BENGHAZI, Libya -- Every morning, Salah Fatour is at his post with his worn rake and wheelbarrow, tending the garden of the dead.
In a city besieged by war, he finds peace among the graves of a long-ago conflict. He steps gently around the whitewashed tombstones, pulling a weed, caressing a flower, careful not to disturb the souls of soldiers who died on foreign soil seven decades ago.
Fatour, 52, his rough hands calloused from raking, performs the sacred duties once carried out by his father, who tended the Benghazi War Cemetery for three decades after World War II. Fatour, who was born at the cemetery, has maintained it for 25 years, preserving the memories of the dead.
"I didn't know them, but I feel that I know them very well now because I'm with them every day," he says.
The cemetery memorializes 1,214 Commonwealth soldiers, many of whom died in the brutal desert battles the Allies fought with the Desert Fox, German Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, and his Afrika Korps for supremacy in North Africa. Most were terribly young - 19, 20, 22 - eager Brits and Scots and Aussies and Canadians and South Africans who fought and died in the sands.
Here lies Flight Lt. S.D. Meadowcroft, dead at 26: "Beloved Husband of Gladys, Father of Michael John, His Duty Nobly Done." And A.F. Payne, 27, of the Royal Army Ordnance Corps: "I Loved Him. What Can I Say More?"
There are Africans too, penniless young men from Britain's African Pioneer Corps and Sudan Defense Force, and Indians from the Indian Pioneer Corps and the Gurkha Rifles.
Here lies Pvt. Moses Nayor, African Pioneer Corps, killed in January 1944. And laborer Mangal Soren, of the Indian Pioneer Corps, dead at 22 in 1942.
Of the graves, 163 bear no names. These are the unknowns. Their tombstones speak for them: Known Unto God.
Towering palms shade some of the dead, and graceful eucalyptus trees stand sentinel over others. Scarlet bougainvillea bracts drape the pale stone walls, and pink oleander blossoms brush against the graves.
The cemetery is beside a busy highway choked with trash and the detritus of the rebellion against Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi. Young gunmen in jeans and sandals lounge outside a small rebel garrison across the road, paying no heed to other young men who once fought on this land.
"Libyans don't care about old wars. They only care about this war now," Fatour says, his brow damp from a morning's efforts with the rake and shovel.
Libyans never visit the graves. Before the rebellion erupted in February, elderly British men would sometimes visit, seeking the name of a fallen comrade.
Fatour cracks open a dusty ledger containing the names of all who rest here. This is how visitors find the dead. When the old men at last locate the proper tombstone, they fall to their knees and weep.
"One old British man, in his 90s, a colonel from the war, he couldn't stop crying when he found his friend," Fatour says.
The last visitor arrived Jan. 26, according to the ledger. Someone named Michael from the United States wrote: "An honor and a blessing."
Fatour's rake carves neat lines in the packed clay earth and the pebbled pathways. The cemetery is immaculate: the headstones bright and clean, dead eucalyptus leaves shoveled away as soon as they land.
Fatour describes how tombstones are shaped differently for graves of non-Commonwealth dead. Here lies a Norwegian, Jorgen Nielsen. And a Yugoslav, Pvt. J. Flajs.
Most graves are marked with crosses. But Fatour says Libyans would be shocked to learn that some bear the Star of David, for Jewish soldiers.
Here lies E. Hewinson, of the Royal Army Service Corps, killed in 1945. And L. Averback, Royal Artillery, dead at 32: "One of the Best That God Could Lend."
And few Libyans know that a fellow countryman is buried here. His tombstone is the only one that bears the Islamic crescent moon and star, also the symbol of the Libyan rebels. Here lies Omar Hussein, of the Libyan Arab Force, slain in 1943.
The cemetery is one of four in Libya maintained by the British-based Commonwealth War Graves Commission. In neighboring Tunisia, 2,841 Americans are buried at the North Africa American Cemetery and Memorial.
Fatour is paid $235 a month by the graves commission. He says he has missed several payments since the rebellion began because the commission's contractor is trapped in Tripoli, the Libyan capital, cut off by fighting.
"I'll keep taking care of them whether I'm paid or not," he says. "British or Jewish or Indian or African, I care for them all."
Fatour is weary from his life's work. His round face is sunburned. Sweat runs in thin rivulets, streaking the white dust caked on his cheeks.
It is late afternoon. The fierce desert sun casts the tombstones in black shadows. The soft buzz of honeybees drifts from hives beyond the cemetery walls. The voices of the rebel gunmen, young and eager for battle, fade at dusk.
Another day's work is nearly done. The fallen soldiers are at peace. The only sounds are the scratch of Fatour's rake and the rough scrape of his shovel as he tends the sanctuary of the dead, and of the living.
Monday, July 18, 2011
Libyan faithfully tends graves of foreign World War II dead
From The Sacramento Bee: Libyan faithfully tends graves of foreign World War II dead
Thursday, July 14, 2011
Beachgoer finds World War II mortars on Folly Beach
From 10WISTV.com: Beachgoer finds World War II mortars on Folly Beach
FOLLY BEACH, SC (WCSC) - Authorities say a beachgoer found two World War II mortars on Folly Beach Tuesday afternoon.
Emergency crews closed the beach around 3 p.m. Tuesday so that officials could detonate the two mortars.
Folly Beach Public Safety Chief Dennis Brown says the county park area used to be an artillery range - complete with mortar shells used as a high arcing explosive during the last world war. That is how the shells ended up being buried on Folly Beach and it was Mother Nature that exposed them after being underground for close to 70 years.
Bomb technicians say the mortars may have moved more inland because of the high tide.
"They were actually on the beach front and you can see where the beach has eroded and slowly exposed these to the daylight so they were able to find them," Brown said.
The Charleston County Sheriff's Office, the State Law Enforcement Division and the Folly Beach Fire Department all responded to the call, but had to wait for officials from the U.S. Airforce.
The park to be evacuated to remove the shells from the area. Brown says he's sure this won't be the last time something like this turns up on the beach since erosion is still a big problem on Folly Beach.
Brown says until the renourishment project to restore beach sand on Folly is completed next year, beachgoers should always be aware of their surroundings on the beach.
If you come across an object you're not sure of on the beach, the best thing to do is to not pick it. Move to a safe place and then notify authorities and give them your location.
FOLLY BEACH, SC (WCSC) - Authorities say a beachgoer found two World War II mortars on Folly Beach Tuesday afternoon.
Emergency crews closed the beach around 3 p.m. Tuesday so that officials could detonate the two mortars.
Folly Beach Public Safety Chief Dennis Brown says the county park area used to be an artillery range - complete with mortar shells used as a high arcing explosive during the last world war. That is how the shells ended up being buried on Folly Beach and it was Mother Nature that exposed them after being underground for close to 70 years.
Bomb technicians say the mortars may have moved more inland because of the high tide.
"They were actually on the beach front and you can see where the beach has eroded and slowly exposed these to the daylight so they were able to find them," Brown said.
The Charleston County Sheriff's Office, the State Law Enforcement Division and the Folly Beach Fire Department all responded to the call, but had to wait for officials from the U.S. Airforce.
