Reprise: A Day That Changed The World

Soldiers Storm OMAHA Beach

I originally planned to write about another subject today, but the significance of June 6th led me to change my mind. What happened on the coast of France seventy-two years ago today was one of the turning points of history. Here is a reprise of the thoughts I expressed on the subject a few years ago.

June 6, 2016:  Seventy-two years ago today, the greatest fleet ever assembled in history launched the largest amphibious invasion ever undertaken.  Over 100,000 American, British, Canadian, French, and other Allied troops stormed ashore on five beaches in Normandy.  American and British airborne divisions preceded the landings by a few hours to disrupt the German lines-of-communications.

On some beaches, the invasion plan worked smoothly despite opposition from the defending German. But the American beach called OMAHA became a slaughterhouse. The defending positions were formidable, and German resistance proved almost fanatical. The beach became littered with dead and wounded attackers and destroyed equipment. The filmmakers of Saving Private Ryan vividly captured what these men endured. The situation seemed so dire that General Omar Bradley, the American commander, considered evacuating the beach entirely.  Then American leadership, training, initiative, and ingenuity turned the tide.

One on-site commander told his soldiers that there were two types of men on the beach: those who were already dead and those who were going to die. He admonished them  “Let’s take that hill and die inland.” Then he rose and led his men from the front. Engineers breached barriers holding up the troops, and the few tanks that made it ashore surged forward. Hundreds of soldiers overcame their terror and braved fierce fire to attack the defenders. They took the high ground, and the crisis was overcome.  By nightfall, all the landings were securely established.  Although much hard fighting still lay ahead, the fate of Nazi Germany was sealed.

D-Day occurred ten days before my eighth birthday. I still recall President Franklin Roosevelt’s somber radio announcement of the event to the American public and his solemn prayer for the success and safety of our fighting men. As I recall, the mood of the country was grim but determined.  The Axis had started this war, and they deserved whatever they were getting. We were damned well going to finish the war with total victory.

Almost every family in the United States had someone directly involved in World War II. Although my father was too old to serve, I had uncles and many cousins in the armed forces.  Some served in the Army, others in the Navy. Several served in the Army Air Forces. My close relatives endured combat in North Africa, Italy, Northwest Europe, New Guinea, the China-Burma-India Theater, and in the Pacific. One helped sink Japanese carriers at Midway to turn the tide of war in that region. He was one of the few torpedo plane pilots who made it back to his carrier. He remained on the USS Enterprise for the remainder of the war and fought in almost every major battle in the Pacific. My oldest brother-in-law flew 8th Air Force heavy bombers over Germany. It seemed that everyone studied world geography. Our family experience was typical of the entire country. We were a united nation, focused on the single purpose of victory. As I said in a previous blog post, we would not be so united again until the days immediately following September 11, 2001.

The Normandy landings cost the Allies over 9,000 soldiers, sailors, and airmen killed or wounded. Those of us in succeeding generations owe these men an enormous debt of gratitude. Their sacrifice in lives lost or maimed freed the world of the gruesome specter of Nazi conquest. Western Europe and the Americas remain free today as a result of their efforts.

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Warren Bell is an author of historical fiction.  He spent 29 years as a US Naval Officer, and has traveled to most of the places in the world that he writes about.  A long-time World War II-buff, his first two novels, Fall Eagle One and Hold Back the Sun are set during World War II.  His third novel, Asphalt and Blood, follows the US Navy Seabees in Vietnam.  His most recent novel, Snowflakes in July, was released on September 15, 2015.  He is currently working on a new novel, Endure the Cruel Sun, the sequel to his best-selling novel, Hold Back the Sun. For more about Warren Bell, visit his website at: wbellauthor.com or see him on twitter @wbellauthor.  

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Why I Write Novels About History

I have been interested in history for as long as I can remember. I started to school in 1942 during the bleakest days of the Second World War. Even in first grade, we knew that we were living in momentous times. Our chief entertainment outside the home in those days was the motion pictures we saw almost every weekend. Dramatic newsreels written to support the war effort screened between feature showings. We were routinely introduced to parts of the world that our parents hardly dreamed of in their childhoods.

The history we were taught in school was too often the dry memorization of dates and event names, but there were also other, more personal sources of historical data. At that time, many Civil War veterans were still alive, and some of the old soldiers loved to spin tales off that conflict. World War I veterans were quite common. All our grandparents had heard personal oral histories from their ancestors. Many of these stories were passed down from generation to generation.

