Thank you for bringing your post back again. Once again you have left me sobbing for the lives lost.
As a pacifist who strongly objects to the hoorahh and flag waving of blind patriotism, I need to occasionally be reminded of why there are times when war is necessary, and thankful for those who gave their lives to protect others.
Well said, Muffin. If anything, this is NOT about patriotism. Patriotism is part of the problem as far as I’m concerned. I’m glad to live where I live (as I’m sure most people here are), but it was sheer chance that got me here. How could one be proud of a roll of the dice?
War IS necessary, at times. The Netherlands had been neutral for almost a century when the Nazis invaded us in 1940. Our army was obviously not up to the task of fighting a well-trained force like the German military. If the allied forces hadn’t arrived, there’s no way we would have been able to kick the Nazis out ourselves. So basically, it’s about being grateful for the liberators help, and the risks they took - and sacrifices they made while freeing us. The fact that these liberators were Canadian, American, or British is rather secondary in this case (the majority where Canadian, BTW, and believe me, there are a LOT of people in the Netherlands born some 9 months after May 5, 1945, who have in recent years been able to track down their unknown father in Canada ;)).
But on the other hand, I do understand stories like Johnny L.A.'s, where an old Belgian man wants to show his granddaughter “the American”, even though he had nothing to do with the liberation of Europe himself. I understand, and I think it’s a wonderful gesture.
Coldfire, you may be pleased to know that this snippet of the poem is recited every night in Returned Servicemen’s Clubs around Australia, where it is known simply as The Ode. Normally, the lights are dimmed, the normal drinking, gambling and festivities of a club are suspended, everyone rises and faces the West (this can vary from club to club) and the following takes place:
Club Director: Ladies and gentlemen the time is now 9 pm…
They shall not grow old, as we that are left grow old.
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.
Lest we forget.
Club Members (in unison): Lest we forget.
Considered kinda corny by many of today’s club patrons, but it never fails to move me.
Interestingly, I believe the original poem contained the word contemn (meaning to mock or scorn), not condemn, but that has changed over the years.
Recently, I went to visit an elderly aunt. Her first husband was a bomber pilot who was shot down over Berlin in WWII. This day, I got the feeling my aunt simply “wanted to talk”. Hours later, I walked out of her quiet suburban home with tears in my eyes. She had showed me his war diary. One of the most moving things about it was its matter of fact, everyman nature. He wrote in it about technical aspects of his bombing missions, about days off, fellow officers, and beer rations. Some parts stood out: *uneventful run tonight. Saw some boys in trouble. Fires below, looked almost beautiful from up here… * To hold this book in my hand, and see this guy’s actual handwriting, documenting each day, one by one, until…
September 6
[nothing]
When I saw those blank pages, I shared my aunt’s tears.
Lest we forget.
As it happens, I was walking in uptown Saint John a couple days ago and stumbled on a library book sale. They were getting rid (the shame!) of a complete collection of LIFE magazines between 1938 and 1972 for a couple dollars per. I managed to snag dates around my parent’s birthdays, but also including the declaration of WW2, D-day, Pearl Harbor, the surrender of the Germans and Japanese, the opening of the Holocaust camps, Midway, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, The Fall of China, Korea, Dienbienphu, The Fall of Cuba, The Berlin Wall, The Cuban Missile Crisis, Kennedy Assassination and subsequent Oswald story, Chappaquidick, Vietnam quagmire, Watergate, The Civil Rights march on Alabama, Little Rock segregation, The Six Day Wars in Israel, COnquering Everest and several issues regarding launching Sputnik and getting Americans in space and on the moon.
What a find! The pictures are incredible, as are the advertisements and rhetoric from the times. Nothing brings back history liek seeing pictures of the beaches of Calais or bodies of the dead stacked up like cordwood. I wish I had the space and money to buy all of the issues but had to settle for selected dates. I might have the issue that shows pictures of the liberation of Holland but am not sure. Thanks for your post.
I must say THANK YOU for the remembrance of our valiant veterans of WWII. Three out of four of my grandparents are WWII veterans. My grandmother and grandfather on the maternal side were both master sergeants in the US Army, him in the Army Air Corps as a mechanic on Liberators and Mustangs, and she was in the WACS. On the paternal side, my grandfather was one of six brothers who all served overseas at the same time. Three of them fought in D-Day, and thankfully ALL six came home. Alive and not much more than scarred. I thought I would share one story that this grandfather loves to tell:
Due to the military regulations about brothers serving in the same unit, or on the same ship, they were scattered all over the world. One brother, Billy, heard that another brother coming in through Omaha Beach had died in the landing. Billy ended up fighting all the way up through and into Germany with his unit. On one particular day, his unit was pinned down by one or more snipers in a tall building. While in a foxhole, he heard the sound of running feet behind his position. He looked up and saw another American unit running up and jumping in the trench with his platoon. A little while later, he turned to the new man next to him, wanting to bum a cigarette. And realized that it was David, the brother that he was told had perished on D-Day. “Old home week” ensued. And both came back.
