You Cannot Kill The Christmas Spirit

By Mark W. Danielson

Yankees Catcher Yogi Berra once quipped, “You can observe a lot by just watching.”  While this is true, you can also learn a lot from listening and reading.  By nature, authors are a curious sort who may be more inclined to watch, listen, and learn, but book worms are in a league all their own.  These are the people I am addressing today, for they yearn to glimpse into the other people’s lives to understand history.  Today I am sharing a treasured recollection from a dear friend who grew up in England at a time of world war when civilian casualties were the norm.  It was a time when no one knew if they would make it through the day, and yet somehow they managed to carry on in whatever sense of normalcy they could muster.  I salute all of the survivors of World War II, civilian and military.  This one’s for you.       

“. . . It goes back to an air raid shelter.  Sitting in there with my mother and sister, listening to the Luftwaffe paying us a welcome.  Watching the candles flicker.  Later would come the rockets. My sister, four years older, told me Eskimos ate candle wax.  ‘Oh, don't tell him that, Mary - he'll believe you!’  Mom said. And the bombing began. Down the street a house was obliterated.  The family in their Anderson shelter were too close to survive.  At our house, the piano blew from one wall to the other, and, as in tornadoes and their freak affects, the curtains in a microsecond blew out and the windows went back into position, and the curtains were hanging on the outside of the windows.

A little man in an old raincoat came a few days later.  He jotted our damage down in a little black book - who in officialdom in those days, didn't have a little black book?  We factored in our curtains, and chalked it up to the war effort.   ‘During the raid of August 13th, severe damage was done to Stanmore and Edgware, near  to Fighter Command  at Stanmore, Bentley Priory.’  The Jerries were always trying to knock out Fighter Command....twelve miles from our house, which cost our neighbors dearly.  After the war I would ride by Bentley Priory on my bike, and listen to birdsong....

‘How many in reserves?’ Churchill asked during one dicey fight with the Luftwaffe. 

‘None sir.

Cut to the end of the war in Europe.  Not the flags, although I helped my mother hoist the Union Jack from a bedroom window.  No more local concerns.  Do we remove the chamber pot from  the Anderson shelter?  Are we free to pee, you and me? No more getting up in the blackest night, under strobing searchlights, creeping downstairs, holding hands, heading for the air raid shelter.  Entering through the dank sacking opening, lit by two candles, settling onto our bunks after checking for river rats.  And the sirens, and the bombers - any English family could tell German and English and American engines or worse - the hard uncompromising drone of a V-1 rocket. 

Dad was home on leave one night.  He worked twenty hours a day repairing Handley Page Halifax bombers, sometime witnessing the hose washing out a tail gunner's boggy mushy remains, all goggled and gunner wings brevet mocking him.  Faithful gloved hands, or what remained of them, on his .303 quadruple Brownings.  So Dad came home.  One night, in the shelter, a V-1 cut out and spiraled down. Dad threw himself across us, my sister and I.  ‘Daddy!  Daddy! I can't breathe!  I can't breathe!’

His Home Guard winter coat uniform, complete with corporal stripes, weighted us down, suffocating, suffocating ... except the family down the street died.

Know what?  I like Mars Bars.  Candy was rationed, two ounces a week per child.  I gotta Mars Bar.  Later, in l953, we emigrated to Canada.  ‘Hey,’ I said, ‘They got Mars Bars.’  And I tried to figure my Canadian currency, which earlier had been spread on the kitchen table by my dad.  ‘Now, this is a quarter, and this is called a dime...’

This morning I watched an episode of World at War.  VE Day.  I remember it so well, helping my mother hoist the Union Jack at the bedroom window... A glorious sunny day.  People festive in Trafalger Square, about twelve miles away...  Sailors in soldiers' hats -- soldiers in sailor hats...

Dancing, dancing, kissing the girls . . .”

Much has changed since 1945, and the majority of those who experienced world war have passed from this Earth.  Yet the legacy they have left behind shall never be forgotten, so long as their recollections are shared.  Merry Christmas, everyone.  I wish you all a safe and joyous holiday season.

