East African Adventures

I recently finished Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck’s memoirs, My Reminisces of East Africa, written by the famous German general of World War I. 

 In the late 1800s, Imperial Germany attempted to catch up with England and France in acquiring overseas colonies.  What they wound up with was: a small slice of China (Tsingtao), the Bismarck Islands in the Pacific, and in Africa, Cameroon, German South-West Africa (known today as Namibia), and German East Africa, better known today as Tanzania.  Mount Kilimanjaro is just north and features heavily in the earlier portions of the story.

 By 1914, the drums of war were beating in Europe – and by August, the war had begun.  PvLV found himself stranded in GEA, and knowing the mastery of the seas which the Royal Navy had earned, and notwithstanding an aggressive ship-building crusade by the Kaiser leading up to WWI, had maintained, he realized that GEA would not likely receive any supplies or reinforcements.

 I had mentioned in my Malaysian blog recently about the strategic impact of the guerillas vs. the Japanese.  In this case, PvLV specifically realized that it would take heroic efforts to keep GEA from being overrun by the British – indeed, Cameroon and GSWA were easily taken by Commonwealth forces.   So his idea was: if we can keep the British pinned down here in East Africa, forcing them to devote forces chasing after us, that means that many fewer men can be fighting our comrades in the trenches of France. 

 His forces usually consisted of a small but substantial core of German soldiers, leavened out with Askaris – native Africans.  Whereas the Germans of WWII were highly racist, even attempting to eradicate assimilated German Jews, PvLV had nothing but praise for his African troops and much admiration for the local people.  Due to supply issues, many of his troops were equipped with earlier 1871 model Mauser rifles which used black powder, and only a small number of the new Gewehr 98 models using modern smokeless powder.  They also took naval guns off the Konigsberg and mounted them on wheels.  But over half their weapons were captured from their enemies.

 Initially he succeeded at making raids into Kenya and Uganda, and fighting off various invasions from those countries, and Belgian attacks from the Congo (now known as Zaire).   Part of the irony was that many Commonwealth forces were from South Africa, led by General Smuts – former Boer guerillas now chasing down German guerilla forces.  Other Commonwealth forces were Indians, the King’s African Rifles, regular British units, British Askaris, and Allied units of Belgians and Portuguese.

Eventually the Commonwealth forces squeezed his forces out of GEA altogether: in 1917 PvLV abandoned any fixed bases, trimmed off excess forces leaving them behind in GEA, and ventured south into Portuguese East Africa (now known as Mozambique).  He romped around, capturing Portuguese supply bases, food, rifles, ammunition, artillery, and basically causing havoc wherever he went. PvLV found the Portuguese to be rarely well led and usually having poor morale.  But the British went into Mozambique after him.  The Brits would frequently have their own column marching parallel to his.  Like Rommel in North Africa, PvLV often found that the best defense was a good offense, so he would pick off British units he found understrength and leave the area before any reinforcements could arrive; and like Rommel he was pretty much stuck working with what he already had, while the British could resupply their forces at will, pulling out decimated units and replacing them with fresh troops – a luxury the Germans could not afford in either war.  

PvLV turned north, returning to GEA, then west into northern Rhodesia (now known as Zambia), which was British territory.   At this time his forces, though considerably reduced by attrition, were still at large and undefeated, when the Brits sent him notice of the Armistice (November 11, 1918).  He surrendered and was returned to Germany, one of its few heroes – very much Germany’s own Lawrence of Arabia.

 The African Queen.  I decided to check out this 1951 film with Humphrey Bogart and Katharine Hepburn.  Far from the suave character of “Casablanca”, Bogart here plays Charlie Allnut, a colorful and boozing ship captain with whom Hepburn teams up after her brother dies.  She and him were missionaries until a German colonial unit invaded early in the war and caused all sorts of problems.  Yet another “uptight lady meets irresistible manly rogue” movie (see “Australia” and “Gone With the Wind”), but here the romance blossoms rather early.  Rose Sayer (Hepburn) is burning with desire for revenge against the Germans, so she cooks up a bizarre scheme to rig the African Queen with torpedoes to blow up a German steamer, the Louisa, which had been dominating the lake.  Of course, getting TO the lake requires a dangerous journey through the river and rapids, which Allnut is ill-inclined to attempt, until he’s shamed into obedience by this courageous (or is she just plain crazy?) woman.  I got the impression that Rose had been bored shitless as a missionary and relishes this opportunity for adventure.  The Germans are ruthless and cruel, with no mention or sign of Lettow-Vorbeck.  He does, however, appear in some episodes of “The Young Indiana Jones”.    