I have always viewed history as the summation of the accomplishments of people. In the 1950s, many historians viewed their discipline through the prism of movements shaped by events. The personal influence of individual leaders was minimized. Events shaped the leaders, not vice versa. I never subscribed to this view. I grew up in an age of leadership giants. The personal accomplishments of men like Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill just didn’t fit into the view of events shaped history. Leadership giants still emerge in the world. Can anyone imagine modern South Africa in its present form without Nelson Mandela? I certainly can’t.

One thing our teachers did emphasize was George Santayana’s statement in his 1905 The Life of Reason that: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” The mistakes made by the Western Democracies during the 1930s that allowed Adolf Hitler to achieve supremacy in Europe were hammered into our brains.

I sometimes question whether history is taught at all in schools today. I know that my children did not receive a good grounding in the subject. If new generations do not understand what ideas have worked or not worked in the past, are they not likely to keep making the same mistakes over and over again?

A good case in point is to compare the workup to the 2003 invasion of Iraq with the early years of U.S. involvement in Vietnam. In both cases, civilian appointees in the Department of Defense believed that they understood the situations better than uniformed military officers. In both cases, an attempt was made to apply just enough military force to cause the enemy to capitulate. Civilians pared the order of battle for the Iraq invasion of elements considered critical by on-scene commanders. In neither case did civilian or military commanders have an understanding of the local cultural elements that would later play such vital roles. All the valuable experience in counterinsurgency that we gained in Vietnam seemed to have been largely forgotten. CI warfare had to be relearned and again paid for in blood.

In the last part of the Twentieth Century, collectivist governments failed all over the world. Communism and socialism proved to be unsustainable systems of governing. Many people in the United States do not seem to be aware of these facts. Some political candidates are again touting socialist principles.

My latest novel, Snowflakesin July, is set in the turbulent 1960s and 1970s when the New Left movement spawned a host of domestic Marxist terrorists.  But the Vietnamese Marxist state that came out of the war became one of history’s greatest failures. Capitalism now flourishes throughout Southeast Asia.

Take heed of history. Let’s stop making the same stupid mistakes over and over again. 

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Warren Bell is an author of historical fiction.  He spent 29 years as a US Naval Officer, and has traveled to most of the places in the world that he writes about.  A long-time World War II-buff, his first two novels, Fall Eagle One and Hold Back the Sun are set during World War II.  His third novel, Asphalt and Blood, follows the US Navy Seabees in Vietnam.  His most recent novel, Snowflakes in July, was released on Kindle on September 15, 2015, and a paperback version will be following.  For more about Warren Bell, visit his website at: wbellauthor.com or see him on twitter @wbellauthor.  

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A Well Defined Six-Pack

Just a few years ago, the requirements to be a cover model for romance books were long, flowing hair, a generally muscular build, and distinguished features. But sometime over the last few years, those characteristics became obsolete. What one needs today is a well-defined set of six packs. It seems as almost all romance book covers today feature a shot of a man’s bare body from just below the navel to the base of the neck. A handsome face is now superfluous. That ripped belly appears all that is necessary.

I should not be surprised. Several years ago I was with a younger group at a party. The women began talking about what attracted them to their husbands. Then a recent bride said something like, “Let’s face it, ladies. What’s really attractive about a man is a sculpted chest and belly.” Wow. And I thought good looks and intelligence were important. That shows how much I know. The proliferation of rippling bare bellies on book covers today would appear to prove that bride to be right.

Unfortunately, not all of us are blessed with a great six-pack, no matter how hard we work out. I did a Google search on the subject and learned that only about 1 in 25,000 men possess that characteristic. Let’s do a little math. The last Census says that there are about 152 million men in the U.S. If only 1 in 25,000 have a six-pack, that would mean that only about 6,100 American men qualify. Even if you double that number, only about 12,200 men with ripped bellies are available. I fear that women who expect potential mates to look like a book cover will be sadly disappointed.

Those of us who have been around awhile have learned that physical appearance is only part of the equation in choosing a mate. Intelligence, character, and integrity are way up near the top also. Not to mention pure, unadulterated love.  Some of us have been lucky enough to be blessed with all of these characteristics in the life partner with whom we chose to live out our lives.  I described my wife, Annette, as, “The greatest of many blessings that have graced my life,” in the dedication for my debut novel, FALL EAGLE ONE. I meant every word then and I still do.

For the record, I have a rock hard six-pack. I do over a hundred “crunches” a day and use the abs machine at the gym. Unfortunately, the years have layered a "keg" of fat over the muscles so that they are now invisible.

