Robber Barons

The Chosin Few

Today is the anniversary of the day my friend Bud Seeburger won the Navy Cross for Valor. In the cruel North Korean winter of 1950, 1st lieutenant Edward Seeburger, USMC, the sole surviving officer of his Company, led the remains of his company south from the Chosin Reservoir, his few Marines the point for a convoy of 400 or so wounded Marines. On the road they came under fire from the surrounding hills. Chinese had come down the backside of the hills and taken up positions overlooking the road, a deadly trap for the convoy of wounded. Bud took his men into the hills and threw the Chinese back, becoming wounded in the process. The Chinese cleared, the convoy of wounded proceeded to the evacuation ships. Bud Seeburger, to his surprise, got the Navy Cross for his heroic action that day in saving the lives of 400 wounded Marines.

The President of the United States of America takes pleasure in presenting the Navy Cross to First Lieutenant Edward H. Seeburger (MCSN: 0-43049), United States Marine Corps (Reserve), for extraordinary heroism in connection with military operations against an armed enemy of the United Nations while serving as Unit Commander of the Dog Company Unit, Provisional Dog-Easy Company, Composite Battalion, Seventh Marines, FIRST Marine Division (Reinforced), in action against enemy aggressor forces in the Republic of Korea on 2 December 1950. First Lieutenant Seeburger was ordered to lead the attack of the combined Regimental Combat Teams FIVE and SEVEN in the breakout from Yudam-ni south to Hagaru. Soon after jumping off along the Main Supply Route with a single tank in the lead together with the remnants of about 20 men, he came under intense enemy fire from small arms, automatic weapons, rockets, and mortars from enemy forces deeply entrenched over commanding ground to the front and both flanks. First Lieutenant Seeburger began deploying his men in defilade on either side of the road. When he spotted many of the enemy on the high ground on the right flank, he contacted the tank commander through the integral phone on the back of the tank and directed their fire to silence the enemy there. As he was doing this, enemy fire severed the telephone connection and wounded him in the knee. At the same time, with well-entrenched machine guns defending a roadblock to the front, and with his ranks depleted by eight further casualties and he himself painfully wounded and unable to walk, he staunchly refused evacuation, and directed his men in an enfilade movement which wiped out the obstruction and enabled the entire column to move forward. By his great personal valor and dauntless perseverance in the face of almost certain death, First Lieutenant Seeburger saved the lives of many Marines; thereby reflecting great credit upon himself and upholding the highest traditions of the Marine Corps and the United States Naval Service.

Today US forces in Afghanistan are increasingly isolated by a hostile Pakistan, who have shut down the supply routes into Afghanistan, and by the Russians playing hardball with the route through Russia for non-lethal material. How long will it be before the Pakistani military, who are on the side of the Taliban, and who fire on our guys and planes whenever they can, decide to attack our forces in strength. Will we level Pakistan or will we pull a Dunkirk and retreat to the sea somehow? Obama put our guys in a place no military man would have put them, deep in enemy territory, with no way out. How many Navy Crosses will be awarded when we have to pull out of Afghanistan under fire?

See my novels and collected verse at Amazon, paperback and 99 cent Kindle HERE

Occupy Walt’s Street

A Tax On Cheese

129 Replies

“I am sometimes tempted to ask the French whether they would like a tax on cheese.” – Cameron, British Prime Minister, in response to French and German attempts to tax all European stock market transactions, 80 percent of which occur in Britain, and which would devastate the British economy. But how would a tax on French cheese work?

The Camembert

Must do its share

To save the Eurozone

And too the Brie

As we shall see

And all things Francophone

A Coulommiers

Will have no fears

That she will not be bought

Nor will Gruyere

Cry it’s not fair

And taxes should be naught

We pay homage

To French fromage

But they must pay the tax

So eat your fill

Of Decauville

There’s always the ex lax

See my novels and collected verse at Amazon, paperback and 99 cent Kindle HERE

The Wrong Koran

157 Replies

A story making the rounds of international circles is that Turkey and Saudi Arabia are ready to take down Assad at the same time the Israelis take down Iran. Seems a little unlikely, but in the Middle East anything can, and usually does, happen.

