Merry Christmas in the Trenches

One hundred years ago, on Christmas Eve, in a muddy and cold place near Ploegsteert, on the WWI front between Belgium and France, surrounded by no-man’s land littered with barbed wire and dead bodies, German and Allied soldiers climbed from their trenches to celebrate Christmas in what became to be known as the Christmas Truce.

It was a spontaneous rise of humanity celebrating their common Christian roots and faith. German soldiers placed makeshift Christmas trees on the bulwark.

Historian Stanley Weintraub wrote in his book, Silent Night, how soldiers, after agreeing not to shoot each other, sang carols in an odd fraternity of inveterate enemies turned into momentary friends by their common belief in God and the tradition of Christmas, Christmas caroling, and Christmas trees. Shaking hands, in the old Germanic tradition of showing that they were not armed, they shared cigarettes and food.

Extending the truce into Christmas Day, the combatants were able to dig graves, bury their dead, and hold memorials. Weintraub mentioned that one Scottish chaplain recited during the memorial the 23^rd Psalm in two languages.

“The LORD is my shepherd, I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures; He leads me beside quiet waters…” “Der HERR is mein Hirte; mir wird nichts mangeln. Er weidet mich auf greener Aue und fuehret mich…”

The chaplain was chastised by his Bishop who thought the role of the clergy in war was to drive the soldiers into battle and to tend to their passage into God’s kingdom.

Christmas 1914 became a day of fellowship, sharing food, trading uniform buttons, and playing soccer, a sliver of normalcy in a cruel and unnecessary war.

According to Weintraub, “No one there wanted to continue the war.” Threatened by senior officers, the troops returned to fighting, “went on with the grim business at hand.”

Remembering the truce in diaries and in letters sent home to their families, soldiers described those moments in time as a “marvelously wonderful” Christmas yet a very “strange” event. German and British troops even posed for pictures together.

It was a peculiar event because Germans, French, and British soldiers were killing each other a few hours earlier, yet for one day, they were celebrating the birth of our savior in the anemic glow of the lit Christmas tree, casting an illuminating shadow over the muddy trenches, their misery, cold, and pain. They were a group of men fighting for the economic cause of greedy elites who were home warm and cozy with their families, celebrating Christmas, while these grunts were dying for nothing.

Director Christian Carion portrayed the truce incident in his award-winning 2005 movie, Joyeux Noel, but on a much larger scale than it actually happened. He took poetic license in order to introduce fictional characters that put a face on the pain, suffering, and the short-lived joy. Officers and troops were punished afterwards for “fraternizing with the enemy.”

World War I was a cruel trench conflict, a special kind of hell on earth, when enemies dug themselves into trenches within earshot of each other, and barbed wire in-between. Soldiers were ordered from time to time over the top, to stand up and advance, which caused them to be swiftly mowed down by machine gun fire. And if machine gun fire did not kill them, they were gassed to death in their muddy trenches, where bits of bones and strips of uniform mingled with the wall supports around the frightened and shivering soldiers, praying to survive.

It is very likely that the men who enjoyed this moment of peace during an expression of the civilized “brotherhood of men” on Christmas Day 1914, died shortly afterwards in the sacrificial gun battles or by poison gas grenade explosions.

Christmas is our beloved tradition that no war or atheist will be able to obliterate. No commercialized elf on the shelf or Kwanza can squash and transform the meaning of Christmas.

Christmas and the celebration of the gift of Christ to the world will always live in the joyful anticipation of children around the world who, with twinkles in their eyes, believe. Christmas will survive in church carols sung around the world, in our faith, in our hearts, and in our homes.

No wars, no atheists, no communists, and no theocracy can stop the Christian faith-based tradition of Christmas welling from the trenches.

The Greek Sponge Divers of Florida

“Give me a word and I will show you that it comes from Greek.”

-          Mr. Portokalis, character in “My Big, Fat, Greek Wedding”

 

Sponge diver with sponge in hand
Photo: Wikipedia

Having experienced the excruciating ear pain from failure to equalize the pressure change underwater, I am in awe of any scuba diver who goes underwater to explore the depths of our oceans or, as is the case of pearl divers, to find exquisite pearls that adorn rare and expensive jewels.

