(The manuscript of the book about the life and times of RADM Mac Showers. Photo Socotra).

Things are all over the map about developments in Afghanistan this morning. I am deeply disturbed about it all, but I am going to let others comment and have the thing play out on its own merits.

This is a week that marks the anniversaries of something else, something foreign to the ambiguous and ambivalent world of this new century.

I am referring to the desperate times of total war in the Pacific and Europe.

In 1942 and 1944, great forces and hundreds of thousands of people were surging forward to their fates. Continents stood at risk, and the continued existence of nation-states and their people were at stake.

I got out the manuscript of the book about Mac Showers, since he was the last insider left alive from the little team of code-breakers who provided the advantage that enabled Admiral Chester Nimitz and his heroes to prevail at the battle near Midway, 72 years ago.

Arguably, Midway was the end of the beginning of the most catastrophic war in human history. The invasion at Normandy almost two years to the day later signified the beginning of the end, though I feely admit that is a Anglo-American perspective on the sprawling violence on the Eastern Front.

Let’s take the first part first. I don’t normally distribute PowerPoint slides, but a pal in the Pacific sent me the presentation they are using to commemorate the achievements of men who my friendship with Mac Showers made human and immediate: Joe, Eddie and Jasper.

Take a moment if you have the time to look at what they accomplished. As Joe used to say, “you can achieve anything, if you don’t care who gets the credit.”

To the men who fought.

Copyright 2014 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
Twitter: @jayare303