(no subject)

[somedaybitch]

Lt Col Bruce Campbell, retired, awarded the Medal of Honor for service in Vietnam.

Mr. Crandall, then a major, commanded a company with the 229th Assault Helicopter Battalion, carrying soldiers to a landing zone, called X-ray, in the la Drang Valley. An assault from the North Vietnamese army erupted, as described at the White House ceremony Monday. Three soldiers on Maj. Crandall's helicopter were killed. He kept it on the ground while four wounded were taken aboard. Back at base, he asked for a volunteer to return with him to X-ray. Capt. Ed Freeman came forward. Through smoke and bullets, they flew in and out 14 times, spent 14 hours in the air and used three helicopters. They evacuated 70 wounded.

this man, and the captain that volunteerd to go with him, saved an entire battalion.

this story was buried on page 15 of the NYT, in a round-up of news, three lines from the bottom of the page.

the Opinion Journal also had this to say:

Most schoolchildren once knew the names of the nation's heroes in war--Ethan Allen, John Paul Jones, Stephen Decatur, the Swamp Fox Francis Marion, Ulysses S. Grant, Clara Barton, Billy Mitchell, Alvin York, Leigh Ann Hester. Lee Ann who? She's the first woman to win a Silver Star for direct combat with the enemy. Did it in a trench in Iraq. Her story should be in schools, but it won't be.

nowadays, most people think Ethan Allen's just a furniture store.

Comments

[lvp3.livejournal.com]

Ethan Allen, John Paul Jones, Stephen Decatur, the Swamp Fox Francis Marion, Ulysses S. Grant, Clara Barton, Billy Mitchell, Alvin York, Leigh Ann Hester.

okay, i went through school and then a 4 year college and the only name in there i know is grant b/c he was president. couldn't tell you what he did to be a war hero. that makes me both very sad and very angry at my lack of education.

[somedaybitch.livejournal.com]

i'm utterly appalled at what schools don't teach students. and it's not a "new" thing, either. the roomie was telling me that they NEVER discussed the Civil War at her high school.

i learned about the Revolutionary War/Civil War players in elementary school, and then it was reinforced again in high school. but then, i went to catholic school for 1-12, so, you know, much stricter standard. the graduation requirements for my high school, irregardless of whether graduates would be going on to college or not, were 4 years each of math, science, history/sociology, religion/philosophy, english (both lit and writing courses), either french, spanish or german language, and phys ed. just to get a high school diploma.

granted, the only reason i recognized Billy Mitchell's name was because i went thru AF ROTC in college. i had no idea who Alvin was, though. and i learned about the Swamp Fox courtesy of Disney. *nods*

one of the girls at work here, JUST took a US History class, 1860 to present. they DID.NOT.EVEN.TOUCH. the Civil War.

why? because her professor was, literally, a socialist, and was only interested in teaching how corporations are evil and capitalism is the downfall of humanity. i shit.you.not.

so...to rectify your defective edumacation, i bring you...wikipedia.

remind me, and i will go get you the best book i've ever read on the Civil War. for srsly.

Ethan Allen (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethan_Allen) - Revolutionary War

John Paul Jones (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Paul_Jones) - Revolutionary War

Stephen Decatur (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Decatur) -principally the War of 1812

Francis Marion (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Marion) - Revolutionary War

General Grant (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ulysses_S_Grant) - The Civil War

Clara Barton (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clara_Barton) - mother of the American Red Cross

Billy Mitchell (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billy_Mitchell) - father of the US Air Force

Alvin York. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alvin_York) - World War I

[lvp3.livejournal.com]

i'm trying to remember, but i don't think they did the civil war in my high school, either. to be fair, we had almost an entire year of it in 8th grade (i only remember because the teacher was so into it that it made the class really interesting and i still talk to him to this day about it). i think one of my high school history teachers said we didn't learn the civil war in high school b/c we had it in 8th grade. the only thing i remember learning in high school was WW2, and Vietnam...both of which were very skewed to the left.

