Victoria Cross: M. D. Wanklyn

MALCOLM DAVID WANKLYN, DSO

Lieutenant Commander, Royal Navy; commanding HMS Upholder

Born: 28 June 1911, Calcutta, India

Citation: On the evening of the 24th of May, 1941, while on patrol off the coast of Sicily, Lieutenant‑Commander Wanklyn, in command of His Majesty's Submarine Upholder, sighted a south‑bound enemy troop‑convoy, strongly escorted by Destroyers.
The failing light was such that observation by periscope could not be relied on but a surface attack would have been easily seen. Upholder's listening gear was out of action.
In spite of these severe handicaps Lieutenant‑Commander Wanklyn decided to press home his attack at short range. He quickly steered his craft into a favourable position and closed in so as to make sure of his target. By this time the whereabouts of the escorting Destroyers could not be made out. Lieutenant‑Commander Wanklyn, while fully aware of the risk of being rammed by one of the escort, continued to press on towards the enemy troop‑ships. As he was about to fire, one of the enemy Destroyers appeared out of the darkness at high speed, and he only just avoided being rammed. As soon as he was clear, he brought his periscope sights on and fired torpedoes, which sank a large troop‑ship. The enemy Destroyers at once made a strong counter-attack and during the next twenty minutes dropped thirty‑seven depth‑charges near Upholder.
The failure of his listening devices made it much harder for him to get away, but with the greatest courage, coolness and skill he brought Upholder clear of the enemy and safe back to harbour.
Before this outstanding attack, and since being appointed a Companion of the Distinguished Service Order, Lieutenant‑Commander Wanklyn had torpedoed a tanker and a merchant vessel.
He has continued to show the utmost bravery in the presence of the enemy. He has carried out his attacks on enemy vessels with skill and relentless determination, and has also sunk one Destroyer, one U‑boat, two troop‑transports of 19,500 tons each, one tanker and three supply ships. He has besides probably destroyed by torpedoes one Cruiser and one Destroyer, and possibly hit another Cruiser.

(London Gazette Issue 35382 dated 16 Dec 1941, published 12 Dec 1941.)

Medal of Honor: W. H. Downs

WILLIS H DOWNS

Private, Company H, 1st North Dakota Volunteer Infantry

Born: 1870, Mount Carmel, Connecticut
Died: 1929, Jamestown, North Dakota

Citation: With 11 other scouts [on 13 May 1899, at San Miguel de Mayumo, Luzon, Philippine Islands], without waiting for the supporting battalion to aid them or to get into a position to do so, charged over a distance of about 150 yards and completely routed about 300 of the enemy who were in line and in a position that could only be carried by a frontal attack.

Russian fishermen catch squeaking alien and eat it

From the English-language version of Pravda:

Village residents from the Rostov region of Russia caught a weird creature two weeks ago after a strong storm in the Sea of Azov. The shark-looking creature was producing strange squeaky sounds. The fishermen originally believed that they had caught an alien and decided to film the monster with the help of a cell phone camera. The footage clearly shows the creatures’ head, body and long tail. The bizarre catch was weighing almost 100 kilograms, the Komsomolskaya Pravda reports.

However, ufologists and scientists were greatly disappointed when they found out that the fishermen had eaten the monster. They said that they were not scared of the creature so they decided to use it as food. One of the men said that it was the most delicious dish he had ever eaten.

Read the rest of the story here.

How (not) to conduct yourself in court

ZUI this public service announcement from LawDog.

Good things to keep in mind, should the occasion ever arise.

Kids and toy guns

ZUI this piece from the Washington Post.

As the father of four kids younger than 9, I confess to being an overly obsessive and doting parent. I secretly follow my 8-year-old son, Benjamin, when he goes out on his bike, to make sure that he doesn't ride in the middle of the street. I hover inches over my 18-month-old daughter, Madie, at the playground to make sure that she doesn't eat sand. I am the very model of the risk-averse parent. Yet for some parents in my neighborhood, my kids and I are the risk to be avoided, even if it means removing their children when we show up at the park. The reason: toy guns.

