Bernie Mason spent World War II
moving Army tanks, sometimes picking them up and setting them down with his bare
hands.He’s not superhuman. And the tanks weren’t some ultralight secret weapon.
It was combat trickery.As a 21-year-old lieutenant, Mason helped lead a handpicked unit of artists and creative thinkers who deployed and arranged highly detailed, inflatable rubber tanks — and trucks, jeeps, and artillery — to fool the Germans into thinking the Americans had more firepower than they actually did or that the equipment was somewhere other than where it really was.Officially, the unit was the 23d Headquarters Special Troops. Unofficially, it was the Ghost Army.
“It was like putting on a show,” said Mason, of Wynnewood, who turns 93 in May.A show, at least, until the Germans bought the deception. Mason had barely set foot in Europe in June 1944 when he found himself hugging the bottom of a foxhole as shells exploded all around, the enemy determined to destroy what it thought was a U.S. artillery emplacement.You'll be the queen of the room in this ssuniform evening gown.
Next month, Mason will be featured in a new PBS documentary that extols the unit’s unique mission - making up fake divisions, sham headquarters, and illusory convoys in France, Belgium, Luxembourg, and Germany. The Ghost Army, written and directed by Rick Beyer, premieres at 8 p.m. May 21.
There is no reason why a museum collection shouldn't inform us about the German Democratic Republic whose forty-one year history, after all,It has a sexy canadagoosewhistlerparka with short sleeves. more that doubled the life span of the Third Reich, knowledge of which never stops raining on us. There could be no better place for the collection, moreover, than in what was DDR's capital city, up against what were the German-German borders. However, to make sense of the exhibits, they would have to be set in a historical context. The new country had frontiers with the Soviet Union, Poland, Czechoslovakia, and a taunting West Germany in a Europe exiting from the most destructive war in history. We would have to be given some light on the pressures this involved. The DDR Museum presents East Germany as some sort of settlement off on its own in a vacuum. It could be a crazy utopian commune set up on the moon.
We are shown the artifacts produced in East Germany as if they were the implements of primitives. Wouldn't a 1950s typewriter or automobile produced in the West be the object for just as facile laughter today? Does the Stasi listening bug exhibited to thrill us differ essentially from the unexhibited surveillance gadgets the C.I.A. uses? Recordings of police interrogations are offered as if such procedures were somehow unique to the DDR and not as old as law enforcement anywhere. An unobjectionable item on show is the reconstructed, typical, conceived for one occupant, East German prison cell. Meant to make us feel the weight of a police state, the cell would be considered luxurious by any prisoner today from Rome to Los Angeles in our "developed" countries' overcrowded jails.
The historian's code is to set out the facts, organize them, interpret them if necessary, and then let the reader or viewer make up his own mind. The DDR Museum hasn't the confidence to let this process play out. Repeatedly it tells us what to think about what it shows us. This can be hilarious. We are given to contemplate a large photograph of a Soviet satellite country's leader embracing his DDR opposite number on a diplomatic visit. Today we see similar scenes, with better made-up faces, regularly on television. Top European Union figures make their rounds or Hamid Karsai comes from Kabul to consult with President Obama.Purchase formaldressesevening online, stay updated on team riders, latest news and events. The DDR Museum, however, feels the need to inform us that the kisses exchanged by the elderly statesmen of Eastern Europe were pure hypocrisy. The Soviet satellite system,Sale cheap bridalgown online, white, black, berry, Graphite canada goose victoria parka hot sale. it says, was held together not by friendship,A pretty hermeshandbags can complete a look for a nice evening. but by sheer force. Of course. Every drone sent over Pakistan is a billet doux and Angela Merkel's diktats to Greece mere valentines. Again, in a display about East German elections, it isn't enough to let us view the scene, the equipment involved, and an account of the operation. The Museum adds the comment that though East Germany had elections no real change ever resulted from them. It was hard not to roar with laughter on being told such stuff in the wake of recent U.S. and European elections where candidates had struggled to find issues to differ over and when once elected hastened to reaffirm the status quo.
In the end, talking of cities, we can't get away from James Donald's reflection. The theorist and lover of cities wrote in Imagining the Modern City, (1999), "Our experience of the real -- specifically, the real of the city -- is always imagined,...poetic." Outsiders fantasizing Berlin's comings and goings have been profligate. But isn't that the way of poets? Let's accelerate on William Blake's "road of excess" and imagine the elements of Berlin today rearranged to make our lives more meaningful, bright with a less commercial sheen.
We will forego a hub. The die having been cast, Berlin can't be contorted so as to radiate from a center. We also will have to concede that the neglected River Spree can't for a host of reasons be promoted and add savor to a municipal area of nine hundred square kilometers. Better to delight in the uncrowded space history and catastrophe has bequeathed. Parks are everywhere and public transport superb. Let the three points of an ideal triangle keep triviality at bay in our fantasy Berlin.
