Category: War & Veterans
-
A message
Mira Talaja Split, Croatia Standing in a clearing on Lake Peruca, I awaited the completion of the negotiations and approval to pass through occupied territory. It was late autumn 1993, and I accompanied the Red Cross medical corps and served as a translator. International forces came to the area to reach a ceasefire agreement, facilitate entry,…
-
The American Civil War as a biological phenomenon: Did Salmonella or Sherman win the war for the North?
Michael BrownChicago, Illinois, United States Reexamining Civil War deaths A demographic historian, J. David Hacker, recently discovered an unfortunate truth; using newly digitized data from the 1860, 1870, and 1880 censuses, he constructed new estimates of Northern and Southern Civil War deaths. In his pivotal analysis published in 2012, the death toll in the American…
-
Mentally ill and Jewish in World War II
Mary SeemanToronto, Canada Introduction In 1928, my grandfather was admitted to the Clinic for Psychiatry and Nervous Diseases in Vienna for a recurrence of the manic-depressive illness he had suffered from since youth. The clinic director was Julius Wagner-Jauregg who one year earlier had been awarded the Nobel Prize for fever treatment of third stage…
-
Requiem for the Beast: A memoir
Mara BuckWindsor, Maine, United States His world was tough and he the toughest in it, exploiting smarts and size. As he matured, he learned intimidation on an intellectual level so he seldom had to resort to the earlier violence. They called him The Beast of One-Hundred-Twenty-Fifth Street—soon friends and enemies alike called him simply B.…
-
Found and lost in Vietnam
Lynn SadlerBurlington, North Carolina, United States War alters, shapes, and re-shapes far different ends even for members of the same family. Clarence Leon (“Boone”) McNeill (1947-1969) and Joseph Nelson Hargrove (1951-1975) are illustrative not only in that telling way but also salute the tenacity of Americans in honoring their veterans. Their names are inscribed on…
-
Lilac hideout
Lidiia RiabovaCherkasy, Ukraine Klym was lying wounded, shell-shocked on the hot black soil. The reflection of a distant, cold sky and the silent copper sun mirrored in his wide open eyes. Only he had survived the battle. The watch on his wrist was glinting in the sun. Somehow it remained undamaged. It was caked with…
-
Neuroscientist refugees from Nazi Germany find haven in Illinois
Lawrence ZeidmanChicago, Illinois, United States Introduction The purge of thousands of “non-Aryan” physicians, including many neuroscientists, began within the first few months of the Nazi takeover of Germany in January 1933. At that time, roughly 9,000 “non- Aryan” (full Jews, baptized Jews, part-Jews, and other minorities), and politically dissident doctors lived in Germany,1 comprising 15-17%…
-
The Siamese Expeditionary Force of World War I and the Spanish Flu
Khwanchai PhusrisomStephen MartinMahasarakham, Thailand The Siamese military presence In July 1918, 1284 Siamese volunteers arrived in Marseilles by ship1. Their air force personnel did not see action because their training had not been completed before the end of the war. The ground troops (Fig 1) had been trained, but being too few to form an…
-
The imponderable ‘what-ifs’: Did the medical issues of three Confederate generals cause the South to lose the war?
Kevin R. Loughlin During the darkest days of World War II, Winston Churchill was credited as saying, “The imponderable ‘what- ifs’ accumulate”. Throughout history, imponderable what ifs have provoked the observer to consider how historical outcomes may have turned out differently. Such it is with the Civil War. It can be reasonably argued that the…
-
Fool the Axis
Kelley YuanMemphis, Tennessee, United States Before the advent of penicillin in 1928, sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) had plagued armies in the field for centuries. In World War I alone, syphilis and gonorrhea resulted in the discharge of more than ten thousand American soldiers and consumed seven million person-days from the war.1 In World War II…