Hold on now while I get this straight

You’re telling me one Muslim state

Now threatens to make war upon another?

That shia guys and sunni guys

Don’t like each other, quel surprise

What happened to that old Islamic brother?

The Turks are gonna take Assad

And make the Syrians feel read bad

While Israel lays waste downtown Teheran

Just goes to show how some folks feel

When they believe their god is real

And other people read the wrong Koran

See my novels and collected verse at Amazon, paperback and 99 cent Kindle HERE

The Old Way Is Always Best

5 Replies

Cutlery is a fascinating subject. People have always used a sharp edged object, first of stone and late of metal, to cut their meat. Spoons came along very early in human history, and were undoubtedly shells or other natural spoon-like objects. The fork, however, was late in arriving, being invented in Italy sometime in the twelfth century, and consisted of a handle and a pair of sharpened tines. There is a scene in “Becket” where Thomas a Becket introduces a fork to King Henry II, explaining it was used to spear the meat and transfer it to the mouth, thereby keeping the fingers from becoming dirty. Henry says then the fork will get dirty, and Becket replies the fork is washable, and the King says so are the fingers, I don’t get the point. We’ve come a long way from the time shells were used for spoons, but sometimes I think the old ways are best. As it happens, I chanced upon my friend Og, hunkered down in front of his cave, night coming on, a large hairy beast burning on the slowly dying fire.

What think you, Og, of forks and knives

To help your many kids and wives

Consume yon hairy beast with some dispatch?

He grunted as he turned to stare

Into the flames as burning hair

Produced a stink that’s awfully tough to match

He said he had no use for those

And had contempt for folks who chose

To elevate themselves to what they’re not

There’s nothing wrong with using hands

To rip a carcass, veins and glands

And eat it even when it starts to rot

Technology will be the end

Of everything, now hear me friend

And listen when I say the old way’s best

At first we start with knives and spoons

And then after a few short moons

There’s dinner parties, place cards and the rest

And then I’ll have to wash my hands

And we’ll invite the other bands

With small talk sipping something on the rocks

Then candlesticks and table cloths

And bread bowls filled herby broths

And wifey will insist I change my socks

Where will it end, if once we start

For once we and the old ways part

Our lives will never be the way we were

I left him there on seeing that

The fire blazed with flaring fat

And the large smoking beast began to stir

See my novels and collected verse at Amazon, paperback and 99 cent Kindle HERE

Photoshopped

5 Replies

Our zealous guardians are busy removing all traces of words once common to the language from public use, words that cannot be used in the current climate. The n word is just one of them, and libraries are removing the books of Mark Twain, our greatest writer, from the shelves because Tom Sawyer used the word, and that makes some people uncomfortable. Some have called this erasing of words and books that make some now uncomfortable “Photoshopping the past”. But the past has always been photoshopped, usually at the time of happening, so in a sense we are, in many cases, photoshopping the photoshop. Did Walter Duranty, in a very real sense, photoshop the reality of the Soviet Union? Yes he did. How many Walter Duranty’s wrote a photoshopped version of events current at the time that was not uncovered as distortion and lie, and which we believe to this day? I completely agree that photoshopping the past by removing works and words we now are uncomfortable with is wrongheaded, but I submit much photoshopping of the past was done in the present of that past, and comes down to us as legend disguised as fact. Fortunately, there are many of us who are adept at setting things straight. Nonetheless, in the contest between legend and fact, legend always wins.