Usually I would sign off with my normal sig, but this time I think not.
Proud of my forefathers. And honored to know them.
I came across that claim the other day when Coldfire originally posted his question as to the origin of that stanza. I went to look it up for him and found this article. It says, in part…
Not that it really matters - it’s still a beautiful poem. Thank you for sharing it in its entirety, headshok.
And my condolences on the loss of your uncle, TheLoadedDog. He gave his life for our freedom, and no, we will never forget. Thank you for sharing your story. May he rest in peace.
The last time I saw my grandfather, he was in the hospital, on his deathbed, and he told me about the end of the war.
He had been a cook in the 71st Infantry, and on VE Day, he tended bar. Every man who came up for a drink asked that he pour one for himself. He didn’t last long behind the bar; the last thing he remembered was singing on the fire escape as some of his friends helped him to bed.
I asked him about the rest of his service. He didn’t want to talk about it.
He died about a week later.
He wouldn’t tell me because the other stories weren’t the kind to bring a smile to one’s face. He was involved in the liberation of Gunskirchen Lager, one of Austria’s smaller concentration camps. He never told me about it personally, but we have the letter he sent home that day.
What follows is very long and graphic. It may not be something very young or very squeamish people ought to read. But it’s so terribly important, and I felt that this was the time and the place to post it, as we are approaching both Memorial Day and the anniversary of this letter’s writing.
[/quote]
May 20, 1945
In Austria
Dearest Mother,
It’s now 11:30 AM and we just got back from the rest camp. I’ll start this now but we’ll have to go to work soon so I probably won’t get this finished until tonight.
The trip was really an enjoyable one but the person that called it rest camp certainly misnamed it for I’m tireder than I was before I left.
We went up in the mountains to a small lake near Gmunden. It’s only a few miles there. The scenery going up was very beautiful and when we got there we found a very beautiful place to spend our 24 hrs. One kid and I got a boat and fooled around a while before dinner taking pictures. After dinner we got us a light row boat and proceeded to look the place over. For a couple of hours we rowed around then spent the rest of the afternoon sleeping. I could dwell much longer on that part of the trip but I have something that will take a long time to tell about so I won’t say anything more about this.
As soon as we finished supper we went with a Lt. to a concentration camp located very near the resort. It was only one of the many camps the Germans had to use slave labor and gradually dispose of the inferior races so that they would have no trouble with them when they started to rule the world they set up to conquer.
As we entered the camp we met an almost unbearable smell of filth and dirt. We entered the camp and immediately saw it would be impossible to see the camp without a guide. We found one fellow who could speak a little English so he told a Greek to show us around. Lucky for us one fellow in the crowd could speak a little Greek so we got part of the story from him. The rest came from some of the fellows who went thru the place earlier in the day guided by an English speaking Russian. Both parties got the general idea of the workings of the camp but we helped each other out with details.
When it was being carried on in full strength the camp normally held 20,000 crowded slave laborers. These unfortunate ones worked some factories that were built in tunnels in the mountains. These men were extremely crowded in their quarters. Four men for one bed no larger than an ordinary cot.
At the present time there are about 17,000 prisoners there but each day the number grows a little smaller as many of the men are in such bad shape they can never hope to recover.
When the Germans ruled the camp the daily death rate was between 300 and 500. Now it has dropped below 50. They kept shifting the prisoners from one camp to another and most of the men brought in to this camp were in poor health to start with.
We were shown the crematory with the Germans cremated approximately one body every 15 minutes. There were still ashes in the furnace and on the tray where the bodies were placed. What they did with the bodies they didn’t cremate, I don’t know.
We were told they burned the bodies that had a little fat on them first. This fat was saved and poured on the bodies that were nothing more than skin & bones so they would burn faster.
Near the crematory, in the same building was a large room about 10 ft high, 20 ft wide & 40 ft. long where they piled the dead.
The guide said the building had oft times been filled to the ceiling and I don’t doubt this in the least because there were visible foot prints & smudges on the walls & smudges on the ceiling where they had been piled to the ceiling.
There was a dozen or so bodies in the room of these unfortunate people who had died, probably that day.
In a room, to one side of this one where the bodies were kept, was a large operating table where they dissected the bodies for the crematory & removed the gold from the teeth, etc. Another room was rigged up for showers only they weren’t showers. This room was for the people who couldn’t work. They were taken to this room to shower but when they turned on the water, no water came out. It was gas. These people unknowingly killed themselves.
