Memorial Day

Charles Loxton was a small man, no taller than 5’6”, and was born in 1899.  This means that when he fought in the muddy trenches of France during the First World War, he was no older than 17 years old — Delville Wood, where he was wounded, took place in July 1916.

Seventeen years old.  That means he would have been a little over sixteen when he enlisted. In other words, Charles must have lied about his age to join the army — many did, in those days, and recruiting officers winked at the lies.  After all, the meat grinder of the Western Front needed constant replenishment, and whether you died at 17, 18 or 19 made little difference.

Why did he do it?  At the time, propaganda told of how the evil Kaiser Wilhelm was trying to conquer the world, and how evil Huns had raped Belgian nurses after executing whole villages.  Where Charles lived as a young boy, however, the Kaiser was no danger to him, and no German Uhlans were going to set fire to his house, ever.

But Charles lied about his age and joined up because he felt that he was doing the right thing.  That if good men did nothing, evil would most certainly win.

It’s not as though he didn’t know what was coming:  every day, the newspapers would print whole pages of casualty lists, the black borders telling the world that France meant almost certain death.  The verification could be found in all the houses’ windows which had black-crepe-lined photos of young men, killed on the Somme, in Flanders, in Ypres, and at Mons.

He would have seen with his own eyes the men who returned from France, with their missing limbs, shattered faces and shaky voices.  He would have heard stories from other boys about their relatives coming back from France to other towns — either in spirit having died, or else with wounds so terrible that the imagination quailed at their description.

He would have seen the mothers of his friends weeping at the loss of a beloved husband.  Perhaps it had been this man and not his father who had taught him how to fish, or how to shoot, or how to cut (from the branches of a peach tree) a “mik” (the “Y”) for his catapult.

But Charles, a 16-year-old boy, walked out of his home one day and went down to the recruiting center of the small mining town, and joined the Army.

When years later I asked him why he’d done it, he would just shrug, get a faraway look in his blue eyes, and change the subject.  Words like duty, honor, country, I suspect, just embarrassed him. But that didn’t mean he was unaware of them.

So Charles joined the Army, was trained to fight, and went off to France.  He was there for only four months before he was wounded.  During the attack on the German trenches at Delville Wood, he was shot in the shoulder, and as he lay there in the mud, a German soldier speared him in the knee with his bayonet, before himself being shot and killed by another man in Charles’ squad.  At least, I think that’s what happened — I only managed to get the story in bits and pieces over several years.  But the scars on his body were eloquent witnesses to the horror: the ugly cicatrix on his leg, two actually (where the bayonet went in above the knee and out below it), and the star-shaped indentation in his shoulder.

The wounds were serious enough to require over a year’s worth of extensive rehabilitation, and they never really healed properly.  But Charles was eventually passed as fit enough to fight, and back to the trenches he went.  By now it was early 1918 — the Americans were in the war, and tiny, limping Private Charles Loxton was given the job as an officer’s batman: the man who polished the captain’s boots, cleaned his uniform, and heated up the water for his morning shave every day.  It was a menial, and in today’s terms, demeaning job, and Charles fought against it with all his might.  Eventually, the officer relented and released him for further line service, and back to the line he went.

Two months later came the Armistice, and Charles left France for home, by now a grizzled veteran of 19.  Because he had been cleared for trench duty, he was no longer considered to be disabled, and so he did not qualify for a disabled veteran’s pension.

When he got back home, there were no jobs except for one, so he took it.  Charles became, unbelievably, a miner.  His crippled knee still troubled him, but he went to work every day, because he had to earn money to support his mother, by now widowed, and his younger brother John.  The work was dangerous, and every month there’d be some disaster, some catastrophe which would claim the lives of miners.  But Charles and his friends shrugged off the danger, because after the slaughter of the trenches, where life expectancy was measured in days or even hours, a whole month between deaths was a relief.

But he had done his duty, for God, King and country, and he never regretted it.  Not once did he ever say things like “If I’d known what I was getting into, I’d never have done it.”  As far as he was concerned, he’d had no choice — and that instinct to do good, to do the right thing, governed his entire life.

At age 32, Charles married a local beauty half his age.  Elizabeth, or “Betty” as everyone called her, was his pride and joy, and he worshipped her his whole life.  They had five children.

Every morning before going to work, Charles would get up before dawn and make a cup of coffee for Betty and each of the children, putting the coffee on the tables next to their beds.  Then he’d kiss them, and leave for the rock face.  Betty would die from multiple sclerosis, at age 43.

As a young boy, I first remembered Charles as an elderly man, although he was then in his late fifties, by today’s standards only middle-aged.  His war wounds had made him old, and he had difficulty climbing stairs his whole life.  But he was always immaculately dressed, always wore a tie and a hat, and his shoes were polished with such a gloss that you could tell the time in them if you held your watch close.

Charles taught me how to fish, how to cut a good “mik” for my catapult, and watched approvingly as I showed him what a good shot I was with my pellet gun.  No matter how busy he was, he would drop whatever he was doing to help me — he was, without question, the kindest man I’ve ever known.

In 1964, Charles Loxton, my grandfather, died of phthisis, the “miner’s disease” caused by years of accumulated dust in the lungs.  Even on his deathbed in the hospital, I never heard him complain — in fact, I never once heard him complain about anything, ever.  From his hospital bed, all he wanted to hear about was what I had done that day, or how I was doing at school.

