The battle that Ernie Pyle and his buddy almost drove into, the Battle of Kasserine Pass, was a disaster for the US Army. We were driven back and lost many lives and vast quantities of supplies. Huge stockpiles of gasoline and ammunition that had been transported at great cost from […]
It’s hard to imagine nowadays, but Ernie Pyle and his fellow correspondents were given jeeps and allowed to go wherever they wanted. Ernie and his buddy nearly drove into the tank battle in the Kasserine Pass. Ernie traveled with different units sharing all their hardships, listening to their stories, diving […]
It doesn’t matter which Barbara Tuchman book you start with. You wind up reading them all and you wind up knowing a lot more about world history. Her career took off when John F. Kennedy was spotted reading “The Guns of August.”Here are some of my favorites. “The First Salute” […]
Back when I worked for the Senate president in New Hampshire, whenever I had to go down to the governor’s office, which was pretty often, I went down a stairwell with an imposing portrait of Johannes de Graff, the governor of the Dutch colony of St. Eustatius, without ever wondering […]
I’ve been reading about Ike for the last six months and have been wondering how to introduce him to my blog. We have a personal connection, Ike and I, because I participated in an Easter Egg hunt on the White House lawn during his presidency, when I was two years […]
I just got started on Ernie Pyle in my last entry, and I’m getting set to write about Dwight D. Eisenhower and Bill Mauldin and Vinegar Joe Stilwell, but tonight I’d like to write about ancient Rome, that wonderful cesspool of decadence and depravity. We in America like to think […]
A couple of years ago I went over to the Senior Center in Greenfield to hear my friend Harold play the piano and I got to chatting with a guy there who was in the Merchant Marine in World War II. I asked him where he served and he said […]
This is the first entry in my blog, ArmchairTravel. The purpose of this blog is to chronicle my journeys through history and literature in books from yard sales and flea markets so that others may enjoy these books as I have. I’m the kind of guy who has to go […]
