73rd entry to the Colonel`s Scrapbook
Birthdates which occurred on November 11:
1050 Henry IV Holy Roman emperor (1036-1106), how Holy was he really?1636 Yen Jo-chu Chinese scholar of Ch'ing dynasty m a real thinking man if ever there was one
1744 Abigail Smith Adams 2nd 1st lady, that was one writing lady as wife of John Adams 1748 Charles IV king of Spain (1788-1808), good for nothing, syphyllitic idiot who couldn`t even rule,spawned a freak on a leash like Charles II
1771 Ephraim McDowell surgeon (pioneered abdominal surgery) ouch ouch and more ouch1821 Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky Russia, novelist (Crime & Punishment.Karamazovi Brothers),the advocate for the poor and oppressed,sublime epileptic,former army lieutenant and foot fetishist
1883 Ernest Ansermet Vevey Switzerland, conductor (Ruilles de Printemps) ,best ballet orchestra conductor although he looked like a dancing circus bear1885 George S Patton general "Old Blood & Guts", great general, great slapper and too bad USA had no more use for him after WWII so faked an accident to get him out of the way1896 Charles "Lucky" Luciano Sicily, NYC Mafia gangster, a man to reckon with
1911 King Hussein of Jordan,lovely king,sweet man, met him in Paris and he won my heart with his simplicity
1922 Kurt Vonnegut Jr author (Slaughterhouse Five, Sirens of Titan), God bless you without rosewater
Deaths which occurred on November 11:
1831 Nat Turner former slave, led a violent insurrection, hanged in VA, so end all freedom fighters
Events
1811 Cartagena Colombia declares independence from Spain ,good,was about time!1860 1st Jewish wedding in Buenos Aires Argentina, did they live happily ever after?
1918 Armistice Day-WW I ends (at 11 AM on Western Front) ,signed in Paris, and thus it is all War Veterans`Day ever since1921 President Harding dedicates Tomb of Unknown Soldier, little did old Warrùn as his awful wife called him, know that death was ready to gnaw at his heart pretty soon, and not while having Nan Britton in his arms in the closet of the Oval Office
WAR VETERANS DAY
Today, ever since the armistice that put an end to World war I was signed in Paris in 1918, is War veterans`Day. All over the world, all of us who have been in one or another war, celebrate the fact that we are still alive-whether in one piece or missing many- and we grieve and honor the fallen ones. It is funny how sentimental people can get about their war veterans in civilized countries like France. Many of them diet for months so they can get again into their old uniforms. But in countries like mine, we are viewed as garbage or freaks on a leash, the people who deal with social insecurity,excuse me,security hates us, want us to be dead. Sometimes there is a small ceremony so we try to suck in our bellies to look good in the old uniform, parade around like preening roosters showing off our medals. But the scars, outward or inner like in my case, pinpoint us as those who returned from the great Beyond, from the Sweet Abyss as Silvio Rodrìguez sings in his song, and we will have sequels for the rest of our lives. Take my dad, for example, veteran of World War II, with so many condecorations that he looked like a ligh5ted and walking Christmas Tree, he had a tic that made his left elbow shake imperceptibly when under extreme stress. He sported his tattoo made by the Nazis, on the inner part of his left elbow, and in the number was the exact day of my birth, engraved into his skin in 1944 when he had no inkling I would be born to his supreme delight. Later on, when I was born, he would say he was fated to have me, and a radiant sunshine smile would make his visage even handsomer. As war veteran he had so many stories to tell, he was never embittered nor shaky. He said he was so thankful to have survived, and he even had the tender soul to risk everything in order to save his German friend Hans Schneider, the officer from the Hitlerian Youth, who had hidden him in the kitchen and saved him from starving, being sodomized again or even sent to get baked. He managed to get Hans across Germany after the Russians freed the Auschwitz prisoners by saying it was a deaf and dumb peasant who couldn’t speak either, hauled him to Normandie, sheltered him and gave him his last name to add to the one he had. My Uncle Hans Levallois Schneider is still well and alive inParis, a true French citizen now, because the war vet my dad was at age 25 gave him the gift of life again.
If life were a competition, I could never race against my dad`s war record. I am a veteran of the war between two Nicaraguan factions, the Sandinistas and the counterrevolutionaries who did not want a totalitarian state to get established. To be honest, I side with neither.I can never approve brother fighting against brother. I was just a war correspondent, escorting and translating for the journalists from world networks who came to find out what was going on here. I was on the warfront since 1983,shortly after I returned from France with my degrees, and was drafted into the army. I was there when we made the big blunder of stepping into Honduras from Teotecacinte, shot on the left knee during conflict in Jalapa, fell off a chopper in La Penca in 1985, where one year later I would be shrapnelled. I saw things I had never believed possible on the battlefield, and cried my own tears of blood too. I was in and out of the hospital so often that I almost considered it my bedroom away from home. Broken column, snake-bitten feet, shattered wrists, shrapnels and a bullet almost converted me into a Bionic woman. I am still looking for any male of the species who has as many war injuries as I do and still feels the urgent need to laugh when the circumstances under which it all happened are mentioned. That is when I realize that the Celts were right to include the women in the battlefield, just like the Zulus. Wise rulers also count on women to reinforce their armies, dumb ones try to shun us away. We are used to blood…remember that menstruation inures us to blood. Few men can be as bold as colonels like Pampata of the Zulus or Manuela Saenz, the liberator of the Libertador Bolìvar.
