Every inch of the British Isles was within range of a massive enemy air force and once again a small but determined few would attempt to save their small nation from an attack from above.
Diary of Burt Post Sept. 15th, 1946
Just saw an advertisement for a new movie coming out before Christmas called "It's a Great Life or Wonderful Life", directed by Frank Capra. I sure liked his movies about the war effort. Those "Why We Fight" movies sure got me stirred up.
Usually I don't like this kind of thing but it could be good. It stars Jimmy Stewart. I guess he made it before he went back in to the Army Air Force. It has angels and a redemption theme. His love interest is a new girl named Donna Reed. She is cute. A guy at the barber shop showed me a nude picture of her. I guess those starlets have to get on screen somehow. The casting couch must not be a myth. I sure wish I was a Hollywood Director. On second thought I wouldn't give up my family for a chance at bedding the most beautiful girls in the world...
The economy is really slowing down again for civilian products. The military stuff is taking over again. I guess Truman and his brain trust are starting to get their head out of their ass. I heard it was the big wig corporate types that didn't want to go into debt further. Hell we just fought a war to save those poor folks over there and they are worried about business when another tin pot dictator comes along. If you ask me if you put business before your country you are a traitor and should be treated as one. Imagine trying to fight a war without asking the average man to sacrifice anything while your fighting men are dying and getting maimed and you sitting at home worried about the next good movie.
I do what I can. I tried to join but they keep saying my job is critical to the war effort. Who would have thought that paper and paper products were a critical part of the war effort.
Bill Swain is still not able to come back to work. According to Mary he has horrible nightmares about his time in Guadalcanal. He wakes up screaming and is pouring in sweat. I guess he even attacked Mary before he came out of it. Combat must be terrible. I wonder if there is any help for these guys? I guess they call it battle fatigue or something. Old Blood and Guts Patton almost lost his job because he didn't believe in it and slapped that soldier. After being with Bill I believe it. Something's just aren't meant for the average man to endure. I wonder how many hand to hand combat situations Patton got himself in to? Maybe he's just one of those rare individuals that can live with killing a man up close. No one knows how they would react until it happen to them.
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A little more from Mr. Post’s diary
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Diary of Burt Post Sept. 16th.
Just heard about the forth major airline crash in just a couple of days. 23 people killed in this one somewhere in Africa. Gambia I think. The only reason I notice was that I have to fly to New York after taking the train to Chicago. I rather keep my feet on the ground thank you, but the boss says I can’t take the time to take the train all the way. I wonder what can be so urgent that you can't take a train? Things are sure speeding up these days. Thank goodness I don't have to fly until next week. It gives me time to break the news to Maxine.
I decided to start running for exercise and to keep in shape. People were looking at me like I was crazy so I tell them I'm training. I don't say what for but I assume they are thinking boxing. It really helped to clear my mind. Brought back memories of running the 2 mile in college without the vomiting at the end.
We got together with the Brown Outs as usual. Once a month without fail we meet at one of the member’s houses. Last night it was the McKees. Fun, food and games is the order of the day. Maxine's Mom baby sat. Nice having family only a few miles away. Great bunch of friends the Brown Outs. We got our name from meeting during the war. Since Wisconsin was far from the action we had brown outs instead of black outs. I suppose they'll have to start that foolishness again even though the Soviets don't have a navy like the Japs.
Diary of BurtPost Sept. 17th, 1946.
Sales increased again. People are buying paper like never before. Just read an article that the population in the US will reach 165 million by 1990 and then decline. Came from the census bureau. They must know if anyone. I wonder why it would decline?
You know the fighting in Europe sure doesn't make the news as much as WWII. I guess we're all tired of it. Bad attitude to take if you ask me. Those Reds are more of a threat than the German's I think but then again maybe not. It could just be another way of running a government. I don't suppose I could get a copy of that Marx guys writing in this day and age. They probably have censored all that kind of thinking. Capitalism has been good to me since there were some limits put on it by the unions and Teddy Roosevelt. No more Robber Barons for us. Those days are over. Thank God the unions are too strong for that to happen again. Some people call the unions communist. Well if that's so then that kind of communism is what we need. I heard that deaths in the coal mines were down again this year and child labor laws are a god send.
Senator Taft and a congressman named Hartley are trying to pass a bill that would greatly curtail the unions. Sounds pretty draconian to me. I guess Truman is fighting against it and calls it a threat to freedom of speech. This will be a battle to watch.
Diary of Burt Post September 18th, 1946
Heard from Maxine’s brother… my brother in-law. I guess he’s coming to visit. Says he’s going to head out to Alaska and take up commercial fishing. Some place named Cordova. Right now he’s in Hurley as a logger. I wonder how he’s staying out of the army? The guy is pretty much of a jerk.
Gets drunk all the time and starts fights in the bars. I only went with him once and that was it. Reminds me of a John Wayne movie where Wayne goes into a bar and picks a fight and the two fighters become best friends after they beat the tar out of each other.