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Musings About My Father

My father, Jewell Bell (25) with my mother Olive Tatum

Lately, I have been thinking a lot about my father. Perhaps it is because I am approaching the age at which Dad left us. As I look at myself and think back on him, I am struck by how much harder his life was than mine has been to this point. I realize that much of that was because he worked so hard to see that his children had better lives than he did.

Jewell Thomas Bell was born at home in Milner, Columbia County, Arkansas on September 22, 1904. His mother suffered a hard labor, and she never had another child. Being a “one young’un,” as they were called in those days, was not an experience he enjoyed.

Dad’s childhood was shaped by tragedy. When he was still an infant, his mother went blind. We learned later that the blindness was a result of a childhood head injury, which sparked a benign brain tumor.  But when he was growing up, his mother’s sisters drummed into Dad’s head that the strain of giving birth to him caused his mother to go blind. This guilt trip plagued him all his life.

My grandfather, whom we called, “Pappy’” never recovered from his wife going blind. For years, he spent every dollar he could get his hands on taking her to doctors all over the region seeking a cure. Unfortunately, the state of medicine in South Arkansas in the early Twentieth Century rendered his efforts fruitless. In the process, he ended up losing his farm and having to work as a logger in the lumber industry.  Relatives from a fairly large extended family helped care for my grandmother. After losing her sight, she had become a complete invalid.  When Pappy had to cook, their meals were usually dried beans and cornbread.

Dad was apparently an avid student. Years later, he could still conjugate Latin verbs and quote many passages of poetry. Given a decent education, he could have had a bright future. But as World War One erupted in Europe, family economics trumped such considerations. Dad grew to man-sized by the time he was in the eighth grade. Big enough to do a man’s work, Pappy pulled him out of school to work full time in the woods as a logger. He would support his parents for the rest of their lives.

Despite his circumstances, Dad managed to become something of a musician, although he couldn’t read a note of music. He played a mean honky-tonk piano and also played the fiddle in the manner of Charlie Daniels. He could hear a tune once and then play it on either instrument. This ability to play “by ear” was not passed on to his children or grandchildren, but two of my grandsons, Thomas Bell and Evan Williams, inherited it. Being a member of the band at the country dances of the era was a apparently a good way to attract girls. At close to six feet tall with black hair and a wiry build, Dad was devilishly handsome.

At some point in the late 1910s or 1920s, Dad and several other young men from Columbia County decided to go up to work the Kansas winter wheat harvest to earn extra money. Winter wheat is harvested in July, when the crops in Arkansas are still immature. Dad told me of this adventure late in his life. Piling into an old Ford pickup, they drove north on the dirt roads of that time, often camping in the woods on the way. Once in Kansas, they had no trouble getting work. The mechanized equipment the Kansas farmers employed fascinated Dad. They had huge steam-driven tractors and combine machines. Dad learned how the machines operated and how to keep them repaired. He would work with machinery for the rest of his life.

After returning to Arkansas, Dad learned to set up and operate the complicated planing machines that smoothed the good Southern Pine lumber of the region. There were no computers in those days. The sophisticated machines were set up  manually, continually making adjustments until the boards produced exactly matched the industry-issued templates. The precise quality of boards from Dad’s machines became legend in the pine lumber industry.

Dad spent the rest of his working life in the lumber industry. Still the primary support for his parents, he did not marry my mother until he was past 25. From that point on, his primary focus was on supporting his family. Times were hard in those first years of the Great Depression, but Dad always managed to find work of some sort. He told me later that he was completely out of work only one day during the Depression.

Our family was definitely what was called “working class” in those days. Some politicians called us “little people,” but that always rankled. Dad routinely worked 50 or 60 hours a week. Because he was a foreman, he didn’t get overtime pay. But we had a roof over our heads, good food on the table, and decent clothes on our backs. My brother, Tom, and I were encouraged to do well in school and to look beyond our circumstances for the future. We were both given formal music training and played in the high school band. Our parents helped as much as they could, but we also had to work for our education (I worked an average of 30 hours a week at Safeway during my high school years).

The inherent danger of working with heavy machinery finally caught up with Dad. While in his forties, his left hand was caught in a machine cylinder, and he lost the middle finger of his left hand. Besides losing the digit, that accident robbed him of his ability to play music. Then, in his early sixties, he caught the same hand in a powered roller, breaking almost all the bones. With only one working hand, he could no longer work.