There are submersibles that operate at depths of 6,500 feet for scientific reasons, research and discovery.  A previously unknown life form, the sinking of famous ships, submarines, airplanes, ocean acidification from underwater volcanoes, marine life behavior, sharks, whales, and other creatures are explored and studied extensively at depths formerly off-limits to humans.

Pices V is such a submersible that can safely carry three people to depths that man cannot withstand. Even sperm whales’ lungs must collapse at such pressure in order to allow them to survive at 7,000 feet and lower, in their hunt for squid. http://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/pressure.html

At sea level, we are comfortable at air pressure of 14.5 pounds per square inch. Our bodies do not react in any way because fluids push outwardly with the same force. But, when diving even a few feet, the pressure starts to be felt by our eardrums. The hydrostatic pressure, the force per unit area exerted by a liquid on a solid mass, grows with every 33 feet by 14.5 psi.

According to NOAA, deep down, the pressure is as much as “the weight of an elephant balanced on a postage stamp, or the equivalent of one person trying to support 50 jumbo jets.”

How do animals survive at such depths? They have more flexible bodies; ribs are connected with “loose, bendable cartilage, which allows the rib cage to collapse at pressures that would easily snap our bones.”

How then can pearl divers learn to cope with the underwater pressure, often without a suit? Some people need ear tubes to be able to withstand even a few feet of water pressure.

Long time ago, in 1932, a movie was made about the “sponge fisherman of the Aegean,” operating in Tarpon Springs, Florida, “a quaint colony” of Greek fishermen who had dived for generations to find the sponges that were used for “washing cars and little Johnny’s back.”



Sponge diving boat
Photo: Wikipedia

The divers were descendants of the Greeks who used to dive naked with a stone under their arms to fight buoyancy. Their group had established in Tarpon Springs eighty years prior to the making of this film. Flying both the American and the Greek flags, the fishermen showed their pride in America and in their own heritage.

The Rock Island sponge bars were the realm of these “fantastic living things we call sponges.” The creatures thrived on graveled ocean floors.

Diving in an air-compressed suit, the master diver required several men to help him suit up properly for the dangerous dive. It was such a treacherous profession; the young did not seek employment in this field. There was such a shortage of divers that old and skilled men were brought from Greece.

By current standards, diving was an infant technology in 1932.  The diver controlled the air pressure in his suit with his head by touching an air valve. He was tethered to the boat by an air hose and a life line and depended on his mates on board to pull him up if he started going down head first and could not right himself up.

At the depth of 100 ft., suited in his 570 lbs. behemoth that kept him alive and conscious, the diver had to walk against the current that was sure to bowl him over otherwise. Dragging his cast iron shoes, the diver filled his basket with live sponges of the sea. When the basket was full, he attached it to the life line, signaled to the surface, and they pull it up.

Photo: Wikipedia

 

The divers sought the sheep’s wool sponge (Spongia equina) found in Florida and in the West Indies. This variety was the more valuable but others were harvested as well.

The diver was not protected in any way from encounters with giant marine life on the floor of the Gulf of Mexico. Barracudas and sharks were a primary danger but giant turtles, in excess of 2,000 lbs., could “bite off a man’s arm.”

After one hour of work, the scuba diver signaled to be pulled up to the surface. While floating helplessly on the surface, bobbing up and down, waiting to be pulled inside the boat, the diver was in danger of being attacked by barracudas.

Pulling his air hose in, the boaters towed the diver into the boat. The diver took his time surfacing, in order to adjust the pressure on his body. If he failed to do so, he suffered from the dreaded “bends.” Many divers became crippled and prematurely old from the “bends.”



Tarpon Springs, Florida
Photo: Wikipedia

Even though hyperbaric oxygenation treatment was tested and developed by the U.S. military after WWI and has been used safely since the 1930s to treat deep sea divers with decompression sickness, these sponge divers did not have such chambers to bring them back slowly and safely to atmospheric pressure.

The marine sponges were “cleared” off the live creature, leaving just its skeleton, the sought-after sponge people used. After a three-month journey, the sponge cargo was auctioned off at the Sponge Exchange after they were dried off on dock. A catch could be worth $90,000, with yearly revenue of one million dollars.