The park to be evacuated to remove the shells from the area. Brown says he's sure this won't be the last time something like this turns up on the beach since erosion is still a big problem on Folly Beach.
Brown says until the renourishment project to restore beach sand on Folly is completed next year, beachgoers should always be aware of their surroundings on the beach.
If you come across an object you're not sure of on the beach, the best thing to do is to not pick it. Move to a safe place and then notify authorities and give them your location.
Vets view WWII bomber at Billard Airport
From CJOnline (Topeka): Vets view WWII bomber at Billard Airport
By Steve Fry
By Steve Fry
Harry Theobold was enthusiastic as he stepped out of "Witchcraft," a restored B-24 Liberator, soon after the heavy bomber landed on Wednesday at Philip Billard Municipal Airport.
Theobold was a 20-year-old tail gunner when he last flew in a B-24 — almost 67 years ago during World War II.
"I had a wonderful trip," said Theobold, 87. Sitting in the radio man's seat, he recognized landmarks as the craft flew at 1,000 feet.
Theobold and his wife, Ula, of Yates Center, flew from Wichita to Topeka.
The B-24 flight was part of the Wings of Freedom Tour of 110 cities, a fundraiser by the Collings Foundation to pay the operating costs of the group's aircraft, said Ken Miles, foundation director.
Aaron Malone, ride coordinator, said the goal of the nonprofit foundation is to educate the public about what the American flyers did in the war and how they preserved the freedoms Americans enjoy today.
Theobold flew 19 bombing missions in a B-24 and 16 missions in a B-17, all without ever being attacked by enemy aircraft. Theobold was stationed for two weeks at what is now Forbes Field before he was shipped to England in March 1944.
On Wednesday, a B-17 Flying Fortress, a heavy bomber called the "Nine-O-Nine," was to have flown to Topeka, but it was grounded at Fort Collins, Colo., where an engine was being replaced.
Basil Hackleman, 90, who piloted the original "Nine-O-Nine," drove from his home in Springfield, Mo., to see the B-17.
Hackelman pulled a worn photograph from his wallet showing three bullet holes punched through the front windows of his B-17 by a German fighter's machine guns. One bullet passed between his left arm and body, punching holes in his leather jacket, Hackelman said. He flew 30 missions over Europe in five months, the last on April 29, 1944.
"You always had some damage from German fighters or their 88mm antiaircraft guns," Hackleman said. On one occasion, his bomber lost three engines and had to land on a beach after skimming over the English Channel.
He received the Distinguished Flying Cross, the Air Medal with three Oak Clusters, and the Presidential Unit Citation for the part the 91st Bomb Group, 323rd Squadron, played in bombing Oschersleben, Germany, on Jan. 11, 1944.
At Oschersleben, "every time you looked up, the windshield was full of German fighters," Hackleman said.
Of 166 American bombers sent, 42 were shot down, according to a 91st Bomb Group website.
"Our gunners shot down 125 German airplanes, and we hit on target," Hackleman said. Hackleman, a first lieutenant, was 22 at the time.
Topekan Beattie Dixon, 88, also watched Wednesday as the B-24 landed.
Dixon, a technical sergeant, flew 32 missions with the 401st Bomb Group, the 614th Squadron, as an engineer and top turret gunner.
On one mission, shrapnel struck the radio operator in the throat, killing him, and on another, the B-17 made a belly landing after it ran out of gas, spinning around after a wing tip dug into the ground.
Dixon found the pilot slumped over his seat where he had fainted.
"He saved our lives," Dixon said.
On yet another mission, Dixon fired his machine guns at an ME 262 jet, disabling the aircraft, he said. The jet was lobbing anti-tank cannon fire into the B-17 formation, he said.
"I opened up on the thing," Dixon said. "Armor-piercing stuff was hitting it. Every time it did, it flashed."
The restored B-24 was built in August 1944 at the Consolidated Aircraft Co.’s plant in Forth Worth and eventually was transferred in October 1944 to the Royal Air Force, where it saw combat in the Pacific Theater.
At war’s end, the aircraft was abandoned restored to duty by the Indian Air Force, abandoned and finally purchased in 1981 by the Collings Foundation.
On September 10, 1989, after more than 97,000 hours of labor, the B-24 returned to the air.
Saturday, July 9, 2011
Ground broken for Wichita's World War II memorial
The Wichita Eagle: Ground broken for Wichita's World War II memorial
Phil Blake's decade-long drive to honor his comrades took a big step forward Saturday morning.
So did the dreams of a handful of surviving World War II veterans when organizers broke ground for a World War II monument, along with a nearby Revolutionary War monument, during an emotional ceremony.
Blake, the 87-year-old World War II veteran who is the driving force behind the growth of Veterans Memorial Park, was all smiles during the ceremony.
"This is a day I've dreamed of for 10 years," he said.
A couple of his fellow World War II veterans, 92-year-old Howard Sheldon and 87-year-old Bob Rogers, said they were full of pride as a ceremonial explosive charge broke ground for the monuments.
"Today is a proud moment," Sheldon said. "It's the reason I'm out here with my hat on. There's not very many of us left."
"It's a wonderful day," Rogers said. "A little hot, no breeze, but a wonderful day."
An emotional day, too, for Rogers, who recalled some of his lost comrades, a group that met locally at the Hometown Buffet every three months.
Including Wichitan Parker Wiley, who died late last year of liver cancer, just days after returning with Rogers from the national World War II memorial in Washington, D.C., on an Honor Flight.
"Parker was so sick with cancer and he wanted to go so badly," Rogers said, his voice cracking with emotion.
"His son said, 'Dad, if you can make it, I'll take you.' Well, Parker made it.
"The next Wednesday, I called to his house to check and see how Parker was doing," Rogers said, his eyes welling with tears.
"His son answered and told me Parker died that morning. Thank God he got the trip in."
There was emotion from the nonveterans in the crowd, too, including Ted Ayres, vice president and general counsel at Wichita State University, who serves as chairman of the World War II Memorial Corporation.
"I'm here for two reasons. My father and Phil Blake," Ayres said.
"My father served in World War II, the Army in the Battle of the Bulge, got a Purple Heart and a Bronze Star.
"I'm doing something for my Dad, who's no longer with us."
The Veterans Memorial Park fund drive is a decade old. Blake said he has raised $1 million for monuments.
Late this week, nearly $10,000 of the needed $35,000 had been raised for the World War II monument.
The goal is to have its 6-foot granite panels and brick walkway finished for the 70th anniversary of the Pearl Harbor bombing on Dec. 7.
"People ask me why, and my usual answer is that I can't help myself," Blake said,
"But there's a bigger story. Ten years ago, I looked at the Bicentennial Flag Memorial there and the city of Wichita had completely let it go. The only argument was whether to tear it down or turn it into something else.
"I was terribly offended because that's the flag I fought under. The city didn't know whose it was, but they said it wasn't their responsibility.
"So I made it mine."
WWII shipwrecks could threaten U.S. coast
The Baltimore Sun: WWII shipwrecks could threaten U.S. coast
On the evening of Feb. 2, 1942, an unarmed tanker with 66,000 barrels of crude oil on board was steaming in the Atlantic, about 90 miles off Ocean City. Without warning, it was struck by German torpedoes. The attack set the W.L. Steed ablaze, and sank it; only a handful of the crew of 38 survived.