In his retirement, Dad was a voracious reader. But like so many people of his generation, he became inactive in his retirement and his health slowly faded. Having smoked heavily all his adult years, he developed severe emphysema, which robbed him of breath.  I didn’t get to be with him in his last days. I was on Guam in the middle of the Pacific Ocean in October 1983 when he fell and quickly succumbed to his injuries. On the way home, I thought of what I might say at his funeral. I conjured up images of him playing piano in God’s jazz band. But Dad had asked for a simple graveside service, so there was to be no eulogy. Perhaps that’s why I’m writing this now. He was a good, hard-working man who loved his family. 

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Terrorism in the U.S. Before 9/11/2001

Weatherman bomb factory explodes in Greenwich Village

Today’s newspapers and electronic news media are constantly sending the message that the United States is threatened by terrorist activity. The Boston Marathon has been bombed. Police recently shot a man they had been tracking for terrorist actions. Reports of thwarted bomb plots are fairly frequent. One might easily believe that these are the worst of times concerning terrorism. But they are not. The highest incidents of terrorist attacks in the U.S. occurred during the 1970s. In a six-month period in 1971 and 1972, over 2,500 bombings took place in the U.S. The following chart from the Washington Post illustrates this point.

 

Why were the Seventies so violent? The turbulent Sixties spawned a number of groups seeking to impose their ideologies of the rest of the country through force and terror. The Ku Klux Klan, perhaps the largest and most long-lived terrorist group in U.S. history, was still attacking and sometimes murdering civil rights leaders. Some radical black power organizations declared war on the police. They began bombing police stations and shooting policemen and moderate African American leaders, whom they branded “Uncle Toms.” Puerto Rican nationalists, who had earlier tried to kill President Truman and had shot up the House of Representatives, carried out more bombings and shootings. They blew up the Mobil Oil headquarters and ambushed a U.S. Navy bus, killing some of the occupants. And then there were the terrorist groups spawned by the American New Left.

Perhaps best known of the New Left groups was the Charles Manson “family,” the murderers who massacred movie star Sharon Tate’s family and tried to kill President Ford. Also fairly well known was the Symbionese Liberation Army, principally because they kidnapped Patty Hurst and brainwashed her into helping them rob a bank. They also assassinated moderate African Americans. Less well known to the general public was the Weather Underground or Weathermen. The Weathermen espoused the violent overthrow of the U.S. government and replacing it with a Marxist society. Terror was their weapon of choice. One of their leaders admonished them to be “crazy MFs and scare the hell out of honky America.” The Weathermen exploded bombs in police stations and government buildings, including the State Department and the Senate Office building. Weathermen also conducted an infamous armored car robbery. Fortunately, the deaths of some of their bomb makers in an accidental explosion hindered their bombing campaign.

Author Bryan Burrough recently chronicled New Left terrorist activities of the 1970s in Days of Rage. Anyone doubting the seriousness of the situation in those years can become informed by reading his book. Burrough considers the subject of his work to be an oddly neglected part of American history.

Why are the Seventies terrorists below the level of consciousness of most Americans? I believe that the earth shaking political events of the period—the impeachment and resignation of a President and the Fall of Saigon—forced domestic terrorism to the back pages of newspapers. The 24/7 news cycle did not exist at that time. If it had, might our collective memories be different?

My upcoming novel, Snowflakes in July, is set during the turbulent Seventies. The story traces the formation and operations of a terrorist group with ambitions to steal U.S. Navy nuclear weapons. Will the Navy be able to counter the plot? Chapter 1 of Snowflakes in July will be available on my website next month.

Graphic: The Washington Post

Note: Warren Bell is a historical fiction author with three novels for sale either for Kindle or in paperback from Amazon.com. The first two are set during WWII, with Fall Eagle One taking place in Europe, and Hold Back the Sun set in the war in the Pacific. His third novel, Asphalt and Blood, covers the U.S. Navy Seabees in Vietnam.

Gender-Based Book Classifications: Still Relevant?

When I was working with an agent on my first book, Fall Eagle One, the agent called my action/adventure novel, “a boy book.” After publication, one of my biggest surprises was the large number of women readers who really like the book. I never envisioned that a World War 2 story about German aviators flying to the U.S. to kill President Roosevelt would find a following among women. I should have known better. With stereotypes about the respective roles of men and women rapidly evolving from those that existed in my youth, I should have anticipated that the barriers between gender-based book classifications would also begin to blur.