Little creatures that had burrowed themselves inside the sponges were hammered out. The larger sponges were cut into smaller ones while the workers sang the “Song of the Sponge Divers.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bR68ZqgLKzc&feature=youtu.be&app=desktop

And that is how real sponges arrived in fancy bath stores and were sold in beautiful packaging.

Merry Christmas in the Trenches

Christmas Truce 1914 Photo credit: Wikipedia

One hundred years ago, on Christmas Eve, in a muddy and cold place near Ploegsteert, on the WWI front between Belgium and France, surrounded by no-man’s land littered with barbed wire and dead bodies, German and Allied soldiers climbed from their trenches to celebrate Christmas in what became to be known as the Christmas Truce.

It was a spontaneous rise of humanity celebrating their common Christian roots and faith. German soldiers placed makeshift Christmas trees on the bulwark.

Historian Stanley Weintraub wrote in his book, Silent Night, how soldiers, after agreeing not to shoot each other, sang carols in an odd fraternity of inveterate enemies turned into momentary friends by their common belief in God and the tradition of Christmas, Christmas caroling, and Christmas trees. Shaking hands, in the old Germanic tradition of showing that they were not armed, they shared cigarettes and food.

Extending the truce into Christmas Day, the combatants were able to dig graves, bury their dead, and hold memorials. Weintraub mentioned that one Scottish chaplain recited during the memorial the 23^rd Psalm in two languages.

“The LORD is my shepherd, I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures; He leads me beside quiet waters…” “Der HERR is mein Hirte; mir wird nichts mangeln. Er weidet mich auf greener Aue und fuehret mich…”

The chaplain was chastised by his Bishop who thought the role of the clergy in war was to drive the soldiers into battle and to tend to their passage into God’s kingdom.

Christmas 1914 became a day of fellowship, sharing food, trading uniform buttons, and playing soccer, a sliver of normalcy in a cruel and unnecessary war.

According to Weintraub, “No one there wanted to continue the war.” Threatened by senior officers, the troops returned to fighting, “went on with the grim business at hand.”

Remembering the truce in diaries and in letters sent home to their families, soldiers described those moments in time as a “marvelously wonderful” Christmas yet a very “strange” event. German and British troops even posed for pictures together.

It was a strange event because Germans, French, and British soldiers were killing each other a few hours earlier, yet for one day, they were celebrating the birth of our savior in the anemic glow of the lit Christmas tree, casting an illuminating shadow over the muddy trenches, their misery, cold, and pain. They were a group of men fighting for the economic cause of greedy elites who were home warm and cozy with their families, celebrating Christmas, while these grunts were dying for nothing.

Director Christian Carion portrayed the truce incident in his award-winning 2005 movie, Joyeux Noel, but on a much larger scale than it actually happened. He took poetic license in order to introduce fictional characters that put a face on the pain, suffering, and the short-lived joy. Officers and troops were punished afterwards for “fraternizing with the enemy.”
World War I was a cruel trench conflict, a special kind of hell on earth, when enemies dug themselves into trenches within earshot of each other, and barbed wire in-between. Soldiers were ordered from time to time over the top, to stand up and advance, which caused them to be swiftly mowed down by machine gun fire. And if machine gun fire did not kill them, they were gassed to death in their muddy trenches, where bits of bones and strips of uniform mingled with the wall supports around the frightened and shivering soldiers, praying to survive.

It is very likely that the men who enjoyed this moment of peace during an expression of the civilized “brotherhood of men” on Christmas Day 1914, died shortly afterwards in the sacrificial gun battles or by poison gas grenade explosions.
Christmas is our beloved tradition that no war or atheist will be able to obliterate. No commercialized elf on the shelf or Kwanza can squash and transform the meaning of Christmas.

Christmas and the celebration of the gift of Christ to the world will always live in the joyful anticipation of children around the world who, with twinkles in their eyes, believe. Christmas will survive in church carols sung around the world, in our faith, in our hearts, and in our homes.

No wars, no atheists, no communists, and no theocracy can stop the Christian faith-based tradition of Christmas welling from the trenches.

