(Paris soccer fans sign their national anthem as they exit the Stade de France in an orderly manner after the attacks of Friday night). The New York Times is reporting that the French Police are looking for an eighth murderer who may have escaped. Seven are dead, either by their own hands or in a […]

I woke to gunshots here at dawn on the farm. I knew precisely the sound, and after the events of last night, it took a moment to realize that the long-gun deer season had started at sun-up. Someone had got up early and climbed up into their tree stand to get their buck. Friday had […]

Sleep is interesting at Refuge Farm, and the cobwebs are slow in leaving this morning. Weekends, I usually have some project in process and am bushed with the exertion and fresh air at the end of the day. This time is unusual, since I am here just past mid-week because of memorial and automotive-related issues. […]

(Two members of Nagato’s original crew. All Photos USN courtesy Lyle Hansen). Lieutenant Commander Ed Gilfillen confessed to being a little disoriented by the way the Japanese ran their ships of war. He said that: “The design of USN ships were shot through with definite principles, all born of experience and most have the force […]

I like the internal contradictions of this holiday. It is just like the military itself: Vets go to work in the civilian and government sector as contractors while civilian government workers get the day off to honor them. Oh well, goes with the territory. I am a little shaken this morning. I was going to […]

Nagato’s appearance had been altered from her usual configuration when Ed Gilfillen first saw her. He said that camouflage was the key to try to distract the American pilots. To render her less conspicuous, the tops of her mainmast and stack had been cut off and plywood structures erected on her decks. Rust blended in […]

I never got a chance to meet Edward Smith Gilfillen. He died in 1979, and I have a suspicion I know what it was that got him. I have no pictures of him, nor of his family, nor even his rank. I suspect he was a Lieutenant Commander, tall and dark, of Welsh decent. I […]

I was going to introduce you to Edward Smith Gilfillen, last XO of the Nagato, this morning but I got wildly sidetracked by an extraordinarily vivid dream I had in the second sleep of the night, deep in the inky darkness of the country. I was back in Yokosuka. I swear, it was a full-on […]

(RADM Donald “Mac” Showers is flanked by a pair of Socotras in the Hoyer Foyer at the Office of Naval Intelligence in Suitland, MD, on the occasion of Mac’s donation of the battle flag of the IJN Battleship Nagato in 2012. The Foyer is so named irreverently in honor of the former House majority Leader […]

It is sometimes said that the Department of War never lost one, and the Department of Defense never won a conflict. There is some room to quibble, since at the time we considered the first Gulf War to be a victory, since it liberated Kuwait from Saddam. All I can say is that the last […]