On Serving Your Country: Honor and Remembrance

The decline of the West’s resolve and its military: We know that the suffocating agenda of the radical left is encroaching on every aspect and feature of life. It certainly has impacted politics, education,…

The first star systems in existence.

A dire warning.

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President Biden and the corporate media are growing increasingly frustrated by the failure of Americans to accept their assurances that the economy is in good shape. They insist that there is an inexplicable disconnect between the public’s gloomy perception of the economy and the sunny state of affairs described by official government statistics. A vocal proponent of this view is New York Times columnist Paul Krugman. As recently as Friday, he declared himself unable to understand pervasive pessimism about the economy and dismissed the phenomenon as a “vibecession.” Sorry, no sale. Krugman is a Nobel laureate in economics who certainly knows this is nonsense. When Americans go to the grocery store, they don’t think about the unemployment rate, the stock market, or the moronic COVID shutdowns. Indeed, he proves it by invoking the Federal Reserve’s Economic Well-Being survey, which he describes as the “gold standard for assessing economic perceptions.” Yet Krugman neglects to mention this passage from its first paragraph: “Despite the moderating pace of inflation, many adults continued to indicate that higher prices were a challenge in managing their finances.” This is, of course, due to the cumulative effect of inflation. As Yahoo Finance reports, “Prices as measured by the seasonally adjusted Consumer Price Index (CPI) are now up over 19.4% in the three-plus years since Biden took office.” Sadly, as the American Spectator’s Seth Forman noted in his March 25 newsletter, this understates the problem: Now we find out — from former Clinton/Obama/Democrat economic advisor Larry Summers no less — that the government is also lowballing its inflation numbers, as measured by its Consumer Price Index … Using something resembling the old way of calculating inflation, Summers et al. find headline CPI would have peaked at 18 percent in November 2022 (not 8.6 percent). This alternative inflation measure would have stood at 8 percent in November 2023, the last month studied in the report. The fake CPI in November of last year was 3.1 percent. The full report does not inspire confidence in the Biden administration’s inflation policies. Nor does the President’s prevarications concerning the inflation rate he inherited from Trump. At least twice this month he has looked the nation in the eye and insisted that inflation was at 9 percent when he took office. The Associated Press fact checked this bazaar claim: “AP’S ASSESSMENT: False. Inflation was at 1.4% in 2021 as Biden assumed the presidency.” When Fox’s Neil Cavuto confronted Council of Economic Advisers Chair Jared Bernstein about Biden’s claim, Bernstein compounded the lie: “He’s making the point that the factors that caused inflation to climb to 9 percent were in place when he took office.” (READ MORE from David Catron: Why Trump Eagerly Accepted Unfair Debate Rules) In reality, of course, the annual inflation rate averaged 1.9 percent during Trump’s term in office. When Biden arrived, the economy was rapidly recovering from the lockdown-induced recession and probably would have fully recovered within a year — absent excessive government meddling. Nonetheless, Biden and his Democrat accomplices on Capitol Hill went on a wild spending spree beginning with the notorious $1.9 trillion “American Rescue Plan.” Liberal economists like Steven Rattner warned the White House that this unnecessary bill would reignite inflation. That is precisely what happened, of course, and the voters are tired of being told the problem is illusory: As Amy Walter of the Cook Political Report explains: Democrats wonder why Biden isn’t getting more credit for an economy where unemployment is at record lows, the stock market is booming, and the post-COVID economic hangover has lifted. But those aren’t the measuring sticks that voters use to gauge the health of the economy. When asked what they thought the best markers of a strong economy were, few (6%) picked the stock market, only 13% picked low unemployment, and just 9% chose household income. Instead, a healthy majority (54%) said the cost of living was the best way to measure the strength of the economy. This shouldn’t surprise anyone with basic math skills. Misleading stories in the corporate media notwithstanding, real wages have declined since Biden moved into the White House. When Biden took office in January of 2021, the Real Earnings report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) indicated that average hourly wages stood at $11.43. The latest Real Earnings report from the BLS, issued on May 15, showed average hourly wages have declined to $11.09. Why, then, are “news” outlets telling us that wages are outpacing inflation? They are reporting nominal wages, which don’t account for the rising cost of living. Real wages account for inflation in order to calculate your paycheck’s true purchasing power. When Americans go to the grocery store, they don’t think about the unemployment rate, the stock market, or the moronic COVID shutdowns. They think about how much more everything costs than it did when Biden was inaugurated. This is particularly true of working class Americans for whom a larger share of their income is dedicated to basic necessities. This is why they are far less enchanted with Biden and the Democrats than they were four years ago. It is why the polls indicate, for the first time in decades, that significant percentages of Black and Hispanic voters may well cast ballots for a Republican. Democrats are in denial about this, of course, but too many respected surveys are getting similar responses. (READ MORE: Trump Owns the Working Class Vote) In the end, the real disconnect has nothing to do with the ability of Americans to grasp the financial realities of their day-to-day lives. It is the failure of Biden, the Democrats, and the corporate media to see that most voters are obviously worse off than they were in January of 2021. If they continue to insult the intelligence of these voters by insisting that there is no cost-of-living crisis, they risk a defeat that cannot be overcome by any amount of ballot harvesting or innovative vote-counting. The margin, to coin a phrase, will indeed be “too big to rig.” The post It’s the Cost of Living, Stupid! appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

If the political signs are correct, this will be the last Memorial Day under the corrupt, inept, anti-American Biden regime. The Administration not only repeatedly dishonors the brave service members who died for our country, it added 13 names to their ranks during the disastrous Afghanistan pullout. So desperate are Biden’s leftist minions to misrepresent his strategic blunder and subsequent callousness that ex-White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki lied about both in her new book, Say More. Psaki wrote that Biden did not check his watch during the transfer of bodies at Dover Air Force Base three years ago. When the visual evidence utterly refuted her, she had to remove her falsehood from future editions of the book, as the dead heroes’ loved ones rightfully lambasted her. For the first time in 26 years, no May film will cross the $175-million threshold. One of them was Steve Nikoui, the father of slain Marine Lance Corporal Kareem Nikoui, arrested last March for shouting out his son’s name during Biden’s State of the Union address. “If the American people want to keep these people in office or keep these people on television and give them, you know, multimillion-dollar jobs [Psaki is now the high-paid hostess of the MSNBC show, Inside with Jen Psaki],” Nikoui said, “Well, they have to answer for that when they die, not me.” (READ MORE from Lou Aguilar: The Leftist Exorcism Has Begun) This humiliation didn’t stop the Biden Administration from further desecrating the honored dead. Last week, the National Park Service denied permission for the Knights of Columbus to celebrate the traditional Memorial Day Mass at Poplar Grove National Cemetery in Petersburg, Virginia. The Knights have held a Mass on the site every year since the 1960s, but this year the NPS said nyet, adding Marxist anti-Christian fervor to its anti-military brew. Fortunately, two factors combined to repel the federal secular tyranny. The Founders inserted Freedom of Religion into the Constitution to countermand precisely such despotic repression. And Virginia state government went Republican in 2021 to no longer be controlled by the likes of Democratic governor Ralph Northam, who once advocated for infanticide even post birth. Infamous quote by Northam: “The infant would be delivered. The infant would be kept comfortable. The infant would be resuscitated if that’s what the mother and the family desired, and then a discussion would ensue between the physician and the mother.” So, the Knights of Columbus filed a restraining order against the NPS dictum, represented by the First Liberty Institute, one of several crusading nonprofit law firms stymying government repression. Intimidated by the Knights, the Constitution, and tough Cuban-American Attorney General of Virginia Jason Miyares, the Biden Administration capitulated to permit Memorial Day Mass at the cemetery. Miyares delivered the oratory coup de grace. I’m pleased that the Petersburg Knights of Columbus was granted access to observe Memorial Day and gather to pray and mourn the loss of fallen military personnel,” Miyares said. “The First Amendment very clearly allows religious and non-religious groups to hold these types of gatherings on government grounds. It’s shameful and un-American that they were denied in the first