Blues vs. Rock

Sorry, I ran out of Christmassy things to ramble on about.  I was going to do a blog on blues guitarists, but it occurred to me, after listening without much emotion and reaction to the undeniably excellent Stevie Ray Vaughan – while still being impressed, after all these years, with AC/DC or Mick Taylor (much as I rant that Exile on Main Street is highly overrated) – that there are two classes of blues guitarists.

 The first are the blues purists.  For these guitarists, blues is not a means, but an ends in itself.  They devote themselves to 12 bar blues, which is nice, but wears dull after the 10^th song.  It’s a real challenge to make it interesting when you won’t step outside the box. 

 Prime examples: Stevie Ray Vaughan, Johnny Winter, Peter Green, and Frank Marino [notice all of these are popularly known by their own names rather than associated with bands, except for Green, with pre-Rumours Fleetwood Mac].   I read Steve Miller bust on Joe Bonamassa, describing him as “making perfect copies of Picassos”, faithfully recreating past blues guitarists works, yet contributing nothing new or original of his own.  Of these, I’ve seen Frank Marino in concert twice, and his shows are very good, but be ready for 2-3 hours of practically nonstop jamming.  I have albums by all these blues guitarists and listen to them, I just prefer rock guitarists – as described below.

 The second type of blues guitarists are rock guitarists who have obvious blues backgrounds, influences, and sounds, but whom are primarily focused on making rock music.  Blues are not an ends in themselves but merely the means by which they produce their songs and music; some, like Ritchie Blackmore, will add considerable classical influences to their mix – it’s ironic that Yngwie Malmsteen should mimic Blackmore so much, because I haven’t heard Malmsteen competently execute any blues solos; he’s a classical guitarist who plays classical scales at 100 mph.  Notice these guitarists are associated with particular bands and not as solo artists.

 Prime examples: Jimmy Page (Led Zeppelin), Jeff Beck (solo), Tony Iommi (Black Sabbath), Ritchie Blackmore (Deep Purple). Angus Young (AC/DC), David Gilmour (Pink Floyd), Robbie Krieger (Doors), Duane Allman (Allman Brothers), Mick Taylor (Rolling Stones), Billy Gibbons (ZZTop), Mark Knopfler (Dire Straits), Dave Murray (Iron Maiden), Glenn Tipton (Judas Priest), even Frank Hannon (Tesla), Slash (Guns’n Roses, Velvet Revolver) and Tom Keifer (Cinderella)

 Outside this dichotomy I put two guitarists: Eric Clapton and Jimi Hendrix.   To call Hendrix a blues guitarist is like calling Oprah a “talk show host” or Hitler a “political figure”.  He was so much more than that.  It’s remarkable that he only had THREE studio albums.  Clapton started off as a blues purist, but then went commercial.  Although he still considers himself a blues guitarist – and certainly consistently markets himself as such – his career has been a constant effort to put the blues into a commercially viable and popular context. 

B-24 Liberator

Earlier I wrote about the better-known Allied bomber of WWII, the B-17 Flying Fortress.  It’s time to revisit the topic by discussing its less popular, but more highly produced, rival the B-24 Liberator. 

 My uncle flew a B-24 in the Pacific during WWII – he was the pilot, at age 18.  He managed to survive to tell the tales.  And the father of my former boss bailed out of a B-24 over Europe.  His squadron had been given a new bomber to replace the patched up one which had survived countless missions – only to have the new one shot down on its first mission.  With his parachute on, he bailed from the top of the plane, was whisked back over the twin tail, and was captured on the ground in December 1944, serving the rest of the war in a Stalag.  More famous B-24 crew members were pilot Jimmy Stewart (the actor) and US 1972 presidential candidate George McGovern.

 Many, though not all, of the B-24’s were produced by Ford at its Willow Run plant.  The bomber saw action in all theaters of war (Jack Nicholson: “…all walks of life”), being predominant in the Pacific and famous for the low-level raids of the Ploesti oil fields in Romania in 1943; the raids suffered heavy losses, yet the refineries were back up to full capacity after only a month.  In addition to standard bombing raids on German industry and Romanian oil, the B-24 also performed supply missions (they dropped supplies to Chapman’s teams in Malaysia) and dropped Resistance agents by parachutes through the belly turret hole (also in Malaysia). 

 Like the B-17, the B-24 had an impressive array of .50 cal armament, including front and rear turrets, a belly turret, and waist gunners.  Despite the obvious claustrophobia and fact that the belly gunner could only enter or leave the turret during flight, studies showed the belly gunner had the lowest fatality rate; however, other studies showed the belly turret being mostly useless, and on later models it was omitted without any change in bomber casualties. 