I first noticed the "shunning" at the most unlikely of events. Each year on Labor Day, my Alexandria community has a "Wheel Day" parade in which hundreds of kids convert their bikes, scooters and wagons into different fantasy vehicles. Last year, we turned our red wagon into a replica Conestoga wagon with real sewn canvas over wooden ribs, wooden water barrels, quarter horse -- and, yes, plastic rifles. It was a big hit and the kids won first prize for their age group. The celebration, however, was short lived. As soon as one mother spotted the toy rifles inside the wagon, she pulled her screaming children out of the event, announcing that she would not "expose them" to guns.

-------

While such "zero-tolerance" parents still seem to be a minority, this is a scene that seems to be repeating itself with increasing regularity. To these parents, my wife and I are "gun-tolerant" and therefore corruptors of children who should be avoided. Not only are such toys viewed as encouraging aggressive behavior and violent attitudes, they are also seen as reinforcing gender stereotypes, with boys playing with guns or swords and girls playing with dolls or cooking sets.

My wife and I are hardly poster parents for the National Rifle Association. We are social liberals who fret over every detail and danger of child rearing. We do not let our kids watch violent TV shows and do not tolerate rough play. Like most of our friends, we tried early on to avoid any gender stereotypes in our selection of games and toys. However, our effort to avoid guns and swords and other similar toys became a Sisyphean battle. Once, in a fit of exasperation, my wife gathered up all of the swords that the boys had acquired as gifts and threw them into the trash. When she returned to the house, she found that the boys had commandeered the celery from the refrigerator to finish their epic battle. Forced to choose between balanced diets and balanced play, my wife returned the swords with strict guidelines about where and when pirate fights, ninja attacks and Jedi rescues could occur.

Guy has some good points.

Victoria Cross: F. C. Schiess

FERDNAND CHRISTIAN SCHIESS

Corporal, Natal Native Contingent, South African Forces

Born: 7 April 1856, Bergedorf, Berne, Switzerland

Citation: For conspicuous gallantry in the defence of Rorke's Drift Post on the night of the 22nd January, 1879, when, in spite of his having been wounded in the foot a few days previously, he greatly distinguished himself when the Garrison were repulsing, with the bayonet, a series of desperate assaults made by the Zulus, and displayed great activity and devoted gallantry throughout the defence. On one occasion when the Garrison had retired to the inner line of defence, and the Zulus occupied the wall of mealie bags which had been abandoned, he crept along the wall, without any order, to dislodge a Zulu who was shooting better than usual and succeeded in killing him, and two others, before he, the Corporal, returned to the inner defence.

(London Gazette Issue 24788 dated 2 Dec 1879, published 2 Dec 1879.)


Note: ZUI this (though it lists his given names in the opposite order from every other site I've checked).
Edited 15 Apr 07 to include complete text of citation.

Medal of Honor: Mad Bear

CO-RUX-TE-CHOD-ISH (Mad Bear)

Sergeant, Pawnee Scouts, US Army

Born: Nebraska
Died: unknown

Citation: Ran out from the command [at the Republican River, Kansas, on 8 July 1869] in pursuit of a dismounted Indian; was shot down and badly wounded by a bullet from his own command.

CVO awarded for services to children's literacy

I finally got a chance to look at the New Year Honours List for 2007, though I haven't had time to read it in detail yet. Just scanning through it, I didn't see any names that meant anything to me immediately, but one entry under the Royal Victorian Order did catch my eye:

C.V.O.
To be Commanders:
Peter Charles ORTON. For services to Children’s Literacy.

Looking around the Web, I found an article from the Swindon Advertiser.

The creator of Bob the Builder and president of Wootton Bassett Rugby Club has been fixed up with an honour from the Queen.

Peter Orton, who was the brains behind the children's TV character and last summer's children's party at Buckingham Palace, has been appointed a Commander of the Victorian Order by Her Majesty for his contribution to children's literacy.

Mr Orton founded the children's TV production company, HIT Entertainment, where Bob the Builder started his life and where Thomas The Tank Engine, Barny the Dinosaur and Pingu have their homes. He has lived on a farm in Wootton Bassett for 28 years and said he was humbled by the royal honour. "To be appointed to the Victoria Order by Her Majesty is incredibly humbling, but also incredibly exciting," he said.

-------

Mr Orton will receive the appointment from Her Majesty on Wednesday, June 20, the anniversary of Queen Victoria's accession, at Buckingham Palace.