place. Instantly and astutely contrasting himself against Biden’s unpatriotic agenda, presidential frontrunner Donald Trump made the perfect Memorial Day Weekend move. According to the Daily Caller, the Trump campaign will soon announce “Veteran and Military Families for Trump”, a coalition with over 175 endorsements from decorated Veterans and Gold Star families ahead of next Veteran’s Day. The accompanying press release reads, “Unlike Biden, President Trump has honored America’s veterans.” Doubtless, most soldiers and sailors — plus the Navy Seals summarily expulsed by the Biden Pentagon for refusing to take the undertested COVID-19 vaccine — and their relatives will be pulling the lever for Trump on November 5th. (READ MORE: Farewell to the Legend: Roger Corman) This Memorial Day month also made a less political and more culturally significant mark. For the first time in 26 years, no May film will cross the $175-million threshold, according to Gitesh Pandya of Boxoffice Guru, and probably only one will gross over one hundred million. The tentative number-one movie of the weekend, Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, barely earned $25-million, a fraction of its $168-million budget, and may still lose to The Garfield Movie. I predicted in this space three weeks ago that Furiosa would be a massive flop. That the male audience it catered to has had enough of the ridiculous uber woman action genre displacing their masculine heroes. That it’s yet another entry depriving them of both female sexuality and femininity, and their ageless ideal of rescuing and winning the damsel. That the entire concept is an unpopular feminist fever dream. “Men know that in a Mad Max world, the Amazonian warrioress Furiosa would be decapitated, raped, or turned into some barbarian’s slave girl,” I wrote. “Just as in the real world, the most mediocre male athlete can trounce the personal best women while insulting them by pretending to be them. We know what true barbarians did to Israeli women last October 7th,. They raped them, murdered them and their children, and took many of them hostage. And there wasn’t a Furiosa among them to stop it.” As I’ve also oft stated, Hollywoke folk don’t care about reality. Today, they would rather fail with Furiosa than make an actual Mad Max picture, then have to explain the success of a toxic male hero to their feminist and eunuch peers. It’s especially sad that 79-year-old Australian writer-director George Miller, whose original Mad Max franchise made Mel Gibson into a superstar and influenced the action film for generations, was neutered into this fiasco. But just like Miller himself in 1979, there are young male filmmakers way outside the Hollywoke orbit conceiving believable heroes such as Mad Max that men will applaud. While Hollywood sinks into the bleak dystopian future that Miller so presciently envisioned. The post The Last Woke Memorial Day appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

Last week, the Drug Enforcement Administration released a report that said that the two worst Mexican drug cartels are operating in all fifty states and are fighting each other for control of the drug trade in several U.S. cities. The DEA said that we are enduring the worst drug crisis in U.S. history.[A]ttempted penetrations of military bases by foreign nationals “is happening more and more.” This is yet another byproduct of President Biden’s open border policy. According to the DEA report, “The deadly reach of the Mexican Sinaloa and Jalisco cartels into U.S. communities is extended by the wholesale-level traffickers and street dealers bringing the cartels’ drugs to market, sometimes creating their own deadly drug mixtures … Together, the Sinaloa and Jalisco cartels have caused the worst drug crisis in U.S. history.” (READ MORE from Jed Babbin: Biden’s Bogus Executive Privilege Claim) But it’s worse than that — far worse — because that report tells only a fraction of the story. The Mexican drug cartels control many of the people who smuggle illegal aliens into the U.S. About seven million have come into the U.S. during Biden’s presidency, been “arrested,” and released into the nation since Biden was inaugurated. That doesn’t count the “gotaways,” who number about an additional two million, who slipped through our open borders and managed to evade the Border Patrol altogether. The “gotaways” are comprised of drug smugglers and others who are eager and able to commit crimes against Americans and America itself. Forget the drug smugglers and other criminals for a moment. Let’s concentrate on the dangers of terrorists — Islamic jihadis — coming into the country. There is an area in South America where Argentina, Paraguay, and Brazil share borders. In this Tri-Border Area (TBA) there is a very large Shiite Muslim population. According to my research, since the mid-1980s Hizballah – the “Party of God” controlled by Iran – has been recruiting operatives and adherents in the TBA. Pretty much every other Islamic terrorist group is also present there and in other parts of South America: Al-Qaida, ISIS, Hamas, and essentially all the other terrorist networks we have come to know since 9-11.  