Chapter 51: Quantum Germans

[Trickfox]

Paul
I hope there is more to this NAZI scientist stuff to come. How about the counterintelligence stuff and disinformation that Stephenson and others were creating to slow down and confuse the Germans. Like those secret shaped object that were being dropped over their territory. You know... the ones that had all the complex gadgets that did NOTHING but created confusion amongst the german scientists who were suppose to tear them appart and figure out what they were for. I'll bet there is still a few proudly held "schematics" of a few of those devices somewhere past down one generation.

[LongboardLOVELY]

[quote]
Not just about right,â€

[twigsnapper]

And thank you LBL for calling the extended history into play. Paul did his job of properly mentioning her but the back story that you have brought up needed to be mentioned too. It was her wonderful mind and intuition that "saw" the situation when the heralded men around her did not. Of course she was Jewish which worked harshly against her in that age. But even so it was so easy for the men around her to take what they could without looking backwards. It has happened throughout history.

Thats why you will see my constant reminder to Paul, " remember the women" because in his research it is quite easy to see only the masculine report on the issue.

Was it you Trickfox who asked about "dangerous women" in my life? Something like that. I have to tell you ..... they have ALWAYS been my great joy. During the war I was totally enamored of an attractive woman ( I remember well that she had GREAT legs) but she also could live amongst the Germans like a reef fish amongst the coral. And she could set a charge like no one you have ever seen! I rather appreciated that! Of course very little has ever been said about her. I am pleased to say that she lived out part of her life in happy retirement in Australia, riding fine horses and setting a lovely table for tea. For quite a while no one around her ever suspected the life that she led so it was always nice to visit her and be able to share a smile and an occasional wink when the conversation turned then to planting flowers in the garden. She would never have been that domestic when I knew her! I think that she could see with me the locomotives detaching themselves from the tracks! ( sorry Mikado, I know you love trains .... but it was the times)

Another lady who hasn't gotten half the credit deserved.

twigsnapper

[grinder]

So I get to stay up all night. Finally gives me a chance to comment on stuff I have seen. Try this as a followup on what Mr. Twigsnapper just said.An example of how much can be learned about history by reading Pauls book, or just trying to keep up with the conversation on the forum!

LongBoard Lovely you are gonna love this! http://www.nzedge.com/heroes/wake.html

I think that this is the lady that Mr. Twigsnapper haps mentioned so fondly above. And I'll just bet that the two of them were hell on wheels. Check this part out especially:

Escape was not easy. She made six attempts to get out of France by crossing the Pyrenees into Spain. On one of these attempts she was captured by the French Milice (Vichy militia) in Toulouse and interrogated for four days. She held out, refusing to give the Milice any information, and with the help of the legendary 'Scarlet Pimpernel of WWII', Patrick O'Leary, tricked her captors into releasing her.

and this:

Nancy Wake, then 31, became one of 39 women and 430 men in the French Section of the British Special Operations Executive which worked with local resistance groups to sabotage the Germans in the occupied territories. She was trained at a British Ministry of Defense camp in Scotland in survival skills, silent killing, codes and radio operation, night parachuting, plastic explosives, Sten guns, rifles, pistols and grenades. She and the other women recruited by the SOE were officially assigned to the First Aid Nursing Yeomantry and the true nature of their work remained a closely guarded secret until after the war.

Mr. Twigsnapper? Was this the training group called Jedburg? or something similar? As I recall the SOS ran intelligence officers that were french too.

And ... I read tht she would have been quite a bit older than you Mr. Twigsnapper, or was that part of the attraction?

In late April 1944, Nancy Wake and another SOE operative, Major John Farmer, were parachuted into the Auvergne region in central France with orders to locate and organise the bands of Maquis, establish ammunition and arms caches from the nightly parachute drops, and arrange wireless communication with England. Their mission was to organise the Resistance in preparation for the D-Day invasion. The Resistance movement's principal objective was to weaken the German army for a major attack by allied troops. Their targets were German installations, convoys and troops. When dropped over Auvergne Nancy's parachute became stuck in a tree. Her agent said he hoped all trees could bear such beautiful fruit. Nancy told him not to give her 'that French shit'.

