AMAZING ANIMALS

I was a Northeastern Oregon ranch kid so I grew up with animals.  Some were pets, some were livestock.  We had cattle, horses, mules, llamas, and bison plus the usual cats and dogs plus rabbits and a baby alligator that found a new home after it bit my mother.  (The folks brought it home from a party one night when I was in grade school, complete with red ribbon around its neck.  Only with some retrospective did I begin to infer the circumstances of that acquisition.)

A few critters stand out in my memory.

Gotta start with a two-year-old bull bison I named Brewster.  Aviation fans will appreciate the reference to Brewster (the) Buffalo.  Everybody else can Google it.

Brewster was athletic.  Flat-footed he could clear almost any fence on the ranch, and then he’d head in whatever of 360 degrees his Pleistocene instincts dictated.  Now, buffs are not especially fast but they can run all…day…long.  Their trachea resembles a three-inch fire hose.  That’s why the plains Indians ran them in circles—or over a cliff.  No horse can keep pace with them for long.

As you may imagine, Brewster could cover ground, and it became a Challenge to find him.  After the second or third episode people asked, “How do you find a runaway buffalo?”

I said, “It’s easy.  You go home and you sit by the phone.”

My youngest brother graduated from college with a degree in English and minor in philosophy.  When he declared the latter, Dad asked, “Have you checked the yellow pages lately?  There’s no listings for philosophers.”

So…the lad decided to raise llamas.  That was in the mid-70s, and exotics were still a growth industry.  Actually, he gave some thought to camels but our father said, in monosyllables, “Not just No but hell No.”

The New World camelids are llamas, alpacas, guanacos, and vicunas.  The latter are easily identified by the silky ruffs on their chests, contributing luxurious fibers to really spendy coats.

Have you ever seen Salmon P. Chase on a greenback?  Me neither.  But at the height of the llama market a cria was worth $10,000 when it hit the ground.  My brother had impeccable timing—got in early and got out at the right time, even married his very astute veterinarian. 

Llamas are worth a separate blog, and I’ll keep that in mind.  Suffice to say that they can be warm and cuddly or cranky and spiteful, which often means spit-ful.  You devoutly do not want to get caught in a llama crossfire.  They’re called “modified ruminants,” meaning they have three stomachs and regurgitate a bilious green slime to express their displeasure.  Think: high-pressure fire hose for starters.

In the 1980s I knew a lady who volunteered at a wildlife park.  Michelle was, to employ an overworked phrase, drop-dead gorgeous—married twice in the time I knew her—but we became friends.  She mentioned that occasionally she tended giraffe and asked if I’d like some face time.  Done deal!  She convinced me (very little convincing required) to accompany her on a feeding detail—a rare opportunity to meet arguably the most fascinating animals on Planet Earth. 

When I say “face time,” I mean face-to-face time.  There are eight or nine varieties of giraffe, but the Rothschild’s I met were curious and friendly as long as I had something munchable.  Their long, rough tongues were darkish colored and amazingly agile.  If there’s such a thing as a prehensile tongue, giraffe have it.

However, meeting giraffe even in a large enclosure was not the same as seeing them in nature.  In 2000 I went to Zimbabwe on a magazine assignment with some hunting included.  Riding the Land Rover onto the reserve, I noticed three long-necked creatures peering at us over the top of acacia trees.  That was an unforgettable moment—a small yet tangible sensation: We’re really in Africa.

A few days later I was out early with my hunting guide when we crossed a dry creek bed.  He pointed to some fresh tracks.  “Leopard.  Passed here last night.”

The hair on the back of my neck actually stood up, accompanied by a prickling-tingling sensation.  Only much later did I mention it to a friend who’d treated himself to a safari upon assuming command of an aircraft carrier.  He said, “That was your DNA talking to you.”

He was right.  It’s hard for most humans to realize it today, but there was a time when it was uncertain whether leopards or hominids would finish atop the food chain.  (There’s archeological evidence indicating a prehistoric contest: Leopards 1, Humans 0.)

At the opposite end of the Fascinating Animal Scale from giraffe are hummingbirds.

There are more than 300 species of hummers, with 19 historically recorded here in Arizona, mostly in the southeastern part of the state.  However, several species are considered Rare (migratory) and five Accidental.  The Phoenix area hosts three or four varieties, with Anna’s mostly patronizing the feeders outside my office and the dining room.