My own reading experience should have alerted me. Prior to becoming an Indie author at 75, I was a voracious reader, plowing through four-six books a week. Once I discovered that I liked a writer, I would read every book in the library that he had written. After finishing all of Jonathan Kellerman’s police thrillers, I read one by his wife, Faye Kellerman, on a whim. I found myself enthralled. Ms. Kellerman writes excellent police fiction. With my eyes finally opened, I began reading other women crime thriller authors as well. They were all great reads. Women write action/adventure that stacks up very well against that by male authors. But do women like to read action/adventure? My experience with both of my published novels leads me to believe that they do.

I believe that the days when men wrote books for men to read and women wrote books for only women are becoming a phenomenon of the past. Consider the genre of erotica, once the exclusive purview of men, both as authors and consumers. Then, when Rosemary Rogers published her novel, The Insiders, in the 1970s, a Time Magazine reviewer proclaimed that she had invented a new genre: pornography for women. Fast forward to the 2010s. Fifty Shades of Grey by E. L. James took the publishing world by storm. Most reports suggest that the majority of Ms. James’s readers are also women, but I’ll bet that a lot are men. It would be interesting to sample the audiences of the upcoming movie.

Books written for children can also become wildly popular with adults. Look at the runaway success of J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series. Ms. Rowling clearly enchanted boys, girls, men, and women. As Bob Dylan wrote, “The times, they are a changing.”

Stereotyped gender roles are fast fading from Western society, and I think this to be a good thing.  I believe strongly in individual freedom. The old “one-size-fits-all” way of viewing human relationships is no longer acceptable to emerging Western generations. I would not want any of the women in my life, whatever their age, to be forced into a gender-role straight jacket.

We Take So Much for Granted

 Today, we live in a world of technological marvels.  We take most of them for granted. Yet so many of the innovations we enjoy did not exist within the lifetimes of many people alive right now. A few years ago, a woman who had reached the age of 100 was asked what was the greatest improvement she had seen in her life. Her answer was simple” “Central heating.” She might have added, “And air conditioning.”

Even in the mid-Twentieth Century, central heating and air conditioning were luxuries enjoyed only by the wealthy that lived in the cities. Everyone else was still dependent on open flame for heating and had no defense at all against excessive heat. In the depths of winter, people clustered around fireplaces of wood-burning stoves to keep from freezing. At bedtime, fires were banked to preserve live coals. Temperatures within houses soon dropped to match that outside. People wore heavy sleeping clothes and scarves or nightcaps on their heads to stay warm.

In the rare instances where running water existed, faucets were left open to prevent water from freezing and breaking the pipes. Water in open buckets would freeze overnight. When a family arose the next morning, the first chores were to get the fires going to provide heat. Women cooked breakfast either in the fireplace or on wood-burning iron “ranges.” Providing an ample supply of split wood consumed a great deal of time, usually for the male children. Just staying warm and preparing food consumed a large percentage of human energy.

In the heat of summer, people sweltered.  Heavy sweating was taken for granted. In that age before deodorant, people used perfume or cologne to cover the smell. Daily bathing was limited to well-off city dwellers. Rural families were limited to sponge baths or a once-a-week dip in a galvanized washtub.

Most of the country lacked electricity until well into the Twentieth Century. Those lucky enough to own radios depended on batteries not much smaller than those in an automobile. Listening time had to be carefully rationed to preserve the battery charge for as long as possible. Indoor lighting was limited to candles and oil lamps. Only those lucky enough to own “Aladdin” lamps using mantles like Coleman lanterns enjoyed illumination anywhere close to that of an electric bulb. A can full of coal oil (kerosene) was a necessary weekly purchase. Television and computers remained undreamed of luxuries.

Having painted what to my grandchildren is a horrifying picture of life in my early youth, it saddens me to realize that a large segment of humankind still exists in such conditions. Those of us in the Western world should consider ourselves extremely blessed to enjoy our current circumstances. We should be thankful people, not resentful that this or that person might have more “stuff” than we do. And we need to do what we can to relieve human suffering throughout the world. We need to get outside ourselves and focus on making the world a better place for all.

The Nature of War

I write historical novels about war. My first book, Fall Eagle One, is about World War II in Europe. My second novel, Hold Back the Sun, is set in the opening months of the Pacific War in the Western Pacific. Asphalt and Blood, which is at the copy edit phase, tells the story of U.S. Navy Seabees in the Vietnam Battle for Hue City.