Another good sea story from Bothenook

Read it here.

Fortunately, I was on leave the day my division had to go to the dump to dig for the crypto....

Sniff, sniff...

Back in '75, I started working in a bakery, with all the fruits and spices and other things. It was interesting work, and I enjoyed it while it lasted, though since I am not a morning person, the hours - 0400-1200 Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday (I had Wednesdays off); 0300-1100 Saturday; and 0200-0800 every second or third Sunday - kind of sucked. Around the same time, I started working in the nursery at church every Sunday, with all of the diapers and, ah, other stuff. And after about three months of this sensory overload, my nose said, "That's it - I'm not playing any more." And while I left the church in '78, and the bakery in '80, my nose still doesn't work properly.

They say that the sense of smell is a very important factor in enjoying the taste of food. I haven't noticed any real problems in that regard (what did affect my enjoyment of food was boot camp, where we had to rush through each meal in order to make room in the galley for the next company - I still haven't kicked the habit), but when it comes to sniffing flowers, or perfumes, or whatnot, forget it. Often I'll get a faint whiff of something the first time I try it, but after that, nothing.

Anosmia ("no sense of smell") can actually be a blessing under certain circumstances. For instance, on my second boat, I was standing U/I watches as COW. Our ETC had the Dive in that section, and he'd be sitting there the entire watch, merrily farting away. Those were some fairly noxious fumes he was creating - even the guy in the far corner of Control was gagging - but I could sit right next to ETC and not notice a thing.

I'm not the only one with this sort of thing. Did you ever hear that old line about "don't put beans up your nose"? On my first boat there was a chap whom I'll call Michael*, whose parents used to tell him that when they would go out for the evening, leaving him at home alone. Now Mike probably wasn't what you'd call an average child to begin with - he has a scar on his lip that he says is the result of his biting a lamp cord when he was a toddler - but even he wouldn't have come up with such a ridiculous notion if his mother hadn't suggested it. But she did, and of course he had to try it.

And so one night his parents came home to find him with a snootful of beans. They removed the beans, and chastised him thoroughly, and that - theoretically - was the end of the matter. Except that a few days later, Mike came down with a headache. Which turned into a bad headache. Which turned into a really bad headache. They took Mike to see a doctor, who asked questions, poked and prodded, and finally reached a conclusion.

They'd missed a bean.

To quote Mike: "The bean didn't know anything about noses. All it knew was that it was in a warm, dark, moist place." So it did what beans do when they find themselves in warm, dark, moist places - it sprouted. And it was the bean sprout, trying to drill through the bones of Mike's skull, that was causing the headache.

The legumectomy was successful, but when the bean came out, Mike's sense of smell went with it. Permanently. Which all, I suppose, goes to show that if you really don't want your kids to do something, maybe it's best not to tell them that....


* Because according to my almanac, Michael was the most popular name for American boys born around the time he was.

"Whiskey in the Jar"

It's time for Friday poetry again. I'm not sure if songs really count as poetry, but they do have meter and (usually) some sort of rhyme scheme. And of course, as Professor Harold Hill said, singing is nothing more than sustained talking - right?

There's a old, traditional Irish folk song called "Whiskey in the Jar." Like other old, traditional folk songs, there are about as many variations on it as there are people singing it. This guy's, for instance, or this guy's, or this guy's, or this guy's (scroll down a bit; it's in the lefthand column). And if for some reason you're not familiar with the tune, you can find a MIDI file here.

And then came the early '60s, and two wonderful people - Tommy Smothers and his little brother Dickie - who gave us this version:

As I was goin' forth to the North Pole so merry
I met a St. Bernard, he was short and squat and hairy.
So I drew forth this stick and was gettin' set to heave 'er
Sayin', "Fetch and deliver, for you are a born retriever!"

Chorus: Mush-a-ringum-durum dar
Whack fol the daddy-o
Whack fol the daddy-o
There's whiskey in the jar.

Up around his neck, there was hung a keg of whiskey,
Now and then Old Rover took a snort and got so very frisky.
As he chased the stick he would do a tricky waddle,
Though he really wasn't tricky, he was pie-eyed from the bottle.