When he died, late one night, there was no fuss, no emergency, no noise; he just took one breath, and then no more.  He died as he had lived, quietly and without complaint.

From him, I developed the saying, “The mark of a decent man is not how much he thinks about himself, but how much time he spends thinking about others.”

Charles Loxton thought only about other people his entire life.

In Memoriam

Bygone Broads 4

Here we go with another “pairing” of a bedroom-poster-worthy car and a woman of similar value.  This time, it’s the De Tomaso Pantera:

And Morgan Fairchild:

 

And yes, she got older and plumper (but in all the right places, if I may say so):

I have no words, either way.

All-American Goodness

Reader Brad_In_IL suggests a theme for a shooty weekend:

“Seeing that this is Memorial Day Weekend, I’ve decided to only shoot pieces which are uniquely and distinctly American. Therefore…

“Saturday will be my Browning / Stoner 2023 Memorial Day Commemorative Shoot, and I’ll be shooting the 1911 and the AR-15… and maybe some .22 pistol (also Browning). No 9mm this weekend… Georg Luger (Austrian) will have to take a rest.” 

An excellent thought:  bringing a little background to the typical “Oh what should I shoot today?”  question that plagues us all.  And going All-American on both gun and cartridge makes it a little more fun, especially as it relegates the 9mm Europellet and the 7.62x39mm Commie to the “Later, Furrin Bastards!” category.

To make life even more interesting, let’s set an arbitrary criterion of “guns and cartridges from before 1900“.

Not so easy now, is it?

Here’s what I would take:

Winchester 1894 (.30-30/.30 WCF or .45 Colt/.45 Long Colt or .44-40)
…and of course Marlin’s and Henry’s versions would be welcome, too.

Browning 1885 High Wall (.45-70 Gov)

Colt Single Action Army (.45 Colt/.45 Long Colt or .44-40)

And of course, there’s some plinking to be done:

Marlin Model 39A (.22 LR)

Winchester Mod 61 (and clones)
(clones allowed because Winchester stopped making them because they’re idiots)

Now, I’m not saying I actually own any of the above (because of that Tragic Canoeing Accident on the Brazos a few years ago), but you have to admit, there’s a whole lotta shooty Murkin goodness on that list.

Your suggestions for the festivities in Comments, as always.

Pushing And Shoving

It is worth noting that almost every instance of an ordinary citizen going crazy and killing government agents has come as a direct assault on his property rights.  In some cases it’s been linked to eminent domain seizures — e.g. that farmer in Missouri who gunned down two local government surveyors (and then shot himself immediately after)  over a “right of way” infringement on his land.  (I can’t find a link to the incident, but it happened at least ten years ago and I still remember the salient details.)  Here’s a more recent situation of Gummint getting too big for its britches (although as yet, there’s been no gunplay because Amish).

Anyway, all that’s unimportant to this post, because enter Fuckface Kerry:

John Kerry claimed that US farm confiscations are not off the table, as he stated that small farms contribute significant greenhouse gasses.

And no doubt he got his loony idea here:

Recently, the governing body of the European Union officially endorsed measures to compel farmers to vacate their lands as part of the EU’s Natura 2000 scheme, which categorizes farms as significant emitters of nitrogen. Under the plan, farmers would be offered 120 percent of their farm’s value through a “buyout” program. However, those who decline this offer would face the risk of being forcibly removed from their land without any financial compensation.

Farmers in Holland are undergoing the most radical regulations that are causing the culling of herds and destroying crops.

Because the Dutch farmers are unarmed, of course they have to resort to peaceful protests by blocking highways with their tractors.

Our American farmers (and their many supporters) are not similarly disadvantaged, and I think that anything that Fuckface starts is going to make the Cliven Bundy episode look like a Sunday church picnic.

Pass the popcorn, Simon.

News Roundup

And speaking of That Kind Of Thing:


...says the fat, unfunny mulatto lesbo.

Anyway:

...unless, of course, the “Disruptive Event” includes the satellite system.  Although I have to say, isolating the Senate can’t be altogether a Bad Thing, crisis or no.

As for disruptive events, from the Dept. of Global Cooling Climate Warming Change:


...hands up all those who think that the Eyetie cop should have just drowned the little bitch right there… oh:


...all of you, huh?

From the Gloomy Commonsense Dept.:


...seriously?  Fill in the blank:  “This will _____ happen” and I’ll spot you the “n”, “v” and “r”.


...aaaah, that’s so adorable.  Again:  I’ll spot you the “n”, “v” and “r”.


...see the above two items for my response.

In International News:


...don’t worry:  a couple more Democrat presidencies and a few more Democrat-controlled Congresses, and we’ll soon make Venezuela and the others look like garden spots.

From the Dept. Of Crime (Non-Political Division):


...and there’s lots more happiness at the link.  (Point of order:  it’s not a Righteous Shooting because the choirboy survived the encounter.)


...all methods of which can be easily thwarted simply by disabling that stupid and unnecessary “keyless entry” system, and using the old “Club”.

And speaking of criminal assholes:


...stop teasing me, Jimbo;  you know how excited I get with this kind of thing.

Now on to the news that matters:


...and off you go to Linkland.

And in more INSIGNIFICA:

 

  …

Finally, some health tips:


...oh, we all know about Yanet Garcia, don’t we?  Just in case:

Yummy Yanet — although I have to say that her derrière  is a tad bulbous for my taste.  Others may differ.

Now:  never mind the weather, get ready to enjoy the weekend.