 The B-24 had its Davis wing high up, a twin tail, and rollaway bomb bay doors and a larger payload than the B-17.   The powerplant was the Pratt & Whitney R-1830, a 1000 HP, 1,830 cubic inch (30 L) 14 cylinder, two row radial engine.  Just as the B-24 ended up as the highest produced Allied aircraft of WWII, the R-1830 was the highest produced aircraft engine.  In the B-24, the engine was turbo-supercharged.

 The B-17 gets most of the attention.  Surely, as an airplane it’s much more aethestically pleasing: it simply looks like a very large plane, but its proportions are right.  The B-24 was ridiculed as “the box the B-17 came in”, and it’s hard to argue that it’s certainly not as pretty as its rival.  It was faster, could carry more, but could not fly as high, as easily, or endure as much damage or punishment as the B-17.  But surely its story has as a much right to be told as the B-17.

Wait Til Your Father Gets Home

My buddy Dave referred me to an older animated movie, “The Point”, which has Ringo Starr as the main voice, which in turn reminded me of this one and led me to rent the first season from Netflix.  I did so before Tom Bosley died, but his passing ended up being an interesting coincidence.

 This was an animated series from 1972 to 1974 in the US, courtesy of Hanna-Barbera, the same folks who gave us the Flintstones, Jetsons, and Scooby Doo.  This was considerably more adult fare, a biting social commentary on the state of the nation (California in particular) in 1972-74 (3 seasons), of which season 1 is on DVD.

 It centers on a small suburban family, the Doyles.  The father, Harry (Tom Bosley), is self-employed.  Mother, Irma, stays home and cooks, cleans, raises the kids, a typical American suburban housewife.  The older son Chet is a slacker whose job search efforts are few and far between.  The daughter Alice is…well, Peg from “The Family Guy” is probably based on her.  She could stand to lose a few pounds.  The younger son Jackie, voiced by Jackie Earl Haley, better known these days as Rorshach from “The Watchmen”, is quite the schemer, described by my friend Dave as a prototype Ferengi, the avaricious aliens from “Star Trek: The Next Generation”.    

 Harry winds up stuck in the middle between his arch-liberal teenage kids and his next-door neighbor Ralph (voiced by Jack Burns) who seems to have a NY accent despite the California setting.  I’ve noticed that Chet’s politics seems less sincere than an excuse not to work, whereas Alice sincerely believes in her new ideas – even joining a commune briefly; Ralph correctly makes the link between “commune” and “communist” but incorrectly assumes they’re all nudist colonies (!).  The mother is tolerant without agreeing.  For his part, Ralph sees conspiracies everywhere – mostly Russkis and Red Chinese, to whom he attributes Pearl Harbor (???) - and mobilizes a local militia neighborhood watch including an Army chaplain, a jeep, a tank, and an oversexed old woman referred to as “Whittaker”.  I don’t recall seeing Ralph’s wife, and he says his son is away at military school.  For his part, Harry rebuffs and complains about the kids’ socialism but also accuses Ralph of being “a prime candidate for a brain transplant.”

 If there is one mantra, one recurring theme repeated ad nauseam, particularly through the voice of reason – the father – it’s that “this country is going down the toilet”.  And it seems that, at every point in history, that sentiment is consistently felt.  I recall an episode of “Dobie Gillis”, the TV show Bob Denver was on before “Gilligan’s Island” (for which he’s known as the title character).  Denver, as Maynard, some beatnik (proto-hippie) is obsessed with nuclear war (this must have been around the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis).  He’s freaking out.  So Gillis reads him a letter, full of doom and woe, the end of the world is near, etc. (very articulate and melodramatic), prompting excited grunts of approval and agreement from Maynard.  Then Gillis reveals that the letter in question was written in 1905!  Some things never change.  The Harry Doyle’s laments fall short of Maynard’s hysterics, but the idea is certainly similar.

 While we’re on the topic of “lost HB cartoons” (NOT a topic I want to explore at length, as that would take a book, not a blog), I recall “Roman Holidays”, which ran in the 70s on Saturday mornings.  It was similar to “Wait” except set in ancient Rome (“wait until Pater returns to the Domus?”).  Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem to be on Netflix, and the YouTube episodes are in Portuguese (???).

The Jungle Is Neutral

This is the book the SS referred to in The Devil’s Guard.  It was written by Spencer Chapman, a British officer during WWII, about his experiences in the jungle of Malaysia escaping the Japanese from 1942-45.

 Malaysia.  The Japanese invaded Malaysia in December 1941, on the way to Singapore, which they also captured.  They remained in control of Malaysia when the atomic bombs were dropped on Japan in August 1945.