As World War II unfolded, the Germans had moved part of their sub pack west to attack shipping along the coast. By the time the Nazis withdrew the subs in July to focus on convoys crossing the North Atlantic, they had sunk 397 ships in U.S. coastal waters.
That wartime legacy has become a new environmental problem, raising concern about leaks from the W.L. Steed's sunken fuel bunkers and cargo — and from many others like it.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is taking an inventory of more than 30,000 coastal shipwrecks — some of them casualties of the 1942 Battle of the Atlantic — and identifying those that pose the most significant threat.
"We're starting to see significant corrosion. Vessels that weren't totally torpedoed didn't break apart and may have intact fuel tanks," NOAA's Lisa C. Symons said.
It's not just the ship's own fuel bunkers, either. Many, like the W.L. Steed, sank with holds filled with crude oil, fuel oil, diesel fuel and explosives. Leaks of those products "could devastate coastal communities and coastal environments," Symons said.
So far, the worst-threat list has been narrowed to 233 vessels, said Symons, damage assessment and resource protection coordinator for NOAA's National Marine Sanctuaries office in Silver Spring.
The final list will be submitted by year's end to the Coast Guard. Once priorities are established, efforts to remove the oil from the wrecks could begin, paid through the Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund, which is supported by the oil industry.
While NOAA's risk assessments are not complete, Symons did identify five sunken ships — four within 60 miles of the coast — that could make the list as environmental threats to Maryland. They include:
• John Morgan, a Liberty ship built in 1943 at the Bethlehem-Fairfield Shipyards in Baltimore. In June 1943, on its maiden voyage, it collided with another vessel off Cape Henry and sank with a cargo of fighter planes, tanks, arms and ammunition. Sixty-seven crew members and armed guards perished.
• Marine Electric, a coal carrier out of Norfolk, Va. With 3,600 barrels of fuel oil in its bunkers, it foundered in heavy seas and sank 30 miles east of Chincoteague Inlet in February 1983. Thirty-one of the 34 crew members died in the frigid water.
• Varanger, a Norwegian tanker. It was torpedoed on Jan. 25, 1942, while carrying 12,750 tons of fuel oil. As the crew took to lifeboats, the Germans fired three more torpedoes. The ship sank 28 miles southeast of Atlantic City, N.J., but the lifeboats were spotted and fishing boats towed them to shore.
• India Arrow, an oil tanker. On Feb. 5, 1942, the tanker, carrying 88,369 barrels of diesel fuel, was torpedoed 20 miles southeast of Cape May, N.J. Nine officers and 29 crew abandoned ship, but only 12 survived.
Spills from wrecks are a global threat, with the highest concentration of ships lying in the western Pacific. But the U.S. coastline, too, is littered with vessels sunk by Japanese and German submarines, in collisions or storms.
NOAA is using a $1 million appropriation secured last year by Maryland Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski and Rep. Elijah E. Cummings to inventory wrecks and identify environmental threats. Part of NOAA's task has been to comb through ship manifests, naval records, reports of sinkings, insurance documents and survivors' accounts to determine which ships burned and which probably went down with their fuel and cargo.
From that, the agency can work to identify those posing the greatest risk of leaking, and those offering opportunities for salvage operations to recover the oil or other cargo before it becomes a costly spill.
Some are already leaking. The most famous example is the 608-foot battleship USS Arizona at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. Sunk Dec. 7, 1941, during the Japanese attack, it went down with 1,177 sailors on board, and 1.1 million gallons of fuel. About half of that fuel remains on board and continues to leak into the harbor.
At a Baltimore conference last month, David L. Conlin of the National Park Service said his study of the leak found that previously intact fuel compartments are still corroding, rupturing and releasing their contents.
While Conlin's study concluded there is "no pressing need" for "invasive" procedures to enter the ship — which is a war grave — to recover the fuel, it also suggests how long these 70-year-old wrecks may remain environmental concerns.
"Three hundred sixty years from now, in the core part of the USS Arizona, the oil bunkers here will still have significant structural integrity," he said.
Another example is the SS Jacob Luckenbach. A freighter carrying military supplies, it left San Francisco in July 1953, headed for Korea, when it struck another vessel in fog. It sank just 17 miles off the coast, settling in 180 feet of water with 457,000 gallons of bunker fuel on board.
In the early 1990s, Californians began to notice mysterious, intermittent oil spills on their beaches. Over the next decade, more than 51,000 shorebirds were covered with oil and died. Oil and tar balls floated onto the beaches.
Investigators sampled the goo and tried to match it to fuel in the bunkers of passing ships. "But we couldn't figure out where it was coming from," Symons said.
It wasn't until 2002 that the state's technical dive community — recreational divers who used advanced technologies to reach more challenging sites — came forward and said they knew a shipwreck in the area that had been leaking oil for years, Symons said. It was the Luckenbach.
Cleanup and wildlife rehabilitation cost $2 million. Salvage of 100,000 gallons of the ship's oil eventually cost another $20 million, said Dagmar Schmidt-Etkin of Environmental Research Consulting. The rest remains on board.
Identifying wrecks that pose a serious risk of leaks and extracting the fuel before an incident occurs is costly, she said. But there is a cost to doing nothing, too: the economic losses to fisheries and tourism; monitoring wrecks for signs of spills; maintaining the personnel, equipment and supplies needed to respond when needed; cleaning the shoreline and oiled wildlife; and disposing of the oil.
Her study estimated the costs of dealing with an oil spill from a shipwreck at $1 million to $5 million for a small spill at a protected location, to $20 million to $100 million for a big, complex spill recovery in a difficult, or open-water location.
Symons said there are many more ships like the Luckenbach off North Carolina, Virginia and Maryland, "and all the way up the seaboard, with the potential for having significant pollutants on board. We can wait until one of these vessels breaks apart, or we can try to be proactive."
Scott Wahl, public information officer for the New Jersey beach town of Avalon, said at the conference that his town has just 2,000 year-round residents. But its beach economy is dependent on clean and healthy beaches.
"Every job along the beach is dependent on clean beaches," he said. "Without that sand on the beach, we don't have an economy. Without a clean environment, we don't have an economy." Preventing spills from shipwrecks, he said, "is not a cost; it's an investment."
On the evening of Feb. 2, 1942, an unarmed tanker with 66,000 barrels of crude oil on board was steaming in the Atlantic, about 90 miles off Ocean City. Without warning, it was struck by German torpedoes. The attack set the W.L. Steed ablaze, and sank it; only a handful of the crew of 38 survived.
As World War II unfolded, the Germans had moved part of their sub pack west to attack shipping along the coast. By the time the Nazis withdrew the subs in July to focus on convoys crossing the North Atlantic, they had sunk 397 ships in U.S. coastal waters.
That wartime legacy has become a new environmental problem, raising concern about leaks from the W.L. Steed's sunken fuel bunkers and cargo — and from many others like it.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is taking an inventory of more than 30,000 coastal shipwrecks — some of them casualties of the 1942 Battle of the Atlantic — and identifying those that pose the most significant threat.
"We're starting to see significant corrosion. Vessels that weren't totally torpedoed didn't break apart and may have intact fuel tanks," NOAA's Lisa C. Symons said.