The TBA is a convenient area for them to gather and recruit more terrorists. Moreover, these terrorist groups have gained success as far north as Venezuela. Last September, Biden granted legal status to hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans who are already in the US, enabling them to get work permits. In 1994 Hizballah, following Iran’s orders, attacked the Argentine-Israel Mutual Association in Buenos Aires. They killed at least 85 people and injured another 300. They, and the others, have not been idle since then. It is absurd to believe these groups are smuggling people into our country and not planning attacks on the U.S. According to a report by the American Military University, many Muslim terrorist organizations, including Hizballah, Hamas, and Al-Qaeda, have a strong presence in South America. They are particularly active in the Tri-Border Area (TBA), the region where Brazil, Paraguay, and Argentina meet.” [Please note that the AMU report, essentially a government document, uses the bowdlerized version of “Hizballah,” i.e., “Hezbollah.”] The AMU report goes on to say, “The most active group is Hezbollah with its contacts and support from the Iranian regime. The support of the Iranian government and Hezbollah’s relationship to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and the IRGC-Quds Force make Hezbollah an exceptionally powerful and dangerous adversary.” Which brings us back to the “gotaways.” The terrorists can pay the Mexican cartels to smuggle their jihadis into the U.S. and into our cities. The FBI is certainly trying to detect these attackers but the convenience of the Mexican cartels mean that the FBI’s intelligence information is almost certainly not good enough to stop their planned attacks. The mystery is why none of the “gotaway” jihadis have yet made attacks on this country. What are they waiting for? As the 9-11 attacks, which took months or years to prepare, proved these terrorist networks can be enormously patient. (READ MORE: Biden Wants Hamas ‘Refugees’) There is some scant evidence that people — possibly terrorists — are testing some of our defenses. On May 3, two Jordanian men attempted to gain access to the Marine Corps Base in Quantico, Virginia. When they were apprehended, they claimed to be delivering goods for a subcontractor to Amazon. Both were in the U.S. illegally, one of them having overstayed his student visa. That attempt alone proves nothing but the growing frequency of such attempted penetrations does. Last week, U.S. Fleet Forces Command boss Admiral Daryl Caudle told a Fox News interviewer that attempted penetrations of military bases by foreign nationals “is happening more and more. This is something we see probably two or three times a week, where we’re stopping these folks at the gate.” Those foreign nationals come from all different nations and many times have passports and papers according to that Fox News report. Those passports and papers are likely forged. It’s pretty obvious that terrorists who have entered the U.S. over Biden’s open borders are testing our vulnerabilities. They can, I suspect, find many small ones and a few big ones. When they can coordinate attacks on them, we will lose dozens — perhaps hundreds or thousands — of American lives. Foreign leaders around the world — both ally and enemy — must wonder at how stupid we are for letting just anyone cross our borders. It is simply amazing. The post Our Border and the Gotaways appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

We know war is filled with sorrow and loss. And yet, we turn to books, films, and relics of war to remind ourselves of the human potential for heroism. Homer’s Iliad, a myth, is among the most unforgettable tales of war, and its heroes — Achilles, Hector, Odysseus — become real the moment we hear their names.   The technology of warfare evolves, but how individual people confront death in combat remains largely unchanged.  Unlike Star Wars, there is no digital finesse to the horror of the Trojan War, no special effect to smooth over the aggression of close combat. You won’t find a heartwarming anecdote about teamwork or doing the right thing when the going gets tough, or about patriotism and loving your country so much you’ll die for it. Instead, you confront fundamental truths, including that war is brutal; it’s real blood and real bones. In the world of The Iliad, what had been a talking, living man can, in an instant, become merely a thing — more like a stone than someone’s father or son. The poem’s greatness lies in its simplicity — how we kill and, more importantly, why we kill. It opens famously: Goddess, sing of the cataclysmic wrath of great Achilles It’s Achilles’ story but he sulks in his tent for most of the poem, inconsolable