As a war veteran, I am grateful to live for having loved me so much that she couldn`t bear to let me go from her. I consume with relish all war movies, and the traumas are well hidden under a picture perfect smile. For the rest of my life my shrink said, shortly before dying himself aided by his own stepdaughter in one of the most scandalous crimes of Nicaragua, I will have my two nightmares per night, in full colour, with music and special effects. Out of these nightmares have come some of my best short stories in the genre of horror, and produced fame and money for me. If life gave me lemons, I sure have made good lemonade too.
The fact that I am a war veteran has changed my perspective of life, and also my ideas on the supposed weakness of women. I will never meet a male-unless I go to the thousand times heroic nation of Vietnam-who can even dream of matching my record of war injuries and still look the way I do in pictures, or indirectly, smack in front of anyone. I have a retarded aging process. In fact I lament that my body sports no outward scars.I would be proud to wear those medals of the flesh. My numerous fractures are well covered by satiny sallow skin that refuses to wrinkle. This old lion still loves to pose and seduce the camera, vain witch that I am, a shameless narcissist as you, dearest reader, so well know. Never for me the drab , graceless servant like uniform for office worn by bureaucrats of the army. Only camouflage or the virginal white of a corvette captain. I earned it. Yet now in my forties, I have never felt more at ease than when wearing my long flowered Jewish dresses with their shawls.
Being a veteran is like sailing against the wind in countries like mine, where we are not the semi gods that veterans are in France or England. The worst of all ios that if I were given a choice, to be reborn again, I would still go through all my war experiences again. The feeling of having kisses death`s bony hand and lived to tell about it is a thrill that not a single drug in the word can give you. The pride is the size of a lion`s shadow at dusk. Nothing can ever come close to it. One day, hopefully no war veterans will exist,but only because war may have died forever. Difficult but possible. Just a dream but dreams and hope are the last thing we lose.
Birthdates which occurred on November 11:
1050 Henry IV Holy Roman emperor (1036-1106), how Holy was he really?1636 Yen Jo-chu Chinese scholar of Ch'ing dynasty m a real thinking man if ever there was one
1744 Abigail Smith Adams 2nd 1st lady, that was one writing lady as wife of John Adams 1748 Charles IV king of Spain (1788-1808), good for nothing, syphyllitic idiot who couldn`t even rule,spawned a freak on a leash like Charles II
1771 Ephraim McDowell surgeon (pioneered abdominal surgery) ouch ouch and more ouch1821 Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky Russia, novelist (Crime & Punishment.Karamazovi Brothers),the advocate for the poor and oppressed,sublime epileptic,former army lieutenant and foot fetishist
1883 Ernest Ansermet Vevey Switzerland, conductor (Ruilles de Printemps) ,best ballet orchestra conductor although he looked like a dancing circus bear1885 George S Patton general "Old Blood & Guts", great general, great slapper and too bad USA had no more use for him after WWII so faked an accident to get him out of the way1896 Charles "Lucky" Luciano Sicily, NYC Mafia gangster, a man to reckon with
1911 King Hussein of Jordan,lovely king,sweet man, met him in Paris and he won my heart with his simplicity
1922 Kurt Vonnegut Jr author (Slaughterhouse Five, Sirens of Titan), God bless you without rosewater
Deaths which occurred on November 11:
1831 Nat Turner former slave, led a violent insurrection, hanged in VA, so end all freedom fighters
Events
1811 Cartagena Colombia declares independence from Spain ,good,was about time!1860 1st Jewish wedding in Buenos Aires Argentina, did they live happily ever after?