In order to write about war, one must understand it. I spent over 29 years in the U.S. Navy, of which seventeen months were in Vietnam. I hold the Navy’s Combat Action Ribbon. An amateur historian all my life, I have concentrated my studies on WW2. From personal experience and rigorous study, I believe that I have an understanding of modern warfare.

War is, by its very nature, barbaric and horrific. The purpose of war is to impose one’s will on the enemy through the use of military force. War is not a duel, with rules to assure that one opponent has no advantage over the other. War is successful only when the enemy loses the will to resist.

In today’s Washington Post, Eliot A. Cohen, former Counselor of the U.S. State Department, argues persuasively that many in today’s Washington, D.C., do not understand the nature of war. He points out that President Abraham Lincoln hated war as much as anyone on earth, yet he understood that winning the American Civil War required his generals to break the will of the Confederate population to continue the struggle. I assert in Fall Eagle One that Union generals invented the modern concept of Total War as it was practiced in WW2. The “scorched earth” campaigns carried out by General Sheridan in the Shenandoah Valley and General Sherman’s March to the Sea in Georgia speak for themselves. Photographs of Richmond, Virginia, after its surrender look much like those of Berlin in 1945.

Only rigorous application of force makes possible a rapid conclusion of hostilities and a minimization of total casualties. Following the suicide bombing of U.S. Marines in Lebanon early in his administration, President Reagan ordered Caspar Weinberger, the Secretary of Defense, to develop a new doctrine for the use of military force. The resulting “Weinberger Doctrine,” sometimes called the “Weinberger/Powell Doctrine,” espoused the following: 

1. military force should only be used as a last resort in situations where key national interests are involved, 
2. military force should only be used in situations where a large majority of the U.S. public supports its use, and 
3. when military action is taken, it should be in such overwhelming force that the ensuing conflict is concluded quickly, thereby minimizing overall casualties. 

This doctrine governed U.S. military involvements through the NATO actions in the Balkans during the Clinton Administration. 

Unfortunately, sometime during the run-up to the Vietnam War, the competing doctrines of “Just Enough Force” and “Proportionality” crept into the conduct of war. For years, the U.S. attempted to apply just enough military pressure to force the North Vietnamese to give up their conquest of the South. When Moshe Dayan, the former Defense Minister of Israel, visited Vietnam in the 1960s, he was asked how the U.S. could end the war. His answer was direct: take the war to the enemy’s homeland. Because obliterating North Vietnam’s capacity to continue fighting was not even being considered, the Vietnam War dragged on for years.

“Proportionality” implies that, when attacked, the response should be no more severe than the attack. This doctrine seems especially attractive to reporters in the news media, who ask about it continually when interviewing combatants. “Proportionality” calls for a “leveling of the playing field,” a minimization of one side’s military advantages. In the context of warfare, “proportionality” guarantees prolonged conflict, which in turn maximizes total casualties. Pursuing this course is anathema to any competent military commander.

War is not some game. People suffer and die in war. It is not, as Chancellor Bismarck argued, simply “Diplomacy by other means.” As I said earlier, war is both barbaric and horrific. I believe that Secretary Weinberger and General Powell got it right on the use of military force.  Franklin Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, Joseph Stalin, and Harry Truman all understood the nature of war and applied overwhelming force to end WW2. Current world leaders could emulate their wisdom.

Note: Warren Bell is a historical fiction author with two novels for sale either for Kindle or in paperback from Amazon.com. Both are set during WWII, with Fall Eagle One taking place in Europe, and Hold Back the Sunset in the war in the Pacific.  

My Electronic Window on the World

Few computers existed when my generation came of age. My first Navy duty station, the Naval Research Laboratory, had one of them for use in scientific calculations. That computer occupied an entire floor of a large laboratory building. It consisted of hundreds of interconnected aluminum chasses filled with vacuum tubes. The machine hardly ever ran   more than half an hour without at least one tube burning out and shutting it down. Yet it made the computations for the first space flights conducted by the U.S. Today, my iPhone has greater capacity than that laboratory computer.

Many people my age are still reluctant to adopt the computer lifestyle. Some even seem to take pride in not spending any time interacting with electronic machines.  I understand this reluctance. My children and grandchildren do seem to spend an inordinate amount of time staring at computer screens. For a time, I too resisted moving my mind into the 21^st Century. However, my desire to maintain contact with my progeny finally overcame my reluctance. Like it or not, electronic messaging has become the preferred method of communication for the younger generations. I now text, have both personal and professional Facebook pages, and tweet extensively. At first shocked to receive text messages from me, my children and grandchildren now regularly exchange electronic messages with me.