 Guerillas.   Most of these were Chinese communists.  They seemed to care more about arguing esoteric politics than …fighting Japanese.  They rarely had enough personnel or weapons – or scarcely any training in how to actually fight – to take on the Japanese.  These units were as likely to be running from one camp to the next to get away from Jap armies than they were actually attacking or ambushing Japanese.  This is one front where the guerillas were little more than a nuisance.  The native Malays, the aboriginine Sakais, and local Sikhs and other ethnic groups were at best occasionally hostile to the Japanese, mostly neutral, and often (especially the Sikhs) pro-Japanese.  The Chinese hated the Japanese the most and had the most intense antipathy, sufficient to take up arms against them – a motivation lacking in most other ethnic groups, including the Malays. 

            Possibly the most ambitious claim which could be made about the Chinese guerillas in Malaysia during WWII is that, to the extent they represented an armed force in opposition to Japanese occupation, the Japanese had to station regular forces in Malaysia to counter guerilla activity, which could otherwise have been fighting to the death on Iwo Jima or Okinawa.  This seems to be most ambitious strategic goal or result of most guerilla armies.  Historically, the French seem to be the only country whose conventional forces ever get beaten by guerillas; most recently in 1954, even in Haiti in the early 1800s.   We defeated the English with conventional forces assisted by the French; we left Vietnam in 1973, 4 years after the Viet Cong were wiped out in the Tet Offensive.

            Spencer’s original plan when he was in Malaysia during the Japanese invasion was to stay behind and organize guerilla resistance to the Japanese.  He would ideally coordinate units and train them, and act as a liaison with the British outside Malaysia – ideally in Ceylon (Sri Lanka).  As a practical matter he spent most of his time traveling through the jungle from various camps or laid up incapacitated with malaria, tick-typhus, or other jungle diseases. 

 Malaria.  More than the Japanese, Chapman’s biggest foe as a practical matter was malaria.  Since food was always a problem, vitamin deficiencies were also an issue.  He diligently studied the jungle, its plants, animals, and idiosyncrasies, and even then was still prey to malaria and was frequently too sick to do much of anything. 

  Ultimately he decided that “the jungle is neutral”, neither inherently hostile to humans nor a natural paradise to be absent-mindedly enjoyed without fear or danger.  Chapman felt that overstating the dangers or the beauties of the jungle, in either direction, was fatal – in the former case, a self-fulfilling prophecy. His attitude probably saved his life.

 Japanese.  Having invaded and occupied Malaysia, the Japanese made sporadic efforts to wipe out the guerillas, with mixed success.  The British only returned after the Japanese surrender and accepted the surrender of local forces which had been bypassed by the Allies’ island-hopping.  Japanese anti-insurgency efforts seemed to be “send in a huge force to wipe out literally everyone you find”, not particularly selective, beheading everyone and not concerned about winning “hearts and minds”.

 Post-War Emergency.  As noted earlier, I had been referred to this by the Devil’s Guard book.  I had been aware of the 1948-60 war, but had been unaware that this book only dealt with WWII.  In fact, Chapman’s book ends abruptly in 1945, and since the guerilla war began in 1948 and lasted until 1960 – long beyond the Vietnamese war which ended in 1954 – the SS men in northern Vietnam could not have benefited from any accounts of the success of the Malaysian counterinsurgency even if they wanted to. 

            The most important difference was that the Viet Minh were Vietnamese, the same ethnic group as the North Vietnamese (and South Vietnamese).  The Malayans insurgents were Chinese, and Chapman notes that no one seemed to have any problem distinguishing Chinese from Malays.  Because of Japanese atrocities in China from 1937 onwards, the Chinese had a definite beef against the Japanese, quite apart from any Communist ideology, whereas the Malays didn’t seem to care enough to fight against the Japanese.  The Japanese mostly left the Malays alone except for counter-insurgency strikes, meaning whatever atrocities Japanese committed against Malays was due to activities of the Chinese guerillas, hardly a situation which would prompt any Malays to identify with, much less support, the guerillas. 

            In fact, the British had ample help from the Malays in their fight against the guerillas, who seemed to be 99% Chinese.  So these Chinese guerillas were ignoring the advice of their own leader, Mao, about “fish swimming in the ocean”, just as Lenin ignored Marx’s opinion that Russia was backwards, quasi-feudal, far from ripe for proletarian revolution; the prime candidates were the US and Western Europe, those countries most advanced in capitalism.  About the only time Marxists seem to follow their own ideology was in Spain, where they supported the bourgeois capitalist democracy against Franco, and discouraged the anarchists.  Even there, many of the moderate democrats were wary that the PSUC (main Communist Party, which had Stalin’s support) was trying to turn Spain into a Soviet satellite.  Time and time again – Russia, Spain, Malaysia, China, Cuba, Vietnam – the Reds show their prime concern is power for its own sake and zero interest or concern for the workers and peasants.