1918 Armistice Day-WW I ends (at 11 AM on Western Front) ,signed in Paris, and thus it is all War Veterans`Day ever since1921 President Harding dedicates Tomb of Unknown Soldier, little did old Warrùn as his awful wife called him, know that death was ready to gnaw at his heart pretty soon, and not while having Nan Britton in his arms in the closet of the Oval Office
WAR VETERANS DAY
Today, ever since the armistice that put an end to World war I was signed in Paris in 1918, is War veterans`Day. All over the world, all of us who have been in one or another war, celebrate the fact that we are still alive-whether in one piece or missing many- and we grieve and honor the fallen ones. It is funny how sentimental people can get about their war veterans in civilized countries like France. Many of them diet for months so they can get again into their old uniforms. But in countries like mine, we are viewed as garbage or freaks on a leash, the people who deal with social insecurity,excuse me,security hates us, want us to be dead. Sometimes there is a small ceremony so we try to suck in our bellies to look good in the old uniform, parade around like preening roosters showing off our medals. But the scars, outward or inner like in my case, pinpoint us as those who returned from the great Beyond, from the Sweet Abyss as Silvio Rodrìguez sings in his song, and we will have sequels for the rest of our lives. Take my dad, for example, veteran of World War II, with so many condecorations that he looked like a ligh5ted and walking Christmas Tree, he had a tic that made his left elbow shake imperceptibly when under extreme stress. He sported his tattoo made by the Nazis, on the inner part of his left elbow, and in the number was the exact day of my birth, engraved into his skin in 1944 when he had no inkling I would be born to his supreme delight. Later on, when I was born, he would say he was fated to have me, and a radiant sunshine smile would make his visage even handsomer. As war veteran he had so many stories to tell, he was never embittered nor shaky. He said he was so thankful to have survived, and he even had the tender soul to risk everything in order to save his German friend Hans Schneider, the officer from the Hitlerian Youth, who had hidden him in the kitchen and saved him from starving, being sodomized again or even sent to get baked. He managed to get Hans across Germany after the Russians freed the Auschwitz prisoners by saying it was a deaf and dumb peasant who couldn’t speak either, hauled him to Normandie, sheltered him and gave him his last name to add to the one he had. My Uncle Hans Levallois Schneider is still well and alive inParis, a true French citizen now, because the war vet my dad was at age 25 gave him the gift of life again.
If life were a competition, I could never race against my dad`s war record. I am a veteran of the war between two Nicaraguan factions, the Sandinistas and the counterrevolutionaries who did not want a totalitarian state to get established. To be honest, I side with neither.I can never approve brother fighting against brother. I was just a war correspondent, escorting and translating for the journalists from world networks who came to find out what was going on here. I was on the warfront since 1983,shortly after I returned from France with my degrees, and was drafted into the army. I was there when we made the big blunder of stepping into Honduras from Teotecacinte, shot on the left knee during conflict in Jalapa, fell off a chopper in La Penca in 1985, where one year later I would be shrapnelled. I saw things I had never believed possible on the battlefield, and cried my own tears of blood too. I was in and out of the hospital so often that I almost considered it my bedroom away from home. Broken column, snake-bitten feet, shattered wrists, shrapnels and a bullet almost converted me into a Bionic woman. I am still looking for any male of the species who has as many war injuries as I do and still feels the urgent need to laugh when the circumstances under which it all happened are mentioned. That is when I realize that the Celts were right to include the women in the battlefield, just like the Zulus. Wise rulers also count on women to reinforce their armies, dumb ones try to shun us away. We are used to blood…remember that menstruation inures us to blood. Few men can be as bold as colonels like Pampata of the Zulus or Manuela Saenz, the liberator of the Libertador Bolìvar.
As a war veteran, I am grateful to live for having loved me so much that she couldn`t bear to let me go from her. I consume with relish all war movies, and the traumas are well hidden under a picture perfect smile. For the rest of my life my shrink said, shortly before dying himself aided by his own stepdaughter in one of the most scandalous crimes of Nicaragua, I will have my two nightmares per night, in full colour, with music and special effects. Out of these nightmares have come some of my best short stories in the genre of horror, and produced fame and money for me. If life gave me lemons, I sure have made good lemonade too.
The fact that I am a war veteran has changed my perspective of life, and also my ideas on the supposed weakness of women. I will never meet a male-unless I go to the thousand times heroic nation of Vietnam-who can even dream of matching my record of war injuries and still look the way I do in pictures, or indirectly, smack in front of anyone. I have a retarded aging process. In fact I lament that my body sports no outward scars.I would be proud to wear those medals of the flesh. My numerous fractures are well covered by satiny sallow skin that refuses to wrinkle. This old lion still loves to pose and seduce the camera, vain witch that I am, a shameless narcissist as you, dearest reader, so well know. Never for me the drab , graceless servant like uniform for office worn by bureaucrats of the army. Only camouflage or the virginal white of a corvette captain. I earned it. Yet now in my forties, I have never felt more at ease than when wearing my long flowered Jewish dresses with their shawls.
Being a veteran is like sailing against the wind in countries like mine, where we are not the semi gods that veterans are in France or England. The worst of all ios that if I were given a choice, to be reborn again, I would still go through all my war experiences again. The feeling of having kisses death`s bony hand and lived to tell about it is a thrill that not a single drug in the word can give you. The pride is the size of a lion`s shadow at dusk. Nothing can ever come close to it. One day, hopefully no war veterans will exist,but only because war may have died forever. Difficult but possible. Just a dream but dreams and hope are the last thing we lose.
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