It's not just the ship's own fuel bunkers, either. Many, like the W.L. Steed, sank with holds filled with crude oil, fuel oil, diesel fuel and explosives. Leaks of those products "could devastate coastal communities and coastal environments," Symons said.
So far, the worst-threat list has been narrowed to 233 vessels, said Symons, damage assessment and resource protection coordinator for NOAA's National Marine Sanctuaries office in Silver Spring.
The final list will be submitted by year's end to the Coast Guard. Once priorities are established, efforts to remove the oil from the wrecks could begin, paid through the Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund, which is supported by the oil industry.
While NOAA's risk assessments are not complete, Symons did identify five sunken ships — four within 60 miles of the coast — that could make the list as environmental threats to Maryland. They include:
• John Morgan, a Liberty ship built in 1943 at the Bethlehem-Fairfield Shipyards in Baltimore. In June 1943, on its maiden voyage, it collided with another vessel off Cape Henry and sank with a cargo of fighter planes, tanks, arms and ammunition. Sixty-seven crew members and armed guards perished.
• Marine Electric, a coal carrier out of Norfolk, Va. With 3,600 barrels of fuel oil in its bunkers, it foundered in heavy seas and sank 30 miles east of Chincoteague Inlet in February 1983. Thirty-one of the 34 crew members died in the frigid water.
• Varanger, a Norwegian tanker. It was torpedoed on Jan. 25, 1942, while carrying 12,750 tons of fuel oil. As the crew took to lifeboats, the Germans fired three more torpedoes. The ship sank 28 miles southeast of Atlantic City, N.J., but the lifeboats were spotted and fishing boats towed them to shore.
• India Arrow, an oil tanker. On Feb. 5, 1942, the tanker, carrying 88,369 barrels of diesel fuel, was torpedoed 20 miles southeast of Cape May, N.J. Nine officers and 29 crew abandoned ship, but only 12 survived.
Spills from wrecks are a global threat, with the highest concentration of ships lying in the western Pacific. But the U.S. coastline, too, is littered with vessels sunk by Japanese and German submarines, in collisions or storms.
NOAA is using a $1 million appropriation secured last year by Maryland Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski and Rep. Elijah E. Cummings to inventory wrecks and identify environmental threats. Part of NOAA's task has been to comb through ship manifests, naval records, reports of sinkings, insurance documents and survivors' accounts to determine which ships burned and which probably went down with their fuel and cargo.
From that, the agency can work to identify those posing the greatest risk of leaking, and those offering opportunities for salvage operations to recover the oil or other cargo before it becomes a costly spill.
Some are already leaking. The most famous example is the 608-foot battleship USS Arizona at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. Sunk Dec. 7, 1941, during the Japanese attack, it went down with 1,177 sailors on board, and 1.1 million gallons of fuel. About half of that fuel remains on board and continues to leak into the harbor.
At a Baltimore conference last month, David L. Conlin of the National Park Service said his study of the leak found that previously intact fuel compartments are still corroding, rupturing and releasing their contents.
While Conlin's study concluded there is "no pressing need" for "invasive" procedures to enter the ship — which is a war grave — to recover the fuel, it also suggests how long these 70-year-old wrecks may remain environmental concerns.
"Three hundred sixty years from now, in the core part of the USS Arizona, the oil bunkers here will still have significant structural integrity," he said.
Another example is the SS Jacob Luckenbach. A freighter carrying military supplies, it left San Francisco in July 1953, headed for Korea, when it struck another vessel in fog. It sank just 17 miles off the coast, settling in 180 feet of water with 457,000 gallons of bunker fuel on board.
In the early 1990s, Californians began to notice mysterious, intermittent oil spills on their beaches. Over the next decade, more than 51,000 shorebirds were covered with oil and died. Oil and tar balls floated onto the beaches.
Investigators sampled the goo and tried to match it to fuel in the bunkers of passing ships. "But we couldn't figure out where it was coming from," Symons said.
It wasn't until 2002 that the state's technical dive community — recreational divers who used advanced technologies to reach more challenging sites — came forward and said they knew a shipwreck in the area that had been leaking oil for years, Symons said. It was the Luckenbach.
Cleanup and wildlife rehabilitation cost $2 million. Salvage of 100,000 gallons of the ship's oil eventually cost another $20 million, said Dagmar Schmidt-Etkin of Environmental Research Consulting. The rest remains on board.
Identifying wrecks that pose a serious risk of leaks and extracting the fuel before an incident occurs is costly, she said. But there is a cost to doing nothing, too: the economic losses to fisheries and tourism; monitoring wrecks for signs of spills; maintaining the personnel, equipment and supplies needed to respond when needed; cleaning the shoreline and oiled wildlife; and disposing of the oil.
Her study estimated the costs of dealing with an oil spill from a shipwreck at $1 million to $5 million for a small spill at a protected location, to $20 million to $100 million for a big, complex spill recovery in a difficult, or open-water location.
Symons said there are many more ships like the Luckenbach off North Carolina, Virginia and Maryland, "and all the way up the seaboard, with the potential for having significant pollutants on board. We can wait until one of these vessels breaks apart, or we can try to be proactive."
Scott Wahl, public information officer for the New Jersey beach town of Avalon, said at the conference that his town has just 2,000 year-round residents. But its beach economy is dependent on clean and healthy beaches.
"Every job along the beach is dependent on clean beaches," he said. "Without that sand on the beach, we don't have an economy. Without a clean environment, we don't have an economy." Preventing spills from shipwrecks, he said, "is not a cost; it's an investment."
Wednesday, July 6, 2011
Civil War and World War II shipwrecks are being analysed with sonar technology to provide never-before-seen detailed images
Daily Mail Online: Civil War and World War II shipwrecks are being analysed with sonar technology to provide never-before-seen detailed images
Historic shipwrecks are being analysed with incredible sonar technology to create images described as almost photographic.
The shipwrecks will appear vivid and three-dimensional, showing even more detail than diving at some of the sites off North Carolina and Virginia, could provide.
Federal researchers are using sonars to gather data that will result in images - and one day video - of the shipwrecks. These will likely end up on-line and in museums.
Not everybody dives, and so that's why we embrace technologies like this that are cutting edge, cost effective and give you a three-dimensional sense of that ship on the bottom,’ said James Delgado of the government's Maritime Heritage Program.
‘The kinds of imagery — it's almost photographic.’
The sites are World War II shipwrecks off North Carolina and Civil War shipwrecks in Virginia.
Some of the major shipwrecks:
Battle of Hampton Roads - March 8, 1862: The USS Cumberland (part of the U.S. Navy's North Atlantic Blockading Squadron) was sunk after being rammed by the Confederate ironclad CSS Virginia (formerly the USS Merrimack) killing 120 men.
CSS Florida - November 19, 1864: a Confederate commerce raider, the ship sunk after it collided with a U.S. Navy troop ferry
The Battle of Atlantic - July 14 1942: a merchant convoy of 19 ships and five military escorts left the Hampton Roads area of Virginia en route to Key West, Florida., to deliver cargo to aid the war effort. A German U-boat submarine attacked the convoy the next day off Cape Hatteras. The German boat was then sunk, along with an American merchant boat and a Panamanian tanker depth charges dropped by U.S. Navy aircraft. The ships are situated in North Carolina's Outer Banks.