Mr. Twigsnapper. Earlier you mentioned visiting friends in Australia. Would that have been John Farmer then? Was he the man who shot the stud? I'll bet! Interesting history that is for sure! grinder

[twigsnapper]

This is particularly for Radomir,

In March of 1944 two agents were dropped into occupied France. Their code names were Barthelemy and Maurice.

I know that you are taking notes Paul, but Radomir got to the grey pony first, and you have enough on your plate right now. <g> twigsnapper

[Trickfox]

Mr. Twigsnapper

Forgive me for saying this, but you past adventures still remain mostly unknown by the public, or perhaps they were mixed in to some war movies we have all seen.
In a way Paul's book is as much a celebration of Dr. Brown's work as it is a celebration of your participation in changing history away from the senarios as recently show in the last few posts.

The public in general have been unaware of the efforts, sacrifice,and pain that you may have suffered just so that young children can play wargames on nintendos and home computers, rather than be forced to continue to serve at the reign of the fourth Reich in America, while our neigbours are forced to serve some imperial Japanese world power.

My questions are:

How do you feel now?....or...Which is more important?

(a) Should we be more apreciative of what we now have because of you and all these fine associates of yours who toiled and risked their lives so bravely to give us the future we are now living.

(b) Are you bitter with the fact that the very young are embracing values that you may consider to be a repetitious mistake of the youth in your own times?

(c) Are you worried that we are watching these war clouds gathering in a large mass because of the looming middle eastern disaster? (which continues to grow dimmer every day).

(d) In your opinion, is there something even more important and dangerous times to come that we are quite unprepared for?

Sir, a person with your history of secret honor humbles me completely. To think that I had the gall to complain about how I was treated in the past, and that you "Thanked me" anyway. Had I known more about you and this story, I would have understood your sentiments much better.

Let me now be the one to "THANK YOU" for your silent service to our generation. WE owe you much more than many will never know. Thank you for continuing to give us hope to change the future rather than complain about the past. But most of all THANK YOU for making this story and this book so darned interesting.

Raising a cheer glass of your favorite spirit!!

Trickfox

[Mikado14]

My questions are:

How do you feel now?....or...Which is more important?

(a) Should we be more apreciative of what we now have because of you and all these fine associates of yours who toiled and risked their lives so bravely to give us the future we are now living.

(b) Are you bitter with the fact that the very young are embracing values that you may consider to be a repetitious mistake of the youth in your own times?

(c) Are you worried that we are watching these war clouds gathering in a large mass because of the looming middle eastern disaster? (which continues to grow dimmer every day).

(d) In your opinion, is there something even more important and dangerous times to come that we are quite unprepared for?

Mr. Twigsnapper,

I would very much like to hear the answer to those questions as well.

However, I have come to know you in these past few months in that you only answer when it fuels the machinery.

However, one only has to read your posts:

a) be appreciative of what we preserved

b) no, it is youth being youth

c) concerned

d) yes

I am not answering for Mr. Twigsnapper, only pointing out that the questions you posed there Mr. Trickfox have been answered in a way in all his previous posts...and there are a few for I have read most if not all of them.

Look at what Mr. Twigsnapper has said of his own youthful days...a hellion?
In my junior year I drove my Suzuki X6 Hustler through the cafeteria of the Catholic High School.....if that bike could talk <g> youth...we were so immortal.

Mr. Twigsnapper, your generation, my Father's generation, my Mother's generation.... may it be a long time, I hope, until we see the measure of a generations metal again.

You already know my feelings but I reiterate what Trickfox has said.

Mikado

[twigsnapper]

Mikado and Trickfox,

Thankyou Trickfox for your carefully thought out questions and thank you Mikado for answering them exactly as I would have.

I have the optimism that each generation is capable of rising to whatever challenge is brought to them. The rather bothersome situation is that you never really know until that generation is put to the test.

