country's dictator, Colonel Muammar Gaddafi. On Saturday when TIME visited, the gates of Ras Lanuf were guarded by a platoon of opposition irregulars with anti-aircraft guns and recoilless rifles mounted onto the backs of pickup trucks.

But calling this a front-line may overstate the level of organization and planning behind the rebel advance. Though opposition forces have been slowly moving west from their stronghold in Benghazi along the about 700-mile coastal highway to Tripoli, the country's capital and the center of Gaddafi's power, Ras Lanuf has changed hands several times. As has Bin Jawad, the next town west down the coastal highway. And looking at the leaderless bands of pick-up trucks gathering at checkpoints to make fresh sorties on government positions with weapons newly acquired from raided government arsenals that they barely know how to use, it's hard to think of this as anything like a conventional army. But what's clear is Libya's desert geography — and Muammar Gaddafi's attempt to violently suppress what was once a peaceful movement — has transformed the country's pro-democracy uprising into the first military campaign of the Arab Spring. And it's also clear the desert is an arena in which people power plays at a disadvantage.

For a dictatorship that's been in power for 42 years, the Libyan government collapsed with remarkable speed in the eastern part of the country — a handful of days around February 17th. Besides the fact that Benghazi has long been a hotbed of dissent to rule from Tripoli, the terrain of the east — hills, forests, and a daisy chain of relatively dense urban centers along the coast — is also more sympathetic to a revolution. But west of Benghazi, the land flattens out, with the white sand of the Mediterranean shoreline giving way quickly to juniper and sage scrub and a seemingly endless expanse of dirt and discarded plastic bags. Towns along the way are small, easy to garrison, spread far apart, and located at highway intersections, or clustered around oil facilities.

If eastern Libya is guerrilla country, central Libya is tank terrain. Some of the great battles of World War Two were fought by legendary Axis and Allied tank commanders over the course of several years in a back-and-forth war along the north African coast between Tunisia and Egypt. Of course, nothing like the scale of those battles is going to occur in the Libyan civil war. Only the forces that remain loyal to the Gaddaffi regime have anything resembling a modern army. But therein lies the problem for the opposition. Though much of the Libyan military — already under-funded by a suspicious Gaddafi, who lavished money and materiel on his personal security forces instead — defected to the opposition camp, it has been unable to impose any authority or organization on the rebellion's volunteers who have been doing most of the fighting. And without air support and armor, speeding down straight desert highways with no cover is almost suicide.

Indeed, given their lack of discipline and training it's incredible there aren't more self-inflicted casualties. Besides the usual bouts of idiotic celebratory gunfire, among the many nerve wracking scenes of boys playing with dangerous toys that TIME witnessed near Ras Lanuf included a youngster sitting on top of a huge heap of ammunition boxes at a highway checkpoint and nearly knocking over an open artillery shell crate just so he could get more comfortable. And though the opposition claims an explosion at an ammunition depot near Benghazi that killed more than 20 people on Friday was the work of government saboteurs, it could just as likely have been the result of an accident. Meanwhile, though the Libyan government forces fled Benghazi in disarray, they appear to have regained a measure of composure, and according to reports, have dug into Bin Jawad with sniper positions backed by artillery, helicopters, and fighter jets. Fighting will get even tougher if the rebels move closer to Sert, Gaddaff's hometown, located about midway between Benghazi and Tripoli.

Just how long Free Libya's desert campaign will last is anyone's guess. During the North African campaign in WWII, supply lines proved crucial. When the Allied air and sea power cut fuel deliveries to German Field Marshall Erwin Rommel's Arfika Corps, its Panzer tanks ran out of gas in a region where, ironically, some of the world's largest oil fields were later discovered. Nowadays the rebel government says it has enough cash to pay salaries for the next two months. It's asking foreign countries to begin recognizing it as Libya's legitimate authority, a prelude to formally asking oil companies to begin paying them rather than the government in Tripoli. The Benghazi government also says at least one national oil company, the Sert Oil Company located in Ras Lanuf, has broken with Tripoli and sided with the rebels, and the refineries at Ras Lunuf were refueling opposition vehicles free of charge. The rebels are also getting foreign donations of food and medicine delivered to Benghazi's port. "This isn't Darfur, there's not going to be a humanitarian crisis here," said one rebel government spokesman in Benghazi . "But let's not kid ourselves. This is a revolution by amateurs. We can't keep doing this forever."