Copyright: Ileana Johnson 2014

The Con-Con: Solution or Pandora's Box

The Article V Convention Forum: Solution or Pandora’s Box was organized by a coalition of conservative groups and met on December 8, 2014 in Falls Church, Virginia. The moderator and one of the organizers, Sevil Kalayci, discussed the necessity of such a meeting since most of the conservatives who oppose an “Article V Convention” have been shut out of the debate by other conservatives with the exception of Danville, Henrico, and Fair Lakes Tea Parties. “The Convention of states has divided the conservative movement,” she said. Kalayci asked, “How do you enforce the Constitution? How do you enforce the amendments?”

The speakers, who argued against state legislatures asking Congress to call for a convention to amend the Constitution, included:

-       Jeff Lewis, National Director of the Patriot Coalition

-       Richard D. Fry General Counsel, Patriot Coalition

-       Dr. Edwin Vieira, Author and Constitutional Scholar

-       Robert Broadus, former Congressional Candidate in District 4 Maryland

-       Mitchell Shaw, Citizens for Constitutional Government

-       Peter Boyce, political activist and Chairman leading the effort to stop a call for an Article V Convention in New Jersey

Mitchell Shaw was the first to address the audience. He described the Constitutional convention known as “con-con,” “amendments convention,” “article V convention,” all phrases referring to the same event, a “convention held for the purpose of proposing amendments to the U.S. Constitution as authorized by Art. V of the present Constitution as it was written.”

He enumerated the conservative groups interested in this “con-con” are the Convention of States, Compact for America, Balanced Budget Amendment Task Force, Middle Resolution, and other individuals interested in addressing what is wrong with America.  

Shaw mentioned many groups and individuals on the left equally interested in amending or potentially replacing the existing Constitution such as “Code Pink, Alliance for Democracy, Wolf Pack, Center for Media and Democracy, Independent Progressive Politics Network, Vermont Single Payer, Sierra Club, MoveOn.org, occupy groups,” and some billionaires.

Are there flaws in the Constitution? Why do we need to amend it in order to rein in an out-of-control government? What “magic language would an amendment adopt,” wondered Mitchell Shaw, in order to force Congress to abide by the Constitution that they are already ignoring? In his opinion, there are no flaws in the Constitution. Congress is ignoring it and American citizens allow it because they are too ignorant of their own Constitution. An amendment is not the solution, Shaw said, the solution is the creation of an informed electorate that understands the power of the state legislators to rein in the federal government. Unfortunately states compromise because they have become dependent on federal money to pay their bills.

Robert Broadus, a Navy veteran and the host of the east coast anti-federalist radio show, presented the anti-federalist viewpoint of an article V convention of the states.

Richard D. Fry explained that our current legislators no longer fear the people and God. They are no longer serving the interests of the American people; they are serving their own interests. We as citizens are not doing our job of holding them accountable. “This article V convention has been promoted for 50 years, starting with the Ford Foundation.” Fry concentrated his speech on the idea of sovereignty of a state with inherent power to regulate itself internally. “The states themselves are sovereign.”

Dr. Edwin Vieira, a Constitutional scholar, summed up the Constitution convention in three words, “imprudence, incoherence, and irrelevance.” He made the most important point of the evening that any kind of amendment, agenda, proposal, or draft are irrelevant in light of the looming national debt which is impossible to repay or manage currently or in the near future.

 “We are on a Titanic right now,” $18 trillion in national debt. If we add unfunded liabilities, we are at over $200 trillion.” That is the biggest threat to our national security. “And the solution is hyperinflation, followed by depression, or hyperinflation with depression.” He continued that the debt is unpayable and must be written off through currency depreciation. “We already have currency wars around the world in reference to the dollar being the reserve currency. This is the run up to WWI again. WWI was ultimately caused by trade rivalries between Germany and England. This war is going to be caused by monetary rivalries.”

Dr. Vieira believes that the Constitutional convention will not happen before “these monetary and geostrategic events come to fruition.” “The Ship is going to come down first,” he said, referring to the irreparably damaged ship of state.

When the monetary system and the banking system collapse, prices will go into freefall, there will be social effects, civil disobedience, a breakdown of society, and other unpredictable events caused by a devastated economy.

Preserving the original Constitution is most important. How long would an amendment take to pass if that is the only intent? Quoting Oswald Spangler and his “Decline of the West,” Dr. Vieira said that the “Untergang” (fall, downfall, doom) of the West will occur first. “The amendment might pass after the Carpathia shows up,” he concluded.

Copyright: Ileana Johnson 2014