In another building they took them to take hot showers. This happened during the winter. After the hot refreshing shower, they would take them outside, scantily dressed to work, freeze & perish.
When the Germans were working these people, they had to get up at 3 AM. They worked until 4 or 5 PM. For such a days work these slaves of heathens received a small cup of synthetic coffee, a part of a cup of dirty potato peeling soup & and small piece of brown bread. It’s no wonder these people perished as flies. During the last days of Nazi ruling they received no food.
We were informed these people are now getting 10 times as much food as they did before they were liberated. True indeed they are still getting very little to eat in comparison to us, but if they were to eat a big meal chances are they would die very shortly because they are in such terrible condition.
At night they had to be crowded into the filthy barracks by 7 PM and no one was allowed to leave until 3 AM the next morning, regardless of what their reason might be. Anyone making any noise after 7 PM disappeared immediately. Even a cough would cause this dismissal. Usually this dismissal meant death. Sometimes, for no apparent reason, the guards beat whole barracks of men.
There were many nationalities in the camp but they were segregated from one another.
During our tour I saw many walking skeletons. They looked like zombies. It amazed me to see and know that people in such shape could live. Words can never describe that sight and at times I wonder if pictures could catch all the agony and misery those poor people were going through. I’m certain that you would never forget it if you cold only see it but not seeing it, it’s hard to believe. Some of the men were naked. They were so skinny and in such bad shape that clothing touching the body was so painful it was unbearable. Some of the men could have easily weighted 200 lbs or more when they were in good health but now they weigh between 50 and 70 lbs. You will probably say it’s impossible. I thought so too but I’ve seen it so I can believe it. These people were so weak they could hardly totter around and they could only do that with great determination. Some couldn’t move at all.
All flesh was gone from their bodies. Their eyes were deep set & staring. Their senses of pain & etc has disappeared. The skin fit so tight over their skeletons it was plain to see the shape of the pelvic bones & the construction of their body. With one hand, I could have easily reached around their arms or legs at any place except the joints. The joints looked so large one might think they were deformed at a first glance but a second look revealed the pathetic truth. They were mere walking skeletons. Their back bones protruded far & it was easy to see the ribs on the back up to where a shoulder blade covered them. Some of those men could not have measured more than 3 or 4 inches through the abdomen. They were suffering immensely but none used their much needed strength to complain for they could see others around them in as bad shape who were also keeping their pains and miseries to themselves.
Others in slightly better condition walked around with few clothes on to cover their bony structures. Few were in decent health!!
Before the Americans came these people received no medical care at all. It was cheaper & easier for the Germans to kill rather than doctor.
There is now an emergency hospital set up there with American doctors & nurses. Initially the hospital was put up to care for 500 but with additional cots, beds, etc they are caring for 2100 bedfast patients. Most of these 2100 are in such bad shape they can never recover. All that can be done for them is make them comfortable during their last few days. Some, with the aid of medical science, will survive. They will be invalids the rest of their lives.
It was impossible to judge age by looking but I was told they were all ages. The young & old looked alike.
The able bodied were burying their dead and slowly cleaning up the filth to make the place half way decent to live in until other accommodations can be made elsewhere.
Shortly before the Americans came the Germans wanted these slaves of the master race to go into one of the tunnels in the mountains so the US Air Force wouldn’t bomb them. Somehow, these people were tipped off that the place was charged with dynamite and going in the tunnel would mean their death. They refused to go and the 60 SS troopers left in charge cold do nothing about it. After the Americans came investigations proved this to be true.
Mother, this is more or less an outline of what I saw and was told by the people who had been victims of these vicious heathens. I could go more in to detail about lots of it but it is so fantastic and hard to believe I won’t take the time just now.
This was the work of the cruel, unhumane and unhuman members of the so called master race who had no mercy for human life and suffering.
This is the way they tried to exterminate the inferior races from the face of the earth so they wouldn’t be bothered with them when the master race had conquered the world and started to rule it. This was the work of the defeated Germans of World War I and their offspring. It is the work of the supposedly, “Super Race”, our armed enemies of a few days ago. Comrades of the prisoners of war held in the United States who have been so well fed, clothed, sheltered, and doctored in the land of freedom. They made slaves of their prisoners while we gave them decent working hrs & money for working for us when we held them captives.
What should be done with these unmerciful killers and war criminals. The firing squad or gas chamber would be much too good for them as it would be a quick and painless way to end it all. They should suffer for their crimes against humanity as they have caused others to suffer. One can’t even start to comprehend the suffering they have caused until one sees it and then one can’t fully comprehend the immense suffering and misery they have caused the world. It’s a problem we must face point blank, turning our backs on no detail. We must insure the world that the German nation will never again rise to power.