- This was a decisive battle turning the tides for the Allied Forces on the American coastline.
These are sites that are miles out into the sea and so unless you're a diver you're likely not to going to be aware of them even,' said Alexis Catsambis, an underwater archaeologist for the U.S. Navy.
'Many people may not know that there were (German) U-boats off the coast of North Carolina during World War II that created a number of casualties,’ she added.
On Tuesday, researchers headed to North Carolina's Outer Banks to begin creating images of ships sunk in the Battle of the Atlantic.
They have identified potential shipwrecks from the battle and the 3-D mapping will help them determine exactly what they're looking at.
One of the escorts for the World War II KS-520 convoy was the Coast Guard cutter, Triton (pictured)
‘There's 400 years of ships sunken off the coast here, so it could be anything. You never know what you're going to get,’ said Joseph Hoyt, maritime archaeologist for the Monitor National Marine Sanctuary.
Eventually, researchers hope to develop 3-D video of individual Battle of the Atlantic shipwrecks.
The researchers used the sonar to map Civil War shipwrecks in the murky waters of the James River near Newport News, Virginia on Monday.
The research will hopefully find new ways to protect the wrecks, of growing interest as the nation prepares to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the start of the Civil War
‘In terms of the guys who died in the Cumberland that day, not only are they heroes, but they're sons and fathers and grandsons and nephews and they left families who are still with us today and their stories resonate,’ Delgado said.
The ships are protected by federal law, but resources are limited.
Researchers hope that by being able to better tell the ships' stories with new visualizations that they won't be looted or damaged by divers or unknowing fishermen.
If people don't have a personal connection to it, they don't care about it,’ said David Alberg of the Monitor National Marine Sanctuary.
‘By doing these types of projects, getting that information out there, that's helping to educate the public, which is ultimately the most important tool to protecting the site.’
Often popular as dive sites, the new images will mean less damage to the wrecks and will aid scientists to preserve them better.
The technology also allows the public to view shipwrecks in waters that aren't very clear.
Historic shipwrecks are being analysed with incredible sonar technology to create images described as almost photographic.
The shipwrecks will appear vivid and three-dimensional, showing even more detail than diving at some of the sites off North Carolina and Virginia, could provide.
Federal researchers are using sonars to gather data that will result in images - and one day video - of the shipwrecks. These will likely end up on-line and in museums.
Not everybody dives, and so that's why we embrace technologies like this that are cutting edge, cost effective and give you a three-dimensional sense of that ship on the bottom,’ said James Delgado of the government's Maritime Heritage Program.
‘The kinds of imagery — it's almost photographic.’
The sites are World War II shipwrecks off North Carolina and Civil War shipwrecks in Virginia.
Some of the major shipwrecks:
Battle of Hampton Roads - March 8, 1862: The USS Cumberland (part of the U.S. Navy's North Atlantic Blockading Squadron) was sunk after being rammed by the Confederate ironclad CSS Virginia (formerly the USS Merrimack) killing 120 men.
CSS Florida - November 19, 1864: a Confederate commerce raider, the ship sunk after it collided with a U.S. Navy troop ferry
The Battle of Atlantic - July 14 1942: a merchant convoy of 19 ships and five military escorts left the Hampton Roads area of Virginia en route to Key West, Florida., to deliver cargo to aid the war effort. A German U-boat submarine attacked the convoy the next day off Cape Hatteras. The German boat was then sunk, along with an American merchant boat and a Panamanian tanker depth charges dropped by U.S. Navy aircraft. The ships are situated in North Carolina's Outer Banks.
- This was a decisive battle turning the tides for the Allied Forces on the American coastline.
These are sites that are miles out into the sea and so unless you're a diver you're likely not to going to be aware of them even,' said Alexis Catsambis, an underwater archaeologist for the U.S. Navy.
'Many people may not know that there were (German) U-boats off the coast of North Carolina during World War II that created a number of casualties,’ she added.
On Tuesday, researchers headed to North Carolina's Outer Banks to begin creating images of ships sunk in the Battle of the Atlantic.
They have identified potential shipwrecks from the battle and the 3-D mapping will help them determine exactly what they're looking at.
One of the escorts for the World War II KS-520 convoy was the Coast Guard cutter, Triton (pictured)
‘There's 400 years of ships sunken off the coast here, so it could be anything. You never know what you're going to get,’ said Joseph Hoyt, maritime archaeologist for the Monitor National Marine Sanctuary.
Eventually, researchers hope to develop 3-D video of individual Battle of the Atlantic shipwrecks.
The researchers used the sonar to map Civil War shipwrecks in the murky waters of the James River near Newport News, Virginia on Monday.
The research will hopefully find new ways to protect the wrecks, of growing interest as the nation prepares to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the start of the Civil War
‘In terms of the guys who died in the Cumberland that day, not only are they heroes, but they're sons and fathers and grandsons and nephews and they left families who are still with us today and their stories resonate,’ Delgado said.
The ships are protected by federal law, but resources are limited.
Researchers hope that by being able to better tell the ships' stories with new visualizations that they won't be looted or damaged by divers or unknowing fishermen.
If people don't have a personal connection to it, they don't care about it,’ said David Alberg of the Monitor National Marine Sanctuary.
‘By doing these types of projects, getting that information out there, that's helping to educate the public, which is ultimately the most important tool to protecting the site.’
Often popular as dive sites, the new images will mean less damage to the wrecks and will aid scientists to preserve them better.
The technology also allows the public to view shipwrecks in waters that aren't very clear.
Tuesday, July 5, 2011
World War II life for kids demonstrated at Carnegie Library day camp
Times-Herald.com (Georgia): World War II life for kids demonstrated at Carnegie Library day camp
Could You Be A World War II Kid?"
That was the question for local youngsters during a camp June 29 at the Carnegie Library in downtown Newnan. Children were able to attend the camp and see what it was like to be a kid in England during the time of the London Blitz.
Campers learned about victory gardens, rations, relocation, and the differences between the experience of an English and American child. Sponsoring the event was the Newnan Carnegie Library Foundation with special funding from the Edgar B. Hollis Testamentary Trust.
The camp was conducted by Dr. Annette Laing, creator of "Imaginative Journeys" which she started in 2003, and her assistants Lindsey Jenkins and Lauren English.
During the camp, every daily challenge of living as a child during the Battle of Britain was explored. Each child was transported with each becoming an evacuee of that era. Activities included handling real pounds, shillings and pence; learning how to extinguish an incendiary bomb; "savoring" meager meals resulting from severe rationing; donning a gas mask and other period gear; and playing wartime games.
"The camp is really fun!" said Taitum Boston and Saramae Brodnax, "We're learning a lot. Being a World War II kid would be fun, but scary at the same time."
"The camp is really good," said Brayden Ferrel. "I don't know if I could be a World War II kid though."
The children in the camp were given a ration box and a name tag, just as the children in England during World War II would have gotten when they needed to move due to danger from the bombings. Then they experienced what it was like in a foster home. They made their own toilet paper out of newspaper, put up black-out curtains, and swept the floor. Their breakfast was a digestive biscuit and a glass of whole milk, and their dinner was toast and beans or toast and salmon paste, just as the children during that time period would have eaten.