It was combat trickery.As a 21-year-old lieutenant, Mason helped lead a handpicked unit of artists and creative thinkers who deployed and arranged highly detailed, inflatable rubber tanks — and trucks, jeeps, and artillery — to fool the Germans into thinking the Americans had more firepower than they actually did or that the equipment was somewhere other than where it really was.Officially, the unit was the 23d Headquarters Special Troops. Unofficially, it was the Ghost Army.
“It was like putting on a show,” said Mason, of Wynnewood, who turns 93 in May.A show, at least, until the Germans bought the deception. Mason had barely set foot in Europe in June 1944 when he found himself hugging the bottom of a foxhole as shells exploded all around, the enemy determined to destroy what it thought was a U.S. artillery emplacement.You'll be the queen of the room in this ssuniform evening gown.
Next month, Mason will be featured in a new PBS documentary that extols the unit’s unique mission - making up fake divisions, sham headquarters, and illusory convoys in France, Belgium, Luxembourg, and Germany. The Ghost Army, written and directed by Rick Beyer, premieres at 8 p.m. May 21.
There is no reason why a museum collection shouldn't inform us about the German Democratic Republic whose forty-one year history, after all,It has a sexy canadagoosewhistlerparka with short sleeves. more that doubled the life span of the Third Reich, knowledge of which never stops raining on us. There could be no better place for the collection, moreover, than in what was DDR's capital city, up against what were the German-German borders. However, to make sense of the exhibits, they would have to be set in a historical context. The new country had frontiers with the Soviet Union, Poland, Czechoslovakia, and a taunting West Germany in a Europe exiting from the most destructive war in history. We would have to be given some light on the pressures this involved. The DDR Museum presents East Germany as some sort of settlement off on its own in a vacuum. It could be a crazy utopian commune set up on the moon.
We are shown the artifacts produced in East Germany as if they were the implements of primitives. Wouldn't a 1950s typewriter or automobile produced in the West be the object for just as facile laughter today? Does the Stasi listening bug exhibited to thrill us differ essentially from the unexhibited surveillance gadgets the C.I.A. uses? Recordings of police interrogations are offered as if such procedures were somehow unique to the DDR and not as old as law enforcement anywhere. An unobjectionable item on show is the reconstructed, typical, conceived for one occupant, East German prison cell. Meant to make us feel the weight of a police state, the cell would be considered luxurious by any prisoner today from Rome to Los Angeles in our "developed" countries' overcrowded jails.
The historian's code is to set out the facts, organize them, interpret them if necessary, and then let the reader or viewer make up his own mind. The DDR Museum hasn't the confidence to let this process play out. Repeatedly it tells us what to think about what it shows us. This can be hilarious. We are given to contemplate a large photograph of a Soviet satellite country's leader embracing his DDR opposite number on a diplomatic visit. Today we see similar scenes, with better made-up faces, regularly on television. Top European Union figures make their rounds or Hamid Karsai comes from Kabul to consult with President Obama.Purchase formaldressesevening online, stay updated on team riders, latest news and events. The DDR Museum, however, feels the need to inform us that the kisses exchanged by the elderly statesmen of Eastern Europe were pure hypocrisy. The Soviet satellite system,Sale cheap bridalgown online, white, black, berry, Graphite canada goose victoria parka hot sale. it says, was held together not by friendship,A pretty hermeshandbags can complete a look for a nice evening. but by sheer force. Of course. Every drone sent over Pakistan is a billet doux and Angela Merkel's diktats to Greece mere valentines. Again, in a display about East German elections, it isn't enough to let us view the scene, the equipment involved, and an account of the operation. The Museum adds the comment that though East Germany had elections no real change ever resulted from them. It was hard not to roar with laughter on being told such stuff in the wake of recent U.S. and European elections where candidates had struggled to find issues to differ over and when once elected hastened to reaffirm the status quo.
In the end, talking of cities, we can't get away from James Donald's reflection. The theorist and lover of cities wrote in Imagining the Modern City, (1999), "Our experience of the real -- specifically, the real of the city -- is always imagined,...poetic." Outsiders fantasizing Berlin's comings and goings have been profligate. But isn't that the way of poets? Let's accelerate on William Blake's "road of excess" and imagine the elements of Berlin today rearranged to make our lives more meaningful, bright with a less commercial sheen.
We will forego a hub. The die having been cast, Berlin can't be contorted so as to radiate from a center. We also will have to concede that the neglected River Spree can't for a host of reasons be promoted and add savor to a municipal area of nine hundred square kilometers. Better to delight in the uncrowded space history and catastrophe has bequeathed. Parks are everywhere and public transport superb. Let the three points of an ideal triangle keep triviality at bay in our fantasy Berlin.
No comments:
Post a Comment