An American Lion

Goofballs kissing floozies, circa 2010Oh, Father really did express his displeasure when he saw the troops come home from World War II. He was not happy about it at all. I'll get to my real point in a minute, but indulge me some home-spun crazy here for a moment.

Father, as many people already know, was too old for World War II and he was fairly wealthy at that time. His work in the defense sector had been taking off for several years by the time the war broke out in 1939. He had been selling everything he could get his hands on to the Spanish and to the Greeks. He would, literally, sail from Spain to Greece every eight or nine days, trying to arrange deals and exchange weapons (which at that time were obsolete or surplus from the First World War).

When the Americans joined the war in earnest, Father had to stop dealing with the European powers and look for another market. Arming the South Americans was a bust--they weren't really in fear of being conquered by anyone and he was "missing" out on the action, as it were. No one wanted the chemicals he was selling and no one wanted to buy the family's bread trucks, which had been turned into riot control vehicles for use against unions and food riots. People needed planes, tanks, artillery and flamethrowers.

Father developed a few prototype flamethrowers and the Army ended up using them, albeit late in the war (that's how procurement went in those days). He was at Aberdeen in Maryland, trying to figure out what to do next when someone told him to get on a plane. He did. The plane flew to North Africa, which had just exited the war by way of leaving hundreds of thousands of Germans and Italians in Allied hands. The ports were wrecked, the coastal areas were devastated, and much of the interior was a wasteland of abandoned vehicles. That's where Father struck a deal with the War Department. He would scour the region, find the most innovative German weapons, and put them on a ship. Then, he would take them to Aberdeen and help break them down and figure out what he could and couldn't turn into a better weapon for American use.

Well, there were no ships, so he, literally, found one that the Germans had abandoned when they were trying to run the gauntlet and escape to Sicily. This is how The Admiral Hassenpfeffer fell into our hands and remains the mainstay of our family's assets (it has been completely retro-fitted twice now). Father cut open the rear deck, removed the rear gun turret, and manhandled a working crane onto the thing with the help of a few stevedores who were otherwise out of work. He loaded the thing with captured German weapons, found a dozen men to sail it with him, and they took off for Aberdeen.

That was 1943.

They didn't make it home until October of 1945 because, in order to avoid the German U-Boats, they had to sail from Gibraltar down around the Cape of Good Hope, completely across the Indian Ocean, pass south of Australia and New Zealand, and then make the run through the Straits of Magellan, then back up the east coast of South America.

Which, of course, was where they were attacked and nearly sunk, twice, by the same German U-Boats that would have missed them entirely had they simply sailed from Gibraltar to Maryland. Father was stuck in Auckland for about eight months because of the rationing of fuel for privately held ships. He was detained numerous times and nearly had his cargo taken away from him by the Chileans. I also think his extended stay in the Dominican Republic was related to gambling, not a customs-related controversy, but nevertheless.

So, to sum it all up--with the war over, and Father in possession of a ship, a number of obsolete, rusted German weapons, and a bill for the War Department totaling over $300,000 in shipping costs, he was in hot water with this fellow named Truman who had become the President. Truman, upon hearing that Father was insisting on being paid, flew into a rage and ordered him arrested for incompetence and treason.

Father spent the next eight or nine years battling with the government, going into hiding, going around the world to get away from the authorities, and all that mess. In fact, had Eisenhower not pardoned him, he might still be in hiding. 

Now, there is the matter of how was I born. Well, in late 1943, my Mother was instructed to meet him in New Zealand because he was lonely and "none of the local women met his standards." This was no small task on her part. She complied, she stowed away on cargo planes and hid in crates, she knocked out sentries and found herself nearly captured by the Japanese, she escaped, she hid on a submarine and posed as a Dutch sailor named Jens, she jumped off of a freighter in Auckland harbor, she found him nearly ready to hang himself, they had relations, my Mother flew home, and, in June of 1944, I was born. By then, Father was somewhere near Fiji, trying to find a propeller or a turbine.

Why, you ask, do I tell you this? Well, it puts this into some sort of context for the Rogers family, et al:

Americans will gather for a group "kiss-in" in Times Square and buglers across the country will play the military funeral tune "Taps" on Saturday in the first national day of remembrance for the World War Two generation.

This year's event comes on the 65th anniversary of what Americans call V-J Day, marking the victory over Japan that ended the war in 1945.

The celebration was immortalized in Alfred Eisenstaedt's photograph of an unidentified sailor kissing nurse Edith Shain in Times Square. A group "kiss-in" recreating the moment is scheduled to take place beside a 25-foot (7.5-meter) statue of the couple.

If World War II hadn't ended so quickly, we might very well have been just a tad bit more prominent, a heck of a lot richer, and I wouldn't have had to grow up wondering why my Father was hiding from the FBI in a Rhino's ass.

We aren't going to go into that today.