Love-Locked

By Mark W. Danielson

I love Germany. The people are great, and they have wonderful traditions. I recently discovered a new one that expresses couples' devotion in an unusual way. While love has traditionally been expressed in paintings, poetry, songs, theater, books, cards, gifts, and even tattoos, I had never realized that padlocks could also be a symbol of endearment to this most powerful and important emotion. Then again, it makes sense, for we often refer to our lovers as holding the key to our hearts.

The Cologne railroad/pedestrian bridge is the first place I’ve seen such a padlock display, and it brings smiles to all who pass by. Here, love-locks span the entire Rhine River. Each lock is inscribed with the names of lovers whose devotion is boundless. Some locks are carefully etched, others written in pen, all are equally special. But the chained metal grinder that’s hanging mid-span suggests at least one person found a way to separate his or her bond. Not surprisingly, this rusting grinder brought more smiles.

Whoever came up with this padlock idea was a genius for it has transformed this bridge into a living work of art. With the magnificent cathedral behind it, there is no better setting. The only problem is it won’t be long before the bridge has reached its padlock capacity because hanging them has become so popular.

To capitalize off this romantic idea, a few people were attempting to hand red roses to damsels as they crossed the bridge. I never saw any money exchanged, and plenty of skeptical women refused their rose, but the gesture was still a nice touch. Who knows whether Cologne’s railroad bridge will become a renowned symbol of love like the Eiffel Tower in Paris. But whether it does or doesn't, it certainly has the same spirit.

Some may ask whether I contributed a lock to this bridge. The answer, of course, is yes. How could I refuse such a wonderful opportunity? It's placed mid-span where our love is bridged equally from either direction. Yes, I'm a hopeless romantic. I just happen to write about murder.

The Adventures of Bill Cody II

by Jean Henry Mead

Buffalo Bill's grandson not only followed in his boot prints as showman, dude rancher, soldier and entrepreneur, he made history of his own. The unpretentious Harvard Law School graduate surrendered the most American troops in Europe during World War II, married more often than the average American, and lectured to more students about their heritage than any of his fellow countrymen. Among his many accomplishments, he learned to downhill ski at 65.

William Cody Garlow was born at the Scout’s Rest Ranch in North Platte, Nebraska, January 4, 1913. His mother, Irma, (Buffalo Bill’s youngest child) returned to Cody, Wyoming, with her two-week-old son and his older brother Fred and sister Jane. The children were orphaned in 1918 when their parents died two days apart during the influenza epidemic. Their grandfather, William F. Cody, passed away the previous year and his wife Louisa adopted their grandchildren and reared them until her death in 1921.

Bill Garlow was four when his illustrious granddad died. “I remember him distinctly only three times,” he said. “Once at the TE Ranch west of Cody, on his deathbed, and at his funeral on Lookout Mountain.”

Bill and his brother Fred were "installed in a military school" in southern California by their grandmother when they were six and nine. Bill continued his education at the Riverside Military Academy in Georgia, where his grades fluctuated according to the season and he studied six years, instead of four, to graduate. “Periodically I was excellent,” he said, grinning. “And other times I got lousy grades. It all depended on hunting season which started about the same time as school. I had to go hunting first.”

The trim six-footer studied pre-law at the University of Nebraska, graduating in 1936. He then enrolled at Harvard Law School. “Very early in high school I decided to become a lawyer. I visualized justice, equity and all that I wanted to participate in, but when I became a lawyer, I found that it was an entirely different ball game, so I practiced two years and quit.”

Following graduation from Harvard, Garlow enlisted in the army as a reserve commissioned second lieutenant. A platoon leader, he was later promoted to the ranks of captain, company commander and major. In 1944, he was transferred to the 106th Infantry Division and sent to Germany where his troops were caught in the Battle of The Bulge. Surrounded by German artillery troops, Garlow’s 423rd regiment, commanded by Colonel Charles Cavender, was stationed on the Schnee Eifel, attempting to fight its way west to the German town of Schoenberg.