after the Greek king takes from him a young woman named Briseis, a war prize won by Achilles in an earlier conquest. Achilles is more like a petulant teenager than the Terminator, lounging in his room and playing his lyre while comrades suffer against prince Hector and the high-spirited Trojan warriors. (READ MORE from John Waters: Out Here, War Is a Precious Memory) Not until his friend is killed does Achilles rouse himself to fight. In the world of heroes, justice amounted to personal vengeance, and so Achilles enters battle to avenge the killing of his friend Patroclus, a second self. He slaughters Trojans, one after the next, piling their bodies so deep in a river it dams up, until the river god himself appears to fight back a raging Achilles. In each spear thrust through a man’s throat or chest, Homer obsesses over the body, the blood draining from a wound, the darkness covering a dead man’s eyes. Returned to action, Achilles embodies the hero’s gamble that, in single combat, he is the one who will kill first and stand over the dead body of his enemy.  ***** I began at Annapolis in the summer of 2005, suffering through the mid-Atlantic humidity as I marched from one end of base to the other, climbing ropes, crawling through mud, sweating my way through what was, in hindsight, a mild initiation into the military. That first year on the Yard, I watched the upperclassmen — with shaved heads and crisp creases in their khaki uniforms — as they moved a step quicker than the plebes. The Iraq War was in the news and on our minds. The Academy’s most ambitious Midshipmen wanted their share of the action. I remember a particular first-class Midshipman who happened to share my last name. He was a captain of the crew team, intense but easygoing among friends, expected by his classmates to be a future leader of a combat arms unit. For young men with his combination of athleticism and confidence, to serve aboard Navy ships or submarines — really, to be anything other than a Marine or Navy SEAL — was a disappointment. I wanted to be like him. I commissioned into the Marines and completed specialty training as an infantry officer and, later, in ground intelligence. By the time I left training in 2011, the action had moved from the urban desert of Anbar Province, Iraq, to the rural desert of Helmand Province, Afghanistan, where I joined thousands of infantry Marines in a place roughly the size of West Virginia. I provided them with intelligence, maps, satellite pictures of roads and mud-brick compounds, as well as answers to whatever questions were on the minds of 20-to-25-year-old Marines walking foot patrols. Question: “When will the war end?” Answer: No idea. Question: “Will we ever see a real Taliban fighter?” Answer: Possibly. Question: “Has anyone ever been killed by the rabid dogs who roam the village?” Answer: No, but don’t be the first. Marines poured into the country ahead of the summer fighting season as part of President Obama’s surge, and they patrolled constantly during daylight hours. But the real action, I discovered, happened at night. A nondescript plywood office was operation central for an elite troop whose mission was to capture and kill terrorists. Visit the office during the day and you might find a few people sitting at desks. After nightfall, however, the troops loaded into a white school bus parked outside their office, made the mile or so drive to the flight-line, then boarded helicopters destined for terrorists’ homes and hideouts, where they fought up-close. After capturing or killing their targets, the men would gather up whatever intelligence treasure they could find and head back to camp. (READ MORE: World War True) On one occasion, I located a compound used by Taliban fighters, then provided the details to someone who occasionally worked out of that nondescript office. He wrote me an email a few nights later: “Dude, thanks for the grids. We called a HIMARS shot on the position. Check it out and keep ‘em coming.” I opened the PDF to find photographs of three dead Afghan males. They looked to be in their late teens, tufts of facial hair along their cheeks. It was my first glimpse of dead enemy fighters, and they were younger than I imagined. Somehow, I hadn’t expected this would happen when I found the fighters’ hideout or passed along its grid coordinates. It was strange looking at their pictures on my computer screen.  ***** Men waged war first with blunt objects and tools. Then came swords, spears, javelins, and arrows. The invention of gunpower ousted the knight and put the killing weapon in the hands of commoners. Gone was the duel, and with it the rules of a fair fight. Whichever side was better organized to the mass application of violence had an often-decisive advantage in the wars of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. From the blaring sirens, the whistle and crash of an artillery bombardment in World War I, came the whisper of drone strikes in Iraq and Afghanistan, then the return to bombardments in present-day Ukraine and Gaza. The technology of warfare evolves, but how individual people confront death in combat remains largely unchanged.  