About 70 years ago this month President Roosevelt personally directed that a special Infantry Regimental Combat Team be formed.
Much of the history of the United States has been written in a flag waving style. It tells Americans of their glorious past and their heroic forefathers and stirs up their patriotic adrenalin juices. To their credit, they are openly proud of their country, their flag, their National Anthem and their heritage.
History records few places in the world where soldiers on both sides of a cruel and deadly civil war are treated equally as heroes. A nation and a people so diverse and competitive - yet so singly focused on the pride they have in their country and its institutions.
Constantine sounds Italian...But his mother was English and his father came from Ireland. In fact they were married on the boat on their way to Canada. His only sister died at 12. His mother became a drunk and died at 38 when he was 11.
His dad worked as a reporter and often his beat was the old Woodbine racetrack. They lived modestly and moved many times from one place to another.
Sixty seven years ago a preacher from Coburg jumped off a landing barge and ran ashore on the main beach at Dieppe. To be exact it was August 19,1942. Instantly this Man-of-the-Cloth became a medic saving lives. Saving souls would have to wait. All hell was breaking loose and his men were pinned down by German machine gunners. Men of The Royal Hamilton Light Infantry.
Just before midnight on Friday October 4th, 1957, fifty two years ago today, something kinda weird happened. Remember your mother telling you whatever goes up must come down? Well something went up through the clouds that night and never came down. Well.....yes it did, sort of - but it was never designed to land, so after it circled the planet for ninety two days, it entered the earth`s atmosphere on January 4th and was quickly toast.
In 1952, my office was on Bay Street. There were three of us. Ralph was the boss and Mary acted as receptionist and secretary for both of us. Actually, Premier Leslie Frost was our boss, but we didn't get to see him very often.
At Christmas, Mary gave Ralph a book. He gave one to me and I gave a book to Mary. The rule was that they had to be about Canadian politics and politicians. Federal, provincial or municipal and non-fiction. We often joked about the amount of fiction in non-fiction books about politicians.
At Christmas that year, Ralph gave me a book about the state of federal politics and government between the first and second war. I enjoyed it, for in it Mackenzie King was portrayed as a scheming and devious man...which was a view I strongly held.
The New York Times reported in 1942 that Germany had developed a plan to systematically exterminate Jews. The story was buried far inside the paper for it was preposterous and unthinkable. Many papers ignored it
It did happen. It went far beyond the ordinary evil of war. Its inhumanity stunned the senses of the civilized world. What kind of a person would find satisfaction in calculatedly murdering millions of helpless men, women and children? The solution to "the Jewish question" was decided upon and drafted sixty years ago at a buffet luncheon in a posh restaurant on the outskirts of Berlin. They ate well and drank fine wine and the best brandy - then fifteen well educated senior government officials laid plans to murder three million people.