Morale may end up playing the decisive factor in this conflict — though it can't be too high on the Gaddafi side as they shoot on their own people, amid rumors that many soldiers are ordered to fight by their officers at gunpoint. But the regime and its supporters are fighting for their survival. Swift sanctions, asset freezes and threats from international bodies to investigate the regime for crimes against humanity have given the government little incentive to surrender peacefully.

The rebellion too is fighting for its life. Though the Arab League has offered to help broker negotiations, the opposition says there is nothing to discuss and fears that any return by the regime will be the beginning of a massacre. But fear is in short supply among the rebel volunteers, many of whom believe that their miraculous against-the-odds successes are a sign that God is on their side. After an attack helicopter appeared and began rocketing the vicinity, TIME beat a hasty retreat from Ras Lanuf back to Benghazi. But car after car of young men with guns and flags of the old Libyan monarchy, which has become the new emblem of Free Libya, kept speeding down the other side of the highway to fill the breach. One truck was also flying the skull and cross-bones of a Jolly Roger pirate flag, which perhaps better captured the wild spirit of the rebel campaign, which may yet tilt in their favor. As one veteran of north African desert battles, American General George Patton, said: "Nobody ever defended anything successfully. There is only attack and attack, and attack some more."

From Time Magazine Online

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2057622,00.html#ixzz1Gmyjvp6n

Nazi Chic or Sinister Outburst?

Once upon a time, two young men named Mick Jones and Tony James were attempting to form a rock band called London SS. Their prospective manager, one Bernard Rhodes, summoned them to a meeting in a pub, and then dumped a bagful of Nazi memorabilia and militaria – badges, knives, caps and the like – over the table. "If you keep that name," he told them, "you'll be spending the rest of your lives having to discuss and justify stuff like this."

They got the message. The name "London SS" was formally buried, and the pool of musicians upon which it was based later ended up in The Clash, The Damned, Generation X and The Pretenders, with swastikas and "Nazi chic" being left to the likes of Sid Vicious. Dr Hunter S Thompson once remarked that if the Hells Angels had really wanted to freak out Middle America, they'd have worn the hammer-and-sickle rather than the swastika, and by sporting red stars and a Brigade Rosse T-shirt, the late Joe Strummer took the good doctor at his word.

That instantly infamous clip of a drunken John Galliano letting his inner bigot out for a stroll has more in common with Eric Clapton's notorious Powellite rant (delivered from a Birmingham stage in 1976 and directly stimulating the founding of Rock Against Racism) than it does with any pseudo-decadent dabbling in Weimar chic induced by one too many viewings of Cabaret. Both disturb because they suggested that, tongues unlocked and inhibitions dissolved by alcohol, Galliano and Clapton were revealing their true feelings about certain groupings of their fellow humans: the sneering, hateful racist lurking beneath the veneer of civilised urbane sophistication.

In direct contrast, nobody could seriously suggest that Lemmy, an obsessive collector of precisely the sort of bits and pieces with which Rhodes had confronted Jones and James, has any truck with rightwing politics. "I'd collect Belgian army stuff if the Belgians had had the best gear", he says.

For those who grew up in the shadow of the second world war, or with endless reruns of Dad's Army, there is an element of kitsch – demystifying and defanging the monster by subverting its symbolism – and a simple impulse towards transgression, shocking parents (or the parent culture) by pretending to cuddle up to the stuff of nightmare.

Essentially, we're dealing with two very different phenomena. On the one hand, a fascination with the camp aesthetics of the Nazi era and a fondness for Weimar Cabaret stylings and its associated iconography (let me make a clean Brecht of it: I'm a sucker for a nice long black leather trenchcoat) can be intensely misleading. Kurt Weill was by no means vile: he and Brecht were committed leftists.

On the other hand, there are actual pro-fascist sympathies. No modern fascist wants anything to do with the imagery of the Third Reich – a recent news story reported a poll revealing that a worrying number of people in the UK, by no means all of whom are white, would support an anti-immigration party provided it carried no overt associations with the downmarket bootboy neo-Nazism of the BNP.

The latter is genuinely worrying, while the former is perhaps merely foolish. As for John Galliano: his employers' decision to immediately dropkick him into the middle distance shows just how much they wanted to avoid inadvertently founding "Rock Against Dior".

From guardian.co.uk