Louisiana Maneuvers

Last week I took a road trip down to Louisiana, taking in some sites pertinent to American military history, a subject I am slated to teach this fall at Harding.

Vicksburg Battlefield. I left Monday morning, stopping at Vicksburg, Miss., en route to New Orleans. I had been to Vicksburg before, back in 1994, on a field trip led by my former teacher, now colleague, Paul Haynie. Vicksburg was a Confederate stronghold on the Mississippi River which, after a lengthy siege by U. S. Grant, finally fell on July 4, 1863. The most poignant thing about this particular visit to Vicksburg was that every grave was decorated with a little American flag, because it was Memorial Day (May 25).


Chalmette Battlefield. The next morning I visited the site of the Battle of New Orleans, fought in January 1815. The battle occurred a few days after the Treaty of Ghent had been signed, but news traveled slowly in those days and no one realized it yet. The battle took place on the Chalmette Plantation. (Like Vicksburg, Chalmette is administered by the National Parks service.)


The photo here depicts the American line during the battle. The British attacked this line, rather futilely, and were forced to withdraw. I was especially interested to learn that the carriages of the American cannon were painted light blue during the battle, in accordance with military regulations of the time.

National WWII Museum. My next stop was at the National World War II Museum in New Orleans. The late Stephen Ambrose, noted World War II historian, was the driving force behind this museum. The website says to allocate at least two and a half to three hours for your visit; I spent about five hours, and felt a bit rushed!

Throughout the exhibit, there are oral history kiosks where one can listen to firsthand accounts of the war from survivors. They also play two documentaries throughout the day; one, on the Pacific War, entitled Price For Peace; and D-Day Remembered, about the Normandy invasion. I was particularly impressed with D-Day Remembered, which is narrated by the always-impressive David McCullough.

There weren’t a lot of vehicles at the museum, though there was a Sherman tank (pictured), a German 88-millimeter gun, two landing craft, and four aircraft rather majestically hung from the ceiling: a C-47 Skytrain, a Messerschmidt 109, a British Spitfire, and a Dauntless dive-bomber.

U.S.S. Kidd. My next stop came Wednesday morning, at the U.S.S. Kidd, which is anchored in the Mississippi River at Baton Rouge. The Kidd is a World War II-era destroyer (Fletcher class) which suffered a kamikaze attack off of Okinawa in April 1945. Although the Kidd is the most prominent exhibit, it is not the only one at this museum; there is also a P-40 Warhawk (of “Flying Tigers” fame) and an A-7 Corsair jet fighter.

This was also my second visit to the Kidd; back in my sportswriter days, during an S.E.C. conference track meet at L.S.U., I also toured the old “tin can.”

8th Air Force Museum. My last stop was in Shreveport, at the 8th Air Force Museum, located at Barksdale Air Force Base. I arrived Wednesday afternoon, but was turned away because I got there too late. So I spent the night in Shreveport, which gave me the opportunity to attend midweek Bible study at the University Church of Christ, which I found enjoyable. Thursday morning I went back to Barksdale. I found that the museum building was again closed, this time because of water problems — but the air park was open, and that was the reason I had come, anyway.

There are several notable old warbirds out in the air park, including a B-17 Flying Fortress, a B-24 Liberator, a B-29 Superfortress, a couple of B-52 Stratofortresses, a P-51 Mustang, and an SR-71 Blackbird (pictured). I was particularly impressed with the British B.2 Avro Vulcan they had on display; the Brits sure know how to build a pretty airplane!


There was something a bit sad, though, about walking through the air park, looking at these old warriors slowly deteriorating out in the elements. The B-29 was particularly rough; it was missing its entire tail. In stark contrast to these rusting relics, however, were the B-52s still on active duty, located just a few hundred feet away across the fence. I got to see two of them take off.

The B-52 never ceases to amaze me. It first flew in 1952, some forty-nine years after the Wright brothers made their initial flight in Kittyhawk. Fifty-seven years later, the design is still flying. This means that the design of the B-52 is closer, in time, to the days of the Wright brothers than to our own time — and yet the venerable old bomber is still absolutely relevant.

A Man Called Intrepid

I just finished reading William Stevenson’s A Man Called Intrepid. Published originally in 1976, this is a gripping account of the World War II service of British spy-master William Stephenson. (In spite of the similarity of their names, the two men are not related.) The Allies clearly out-spied the Germans during the war, and this was in no small part due to Stephenson, whose code name was “Intrepid.” (The Soviets may well have out-spied their own Allies, but that is another story.)

There are a couple of passages which particularly caught my attention, both from Intrepid himself. First, on the necessity of spying:

The weapons of secrecy have no place in an ideal world. But we live in a world of undeclared hostilities in which such weapons are constantly used against us and could, unless countered, leave us unprepared again, this time for an onslaught of magnitude that staggers the imagination. And while it may seem unnecessary to stress so obvious a point, the weapons of secrecy are rendered ineffective if we remove the secrecy. One of the conditions of democracy is freedom of information. It would be infinitely preferable to know exactly how our intelligence agencies function, and why, and where. But this information, once made public, disarms us. (p. xv)

Stephenson made this argument during the Cold War, when the threat of nuclear war seemed ever present — hence the reference to “an onslaught of magnitude that staggers the imagination.” But the end of the Cold War — (it did end, didn’t it?) — has not brought an end to the threat of terrible onslaught, as the events of September 11, 2001 made so very clear. In some ways, the threat is worse. The beautiful thing about the Soviets was that they did not want to die, and thus could be blackmailed into peace. But Islamic terrorists desire death, and want to take you with them.

Not all Muslims are terrorists, of course; but a distressing number are, and it does not take many to cause great evil. (Nineteen, I think, was the number.) There are too many today who want to pretend that there is no threat, that claims to the contrary were merely a pretense by an evangelical president to settle old political scores and spy on his own people. Another passage from Intrepid is, I think, applicable to this sort of nonsense:

The easy way out is to pretend there are no crises. That’s the way to win elections. That’s the way we stumbled into war in the first place — there were too many men in power who preferred to see no threat to freedom because to admit to such a threat implies a willingness to accept sacrifice to combat it. There’s a considerable difference between being high-minded and soft-headed. (p. 466)

For all of its political appeal, we cannot afford soft-headedness in the Long War we find ourselves now in.

The Same War

I’m back in Fayetteville this week on “spring” break, though there is nothing particularly spring-like about the weather of the past couple of days. With a little downtime on my hands, I thought I would update my blog. In part, this is prompted by a remark from my brother today, who said that he was going to be removing dead links from his blog, and threatened to remove mine, since it has been so long since I have posted.

Although it has heretofore gone unremarked on my blog, I am now teaching history at Harding University. This is not entirely unconnected to the fact that I have not been posting; teaching four classes — with a total of about 180 students in them — does keep me pretty busy. But it is a very happy kind of busy. 

Several months ago, during a dark time, I complained that youth ministry seemed like an unwinnable battle. As a teacher at a Christian college, I actually feel like I’m in the same war, against the same enemy. But the fight no longer seems unwinnable — perhaps a bit like the difference between being in the Polish cavalry in 1939, and the 1st Polish Armoured Division in 1944.