In the myth, when Hector and Achilles meet, we get the crux of a human life in Hector’s final moments. First, he leaves behind the safety of Troy’s defenses for the open plain, so the Trojans gathered along the city’s walls can watch and cheer. Then, when Hector sees the great Achilles approaching, he panics and runs, feeling he is trapped in a nightmare. Finally, he stops running. Hector faces the greater Achilles, and says: And now my doom has come at last. But never let me die without a struggle and without acclaim. Let me achieve some greatness and be known to people in the days to come. Let me at least die gloriously, with a struggle, and do some great deed that men will praise for all time. For most of us, the reality of war doesn’t match what we expect, just as our own lives don’t unfold exactly how we intend. And still, in each new generation, young men voluntarily risk death to prove themselves worthy of a legacy that can be raised to the heroic, to achieve with their lives what Hector sought in the final moments of his. To speak only of war’s horror and brutality is to avoid an inconvenient truth: the reason we seek battle has not changed in 3,000 years. John J. Waters is the author of the postwar novel River City One (Simon and Schuster). He lives in Nebraska, where he was born.  The post War: Where Men Win Glory appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

Sometimes two events come together to remind us of a very special moment in history. A few days ago the 2024 edition of the “Paris-Chartres Pilgrimage” concluded. This is an annual event in which devout Catholics, typically numbering more than 15,000, make a 60 mile trek from Paris to the renowned gothic cathedral of Chartres to celebrate the feast of Pentecost. The pilgrimage, which has taken place for the better part of a millennium, occupies an important spiritual place, particularly among those who wish to see a revival of traditional Catholicism. It is especially fitting that it should culminate with a Mass celebrated at a 12th Century cathedral, described in its designation as a UNESCO World Heritage Site as “one of the most beautiful and historically significant cathedrals in all of Europe.” [I]t nonetheless deserves our attention, a reminder that the so-called “dash across France” was never the bloodless romp that the history books want to portray. UNESCO also notes that the cathedral is well-preserved, which takes us to the second event, and with it, a very special story for this Memorial Day weekend. In August 1944, General George S. Patton’s Third Army had just been activated as part of Operation Cobra, the “breakout” from Normandy that marked the beginning of the destruction of the German armies west of the Seine and the liberation of France. Racing across France, the XXth Corps of the Third Army had liberated Le Mans and Angers and was in the process of outflanking Paris to the south. The small city of Chartres stood squarely in its path, a logistics hub for the German army and the location of an important Luftwaffe airbase. Although the rapid advance had disrupted any coherent line of defense, the Germans still fought desperately to defend as many key strongpoints as possible. One such strongpoint was Chartres, a place where several key roads came together, with important bridges over the river Eure. For the Wehrmacht, holding Chartres, if only for a few critical days, meant allowing more units to escape eastward and reconstitute a defensive barrier. For Patton, seizing Chartres on the run meant trapping more Germans, maintaining the momentum of the Third Army’s drive toward the German border, and, above all, making sure that the retreating Germans remained off-balance. Two divisions of the XXth Corps, the 7th Armored and the 5th Infantry, were tasked with taking Chartres, the armored if it could be seized on the run, the infantry if a more deliberate assault proved necessary. (READ MORE from James H. McGee: Pro-Hamas Panty Raids: A Destructive Dynamic) On August 16, 1944, the 7th Armored had run into increasingly heavy resistance as it pushed from the outskirts into the center of Chartres. The city is located on the plain of Beauce, the center of farming country, the terrain flat for miles around. The cathedral sits on the only hill of significance, and its towers, the tallest some 371 feet high, are visible for miles around. For the approaching American GIs, not simply visible, but oppressively so, for such dominant features were almost always associated with German artillery observers, looking down with binoculars from on high, calling down the dreaded 88s on anything that moved. Even as the 5th Infantry moved in to take over the fight, riflemen of the 7th Armored found themselves drawing sniper fire from the cathedral, significant in and of