Just a quick note to let anyone who is interested know that I'm still here. Recent evens in life kept me away from the keyboard for almost a month. They are positive events, but have filled my time and mind to the point where all the intentions I had about keeping up with this blog got sent to wait at the back of the line. But like Douglas MacArthur or a bad check, I have returned with an especially neurodivergent edition of As I Please. Here goes.

* I just referenced MacArthur. Well, I also just watched a John Wayne war movie called "They Were Expendable," about a PT boat squadron based out of Hawaii in WW2. The movie is interesting because it is much less rah-rah than I was expecting for a wartime-produced movie starring the Duke, and therefore more realistic and gritty. The film follows the squadron as it fights the Japanese at sea in the early months of the war, and is finally whittled down to a few ragged survivors on Battaan and Corregidor who have to fight with rifles as they no longer have any boats. Most of the characters die or are left by the movie in positions where they are certainly doomed. In one scene, for example, a bunch of officers are awating evacuation to the States via the last cargo plane, but there is not enough room and several are pulled off the aircraft to meet their fate. Grim, grim stuff, but one thing that stuck in my craw was the depiction of the sailors as they evacuated General MacArthur from the Phillippines so he could fight another day. The sailors look joyfully privileged to be escorting their general to safety while they must return to the lost battle to die or be captured -- a fate equivalent to death, considering what the Japanese did to POWs. In reality, MacArthur was hated by many, perhaps most, of his troops, partly because they blamed his decisions for their defeat in battle, partly because he left them to their fate. This song, meant to be sung to the tune of "Battle Hymn of the Republic," was popular among them as they defended Bataan from the Japanese while he was assumed safe on Corregidor Island:

Dugout Doug MacArthur lies a shaking on the Rock

Safe from all the bombers and from any sudden shock

Dugout Doug is eating of the best food on Bataan

And his troops go starving on.

Dugout Doug’s not timid, he’s just cautious, not afraid

He’s protecting carefully the stars that Franklin made

Four-star generals are rare as good food on Bataan

And his troops go starving on.

Dugout Doug is ready in his Kris Craft for the flee

Over bounding billows and the wildly raging sea

For the Japs are pounding on the gates of Old Bataan

And his troops go starving on…

I mention all this because myth-making is a fascinating process both during and after the creation of the myth. Often it involves taking a disohonorable or cowardly action and turning it upside-down, so that it refracts the glow of military genius and civic virtue. It is an illusionist's trick which throws off a dazzle which, if you squint a little, allows you to see that it's all just stagecraft. But most of us do not squint. It is easier to applaud the illusionist than to point out the flaws in his trick. MacArthur is defeated in battle, runs away while his troops are left to die, and then goes on to crown himself, and to be crowned, as a kind of American Caesar, the man who won the Pacific War, ruled postwar Japan as unofficial emperor, and masterminded the Inchon landings in Korea. At any point this narrative falls apart under even the most cursory scrutiny (please see "The Legend of Dougout Doug," Episode 103 of the Unauthorized History of the Pacific War Podcast if you want details delivered by historical experts on the subject), but how often do we subject our national myths to even cursory scrutiny? In this age, it is more important than ever to put any narrative through a scientific wringer before even tentatively accepting it is true.

* I also watched another WW2-era war movie starring Errol Flynn called "Objective: Burma!" Now this was a really excellent film. Flynn gives a surprisingly warm and understated performance as an Army captain tasked with leading a raid on Japanese radar installations in Burma in early 1945. The grinning swashbuckler of Hollywood puts his grin and his swashbuckling aside to portray a quietly professional officer who does everything right, only to discover that everything goes wrong anyway. "Burma!" is surprisingly skilled in the craft of its narrative, bait-and-switching the audience by having our heroic paratoopers pull off their coup with ease. The movie seems complete a third of the way through, and then, well, shit goes south in a hurry, and instead of a smooth plane ride back to base, they must make a hellish 200 mile trek on foot, through malaria-ridden swamp in blistering heat, while being attacked and ambushed every step of the way by irate Japanese who show them no mercy. A "men on a mission" commando flick becomes a cinematic study in survival under pressure, as Flynn's character, fighting hunger as well as exhaustion, disease, despair and the Japanese army, tries to get his dwindling survivors to safety. I really enjoyed this movie, not merely because it is a surprisingly realistic depiction of battle for its time (1945), but because unlike John Wayne, in actuality a gifted actor yet who made a career playing essentially the same character over and over again, Errol Flynn sets aside his usual rakish grin and devil-may-care antics to show the burden of command on a well-trained professional struggling not to succumb to despair.

* I just finished "Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo," a memoir by Captain Ted Lawson, of the famous surprise "Doolittle Raid" on Japan carried out by the US Army and US Navy on Japan in early 1942. As an account of a carefully and meticulously planned military operation, carried out in uttermost secrecy as a means of boosting American civilian morale during a period of defeat and despair, it is very interesting, but where the book is truly remarkable is in Lawson's depiction of the aftermath. His bomber, "The Ruptured Duck," crashed in China after the raid, and his crew were all badly injured, worst off himself -- he was thrown through the bullet-resistant windshield at 110 mph into the water, then washed up on the shore. His face caved in and his leg badly injured, he and the others had to be carried by friendly Chinese peasants from village to village over several hundreds of miles without any anesthetic or medical care, all the while being hunted by Japanese patrols. Then Lawson's leg became gangrenous and had to be amputated...it just goes on an on, bad to worse, to worse yet. A truly astounding story of human endurance and survival, and also of the human ability to suffer, and to endure, pain in every form. Indeed, when Lawson finally returned to the States, the plastic surgeons discovered the impact had driven some of his teeth into his sinuses, and when they were removed, the astonished surgeons found beach sand in the wounds. How he made it through all of this is beyond me, but Lawson, incidentally, lived to be 74 years old.

* In the back of my copy of "Tokyo," which is an original (1943 publishing date), there is an advertisement for a book called "Psychology For The Fighting Man." This is an interesting book which you can peruse for free on the wonderful Internet Archive (archive.org), cobbled together by a whole slew of psychologists, psychiatrists, military men and spies, to help the American fighting man, regardless of branch of service, cope with some of the challenges he faced during wartime: not just physical challenges posed by military life and combat, but loneliness, sexual starvation, resentment against superiors, et cetera and so on. A lot of the topics seem to fall far afield from psychology, venturing into things like sight, hearing, noise, color sense, use of camouflage, etc., but are eventually shown through a psychological lens, such as "how to find your way when lost." There are also chapters on leadership and organization, and how psychology plays into each. I found the book quite interesting simply as a discussion of the human condition, but also because it shows how science, biology, psychology and other disciplines come together to create a better fighting man. The great body of knowledge which exists in a society is harnessed to the goal of training men for war. When the book discusses caloric needs, sexual hygiene, colds and flus, temperatures, oxygen requirements, tolerances for noise, and so forth, it is all in the service of making the better and more efficient soldier. On the one hand, tremendous thought and care, and on the other, the full knowledge that all of this thought and care will be put into a body which may soon be blown to bits. The ethical and moral problems raised by this are fascinating, and it is interesting to ponder whether much of the knowledge we have, whether industrial, technological, psychological, medical or what have you, would have come about so quickly or at all if we did not spend so much time, money and effort figuring out ways to kill each other.

And with that, I bring "As I Please" to a close. If you noticed my absence from the platform, I apoligize; if you didn't, that is still my fault.