When Peter the Great established St. Petersburg in the early 1700s, he called it his “Window on the West.” I look on my computers as my window on the world. Not only is a vast amount of knowledge now available at my fingertips, but a new world of human interaction also awaits my participation. E-mail and texting allow real time communications. Facebook provides instant interaction with a circle of friends that has no geographical limits. By far, my widest range of interaction with other humans comes through Twitter.

When my daughter offered to set up an electronic marketing program for FALL EAGLE ONE, my debut novel, I had no idea what I was getting into. After she set up my Twitter account, I began experimenting in earnest. I seem to have a facility for composing 140-character book sales pitches, so that soon became a part of my routine.  After a few weeks, a light suddenly came on inside my head. I realized that Twitter can be an ever-expanding platform for marketing my writing. As my “followers” re-tweet my postings to their “followers,” my message spreads like the expanding ripples from a rock thrown into a glassy-surfaced pond. The more people hear about one’s work, the more sales can be expected.

I learned early on to adopt a courteous attitude in my Twitter communications. After all, good manners alone dictate that one should thank others for taking the time to re-tweet your posts or become new followers. However, the contact I feel with my followers soon went far beyond just good manners. Regular exchanges on the Internet with many of the same people establishes bonds of communication that continue to expand. A kind of friendship actually develops. My horizons have broadened to encompass other countries and other societies. I currently have over 5,600 “followers” from all over the world. My life is much richer because of these contacts. I hope that interacting with me has enriched the lives of those who read my electronic communications.

My sympathies go out to those of my generation who choose to limit their interactions to the physical world. They are missing out on a whole world of intellectual stimulation. For as long as my mind continues to work, I plan to write fiction and interact with my Internet friends. I pray that my remaining time may be productive. 

Note: Warren Bell is a historical fiction author with two novels for sale either for Kindle or in paperback from Amazon.com. Both are set during WWII, with Fall Eagle One taking place in Europe, and Hold Back the Sun set in the war in the Pacific.  

Another Glass Ceiling Shattered

Admiral Michelle Howard

Last Tuesday, July 1st, Admiral Michelle Howard became the first woman four-star admiral in the U.S. Navy, joining the first women who hold four-star rank in the Army and the Air Force. Admiral Howard is becoming the Vice Chief of Naval Operations (VCNO), the second most powerful job in the Navy. Many people who hold this billet go on to be CNO.  By the way, Admiral Howard is also an African American.

Her new position is but the latest in a career filled with “firsts.” She was among the first women to attend the Naval Academy, graduating in the Class of 1982 (the first class to include women at all was the Class of 1980). A Surface Warfare Officer, she served in increasingly responsible positions aboard ship and ashore. When she took command of the dock landing ship, U.S.S. Rushmore, in 1999, she became the first black woman to command a U.S. Navy warship. She was later to become the first black woman to command a strike group at sea and the first to attain the rank of vice admiral.  She is a super smasher of “glass ceilings.”

Admiral Howard’s path to these achievements was not easy.  “This is not for wimps,” she told an audience at NOVA Southeastern University in Florida. “You have to develop a sense of humor. You have to develop stamina because there’s going to be tough days. Like the pioneering women of old, you have to let some things go. It can be scary going into an environment where no one looks like you. I have been in rooms where I was the only woman and the only minority.”
 

As a twenty-nine-year Navy veteran, I can well imagine the discomforting situations Admiral Howard faced.  One of the central characters of my new novel, Asphalt and Blood, is “Bull” Barker, a young African American petty officer in a Seabee battalion in the Vietnam War.  While happy and comfortable as a Seabee, Barker encounters many instances of overt racism as the story progresses. Getting Barker right is one of the most difficult challenges I faced in writing Asphalt and Blood. 

The Navy has changed a great deal since I retired. In an interview last Monday, Admiral Howard commented that many of the obstacles she faced and overcame no longer exist, at least not to the degree they did at the outset of her career.  Repeal of the combat exclusion law has allowed women to serve on all types of ships and aircraft. Now even submarines are open to women.

“Admiral Howard is also a great example of how much we lose as a Navy and a nation if we put artificial barriers in,” Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus told a crowd of about 150 people at Howard’s promotion ceremony. “If we don’t judge people on their ability, based on their capability.”