Chorus

I threw the stick so far, it was kinda hard to trace it.
Ol' Rover said, "Bow, wow!", and was gettin' set to chase it.
But a car came driving by and he changed his mind and sought it,
Though I knew he couldn't drive one, not even if he caught it.

Chorus

Well, that's about the end of my song and poor Ol' Rover.
He caught it in a fan-belt, and his rovin' days are over.
That poor retriever lies b'neath the ground so cold and chilly
And I have to fetch the stick myself. Boy! Do I look silly!

Chorus

Medal of Honor awarded for Vietnam service

President Bush awarded the Medal of Honor this week to LTC Bruce Crandall, US Army (ret), for service in the Ia Drang Valley on 14 Nov 1965. This was an upgrade of the Distinguished Service Cross that Crandall was originally awarded.

The citation reads:

Major Bruce P. Crandall distinguished himself by extraordinary heroism as a Flight Commander in the Republic of Vietnam, while serving with Company A, 229th Assault Helicopter Battalion, 1st Cavalry Division (Airmobile). On 14 November 1965, his flight of sixteen helicopters was lifting troops for a search and destroy mission from Plei Me, Vietnam, to Landing Zone X-Ray in the la Drang Valley. On the fourth troop lift, the airlift began to take enemy fire, and by the time the aircraft had refueled and returned for the next troop lift, the enemy had Landing Zone X-Ray targeted. As Major Crandall and the first eight helicopters landed to discharge troops on his fifth troop lift, his unarmed helicopter came under such intense enemy fire that the ground commander ordered the second flight of eight aircraft to abort their mission. As Major Crandall flew back to Plei Me, his base of operations, he determined that the ground commander of the besieged infantry batallion desperately needed more ammunition. Major Crandall then decided to adjust his base of operations to Artillery Firebase Falcon in order to shorten the flight distance to deliver ammunition and evacuate wounded soldiers. While medical evacuation was not his mission, he immediately sought volunteers and with complete disregard for his own personal safety, led the two aircraft to Landing Zone X-Ray. Despite the fact that the landing zone was still under relentless enemy fire, Major Crandall landed and proceeded to supervise the loading of seriously wounded soldiers aboard his aircraft. Major Crandall's voluntary decision to land under the most extreme fire instilled in the other pilots the will and spirit to continue to land their own aircraft, and in the ground forces the realization that they would be resupplied and that friendly wounded would be promptly evacuated. This greatly enhanced morale and the will to fight at a critical time. After his first medical evacuation, Major Crandall continued to fly into and out of the landing zone throughout the day and into the evening. That day he completed a total of 22 flights, most under intense enemy fire, retiring from the battlefield only after all possible service had been rendered to the Infantry battalion. His actions provided critical resupply of ammunition and evacuation of the wounded. Major Crandall's daring acts of bravery and courage in the face of an overwhelming and determined enemy are in keeping with the highest traditions of the military service and reflect great credit upon himself, his unit, and the United States Army.

Book list - Feb 07

In High Places - SF, by Harry Turtledove
The Gods of Mars - SF, by Edgar Rice Burroughs *
Fool Moon - modern fantasy, by Jim Butcher
Panzer Commander - memoirs, by Hans von Luck
Cathedral, Forge and Waterwheel - history, by Frances and Joseph Gies *
The Road to Infinity - science essays, by Isaac Asimov
The Subatomic Monster - science essays, by Isaac Asimov
Mapping Human History - palaeoanthropology, by Steve Olson
The Journey of Man - palaeoanthropology, by Spencer Wells *
At the Water's Edge - palaeontology, by Carl Zimmer
Final Blackout - SF, by L Ron Hubbard *
The Warlord of Mars - SF, by Edgar Rice Burroughs *
Far As Human Eye Could See - science essays, by Isaac Asimov *
The Dancing Dodo - thriller, by John Gardner *
Guerilla - WW I, by Edwin P Hoyt
The Winds of Change - SF (short stories), by Isaac Asimov *
The Tinkling Symbol - mystery, by Phoebe Atwood Taylor
Re-Birth (aka The Chrysalids) - SF, by John Wyndham *
Sandbar Sinister - mystery, by Phoebe Atwood Taylor
The Last Trump - thriller, by John Gardner *
Flandry of Terra - SF, by Poul Anderson
Agent of the Terran Empire - SF, by Poul Anderson *
Beyond the Farthest Star - SF, by Edgar Rice Burroughs *
Voorloper - SF, by Andre Norton
Young Rissa - SF, by F M Busby
Unexpected Death - mystery, by Dell Shannon *
Old Bones - mystery, by Aaron Elkins *
Anthropol - SF, by Louis Trimble *
Some Survived - WW II, by Manny Lawton
Sos the Rope - SF, by Piers Anthony *
Blitzkrieg - WW II, by Len Deighton
The Land of Hidden Men (aka Jungle Girl)- adventure, by Edgar Rice Burroughs *
Lallia - SF, by E C Tubb
Snake Eater - mystery, by William G Tapply
Past Tense - mystery, by William G Tapply

