Pickett’s Charge

It is drizzly in town this morning, which is the way we could sum up the
spring. It is not cool, but it is definitely not hot. This is almost the Fourth
of July and we have had exactly two days that got into the nineties. Tom Cruise
is 42 and Dave Barry is denying that he is four years older than I am. I keep
vowing to write something commemorating the battle of Gettysburg, which 140
years ago was coming to resolution today, the day before the Fourth. I will be
traveling tomorrow, heading home, the same thing Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia
did on the Fourth. This is what happened on Day Three in a field near a little
town in southern Pennsylvania:

“At l:00 p.m., Longstreet opened the great bombardment of the Federal line.
The Federal

army replied with approximately 80 cannon and a giant duel ensued which
lasted for nearly two hours. After the bombardment subsided, the Confederate
infantry went forward. This attack is known to us as “Pickett’s Charge.” Federal
artillery and musketry cut their formations to pieces and inflicted devastating
losses. A small Confederate force made one small penetration of the Federal
line, but was overwhelmed. The attack ended in disaster, with nearly 5,600
Confederate casualties. Meanwhile, three miles east of Gettysburg, J.E.B.
Stuart’s cavalry was engaged by Federal cavalry under Brigadier General David
Gregg. The cavalry clash was indecisive, but Stuart was neutralized and posed no
threat to the Federal rear. The battle was effectively over. Federal losses
numbered approximately 23,000, while estimates of Confederate losses range
between 20,000 and 28,000. “

A century and a half later, more or less, eight U.S. soldiers were injured
overnight in Iraq, but none were killed. There will be some hamburgers and
hot-dogs grilled in Iraq this holiday, but I suspect that everyone will be
looking over their shoulders while they are doing it.

It was a good morning for BBC correspondents. Right after Vicki signed off
from London, Carl Castle of NPR brought on Chris Morris from Berlin. He finally
explained the furor I had been hearing about but did not understand on the World
Update the hour before. I was a little foggy, having a hard time getting with
the program. I had a couple drinks on the way home from the office with Paul, an
old buddy from my middle Pentagon days. We met at what had been the Gangplank
Restaurant on the DC Waterfront. It is something else now, but that scarcely
seemed to matter. We sat under the awning near the bar on the dock just across
from where the former Presidential yacht Sequoia is docked. The brass gleamed on
the rich wood of the upper decks and I marveled at the youthful good looks of my
friend. He looked much younger than when I worked with him in the five-sided
adult care facility. In those days we were busily dismantling the Cold War
military that had been so successful in the Gulf, working on the Clinton
Administration’s assumption that we wouldn’t be needing it again. My friend and
he secretly was attending the GW Law School at night. He had become a
clandestine lawyer, a remarkable achievement, considering how hard I thought we
were working at the office. I remarked that he must have a portrait in a closet
that was aging because he seemed to be going backward while the rest of us
continue to disintegrate.

This morning the drizzle continues. I heard about the controversy but did not
understand what the new President of the European Union had said to provoke it.
Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder of Germany is in high dudgeon about what was said,
obviously thinking there is some political mileage to be gained at home over
what the rotating six-month President said. Apparently Sylvio Berlisconi made
some remarks suggesting a German Member of the European Parliament (a MEP, a new
acronym I dutifully copied down) could play the role of a concentration camp
guard. The Germans have hurt feelings, part of the whole victim thing they have
been practicing so artfully of late.

Then WDET linked the theme with a report claiming a 77-year-old man was found
hiding under the stairs of his suburban Detroit house. He fled the jurisdiction
in 1987 for Canada, at the height of the Justice Department’s hunt for Nazis
about to be eligible for Social Security. They managed to garble his service,
obviously not understanding what it meant to be a Totenkopf SS-mann, or who he
worked for in the Black Legion of the Heinrich HImmler. The man is accused of
being a guard at the Malthausen concentration camp, an ironic coincidence
considering what the President of the European Union is saying. The arrest of
the SS-mann is an oddity, a sort of last hurrah for the Nazi hunters. The
fugitives who came to America have their catch 22. They can’t have citizenship
if they are convicted of crimes against humanity. One of my buddies in high
school discovered on his summer job that was an entire Waffen SS unit that
worked at a steel fabricating plant in Troy. They minded their own business and
kept to themselves and never were heard singing the “Horst Wessel Leid” over
beers at happy hour.

Vicki introduced a bit on the American flag and the National Anthem this
morning, facilitating a short story by Steven Evans that she said was going to
look at the unique relationship of Americans with one of the most potent symbols
in the world. Steven Evans was the correspondent, and I cringed a little,
waiting for the snide remark about our patriotism. Goodness knows we wear our
hearts on our sleeves, or the flag in the case of our uniformed personnel.
Steven started out with a long sound-bite from Ollie North on an incident he
observed in Iraq. Or claimed to. I don’t trust Ollie any further than I can
throw him. But he told a touching story about a tough Marine Sergeant Major who
was nearly reduced to tears when presented a hand-drawn flag by an Iraq girl. He
claimed some sand had gotten in his eyes. Then the story wound through its way
through Johnny Cash and Jimmi Hendrix and the antiwar movement. Then he quoted
some academic who said that New Yorkers don’t show the flag because they are not
as bellicose there as they are out in the country. Vicki finished by playing a
little of Marvin Gaye’s version of the Star Spangled Banner. I kept waiting for
the irony and it never came.

I was pleased. I have a flag in my window, and I don’t for an instant believe
the words of that moron from New York.

Remember the guys who walked across the Emmetsville Pike, carefully reforming
the ranks that had been shot to pieces. Remember the boys in the soggy woolen
Blues that waited to greet them with steel. Mostly our great-great grandfathers
didn’t run.

Except toward one another.

Copyright 2003 Vic Socotra