History, or so they say

Is written by the winners

Which is why our mothers pray

We don’t turn out as sinners

Who turn the facts right inside out

To make ourselves look grander

Erasing every fear and doubt

And every groveling pander

History is, as Boney said

A fiction that’s agreed to

So photoshopping pasts has led

To poseurs being freed to

Portray themselves as princely guys

Whose lives and works are gleaming

And worthy of the highest prize

But in truth are past redeeming

See my novels and collected verse at Amazon, paperback and 99 cent Kindle HERE

Tomb Raiders

5 Replies

Egyptian authorities closed the pyramids to the public when they discovered that Jews were about to capture the immense power of the pyramids by performing a sacred ceremony on November 11 at 11:11, thus using the magic numerological notation of five consecutive elevens to perform their nefarious deed. Fortunately for the world, for who knows what mischief might have ensued had the Jews succeeded in capturing the power of the pyramids, the Egyptians are not be fooled by such amateurish attempts. A relieved spokesman, a Mister al Asfar, pronounced the danger past, and all was again normal. But before one rolls one’s eyes, remember the curse called upon Carter and all who opened the tomb of Tutankhamun in 1922, the mysterious deaths of several of the archaeological party, including Carter, and the episode of the canary and the cobra, where Carter’s canary was last seen in the mouth of a cobra, a snake that was the very symbol of the Egyptian monarchy. Laugh if you will, but it is just possible the pyramids do have power, and that Tutankhamun is not just another old Giza. And as far as Carter’s canary and the cobra is concerned, it would seem the victim was just the proverbial canary in the algemeinschaft. When I spoke to al Asfar, he had much to say.

You scoff, my friend, but there are truths

Too ancient to dismiss

The power of the pyramids

Is like a Pharaoh’s kiss

A blinding flash as Amon’s fire

From Pharaoh’s lips to yours

And which is why from time to time

We must close down the tours

The Jews were come to steal the curse

The power of these stones

And use it for ignoble ends

Defiling sacred bones

But we are steps ahead of them

We know their wily ways

And now if you’ll excuse me, sir

It seems for some past days

The sky has rained down frogs and newts

And murrains by the score

And now I fear I must believe

The Jews have robbed the store

See my novels and collected verse at Amazon, paperback and 99 cent Kindle HERE

A Free Europe

7 Replies

The socialist dream of a European welfare state is now coming to an end after a fifty year experiment. A socialist dream where everyone shares equally, whether or not that equality is earned. A socialist dream of little work for lordly pay, of early retirement on lavish pensions, on cradle to grave government medical and financial care. The lefty bureaucrats kept it going for fifty years, but they finally ran out of other peoples’ money. The lefty self-proclaimed elite would make the rules and run the show, because they were better than the common folk, and knew better what the common folk wanted and needed. And so it ends, as anyone with a grain of sense knew it would.

What is it with these little folks

Who think they are the center

Of universes large and small

They landlord and we renter

Europa in her grander thoughts

Believed it was not she

Who circled massive Jupiter

But she who captured he

And so it comes, the journey’s end

Of socialism’s dream

To smooth the edges off of life

Like pebbles in a stream

But streams have a life of their own

For pebbles they care not

And now the EU’s washed ashore

To lie in sun and rot

The dream is done, now Europe’s free

To be as they once were

Free in their homelands, free to sing

And not call Brussels sir

See my novels and collected verse at Amazon, paperback and 99 cent Kindle HERE

Thanksgiving 2011

4 Replies

Obama pardoned a couple of turkeys yesterday, but it turns out they were real turkeys, not part of his Chicago machine nor part of the overpaid, under-educated, under-worked federal bureaucracy. Still, it was a noble gesture, even if the turkeys were blissfully unaware they were being used. But thanksgiving is not about pardoning turkeys, however deserving, but about giving them a couple of whacks and into the ovens.

Turkey soldiers on the farms

Alert for all Thanksgiving harms

Sergeants sounding the alarms

Soldiers scream they got no arms

Turkey turkey gobble gobble

Watch the old man hobble hobble

Through the barnyard with the axe

Giving turkeys forty whacks

The turkeys mill about the pen

Each turkey tom and turkey hen

The turkey sentries loose and lax

They do not see the sharpened axe

Oh dear

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!

Verse-afire

The Writings of Walter Erickson

Robber Barons

The Chosin Few

Occupy Walt’s Street

A Tax On Cheese

The Wrong Koran

The Old Way Is Always Best

Photoshopped

Tomb Raiders

A Free Europe

Thanksgiving 2011