At the end, they heard from Carol Bruke about what it was like to be an American kid during World War II and compare the experiences of the children in the two countries.
Dr. Laing is formerly of Great Britain and resides in south Georgia where she conducts special historical programming built around different themes for children. Prior to launching "Imaginative Journeys," she was a tenured history professor at Georgia Southern University.
"Our kids' camps are always exciting and thought-provoking and silly, but never boring, preachy or dumbed down," she said.
She has been praised for the scope and originality of her camps and is also the author of "The Snipesville Chronicles," a middle-grades focused, time travel series.
The Carnegie Library is a non-circulating reading room operated by the City of Newnan at 1 LaGrange St. at the Court Square in downtown Newnan. For more about Carnegie programs call 770-683-1347.
Could You Be A World War II Kid?"
That was the question for local youngsters during a camp June 29 at the Carnegie Library in downtown Newnan. Children were able to attend the camp and see what it was like to be a kid in England during the time of the London Blitz.
Campers learned about victory gardens, rations, relocation, and the differences between the experience of an English and American child. Sponsoring the event was the Newnan Carnegie Library Foundation with special funding from the Edgar B. Hollis Testamentary Trust.
The camp was conducted by Dr. Annette Laing, creator of "Imaginative Journeys" which she started in 2003, and her assistants Lindsey Jenkins and Lauren English.
During the camp, every daily challenge of living as a child during the Battle of Britain was explored. Each child was transported with each becoming an evacuee of that era. Activities included handling real pounds, shillings and pence; learning how to extinguish an incendiary bomb; "savoring" meager meals resulting from severe rationing; donning a gas mask and other period gear; and playing wartime games.
"The camp is really fun!" said Taitum Boston and Saramae Brodnax, "We're learning a lot. Being a World War II kid would be fun, but scary at the same time."
"The camp is really good," said Brayden Ferrel. "I don't know if I could be a World War II kid though."
The children in the camp were given a ration box and a name tag, just as the children in England during World War II would have gotten when they needed to move due to danger from the bombings. Then they experienced what it was like in a foster home. They made their own toilet paper out of newspaper, put up black-out curtains, and swept the floor. Their breakfast was a digestive biscuit and a glass of whole milk, and their dinner was toast and beans or toast and salmon paste, just as the children during that time period would have eaten.
At the end, they heard from Carol Bruke about what it was like to be an American kid during World War II and compare the experiences of the children in the two countries.
Dr. Laing is formerly of Great Britain and resides in south Georgia where she conducts special historical programming built around different themes for children. Prior to launching "Imaginative Journeys," she was a tenured history professor at Georgia Southern University.
"Our kids' camps are always exciting and thought-provoking and silly, but never boring, preachy or dumbed down," she said.
She has been praised for the scope and originality of her camps and is also the author of "The Snipesville Chronicles," a middle-grades focused, time travel series.
The Carnegie Library is a non-circulating reading room operated by the City of Newnan at 1 LaGrange St. at the Court Square in downtown Newnan. For more about Carnegie programs call 770-683-1347.
Monday, July 4, 2011
At Bletchley Park, breaking Enigma codes and winning WW II
CNet News: At Bletchley Park, breaking Enigma codes and winning WW II
BLETCHLEY, England--The list of important sites is endless: Omaha Beach, Dunkirk, London; Paris; Toulon; But if you're a real World War II aficionado, you may think of Bletchley Park with special fondness.
This nondescript town about 45 minutes outside London is where famed mathematician Alan Turing led a group of master code breakers in a successful battle against Germany and its once-unbreakable Engima codes.
Over the course of several years, the British government assembled a team and sequestered them here, working on various devices intended to break the codes. In the days prior to the war, the Germans rarely changed the code key for Enigma. But as the war developed, they changed it daily, and sometimes more than that. And that forced the code breakers to find a way to fight back, and swiftly.
What that meant was big, sophisticated devices like Colossus, a machine that was purpose-built to take on the daily key changes by the Germans and solve the Enigma codes.
The machines and the work done at Bletchley Park were so secret that not only could those who toiled there not talk about it during the war, but not afterwards either. And it's only since the early 1990s that the world really began to understand what Colossus was and the way that it helped the British crack the Enigma codes. I got a chance to visit as part of Road Trip 2011, and being able to see the recreations of the machines that cracked the Enigma codes was one of the highlights of the project.
Poland had figured Enigma out in 1932, and had in fact fashioned a reconstruction of it. The problem was that in the early days, Enigma's cypher was changed infrequently. But with the outbreak of war, the Germans changed the cypher at least daily. Though the Poles were unable to solve the rapidly changing Enigma code, they transferred their knowledge to the French and British, who promptly put their best code breakers on the job. Those people, whose jobs were so top secret they were not allowed to talk about their work for years after the war, were able to advance the knowledge of the way the Enigma keys were connected to its electrical circuits--something that was not possible without the Polish Enigma machine to work on.
With this, the teams exploited an Enigma weakness, according to the Bletchley Park Web site: "A fundamental design flaw meant that no letter could ever be encrypted as itself; an A in the original message, for example, could never appear as an A in the code," the Web site reads. "This gave the code breakers a toehold. Errors in messages sent by tired, stressed or lazy German operators also gave clues. In January 1940 came the first break into Enigma.
"It was in Huts 3,6,4 and 8 [at Bletchley Park] that the highly effective Enigma decrypt teams worked. The huts operated in pairs and, for security reasons, were known only by their numbers....Their raw material came from the 'Y' Stations: a web of wireless intercept stations dotted around Britain and in a number of countries overseas. These stations listened in to the enemy's radio messages and sent them to Bletchley Park to be decoded and analyzed.
"To speed up the code breaking process, the brilliant mathematician Alan Turing developed an idea originally proposed by Polish cryptanalysts. The result was the Bombe: an electro-mechanical machine that greatly reduced the odds, and thereby the time required, to break the daily-changing Enigma keys."
According to Tony Sale, who was the first curator of the Bletchley Park Museum, and who spearheaded the efforts to rebuild Colossus--it was destroyed, as was its design documents, after the war--the first information about the machine began to come to light in the 1970s.
"When I and some colleagues started, in 1991, the campaign to save Bletchley Park from demolition by property developers, I was working at the Science Museum in London restoring some early British computers," Sale writes on his Web site, Codes and Ciphers. "I believed it would be possible to rebuild Colossus. Nobody believed me.
"In 1993 I gathered together all the information available. This amounted to the eight 1945 wartime photographs taken of Colossus plus some fragments of circuit diagrams, which some engineers had kept quite illegally, as engineers always do."
And from there the work began--to find a way to recreate the plans for Colossus and then to build a new, fully-functional version of the code-breaking machine. And if you take the train from Euston Station in London, or drive your way to Bletchley and visit the National Museum of Computing at Bletchley Park, where the rebuilt machine, and many others used in the battle against the Germans, are kept, you can get a rare view of one of the most important stories in the history of World War II, and what it took to defeat the Nazis.