Like any successful executive, Admiral Howard has her detractors. One contemporary hinted that she might not have been required to cross as many hurdles as her male counterparts. In an interview with Navy Times, Rear Admiral Sonny Masso refuted such claims. “Do I think she’s a token female, a token African American?” Masso commented. “I would say absolutely and emphatically not. With her performance and critical jobs across the spectrum, …she has brought an extraordinary amount of experience that is equal to any of her peers.”

To those who would question the ability of women to command in combat, I would cite Admiral Howard’s performance while Commanding Task Force 151 during anti-piracy operations in the Gulf of Aden. In April 2009, when Somali pirates seized the cargo ship, Maersk Alabama, and her skipper, Captain Richard Phillips, Admiral Howard devised a plan to get him back and sent destroyer, U.S.S. Bainbridge, to perform the rescue. Navy Seals aboard Bainbridge later shot and killed the pirates and freed Phillips.  A win-win situation for everyone but the pirates. This woman is a warrior!

In closing his remarks at the promotion ceremony, Secretary Mabus concluded, “I hope that I have always been as passionate about that (judging people on their abilities), but the intensity has increased since I became the father of three daughters, and I refuse to believe that there are any ceilings for them, glass or otherwise. That they can get to where their abilities take them. And with that, they and countless others in the Navy now have a wonderful role model in Michelle Howard.”

To paraphrase a popular TV commercial of past years, “Admiral Howard gained her new position the old fashioned way—she earned it.”

Note: Warren Bell is a historical fiction author with two novels for sale either for Kindle or in paperback from Amazon.com. Both are set during WWII, with Fall Eagle One taking place in Europe, and Hold Back the Sun set in the war in the Pacific. 

When Life Puts Book Writing on Hold

Writing can sometimes become an all-consuming activity.  Creating characters and imagined worlds may so intoxicate the writer that everyday activities of life fade into the background. Sometimes, however, one must lay aside the heady world of creativity and attend to important milestones of family existence. This weekend, I lived such a fulfilling experience.

Yesterday afternoon, my 20-year-old grandson, Thomas Bell, graduated from the Roberto-Venn School of Luthiery here in Phoenix, Arizona. For those unfamiliar with  luthiery, it is the art of designing and custom making guitars and other stringed instruments from raw materials. Luthiery combines the skills of musical instrument design and fine woodworking with music theory and electrical engineering. Almost all the music artists our younger generations so venerate play custom made instruments. My grandson hopes for a career catering to the luthiery needs of these artists.

As an engineer and long-time woodworker myself, I marvel at the skills Thomas amassed during his time at Roberto-Venn.  His designs are artistic, his woodworking flawless, and his finishes impressive.  He completed or made significant progress on seven different instruments during his training.  Both acoustic and all manner of electric guitars are included in his portfolio. Their sound quality is fantastic. Any musician would be proud to own and perform on one of his creations.  Is a little bit of proud grandfather showing through here?  So be it.

Thomas is proving the eternal truth that a traditional college education followed by a career in an office, laboratory, or classroom is not for everyone. Modern society still requires artists, craftsmen and skilled tradesmen as well as those immersed in the world of finance, business, science, or education.  The satisfaction from imagining a fine musical instrument and then creating it from scratch has to be comparable to that felt by a master sculptor who sees his creation already formed inside a block of marble and goes on to free the image.  I hope my grandson has an exciting life in front of him.

As a bonus from the graduation trip, I got to visit my brother, Tom, who lives here in Phoenix with his wife, Charlotte. Tom and I had a grand time regaling my son and his family with our childhood experiences and our memories of our parents. These happy stories are now burned into the minds of two more generations of our family.  We all celebrated our time together and Thomas’s achievements at a fine Mexican restaurant last evening.

Next week, I will be back into my busy routine of writing and marketing my literary creations. My third novel, Asphalt and Blood, will move back  to the front burner. U.S. Navy Seabees will battle the elements and the elusive Viet Cong enemy in the dusty landscape of 1960s Vietnam.  Tweets and Facebook posts will go out on my regular schedule to keep sales up for my published novels, Fall Eagle One and Hold Back the Sun. But my work will be sharper and more clearly defined because of my life experiences this weekend.  No matter how much an author enjoys the art of writing, one must always keep in mind the things that matter most in life.

Note on image: Thomas is the young man in the red shirt holding the blue electric bass guitar higher than the others.

Note: Warren Bell is a historical fiction author with two novels for sale either for Kindle or in paperback from Amazon.com. Both are set during WWII, with Fall Eagle One taking place in Europe, and Hold Back the Sun set in the war in the Pacific.