itself, all the more so because it seemingly confirmed that the Germans were using the cathedral as an observation post. As these riflemen returned fire, the call went up the chain of command for an artillery barrage to flatten the cathedral. At XXth Corps Headquarters, the request came to Colonel Welborn Barton Griffith, a young colonel and the chief of Operations (G-3) on the Corps general staff. Griffith had already been in the city the night before, and, while he knew of the reported sniper fire, he also knew that the order to destroy an historical structure of such significance should not be given lightly. With only his jeep driver as an escort, he drove to the front lines around the cathedral, then through no man’s land to the entrance to the cathedral itself. He entered the cathedral and searched it, including climbing hundreds of steps up into the bell tower. Satisfied that the Germans were no longer present, he blocked the order to bombard the cathedral. Welborn Griffith, West Point photograph, 1925. Col. Welborn Barton Griffith, Jr., is credited with personally saving historic Chartres Cathedral during World War II. Image available on the Internet and included in accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107. A happy ending then? Sadly, not entirely. Already far forward of his post back in the rear echelon at Corps Headquarters, he continued to reconnoiter, soon encountering a  strong German patrol. He withdrew, found an American tank and some infantry, and led them forward to deal with the German patrol. Standing exposed behind the turret of the tank, directing the tank and the infantry forward, he was shot and killed. French villagers maintained a vigil over his body until it could be recovered. A plaque now marks the place of his death, and his courage was recognized with the Distinguished Service Cross, second only to the Congressional Medal of Honor. Today Colonel Griffith’s body lies alongside some 4,404 of his comrades in the Brittany-American Cemetery in St. James, France. Less famous than the Normandy American Cemetery above Omaha Beach, smaller than the Lorraine and Luxembourg American cemeteries, filled with those killed in the massive slugging matches at Metz, the Siegfried Line, and the Battle of the Bulge, it nonetheless deserves our attention, a reminder that the so-called “dash across France” was never the bloodless romp that the history books want to portray. I grew up with the story of the decision not to destroy Chartres Cathedral. As I’ve recounted elsewhere, my dad was a junior officer in the 5th Infantry Division, and the fight for Chartres was among the stories he read to me from the division history. But the story of Colonel Welborn Barton Griffith was absent from that narrative, largely because it was written in 1946, and Griffith’s heroism received little public recognition in the U.S. until many years later — and this largely because of the French in the little community where he was killed. On this Memorial Day weekend, I think he deserves to be remembered with a hero’s salute. He deserves to be remembered alongside the hundreds of thousands of Americans who, over the life of our nation, have given their lives to protect our freedom. But he also deserves his salute because of the moral character of his actions on August 16, 1944. It would have been easy to allow the artillery bombardment to go forward. Not doing so meant potentially risking the lives of dozens, if not hundreds of the GIs for whom he was responsible as a senior officer. And many other officers would have made the decision, one way or the other, from the relative safety of his Headquarters, and no one would have faulted them for doing so. But he decided that it was important enough to risk his life to make sure, and then to risk his life yet again doing something that colonels might reasonably have delegated to a lieutenant. (READ MORE: Gentlemen, Scholars, Thugs: The Real Heroes Behind The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare) On this Memorial Day weekend then, a week after thousands of believers enjoyed the inspirational beauty of Chartres Cathedral, let’s pause to remember Colonel Welborn Barton Griffith of Quanah, Texas, West Point Class of 1925. November 10, 1901 — August 16, 1944. James H. McGee retired in 2018 after nearly four decades as a national security and counter-terrorism professional, working primarily in the nuclear security field. Since retiring, he’s begun a second career as a thriller writer. His 2022 novel, Letter of Reprisal, tells the tale of a desperate mission to destroy a Chinese bioweapon facility hidden in the heart of the central African conflict region, and a forthcoming sequel carries the Reprisal team from the hills of West Virginia to the forests of Belarus. You can find it on Amazon in both Kindle and paperback editions, and on Kindle Unlimited. The post The Hero Who Saved a Cathedral appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.