Anna’s are especially colorful.  They display almost iridescent green bodies while males sport brilliant red or reddish throats.

I never get tired of watching them.  Like every other aviator, I find them absolutely enchanting.  Their ability to change direction and velocity in an instant make them the envy of every Harrier pilot—“viffing” is part of the VSTOL aviator’s inventory, but Mom Nature imparted unmatched virtuosity to the tiny masters of vector in forward flight.

Then woodpeckers discovered the feeders in April.  Damn poachers.

The other day I was typing away when I heard a tap-tap-tapping sound.  Looked to my right about four feet and saw a Gamble’s Quail on my window ledge.  The little guy was persistent—kept at it though I have no idea what he wanted.  A day or so later a lady Gamble’s repeated the process at the kitchen window.  I guess The Word got around.

So did the word on the porcine grapevine.  My wife’s flower pots have drawn attention of javelina, which regard the decorations as an open-air salad bar.  But know what?  We don’t mind too much.  It’s a pleasure to share our environment with wildlife, even including coyotes, bobcat, and at least one cougar which a friend calls the “mountainous lion.”

After all, they were here first.  But we really could’ve done without the diamondback rattler in the garage.

JUNE 1944: THAT WAS THE MONTH THAT WAS

Among the eloquent oratory attending the any D-Day anniversary is a frequent refrain: “The Greatest Generation” preserved America’s freedom.  It is, however, a gross overstatement.  The plain fact is that neither Germany nor Japan ever had the ability to conquer America.

By June 1944, both Axis powers had lost control of the sea, besides which they lacked the ships and manpower to occupy North America. (If Hitler was unable to invade Britain in 1940, how could he occupy America?)  In fact, the Axis already was fatally overextended on the Eurasian landmass and in China.

Even today, orators continue overstating the threat to America’s freedom.  While our security may be at risk in the war on terror, our freedom is as secure as We The People will tolerate.  Not even during the height (or depth) of the Cold War was American freedom at stake. The Soviet Union had the power to destroy us, but never could have enslaved us. Only Americans have the ability to deprive Americans of their freedom.

What, then, was America’s stake on Norman beaches?

The question answers itself. At stake was Western Civilization, and the freedom of most of Europe. France, Belgium, Holland, Denmark, Italy, Poland, Greece, Yugoslavia, Norway and other nations awaited liberation. In fact, so did Germany and its European allies: Bulgaria, Hungary and Romania. Sadly, many of them merely exchanged one oppressor for another: Nazism for Communism.

In June 1944 a celestial observer in low orbit would have marveled at the immense breadth and variety of violence on Planet Earth.  It was a watershed period in World War II, and not only Operation Overlord in Normandy on June 6.   That month truly defined the phrase “world war.”

On the fourth Allied forces entered Rome, liberating the Eternal City after nine months of muddy, bloody slogging up the Italian boot.  The U.S. Fifth Army gained the credit but the victory also belonged to Britons, New Zealanders, South Africans, Frenchmen, Poles, Indians and Gurkhas; even some Brazilians.  But at the end of the war in May 1945, enemy forces still owned northern Italy. In fact, the Axis-- outnumbered six to one and out-produced beyond computing--tied the rest of the world in knots for six years, including America, the British Empire, China, and the Soviet Union.

Also in Italy, the U.S. Fifteenth Air Force flew its first shuttle mission to Russia.  Between June 2 and 11, nearly 200 bombers and fighters attacked German targets in Romania while staging out of Soviet bases.

Meanwhile on the Eurasian landmass, Russia prepared a massive blow.  Along the Donets the Wehrmacht still occupied land several hundred miles east of Kiev.  Four Soviet army groups--124 divisions with 1.2 million men--were poised to strike, a cocked fist with an armored avalanche of 5,200 tanks and massive artillery on a scale that only Russians have ever managed.  Half a million Germans awaited the blow on Army Group Center.

In northeastern India, British Empire forces shot it out with determined Japanese attackers (the only kind the Emperor possessed) at a place called Imphal.  It was valuable more for its position than anything intrinsic: Imphal controlled the only all-weather highway on the Burmese frontier.  In a dank, jungly world perennially wet, soldiers on both sides watched their uniforms mold and weapons rust almost before their eyes.  Tokyo's hope of seizing the crown colony died in the rot and decay of Manipur Province.