(Books marked with an asterisk were rereads.)

Averaged better than a book a day this month - nowhere near what I was doing in high school, but still much better than I've been doing the last few years. All the time I spent in bed last month whilst sick certainly helped. Maybe I should just forget about getting the computer fixed....

The Cybils: 2006 winners

One of the things I missed while I was sick was the announcement of the winners for the 2006 Cybils (the Children's and YA Bloggers' Literary Awards). They were:

Fiction Picture Books:
Scaredy Squirrel, by Melanie Watt

Non-Fiction Picture Books:
An Egg Is Quiet, by Dianna Aston; illustrated by Sylvia Long

Middle Grade Fiction:
A Drowned Maiden's Hair, by Laura Amy Schlitz

Young Adult Fiction:
Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist, by Rachel Cohn and David Levithan

Fantasy and Science Fiction:
Ptolemy's Gate, by Jonathan Stroud

Graphic Novels (12 and under):
Amelia Rules, vol 3: Superheroes, by Jimmy Gownley

Graphic Novels (13 and up):
American Born Chinese, by Gene Yang

Poetry:
Butterfly Eyes and Other Secrets of the Meadow, by Joyce Sidman; illustrated by Beth Krommes

Non-Fiction (Middle Grade and YA):
Freedom Walkers, by Russell Freedman

Haven't read any of these yet, but I'll be looking for some of them (and some of the other nominees). Actually, I was kind of disappointed that Beka Cooper: Terrier, by Tamora Pierce, didn't win the Fantasy and SF award - that's one book that I'm definitely going to be buying. (You can read the beginning of it here.)

Bleah

This blog has been kind of dead the last few weeks - mainly 'cos I've been feeling that way myself. Last Friday was the first day in a week and a half that I didn't get home from work wanting nothing more than to collapse in bed. (I had four days off during that period, and except for taking my daughter to school, getting something to eat, and performing other necessary evolutions I stayed in bed the whole day.)

Don't even remember the last time I was this sick - has to have been back when I was a kid sometime. Actually, my wife says I had it easy while I was in the Navy; I was around the same group of people all the time, and we immunized ourselves to each other's germs fairly quickly. Now that I'm working in the store, though, I'm around a lot more people, picking up strange bugs all the time. And since I'm spending a lot more time at home, I'm also more susceptible to what the kids bring home from school, and the wife brings home from where she works.

So now I've come down with another cold already....

Coming up: Seasickness, noses, snake eaters, tourists, more on bunks, and familygrams and e-mail.

A fib

Leonardo Fibonacci and his famous number sequence have come up a couple of times in the books I've been reading lately, so I thought I'd try writing a fib (a poem in which the number of syllables in each line follow the Fibonacci sequence) of my own....

I
think
this is
the silli-
est thing I've ever
seen. Don't you think so, too, Bubba?

What kind of reader are you?

What Kind of Reader Are You? Your Result: Literate Good Citizen You read to inform or entertain yourself, but you're not nerdy about it. You've read most major classics (in school) and you have a favorite genre or two.
Dedicated Reader
Obsessive-Compulsive Bookworm
Book Snob
Fad Reader
Non-Reader
What Kind of Reader Are You? Create Your Own Quiz

The Cybils

The winners of the Cybils will be announced on 14 February.

