January 2011

Germantown, Pennsylvania, was founded in October of this year, the first of the German townships in America. Its birth was the direct result, six years after the event, of a visit made by the Englishman William Penn to Frankfurt in 1677. Frankfurt was then the center of the German Pietists, a sect of devout, semi-mystical Christians whose purpose was to loosen the rigid, creed-bound systems of the Lutheran Church. Their emphasis on the individual spirit made it likely that they would find a kindred soul in the famous Quaker, and he kindred souls in them. When Penn, a few years later, became a great landholder in America, it was natural that a large number of his German friends should wish to join him in his “holy experiment.”

The Frankfurt Land Company was formed: it purchased fifteen thousand acres of American soil, made an extraordinary man named Francis Daniel Pastorius its agent, and the Germans began to come.

The evening of October 22 offered an embarrassment of riches to New York society. At the Metropolitan Opera House the first of all first nights; at Madison Square Garden, the first National Horse Show. Both were socially obligatory; some of the great managed to split their time evenly between the two events, and a Mrs. Paran Stevens, it was reported, squeezed in yet a third entertainment at the Academy of Music.

The gaslit Metropolitan presented Faust (sung in Italian) with Christine Nilsson, Italo Campanini, and Franco Novara (an Englishman named Frank Nash). The New York Times generally approved of the splendor of the evening but had several reservations about the acoustics and sight lines of the new theater. The performances were well received, and Nilsson’s rendition of “The Jewel Song” prompted an avalanche of flowers.

In October the Ford Motor Company offered for sale a light (twelve hundred pounds), cheap ($825 for the roadster; $850 for the touring car), massproduced, fuel-efficient (about twenty miles to the gallon) motorcar to the American public. It was called the Model T, a name soon and affectionately modified to Tin Lizzie or flivver . No single product has ever effected such a profound change in the social fabric of this country.

Some background: In 1902 there was one car for every 1,500,000 people; in 1905 one to 65,000 people; and in 1907 one to 800. In 1907 the Ford Manufacturing Company was absorbed into the Ford Motor Company: Henry Ford was then in a position to control every aspect of production and marketing. This was essential to his dream of supplying the masses with a good, cheap car. In 1909 the company informed its branch managers that 10,607 cars had been sold during the Model T’s first year. When the car was retired in 1927, total sales had climbed to a staggering 15.5 million.

I WAS A CAPTAIN in the Stonewall Brigade when I first went into battle at Omaha Beach on June 6, 1944. Our outfit was directly descended from the famed command of Gen. Thomas J. (Stonewall) Jackson and proud of it, and D-day was for me much as the First Manassas had been in 1861 for a Capt. Randolph Barton, CSA, of the Stonewall Brigade, who wrote: “I think I went into that action with less trepidation than into any subsequent one. Inexperience doubtless had much to do with it, and discipline told on me from first to last.”

For me, too, in those first twenty-four hours, innocence was lost, trepidation surfaced, and discipline and training somehow prevailed. In ways D-day seems more distant from 1983 than from 1861 and, overall, like a particularly long and chaotic dream.

I read with great interest the article “Winter of the YaIu” (December 1982). At that time I was S-2 for the Marine Air Group supporting units on the east coast. One morning when the Chinese attack was first developing, I was over the reservoir in a Corsair, alone, as I had simply gone out in a staff aircraft to see what was happening. It had snowed the night before, leaving the surface one large expanse of white.

I picked up a call from a forward air controller, “Boyhood 14,” over whom I happened to be flying. Upon observation I found a column of vehicles stopped on a road on the northeastern edge of the reservoir. There were a number of trucks, some tanks, and a considerable body of troops in the vicinity of the vehicles. All the green paint and green uniforms were etched against the white background. Boyhood 14 advised me that these troops were pinned down by the enemy on the ridgeline directly above the road. I skimmed over the ridge at minimum level and saw the Chinese. They blended into the snow from any distance.

The author of the original article, James H. Dill, replies: Task Force MacLean, named for Col. Alan MacLean of the 31st Infantry, included, among other units, one battalion of the 31st Infantry and one battalion of the 32d Infantry. At the start of the Chinese attack, the battalion from the 32d was some distance north of the remainder of the Task Force. Colonel MacLean himself happened to be with this battalion. The Chinese quickly occupied the ground between the two elements, and the 32d first had to fight its way south to the main body.

I would like to point out an error in the interview with Captain Beach (April/ May). He claims that radar was totally a U.S. invention, which is not quite right. While I’m not an authority on this, I believe the United States had radar before World War II; in fact, it was used to detect oncoming Japanese planes during the Pearl Harbor attack. However, this primitive radar used relatively long wavelengths, which gave only a broad picture of what was happening. The British during the war developed a new type of tube, called a magnetron, which was capable of producing very high power at very short wavelengths. This gave the radar high definition, so that it could actually indicate the size, et cetera, of the object. The older type of tubes, as used in the radios of the era, could not do this. So it was the development of the magnetron that really produced radar as we know it today. I think Captain Beach shortchanged our British friends.

Captain Beach replies: Mr. Davis and I are both right, depending on what we’re using for criteria. While the U.S. Navy was the first to realize something was happening to certain high-frequency radio waves when ships approached—in 1922—real research into the causes and possible applications of the phenomenon did not begin until about 1930. Great Britain began actively to work on it around the same time—1934, according to some sources. As scientists of the two nations made progress, the obvious military value of R Adio D etection A nd R anging caused both governments to impose a very high security classification.

In the article in your April/May issue on the merchant marine by Robert UhI, there are three points that I believe give a false picture. Mr. UhI has characterized the packet-ship era by the features of its decadent years after about 1840, when steam was beginning to threaten the cream of the business and the packet ship had to turn to the immigrant and other less desirable trades. From 1816 to about 1840 the packets carried very profitably the cream of the Atlantic trade. They were the luxury liners of their day. Fortunes were being made in the shipping business, and the training to become a merchant was either in the countinghouse or at sea. The shipmasters were the finest and they carried in their crews promising young men working their way up. Of course there was some trash among the crews, but it did not predominate until after about 1840. During this period American seamen were the highest paid in the world, but they earned their money and did the best job.

Mr. Uhl replies: Mr. Holly, obviously knowledgeable, believes I undervalued the packet, exaggerated the clipper, minimized coastal trade. But my primary focus was on the education of the deep-water master mariner, and the evolution of ships was included only as it affected that training. The sailingpacket-ship era extended decades beyond his 1840 date; my comments on crews are correct for most of that period. A law limiting noncitizen crews was passed in 1817, a year before the first packet. Clippers did make fantastic profits at first. Uneconomic when speed became less important than capacity, their heydey lasted ten years, not five. As for coastal traffic, while vital to our economy, it was mostly in smaller vessels. I sailed myself as a cadet on the Clyde-Mallory and Grace lines.