Meanwhile, American power also projected westward that June.  On the opposite side of the globe, Operation Forager smashed Japanese defenses in the strategic Mariana Islands, 1,500 miles south of Tokyo.  Conquest of Saipan, Guam, and Tinian involved the greatest aircraft carrier battle of all time, and put B-29 bombers within range of Japan itself.  Significantly, 80 percent of the ships in the Fifth Fleet had been commissioned in the two and a half years since Pearl Harbor.

Federal spending reached $91.3 billion in 1944, raising the national debt to $204 billion.  But unemployment ran merely 1.2 percent, and more than a few servicemen reckoned that at least one percent of the population was unemployable.

Like every other operation, Overlord turned on logistics. The vital aspect of D-Day that’s usually overlooked was the tremendous task of moving men and materiel from the New World to the Old.  Thanks to the U.S., British, and Canadian navies, defeat of the U-boats by May 1943 cleared a transatlantic path to Omaha and Utah Beaches.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt already had proclaimed America the arsenal of democracy, and however undemocratic some of FDR’s allies proved, the U.S. became a global Vulcan’s forge. 

Consequently, the supply war was fought and won at home, in factories and farms.  Among other things, America manufactured 79,000 landing craft; 297,000 airplanes; 2.5 million trucks; 12.8 million rifles; and 190 million pair of boots and shoes.

For American servicemen one of the greatest events that month was passage of the GI Bill of Rights.  It provided for postwar education loans plus additional discharge pay, unemployment benefits, and social security credit for time in uniform.

So when you think of the WWII veteran, don’t allow your mental computer to default to the traditional recruiting-poster image.  The vet may have wielded a bazooka, piloted a bomber, skinned a bulldozer or a pounded a typewriter.  Additionally he—or she—may have welded steel plates in Norfolk or riveted airframes in Seattle.  But Rosie the Riveter and GI Joe formed an unbeatable team.  Between them, they helped win the war.  And in doing so, they shaped our world.

MAY 14, 1945

I've never posted twice in one month but this May recalls two events 20 years apart.

One of the most satisfying books I’ve written was Enterprise: America’s Fightingest Ship and the Men Who Helped Win  WW II (Simon & Schuster, 2010)  I knew so many Big E men that I came to share their love for their ship, and on the 70th anniversary of her last day in combat, I want to share events of May 14, 1945, well west of the International Date Line.  

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When the sun appeared over the Philippine Sea at 5:30 a.m., the ship had been at general quarters for ninety-three minutes.  Hatches were dogged; guns were manned; and battle rations available.  The dawn revealed good flying weather: a fifteen-knot southerly wind driving scattered cumulus clouds with bases at 3,000 feet.

Radar had tracked twenty-six raiders inbound from Kyushu, and when the hostiles met the task group’s Hellcat umbrella, some twenty-two Japanese succumbed to interceptors or shipboard antiaircraft gunners. 

One intended to die gloriously.

Hellcats hunted a particularly cagey Zeke playing three-dimensional cat and mouse.  He ducked in and out of clouds, tracked by radar and occasionally by optical gun directors, but the fighters could not corner him.  He was unusually persistent, biding his time while making good use of the low clouds.

The intruder was Lieutenant (jg) Shunsuke Tomiyasu of the 721st Naval Air Group.  The 721st was deadly good at its job.  Ensign Kioyoshi Ogawa had expended his life against the Bunker Hill three days before, forcing Vice Admiral Marc Mitscher to shift his flag to The Big E.

Like his squadronmate Ogawa, Tomiyasu was twenty-two years old.  His relatives remembered him as a cheerful young man, fond of sports and music, who dabbled in painting.  He urged his family to “live with great enthusiasm,” but Tomiyasu was equally capable of dying with great enthusiasm.

Now, seeing an opportunity, at 6:53 Tomiyasu pointed his Mitsubishi’s nose at the American carrier group and initiated a run, broad on the starboard beam.

The sailors were alert.  Almost immediately brown-black splotches erupted beneath the puffy white clouds, radar-directed shells with fuses containing miniature radio transmitters that detonated when they sensed an aircraft nearby.

As the Zeke sprinted from the clouds at 1,500 feet, Captain Hall ordered a hard port turn.  By swinging the stern to starboard as the bow came left, Hall unmasked more antiaircraft guns and forced the pilot to make a correction to avoid an overshoot.