Mnemonics

When I went through Basic Electricity and Electronics, at Great Lakes, I learned about resistors. These little widgets come in many values (as measured in ohms), and they're colour-coded so people can tell them apart - little stripes of different colours (each colour representing a different number) are painted near one end of the resistor, and one who knows the code can read these stripes to know what sort of resistor it is. To learn the code, we were taught the sentence "Bad Boys Rob Our Young Girls Behind Victory Garden Walls;" the initial letters of the words are the initial letters of the colours, and the values are, in order, one through zero.*

From Great Lakes I went out to San Diego for A school (in those days all radiomen, sub or skimmer, attended the same A school). My brother had served 20+ years as an IC, retiring five and a half years before I enlisted, and he was still living in San Diego at that time, so I spent as much time as possible at his house. One day I mentioned the above sentence to him; he laughed, and said that in his day it was "Bad Boys Rape Our Young Girls But Violet Gives Willingly."

Such sayings as these are known as mnemonic devices, things to aid one's memory. There are lots of them around; I think it was in eighth-grade music class that I learned "Every Good Boy Does Fine" and "FACE" - the notes which fall, respectively, on the lines and on the spaces of the treble clef.

Need to know the proper order for various taxonomic groupings? "King Philip Came Over For Good Soup" (kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus, species).

How about the order for geological time periods? "Camels Often Sit Down Carefully. Perhaps Their Joints Creak? Proper Early Oiling Might Prevent Premature Rusting" (Cambrian, Ordovician, Silurian, Devonian, Carboniferous, Permian, Triassic, Jurassic, Cretaceous, Paleocene, Eocene, Oligocene, Miocene, Pliocene, Pleistocene, Recent - and if you want to split the Carboniferous period into the Mississipian and the Pennsylvanian, substitute "Mighty Precariously" for "Carefully").

Or you can memorise the following little poem:

Sir, I send a rhyme excelling
In sacred truth and rigid spelling.
Numerical sprites elucidate
For me the lexicon's dull weight.

As long as you spell it correctly, you can count the letters in each word and come up with 3.14159265358979323846 (sound familiar?).

I love these things, and history has always been my favourite subject, so it was with great joy that I discovered the following:

Willie, Willie, Harry, Stee,
Harry, Dick, John, Harry Three;
One, two, three Neds; Richard Two;
Harry four, five, six - then who?
Edward four, five; Dick the bad,
Harrys twain and Ned the lad;
Mary, Bessie, James the vain;
Charlie, Charlie, James again.
William and Mary, Anna gloria;
Four Georges, William and Victoria.
Edward the Seventh next, and then
George the Fifth in nineteen ten.
Edward the Eighth soon abdicated,
And so a George was reinstated.
Bessie again, to end the list,
And that's the lot - not one's been missed.**

And in case you haven't figured it out by now, that's a list - in order, of course - of the reigning kings and queens of England/Great Britain/the United Kingdom, from William I to Elizabeth II.

* See here if you really want to know the whole thing.
** Well, actually both Maud and Jane have been missed, but....

Book list - Jan 07

Mirror Dance - SF, by Lois McMaster Bujold
Falling Free - SF, by Lois McMaster Bujold
The Fourth Crusade and the Sack of Constantinople - history, by Jonathan Phillips
Memory - SF, by Lois McMaster Bujold
Komarr - SF, by Lois McMaster Bujold
Marching through Georgia - AH, by S M Stirling
Sorcery and Cecelia - fantasy, by Patricia C Wrede and Caroline Stevermer
A Civil Campaign - SF, by Lois McMaster Bujold
Diplomatic Immunity - SF, by Lois McMaster Bujold
Then There Were Five - children's, by Elizabeth Enright
A Princess of Mars - SF, by Edgar Rice Burroughs
Spiderweb for Two - children's, by Elizabeth Enright
The Serpent and the Moon - history, by HRH Princess Michael of Kent
Bachelors Anonymous - humour, by P G Wodehouse
Adding a Dimension - science essays, by Isaac Asimov
From Earth to Heaven - science essays, by Isaac Asimov
The Tragedy of the Moon - science essays, by Isaac Asimov

Yep - sure can tell my computer's been down all month. Over twice as many books on this month's list as the monthly average for last year....

Seven of these were rereads: Stirling, Burroughs, the two Enrights and the three Asimovs. All the rest were new to me. And sadly, I've run out of Miles Vorkosigan books to read (though I hear she's working on a new one).