But while you're there, keep an eye for Sale, one of the true heroes of World War II history. Were it not for his efforts and those like him, we wouldn't know much about how the Allies cracked the Enigma code. But you're more likely to find Sale with a screwdriver in hand, tending to George, his humanoid robot. It was featured in a Wallace & Gromit movie, and it was the first-ever walking humanoid robot. It didn't win the war, but with its smile, it will certainly win your attention.
BLETCHLEY, England--The list of important sites is endless: Omaha Beach, Dunkirk, London; Paris; Toulon; But if you're a real World War II aficionado, you may think of Bletchley Park with special fondness.
This nondescript town about 45 minutes outside London is where famed mathematician Alan Turing led a group of master code breakers in a successful battle against Germany and its once-unbreakable Engima codes.
Over the course of several years, the British government assembled a team and sequestered them here, working on various devices intended to break the codes. In the days prior to the war, the Germans rarely changed the code key for Enigma. But as the war developed, they changed it daily, and sometimes more than that. And that forced the code breakers to find a way to fight back, and swiftly.
What that meant was big, sophisticated devices like Colossus, a machine that was purpose-built to take on the daily key changes by the Germans and solve the Enigma codes.
The machines and the work done at Bletchley Park were so secret that not only could those who toiled there not talk about it during the war, but not afterwards either. And it's only since the early 1990s that the world really began to understand what Colossus was and the way that it helped the British crack the Enigma codes. I got a chance to visit as part of Road Trip 2011, and being able to see the recreations of the machines that cracked the Enigma codes was one of the highlights of the project.
Poland had figured Enigma out in 1932, and had in fact fashioned a reconstruction of it. The problem was that in the early days, Enigma's cypher was changed infrequently. But with the outbreak of war, the Germans changed the cypher at least daily. Though the Poles were unable to solve the rapidly changing Enigma code, they transferred their knowledge to the French and British, who promptly put their best code breakers on the job. Those people, whose jobs were so top secret they were not allowed to talk about their work for years after the war, were able to advance the knowledge of the way the Enigma keys were connected to its electrical circuits--something that was not possible without the Polish Enigma machine to work on.
With this, the teams exploited an Enigma weakness, according to the Bletchley Park Web site: "A fundamental design flaw meant that no letter could ever be encrypted as itself; an A in the original message, for example, could never appear as an A in the code," the Web site reads. "This gave the code breakers a toehold. Errors in messages sent by tired, stressed or lazy German operators also gave clues. In January 1940 came the first break into Enigma.
"It was in Huts 3,6,4 and 8 [at Bletchley Park] that the highly effective Enigma decrypt teams worked. The huts operated in pairs and, for security reasons, were known only by their numbers....Their raw material came from the 'Y' Stations: a web of wireless intercept stations dotted around Britain and in a number of countries overseas. These stations listened in to the enemy's radio messages and sent them to Bletchley Park to be decoded and analyzed.
"To speed up the code breaking process, the brilliant mathematician Alan Turing developed an idea originally proposed by Polish cryptanalysts. The result was the Bombe: an electro-mechanical machine that greatly reduced the odds, and thereby the time required, to break the daily-changing Enigma keys."
According to Tony Sale, who was the first curator of the Bletchley Park Museum, and who spearheaded the efforts to rebuild Colossus--it was destroyed, as was its design documents, after the war--the first information about the machine began to come to light in the 1970s.
"When I and some colleagues started, in 1991, the campaign to save Bletchley Park from demolition by property developers, I was working at the Science Museum in London restoring some early British computers," Sale writes on his Web site, Codes and Ciphers. "I believed it would be possible to rebuild Colossus. Nobody believed me.
"In 1993 I gathered together all the information available. This amounted to the eight 1945 wartime photographs taken of Colossus plus some fragments of circuit diagrams, which some engineers had kept quite illegally, as engineers always do."
And from there the work began--to find a way to recreate the plans for Colossus and then to build a new, fully-functional version of the code-breaking machine. And if you take the train from Euston Station in London, or drive your way to Bletchley and visit the National Museum of Computing at Bletchley Park, where the rebuilt machine, and many others used in the battle against the Germans, are kept, you can get a rare view of one of the most important stories in the history of World War II, and what it took to defeat the Nazis.
But while you're there, keep an eye for Sale, one of the true heroes of World War II history. Were it not for his efforts and those like him, we wouldn't know much about how the Allies cracked the Enigma code. But you're more likely to find Sale with a screwdriver in hand, tending to George, his humanoid robot. It was featured in a Wallace & Gromit movie, and it was the first-ever walking humanoid robot. It didn't win the war, but with its smile, it will certainly win your attention.
Movie about pilot Joe Moser's story of WWII survival to premier in Bellingham
The Bellingham Herald: Movie about pilot Joe Moser's story of WWII survival to premier in Bellingham
Joe Moser of Ferndale nearly died in a plane crash during World War II and spent two months in a hellish German labor camp, yet he considers himself a lucky man.
Lucky, of course, that he survived. Beyond that, he's lucky his story has been wonderfully preserved in "A Fighter Pilot in Buchenwald," his 2009 tale of survival written with the help of Bellingham author and businessman Gerald Baron.
Now, thanks to another fortuitous connection, Moser's story has been told again in "Lost Airmen of Buchenwald," a documentary that will premier July 16 at Mount Baker Theatre.
A quiet man with a resonant voice, Moser didn't set out to become the object of media attention. He first agreed to be interviewed for a newspaper story back in 1982, and didn't sit down with Baron to begin work on his book until five years ago.
Now his story is on film. Mike Dorsey, a California filmmaker and TV producer, was already working on a documentary about his grandfather, Elmer Freeman, another flier shot down over France and sent to Buchenwald, a Nazi slave labor camp. Dorsey met with Baron after learning about Moser's book and they agreed to widen the documentary's focus to include Moser.
Then, while in Europe last year to shoot footage and to mark the 65th anniversary of the liberation of Buchenwald, Dorsey met several more Allied airmen who had spent time in the camp.
Baron, who helped write and finance the film, is the executive producer. Two other Whatcom County men - Duane McNett and Frank Imhof, who is Moser's first cousin - are associate producers, for their financial and other help.
Baron's son Chris, an Emmy-nominated photographer, is the film's director of photography.
The two-hour film features interviews with Moser, Freeman and five other airmen who survived the ordeal, plus combat footage, graphic photos and footage from Buchenwald and other German camps, even a cartoon primer on how pilots like Moser should escape a wounded a P-38 by turning the plane upside down so they could bail out without hitting the plane's tail section.
Moser, now 89, and Dorsey will be at the premier to answer questions.
"I can't get used to the public eye I'm in," Moser said. "I just don't feel like I did that much to warrant it all."
People who know Moser's story may beg to differ.
A STORY UNTOLD
Like many WW II vets, Moser at first spoke little about his war years, in part because people just wouldn't believe that he and 167 other Allied airmen - including 82 Americans - had spent two months in Buchenwald rather than in a humane POW camp, as called for by the rules of war.
A Ferndale farm kid, Moser grew up wanting to fly, and got his wish when he passed the test to fly a P-38, the Army Air Corp's one-man fighter.