People don’t realize that a punch in the face from a 6’4” 200lb man is a devastating thing. Breaks a lot of stuff in the other guys face as well as your hand. The only time I hit a guy it really busted my hand up. Hurt like hell. The movies are far from accurate. Two big grown men throwing haymakers at each other is not funny.
Anyway he’s coming and I have to figure out a way to not go out drinking. I guess I have a good excuse with a new baby in the house. The guys a maniac when he gets drunk. He belongs in Alaska far from women and children. I wonder how that part will work out. The women seem to love him for some reason.
Evelyn Dick
Diary of Burt Post Sept. 22nd, 1946
Thank God they finally charged that women, Evelyn Dick, with murder. I know the Canucks are slow but jeepers. A bloody torso that is missing arms, head and legs is found in town by school kids. They find body parts partially burned in the furnace. We have a woman whose husband is missing, borrows a friend’s car, brings it back with blood all over it, there are bloody clothes in back, claims an “Italian hit man” came to the house, then claims her daughter bled all over the car, then claims that another man made her drive to a dump site with a large bag, has a body of a baby boy encased in concrete in her attic, another guy's wife claims she saw the trunk when her husband yelled at her to get out of the garage where a bloody saw, bullet holes and bloody shoes are found. And they are just now getting around to charging her with murder! The torso was found by the kids in March for god’s sake!
I heard there’s a song the school kids sing as they jump rope.
You cut off his legs...
You cut off his arms...
You cut off his head...
How could you Mrs Dick?
How could you Mrs Dick?
How stupid can you get? Well at least she will not get away with it now. I understand that Canada still hangs people. I hope she gets the noose. What a strange story. I suppose someone will write a book or make a movie about it. Sometimes the truth is stranger than fiction. [xlix]
http://home.cogeco.ca/~mrcarle/evelyn.htm
Mark I
September 22nd, 1946
Bikini Atoll
South Pacific
07:23 hours
The fireball rose in the classic manner we all have come to fear and admire. The stem of the mushroom and blast of light and heat, followed by visible rings of concussion are a sight to behold on a movie screen. You do not want to experience them in person. A handful of army personnel did just that. The cap of the mushroom was reaching for the sky, pulsing with light and energy, visible energy reaching out to destroy all in its path. The trouble with this atomic explosion was that it was totally unexpected. It shocked the thousands of spectators and scientists floating at a safe distance out in the Pacific Ocean far from prying eyes but not far enough that the pens of hundreds of reporters could be stopped.
Months before the world’s supply of polonium 210 ended up in the lungs and organs of tens of thousands of American nuclear scientists, their friends, families and other innocent victims. Much of the polonium was buried six foot under along with the bodies of its victims in caskets lined with lead and covered in dirt, flowers and tears. The American nuclear scientific community was devastated and barely existed. New students were being taught by more experienced students but the professors, were for the most part, dead. They had died an excruciatingly painful death that they had designed for others. Much like the ones their work had visited on the citizens of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Their students had cobbled together enough material for 6 more atomic bombs. There were enough parts left in the assembly rooms and nuclear storage areas to fashion even more atomic bombs. From these bits and pieces they had fashioned one Mark I atomic bomb which was on its way to be dropped on Bikini Atoll in the Pacific Ocean. In the target area were dozens of surplus ships. The test had been originally scheduled for July, 1946. Then the war broke out. The plan was code named Operation Crossroads.
The original operation was to prove or disprove theories about the survivability of naval vessels during an atomic attack. The ships were to be anchored and filled with live animals and supplies etc. that would be studied after the explosions to determine if naval personnel and their ships could function after being subjected to the power of atomic fission. Some saw it as a test for the very survival of the US Navy and its relevance in a world filled with atomic destruction.
The atoll’s inhabitants, some 167 Bikini islanders, were convinced using prophecies of the bible, to leave their island paradise and were moved out of harm’s way. The purpose of the tests had been altered and many of the ships and the preparations that would have occurred were hastily forgotten. Now the test was to be of the Mark I atomic bomb. The design was inherently dangerous and that is why the Mark III had been designed using polonium 210 as a major part of the weapon. The Mark III Fat Man was considered much safer the Mark I.[l]
Many things could go wrong with the Mark I and many things could make it prematurely explode either conventionally or in an atomic explosion. The Mark I was the bomb that everyone knew would work because of its simplicity. The Mark III was somewhat of a question mark until Nagasaki. Because of its significant improvement in safety the Mark III using polonium 210 was the bomb destined to fill America’s nuclear arsenal and not the much more dangerous Mark I. That was until George Koval used the world’s supply of polonium to sabotage the US atomic weapons program.
The students of the original designers and engineers who brought the world the Mark III atomic bomb had to improvise and the Mark I was their answer… or so they thought. The reason the Mark I is so dangerous is because any number of things can go catastrophically wrong. A simple electrical short, getting hit by lightning, getting wet or a fire could set it off. No one knows what happened aboard the bomber. The former student of Robert Oppenheimer during one of his rare semesters teaching at Caltech, had designed the trigger mechanism. He had never assembled it before in earnest. This would be his first attempt under simulated combat conditions and he apparently failed his test.