Just before daybreak on December 19, 1944, Cavender gathered his three battalion commanders and staff in a small open field to discuss their next line of action when a German artillery shell fragment killed the officer standing next to Garlow. After the initial volley, American troops assembled to coordinate an attack westward across the hilly Schnee Eifel, but the entire command was caught in the open where artillery fire was inflicting heavy casualties. Colonel Descheneau of the 422nd gathered field officers in a bunker to discuss the graveness of their situation. Food and ammunition supplies had been cut off, and the colonel concluded that the only way to save the lives of the 5,000 men was to surrender.

Garlow volunteered to negotiate the surrender although he and several other men had planned to escape through the woods, with the colonel’s permission. He decided to hand over his gun and borrow white handkerchiefs to wave as he ran an erratic path down the side of the hill into German-held territory. There he was grabbed and stripped of “his most prized possessions.” He spoke no German and was unable to communicate his intent to negotiate a surrender until a young German lieutenant, who spoke English, came to his rescue and ordered his men to return Garlow’s watch, pint of bourbon and candy bars. He was then taken to a major who also spoke fluent English.

John Eisenhower describes the scene that followed in his book, The Bitter Woods:

Turning to the lieutenant [the major] snapped orders in German which Garlow soon learned charged the lieutenant with conducting a patrol of nine or ten men to accompany Garlow back to the American positions. Faced with a tense situation, the young volksgrenedier’s personality instantly changed. He jabbed Garlow in the back with his Schmeisder burp gun. “If this is a trick, Major, you’re dead.” Garlow winced under the painful blow: later turned out his chivalrous enemy had broken two of his ribs. But the lieutenant’s former friendly attitude returned. Keeping Garlow covered, he let the American guide his patrol up the hill to Descheneau’s CP on the Schnee Eiffel, where they found that Descheneau had prepared everything. Weapons were broken . . .

And many American soldiers were in tears. Garlow, therefore, held what he termed “the dubious honor or having negotiated the surrender of the largest number of American soldiers in the European theatre;" surpassed only by the Bataan surrender in 1942. Members of the 422and and Garlow’s 423rd regiments spent the rest of the war in German prison camps and were awarded purple hearts for the frostbite they suffered as a result of their capture. Garlow was also “unofficially shot in the leg.”

Following the war, he returned to “Cody Country” where he practiced law for two years and helped establish the local radio station. He was one of the founders of KODI, later serving as owner-general manager and on-the-air personality. He then moved to Texas where he “got into the oil business,” the drilling end of it. He went broke after a while, he said, because of his preoccupation with “having a good time and chasing girls.” So he once again returned to the town of Cody, where he established a river float business, later run by his son Kit. In 1969, he married for the fifth time.

His first marriage lasted six months. He married again while a law student at Harvard. The union produced four sons: Bill and Jack Garlow and Barry and Kit Carson Cody. He remarried after his sons' mother died, but was divorced after only a couple of years. A fourth marriage also failed, but he remained happily married to his fifth wife Barbara, some forty years his junior, until his death. Together they purchased a rundown guest ranch and established it as one of the most highly rated resorts in Wyoming. Located on ten acres of leased government land, it lay halfway between Cody and the east entrance to Yellowstone Park, adjoining millions of acres of national forest.

He began making public appearances for the Daisy Air Rifle Company in 1968 when a new line was introduced called the “Buffalo Bill.” The promoters insisted that he legally change his name from Bill Cody Garlow to Bill Cody for the television and radio commercials as well as public appearances. “Bill Garlow just wouldn’t do,” he said. “But I may have already been a Cody because my grandmother adopted me. I never thought to check the courthouse records. So with all my marriages and the change in name, I have the Cody family book well fouled up.”

Buffalo Bill’s grandson appeared on some 3,000 television shows, thousands of radio programs and various promotions during the next nine years. He also lectured to junior high and high school students about their “American heritage” while on the road making public appearances. He talked to “more youth in person than any other American” during 1,171 lectures in forty-two states. At the time of the interview, he still had hopes of speaking to students in all fifty states.

He said, “That’s my kind of pony express.”

(Excerpted from my book, Westerners: Candid and Historic Interviews)