Enterprise now got a good look at Shunsuke Tomiyasu--his Zeke carried a large bomb.  At 6:57 he came straight on, in a thirty-degree dive, not jinking to avoid the flak and tracers that flashed and flared around him.  “Everybody unloaded on him,” said Marine gunner Jack Maroney. 

It seemed incredible that an airplane could survive such gunfire.  By one reckoning, the Zeke was subjected to fifty-five barrels: 20 and 40 millimeter to five-inch. 

Near the bottom of his dive, Tomiyasu recognized that he would overshoot to starboard.  Two hundred yards out, in the final seconds of life, he snap-rolled left to inverted and tugged the stick back, performing the first quarter of a split-ess.

It was a beautiful piece of flying.

On escorting ships, men watched incredulously as the suicide pilot performed an inverted forty-five degree dive into Big E’s fir flight deck, splintering it just aft of the number one elevator.  The hull trembled with the violence of the ensuring explosion; men felt it throughout the ship.  

The explosion lofted a large section of the fifteen-ton elevator some 400 feet into the air; the rest fell into the elevator well.   

The bulkhead between the pilots’ staterooms was obliterated, leaving a ballroom-sized pile of rubble.  The flight deck was bulged upward nearly five feet, and twenty-five aircraft destroyed.

Lieutenant Commander John Munro already was one of the most experienced damage control officers in the U.S. Navy.  His ship had been hit on March 18, March 20, and April 11—four times in seven weeks.  But the latest was the worst—moreso than Eastern Solomons or Santa Cruz in 1942.

The information poured into DC Central: a serious fire in the forward hangar bay, threatening ammunition lockers; the aviation fuel system was ruined, lines severed and tanks leaking high-test gasoline.  Seawater was streaming in unchecked through breaches in the hull, and three- and six-inch water mains were broken, aggravating the flooding.  Any one of those was serious; together they posed a catastrophic threat.

Yet Enterprise responded as she had off Guadalcanal.  The men, the crew—the ship—fought back.  Up forward where the situation was worst, damage repair teams rushed to work.  Hull technicians, carpenters, and bosun’s mates gathered their gangs, shouted orders over roaring flames, and began fighting the fight.  Some sailors picked up five-inch shells and powder bags, passing them hand to hand until the last man in line pitched the explosives overboard.  Others sought the maimed, dead or dying and pulled, carried, or tugged them out of the way.

Enterprise won her fight in seventeen minutes.  The worst of the flames were suppressed and the rest finally extinguished in two hours.

Meanwhile, power to forward guns was interrupted or destroyed but other batteries remained in the fight.  While the smoke still smoldered, Big E gunners splashed two more “bloodsuckers” in the next hour.

That was the end of The Big E's long war.

Then it was time to count the cost.  Fourteen men were dead.  About sixty were wounded, half of them seriously.  The toll was small compared to the sixty-six crewmen Enterprise had lost at Eastern Solomons and forty-four at Santa Cruz—let alone Franklin and Bunker Hill’s hundreds.  But shipmates are special in the sea services, and three of the Big E’s dead sailors had been aboard since 1942.

One other casualty was tended to.  Tomiyasu’s body was recovered largely intact, and intelligence officers retrieved his papers. 

Much has been made of the racial aspects of the Pacific War—perhaps too much.  But generally the U.S. Navy accorded proper if not Christian burial to dead Japanese: two instances involved the battleship Missouri and escort carrier Sargent Bay.  So it was in Enterprise.  The medical department sutured the enemy pilot’s wounds; his body was enshrouded in a mattress cover, then committed to the ocean. 

The kamikaze’s name was improperly translated as “Tomi Zai,” and remained so for decades.  But assiduous research on both sides of the Pacific finally solved the riddle, and some of Tomiyasu’s personal effects with pieces of his airplane were delivered to his family in 2003.

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In 2010 I received a letter from a Big E radar specialist.  It contained a hand-written note appended to an envelope: “Thought you’d like to have this.”

Inside was a fairly crisp Japanese 50-sen note with the comment, “This was in the pocket of Tomi Zai, 14 May 1945.”

I’m keeping that irreplaceable bit of history in a safe, dark place, until I determine what to do with it.