30 miles out from the target the B29 Silverplate exploded in a nuclear fireball over the Pacific Ocean. If the Bikini test had not been scheduled no one would have seen what happened. But they were 289 reporters from the NATO countries that did see it happen. Although far enough away to not suffer any immediate harm some were not yet prepared and did not have their special glasses on and did suffer temporary effects to their eyes. Luckily, and by design, no one or anything was in the ingress path of the B29 Silverplate bomber named Bockscar. No one but the crew and the assembly person were immediately harmed. The nuclear program of the United States of America would not survive, however.
The lethal list of US nuclear accidents that became public knowledge and included…
2 September 1944
Peter Bragg and Douglas Paul Meigs, two Manhattan Project chemists, were killed when their attempt to unclog a tube in a uranium enrichment device led to an explosion of radioactive uranium hexafluoride gas exploded at the Naval Research Laboratory in Philadelphia, PA. The explosion ruptured nearby steam pipes, leading to a gas and steam combination that bathed the men in a scalding, radioactive, acidic cloud of gas which killed them a short while later.
21 August 1945
Harry K. Daghlian Jr. was killed during the final stages of the Manhattan Project (undertaken at Los Alamos, New Mexico to develop the first atomic bomb) from a radiation burst released when a critical assembly of fissile material was accidentally brought together by hand. The accident occurred during a procedure known as "tickling the dragon's tail").
21 May 1946
A critical nuclear accident occurred at the Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory in New Mexico. Eight people were exposed to radiation, and one, Louis Slotin, died nine days later of acute radiation sickness.
13 July 1946
The Soviet spy known as Delmar (George Koval) releases polonium 210 by timed explosions during two separate gatherings of nuclear scientists and engineers in Dayton, OH and Oak Ridge, TN. The world’s only supply of polonium kills hundreds of America’s top scientists as well as killing and sickening tens of thousands of others who come in contact with the scientists.
Add to this our latest nuclear fiasco and combine that with the images of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the American public has had enough and more importantly Harry Truman has had enough. All nuclear weapons production ceases.
***
On a side note there will be 4 additional nuclear explosions before the nuclear gene is put back into its bottle. As I write this I suspect that the world will be a quite different place without the nuclear bomb. Quite different indeed than it would have been if this height of insanity and evil had run its course and been allowed to proliferate throughout the world. Only time will tell if I am right or wrong. It would be interesting, to say the least, if we had a parallel universe in which to compare the two paths. One now decided upon in our universe and one filled with the unimaginable horror of tens of thousands of nuclear weapons. Perhaps enough to even destroy the world itself as unimaginable and insane as that may seem.
***
Anti-Atomic Bomb Rally Washington D.C. 1946
Diary of Burt Post Sept. 24th, 1946
Just read that prices increased by 12% this year. My salary sure didn’t. The way prices are going up, I don’t know if we’ll ever be able to save enough to buy that new radio. I looked at them again on my lunch hour. The salesman showed me the inside. It was full of glowing tubes. It was just wonderful. He told me that if one of the tubes burned out you just went to the hardware store and buy another. They even have testing machines to see if your tube is bad.
I don’t think the war bond drives are going very well. No one has the money to buy them. The cost of food is going up and the taxes have to stay high to pay for the war it's kind of a no win situation. Plus there’s the fact that many just can’t see the sense in bailing out the French again much less the German’s. I’m sure we won’t let Britain fall. If the British navy and the US navy can’t keep the Reds on their side of the channel then nothing can. I just wrote “their” side. Already i
t's starting to seep into our consciousness. “Their” side, not occupied France or Denmark or even Germany. How fast change becomes the normal. I’m going to work on that. It's not “theirs”. It belongs to the people of Western Europe and we have to give them the chance to choose once again.
Can you imagine being in occupied France? Once again occupied by a foreign power. It must be almost unbearable. I guess that’s why that guy DeGaul did what he did. He just couldn’t take it anymore. Just couldn’t see his country raped one more time.
Chapter Eight:
Opening Moves
Burt Post, Maxine and Charlie
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Know your enemy and know yourself and you can fight a hundred battles without disaster.
Sun Tzu
**
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Dreamers will dream
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The Slaughter
He couldn’t believe the Soviets kept coming. It was a slaughter with Red fighters and bombers falling from the skies as far as the eye could see. The AA guns and the proximity fuse were destroying the enemy as a prodigious rate. He started out the day worried that he would not get a chance to tear into the waves of bombers that made it over the channel. They obviously had no idea of where they were going. Flocks of bombers and their escorting fighters wandered off from the main bomber stream and that was his squadron’s chance. Free from the AA zones set up around the airfields, the bombers and their Yak escorts were fair game.
World War Three 1946 Series Boxed Set: Stalin Strikes First Page 58