In August 1944, during his 44th mission over Europe, German guns positioned near decoy trucks downed Moser's plane over the French countryside. One of Moser's boots snagged when he tried to bail out, and he barely escaped before the plane crashed into a stone farmhouse.
German soldiers quickly sent him to a prison near Paris, where he joined other Allied airmen. The Germans called them "terrorist fliers" and shipped them in train cattle cars to Buchenwald.
While not a formal extermination camp, Buchenwald was nonetheless a brutal place. The airmen slept outdoors on rocky ground. Prisoners shriveled on a meager diet of foul food. Those too weak to work were killed and burned. More than 50,000 people died there.
Moser and the other airmen survived, in part, because they were soldiers. Under the command of their ranking officer, a flier from New Zealand, they marched and exercised together, and watched each other's backs. Phil Lamason, the New Zealander who is interviewed in the movie, resisted German demands that the airmen work in Buchenwald's factories.
"I'd follow him most anywhere," Moser said.
FREE OF BUCHENWALD
The airmen received help from a surprising source, the German air force. Somehow - the film explores one theory - Luftwaffe officers learned the fliers were at Buchenwald.
Perhaps it was mutual respect among airmen. Perhaps it was the Luftwaffe's disdain for the cruel Gestapo and SS members who ran Buchenwald. Whatever the reason, they escorted the airmen - other than two who died and nine too sick to travel - to a POW camp farther east, the same camp later made famous by the movie "The Great Escape." Moser later learned he and the other airmen had been scheduled to be executed at Buchenwald just four days later.
In early 1945, the airmen were marched west through frigid winter weather because Russian troops were advancing from the east. Moser collapsed and nearly died, but two prisoners carried him to the next village and he revived. Three months later, U.S. troops liberated the camp holding the airmen and 130,000 other prisoners.
Consider the thousands upon thousands of WW II soldiers who died in action, never able to recount their experiences in their own words. Or the thousands who came home but couldn't find the heart, the words or the help from a writer to preserve their stories.
Luckily, Moser escaped that fate. His story survives.
"He is, in a sense, a symbol for a lot of people who never have been recognized," Baron said.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
COMING UP
What: Premier of "Lost Airmen of Buchenwald."
When: 7 p.m. July 16
Where: Mount Baker Theatre.
Tickets: $10 adults, $8 seniors 65 and older, $5 students. For advance tickets, visit the theater office at 104 N. Commercial St., call 360-734-6080 or go to this mountbakertheatre.com webpage.
Joe Moser of Ferndale nearly died in a plane crash during World War II and spent two months in a hellish German labor camp, yet he considers himself a lucky man.
Lucky, of course, that he survived. Beyond that, he's lucky his story has been wonderfully preserved in "A Fighter Pilot in Buchenwald," his 2009 tale of survival written with the help of Bellingham author and businessman Gerald Baron.
Now, thanks to another fortuitous connection, Moser's story has been told again in "Lost Airmen of Buchenwald," a documentary that will premier July 16 at Mount Baker Theatre.
A quiet man with a resonant voice, Moser didn't set out to become the object of media attention. He first agreed to be interviewed for a newspaper story back in 1982, and didn't sit down with Baron to begin work on his book until five years ago.
Now his story is on film. Mike Dorsey, a California filmmaker and TV producer, was already working on a documentary about his grandfather, Elmer Freeman, another flier shot down over France and sent to Buchenwald, a Nazi slave labor camp. Dorsey met with Baron after learning about Moser's book and they agreed to widen the documentary's focus to include Moser.
Then, while in Europe last year to shoot footage and to mark the 65th anniversary of the liberation of Buchenwald, Dorsey met several more Allied airmen who had spent time in the camp.
Baron, who helped write and finance the film, is the executive producer. Two other Whatcom County men - Duane McNett and Frank Imhof, who is Moser's first cousin - are associate producers, for their financial and other help.
Baron's son Chris, an Emmy-nominated photographer, is the film's director of photography.
The two-hour film features interviews with Moser, Freeman and five other airmen who survived the ordeal, plus combat footage, graphic photos and footage from Buchenwald and other German camps, even a cartoon primer on how pilots like Moser should escape a wounded a P-38 by turning the plane upside down so they could bail out without hitting the plane's tail section.
Moser, now 89, and Dorsey will be at the premier to answer questions.
"I can't get used to the public eye I'm in," Moser said. "I just don't feel like I did that much to warrant it all."
People who know Moser's story may beg to differ.
A STORY UNTOLD
Like many WW II vets, Moser at first spoke little about his war years, in part because people just wouldn't believe that he and 167 other Allied airmen - including 82 Americans - had spent two months in Buchenwald rather than in a humane POW camp, as called for by the rules of war.
A Ferndale farm kid, Moser grew up wanting to fly, and got his wish when he passed the test to fly a P-38, the Army Air Corp's one-man fighter.
In August 1944, during his 44th mission over Europe, German guns positioned near decoy trucks downed Moser's plane over the French countryside. One of Moser's boots snagged when he tried to bail out, and he barely escaped before the plane crashed into a stone farmhouse.
German soldiers quickly sent him to a prison near Paris, where he joined other Allied airmen. The Germans called them "terrorist fliers" and shipped them in train cattle cars to Buchenwald.
While not a formal extermination camp, Buchenwald was nonetheless a brutal place. The airmen slept outdoors on rocky ground. Prisoners shriveled on a meager diet of foul food. Those too weak to work were killed and burned. More than 50,000 people died there.
Moser and the other airmen survived, in part, because they were soldiers. Under the command of their ranking officer, a flier from New Zealand, they marched and exercised together, and watched each other's backs. Phil Lamason, the New Zealander who is interviewed in the movie, resisted German demands that the airmen work in Buchenwald's factories.
"I'd follow him most anywhere," Moser said.
FREE OF BUCHENWALD
The airmen received help from a surprising source, the German air force. Somehow - the film explores one theory - Luftwaffe officers learned the fliers were at Buchenwald.
Perhaps it was mutual respect among airmen. Perhaps it was the Luftwaffe's disdain for the cruel Gestapo and SS members who ran Buchenwald. Whatever the reason, they escorted the airmen - other than two who died and nine too sick to travel - to a POW camp farther east, the same camp later made famous by the movie "The Great Escape." Moser later learned he and the other airmen had been scheduled to be executed at Buchenwald just four days later.
In early 1945, the airmen were marched west through frigid winter weather because Russian troops were advancing from the east. Moser collapsed and nearly died, but two prisoners carried him to the next village and he revived. Three months later, U.S. troops liberated the camp holding the airmen and 130,000 other prisoners.
Consider the thousands upon thousands of WW II soldiers who died in action, never able to recount their experiences in their own words. Or the thousands who came home but couldn't find the heart, the words or the help from a writer to preserve their stories.
Luckily, Moser escaped that fate. His story survives.
"He is, in a sense, a symbol for a lot of people who never have been recognized," Baron said.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
COMING UP
What: Premier of "Lost Airmen of Buchenwald."
When: 7 p.m. July 16
Where: Mount Baker Theatre.
Tickets: $10 adults, $8 seniors 65 and older, $5 students. For advance tickets, visit the theater office at 104 N. Commercial St., call 360-734-6080 or go to this mountbakertheatre.com webpage.
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