I do worry that young folks are becoming more and more materialistic . I worry that their education is sadly inadequate for the future that is facing them, especially American children. We will lose without a shot ever fired if those things are ignored. So yes, I am concerned. And of course, perhaps I see things that some are not aware of yet. Goes with a senior position I guess. Wisdom and bad knees. I guess you can't have it all.

Thank you for the compliments but save the applause for the end please. twigsnapper

[flowperson]

Wonderful conversation. Tom Brokaw's book, The Greatest Generation was very inspirational and informative for me, and I can remember much about WWII and how it affected my families when I was a child.

Thank You gentlemen.

flow....

[Paul S.]

Thats why you will see my constant reminder to Paul, " remember the women" because in his research it is quite easy to see only the masculine report on the issue.

Twigsnapper and LindaB are quite right, that when we start to tell the story of these discoveries during the 1930s, there is a dramatic "back story" to almost every detail. I was quite mindful of the details of the Lise Meitner story when I was working on this chapter, although I don't recall all the details I do recall that she's very much an "unsung hero" in all this. And I took particular notice precisely because of Twigsnapper's frequent rejoinder to "remember the women" in all this.

It's hard to know sometimes where to draw the line between pertinent back story and details that lie outside the purview of the current narrative. That's one reason I like working in this medium. It's so easy to link to other sources that it's not necessary to interrupt the current flow to tell the whole story.

Just follow the links.

--PS

[Paul S.]

In March of 1944 two agents were dropped into occupied France. Their code names were Barthelemy and Maurice.

How much of France was still occupied in March of 1944? A quick read from Wikipedia:

After four years of occupation and strife, Allied forces, including Free France, liberated France in 1944. Paris was liberated on 25 August 1944. On 10 September 1944 Charles de Gaulle installed his provisional government in Paris. This time he remained in Paris until the end of the war, refusing to abandon even when Paris was temporarily threatened by German troops during the Battle of the Bulge in December 1944.

I mean, weren't the allied forces already into Germany by March, '44?

Guess I'll find out soon enough.

--PS

[grinder]

My World War ll history knowledge sucks. But apparently during the battle of the Bulge much of France came under Gerrman occupation again!... thats what Wikdpedia says right ? That Paris was threatened again in December of 44. It had been "liberated on the 25th of August"

So these two agents Barthelemy and Maurice parachuted in, according to Mr. Twigsnapper, on March of 1944. Shoot I would say alot of France was still in enemy hands then I don't think that Mr. Twigsnapper would have mentioned those two men if there isn't something, some sort of record written somewhere about that drop.

And it looks like Radomir gets first draw on it but I intend to try to find it too. If nothing else I will find out something about that time in history. Besides its fun . And in honor to the men and women that went through all of this .... I should know about it. grinder

[Paul S.]

Sorry guys, I just realized I had my dates all screwed up.

Twigsnapper was talking about March 1944 and for some reason I was thinking March 1945.

Yeah, France was still occupied in March, 1944. Hell, D-Day wasn't for another three months.

Sorry for the confusion (and I deleted a post which belabored what I now realize was an erroneous point).

You may proceed. Yes, dropped into occupied France in 1944... now where were we...?

--PS

[Mark Culpepper]

My daughter just passed this along for you Paul. As you know since Mr. Twigsnapper got her started researching her Grandfathers history she has quite a file going along those lines and she said that this particular one

http://home.comcast.net/~defactohistori ... /Joes.html

you just might find interesting.

I have been overwhelmed with alot of family problems recently but will be back to you guys soon.

Lisa is very excited about the area of your story now because she has been really studying hard and she hopes that the information she has sent you will be of some use. She said that when Mr. Twigsnapper mentioned those two agents she knew that she had seen thier names somewhere and so sends you the above with her best. Shes getting awfully good at this researching thing.

Oh, and we have another horse in the barn. Go figure. I told her when I get old and grey she can run a stable and the horses will repay me. Maybe? Mark C.

[Mikado14]

Hey Paul, here's what I found down in this hole!


His name is Neva....for "never again". I saved him from some pit bulls.

Mikado

PS: He is really bigger than he looks. Tyranorabbit

I'll post a better one