i too had a socialist teacher. this was in high school. he taught, of all things, american government. we took an ideology test and i tested libertarian and he went off on a rant about how i was an anarchist and was going to be one of those people who would blow up the capitol and all that. also, when i said i didn't believe in evolution (in the we came from one cell all the way to monkeys to us) because i believe that God created all those other things, and he invented us, too...he told me i was stupid and had backwards thinking due to my religious beliefs.

this is the same school where huck finn was still banned when i went there.

and yet, we prayed aloud before every sporting event. go figure.

thanks for the info. i definitely want to read up on these people. i totally agree with what that writer was saying, we need to be taught the important things, the heroes, the truth, how bout it.

as an aside, i am currently getting my american government education from jon stewart's america the book: a guide to democracy inaction. heh

[somedaybitch.livejournal.com]

i'd look for other sources, witty as Mr Stewart is.

[lvp3.livejournal.com]

i don't take much of what he says to heart. i just find him amusing. but it has made me go, hmmm is that true? and look up some stuff. which is a good thing. :)

[somedaybitch.livejournal.com]

he's brilliantly funny, and very, very smart, which is what i think makes him brilliantly funny.

[veejane.livejournal.com]

Ethan Allen, John Paul Jones, Stephen Decatur, the Swamp Fox Francis Marion, Ulysses S. Grant, Clara Barton, Billy Mitchell, Alvin York, Leigh Ann Hester.

I'm not sure why one would expect me to know these names as a matter of course? I actually do know more than half of them, but in general, history is no longer taught about the spectacular individual. That goes double when the spectacular individual is spectacular on basis of personal achievement or tactics (e.g., General Longstreet) rather than broad strategy (e.g., President Lincoln).

This is just a different perspective of history teaching than used to be in the past: we don't learn about Great Men so much as influences, trends, what daily life was like, how people thought about big issues and how those thoughts changed. Although I did plot the tactics of the Battle of Little Bighorn in highschool, it was much more important, in the context of my class, to map the timing of the battle's news making it east just in time for the centennial 4th of July -- thus making it the OMGWTFWMDBBQ! of its day. Probably, if it had happened in January, it would have been a much less famous battle!

While there's something to be said about the Great Men approach to teaching history (some of those men were really interesting people, and who doesn't want to read all about how Robert E. Lee had angina, and how he never returned to his home in Arlington after the Union army snottily buried its dead in his front yard!), but Robert E. Lee having angina might not be as enlightening of the broader issues at hand as studying why the Confederate army adored him, or why "the Civil War was fought over slavery" is an inaccurate and simplistic statement, or why immigration debates and the nascent women's rights movement influenced and were in turn influenced by debates over property, personhood, and citizenship.

I still enjoy a biography of Robert E. Lee -- have you read Lincoln's Dreams by the way? Cool modern novel about reimagining the history of the Civil War -- but given the time constraints of history classes, I'm not surprised that lengthy biographies are not on the curriculum.

[somedaybitch.livejournal.com]

Lincoln's Dreams...:::thinks::: i don't think so. who's the author?

[vee-fic.livejournal.com]

Connie Willis. It's one of her early novels, came out in probably 1988. Willis has two modes, farce and Deadly Serious, and this book is the latter. (Much of her work is infused with serious interaction with history; her time travel novels, of which the devastating novella "Fire Watch" is the first, are all about history being alive to the people who go back and experience it themselves.)

[somedaybitch.livejournal.com]

will have to check it out. thanks, yo.

[arthurfrdent.livejournal.com]

I guess there was some small advantage to going to a conservative Lutheran college... even my most liberal history prof. felt it was his professional duty to show all sides of a question, regerdless of it being the Civil War or VietNam. Indeed he was the one who charged me to go looking for the roots of Viet Nam in WWI and II, and the differences between exported communism, and nationalism.

These days, every time I see a mention of how real history is being glossed over in defference to an individual bias, I consider if I should head out and begin the master's/doctorate track and become a prof. Though, with my strong independent streak, I'd prolly never be tenure track...
:shrug:

[somedaybitch.livejournal.com]

even my most liberal history prof. felt it was his professional duty to show all sides of a question, regerdless of it being the Civil War or VietNam.

which is totally how it should be. because that is what teaches students how to think, not just absorb and regurgitate.