The Finns are below, but for a smattering of my pathetic social life as told through Baseball Cards see http://bowltilithurts.com/articles/carded-by-life--2 I'm like the CarrotTop of sports bloggers. Enjoy!!
Taking part in any war, let alone one of the trench variety, takes, as Mick Foley once put it, Testicular Fortitude. That’s why the ferocity and heroism of the combatants in the 1939-40 Winter War between Finland and Russia, as described in William R. Trotter’s tome A Frozen Hell, is so surprising.
Taking part in any war, let alone one of the trench variety, takes, as Mick Foley once put it, Testicular Fortitude. That’s why the ferocity and heroism of the combatants in the 1939-40 Winter War between Finland and Russia, as described in William R. Trotter’s tome A Frozen Hell, is so surprising.
Commencing on November 30th and fought entirely
on Scandinavian soil, much of it within a mortar round of the Arctic Circle,
this prelude to WWII must have had the smallest testicles per man of any battle
this side of the Grey Cup.
Of course the smaller the potatoes the bigger the steak
looks and in this case size did matter. For while the Finns had the fight in
the dog, the Russians had more dog(s) in the fight. So like a Mastiff on a
Maltese it was just a matter of time.
The best thing Mr. Trotter does here is understand this was
a small conflict that can be contained in a small book- 278 pages including
notes and bibliography. But that doesn’t mean it fails to capture the
atmosphere or the lessons of the war.
Thus we learn in detail the sacrifice and heroism of any
number of men with Double-A’s and umlauts in their names. Plus get a vivid
sketch of the “Father of Modern Finland” Marshal Mannerheim, an iron-willed,
German trained autocrat who can only be conjured up as wearing one of those
helmets with the point on top favored by 1960’s motorcycle gangs that
terrorized the highways but could never seem to get the best of Billy Jack or
Frankie Avalon.
Not
the kind of helmet you want to forgetfully leave on, say, the front seat of
your car…
As for lessons we learn never trust your neighbor no matter
how friendly. Aid to the Finns was consistently blocked by both Norway and
Sweden who professed their neutrality despite angry (though probably empty) threats
from France and England leaving one to wonder how the Swiss do it. But most
important Trotter points out the ineptitude of the recently Stalin-purged
leadership of the Russian forces which leads to sweeping changes that
ultimately and just barely kept Moscow and Stalingrad from being knee-deep in
strudel.
Recommended for all with an interest in WWII the best part
of A Frozen Hell is you can relive this bitter, sub-zero conflict with
your feet propped up and your testes toasty! Just as God intended…I’m guessing…
I
know this girl is Swedish, but now….I’m fin(n)ished…and suddenly sleepy…
I believe it was lead-throated crooner Tom Waits who said, “I’d
rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy.” But after reading
The Lobotomist by Jack El-Hai I can see the benefits of a little of
both.
The Lobotomist is basically a biography of Dr. Walter
Freeman the man who pioneered and promoted lobotomy in the U.S. from the 1930s
to the 1970s. As legacies go even Edsel Ford chuckles at Freeman, but at the
time there were extenuating circumstances surrounding and some benefits of this
controversial surgery.
That’s because up until the arrival of Dr. Freeman on the scene
the general therapies for the severely mentally handicapped included swinging
beds, water treatments that could make the Freedom March through Selma, Alabama
look like kids under a sprinkler, electro-shock and injecting patients with
enough insulin to cause a hypoglycemic coma. Lobotomy wasn’t much better, but
it did show promise among patients with Neuro-Syphilis, a disease so horrible
its AMA proscribed cure at the time was to inject the patient with malaria.
Frontal Lobotomy…As Jerry Seinfeld
once put it if the procedure they’re performing on you makes other doctors want
to crowd around and watch…well, that can’t be good.
So in this light you could say at least Freeman gave it a
shot. Problem was he kept giving it a shot long after safer more effective
treatments were developed. In fact during the late 40s and 50s the not-so-good
Doctor took off on a tour of rural Mental Health facilities that saw him
performing a dozen or more “icepick jobs” a day.
So if as the Mathematician/Philosopher Pascal wrote, “All
man’s problems stem from his inability to sit silently in a room alone” then
Walter Freeman did his part to make the world a better place. Hey at least it
made things a little quieter and as any parent can tell you sometimes that’s
all you ask for.
And
to think all this poor bastard wanted to do was wet his whistle and watch the
ballgame…
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passed out on my laptop. Back soon with something about Russians I’m thinking…