We must do this to preserve the future of a land and people we love so much because if there were to be another world war we might be the ones who suffered.
Mother, this is getting to be quite long so will sign off for now and write another little note later
Your loving son,
Ed
p.s. Please keep this letter for me.
Thanx
ELC
[/quote]
When he wrote that, Gramps was 20–the same age I am now. I’m just a little girl, a college kid. I haven’t saved anyone’s life or raised a gun to an enemy. Neither has anyone else I know. I can’t imagine it, and he lived it.
Ed came home safely and went to Purdue on the GI bill. He taught special education classes in the schools of his hometown south of Terre Haute. He married one of the local girls, and he farmed the same land his father tended.
He fathered my mother and my two uncles. He led 4-H clubs, took troubled children into his home, and sent two of his own children through fine, expensive colleges.
He was proud enough to pop his buttons when his first grandchild (that’s me) was born. He took me fishing, helped me bottle-feed newborn lambs, and spoiled me rotten.
He smoked cigarettes and chewed tobacco most of his life. He had half of his left lung removed in the early 1970s. He suffered from emphysema since before I was born, and died a few weeks shy of that wonderful, awful letter’s 50th birthday.
I miss him all the time, but especially when I read that letter he wrote when he was just a kid like me, off saving the world.
I just dug out the April 28, 2001 edition of the Globe and Mail newspaper, published in Toronto. It had a story called “Remains from a war unearthed”. Accompanying the story is an old photo of four young Canadian soldiers, heavily armed, in white robes with white hoods for fighting in the snow. The photo was taken in the Netherlands in January 1945, after the battle for Kaplesche Veer. One soldier has what looks like a sniper rifle, another has a big BREN gun, and the other two have those automatic sten guns. Three of them are smiling.
At that time Canadian soldiers had occupied the south shore of the Maas River and the Germans were holding the north shore. An island called Kapelsche Veer, in the river, (south of the town of Dussen, near the intersections of roads A27 and A59)was a German outpost and the Germans had cemented in their positions on the dikes. Three attempts by Polish and British troops had failed to take the position and 339 of these troops had been killed or wounded. The Lincoln and Welland Regiment from St. Catherines, Ontario, launched an attack. The Canadians were young and had little training. The attack was made using canoes to cross the river under a mortar smoke screen. The wind picked up and river ice caught the canoes and “the Canadians were decimated”. The fighting went on for five days and the regiment lost 50 dead, 133 wounded. A veteran described the pile of bloody white winter uniforms that “kept getting higher and bigger” outside the first aid station.
Dutch army personnel are now cleaning the island of munitions, including grenades and unexploded 500 pound bombs. They found the remains of Private Victor Howie, who died there at the age of 24. More dead Canadians are being found in the mud, and they are, and will be, identified by dental records and buried with full military honours in the Canadian War Cemetery at nearby Bergen op Zoom. So far three Canadians’ and 26 Germans’ remains have been found on the island. “Every year, the Dutch recovery service identifies the remains of 10 to 15 soldiers from the Second World War, most of them Germans.”
So anyway, Coldie, it would seem that the Dutch are treating human remains from the war with respect, and have procedures in place for the proper handling of the dead soldiers. It’s a great photo, I tried scanning it, but newspaper pictures don’t scan well.
Juniper2000, thank you so much for sharing your grandfathers letter. That must have been very hard for you, reading it again. I can’t imagine, though, how it must have been for your grandfather to actually witness these atrocities. And to think there’s thousands of vets like him that carry stories like these with them for all their lives… it boggles the mind.
Al Zheimers, I received your scanned picture, thank you. And thank you for outlining the battle over the Kapelsche Veer. It gives us an idea of how hard it actually was for these young men. The odds they were up against.
Yes, we do have elaborate procedures of dealing with the remains of found soldiers. Even the German ones are identified and if possible returned to their families for reburial. After all, 99% of these Germans were just young men who were sent off to fight a “higher cause”, not unlike the liberators. Sure, the cause was despicable, but for them it was a matter of “fight or die”, in many cases. They, too, deserve a proper burial, IMHO.
Oh my God, Juniper… you mentioned your grandfather’s role in liberating a concentration camp once to me… but that letter, Jesus, that’s like something out of my worst nightmares. I am speechless. Thanks so much for the insight.
I promise I will think of your grandpa when I am in Austria this summer.
is that a not insignificant portion of the Dutch were Nazi sympathizers.
With 3,372 rescuers, Holland claimed more rescuers of Jews than any other country. Yet no other country in Western Europe including Germany, lost a larger percentage of its Jewish population than Holland.
Of course, Disney and Ford were pro-Hitler in America, so I guess there was enough of that going around here in America too.
Then there’s always the Vichy regime in France, executing abortionists for crimes against the state while sending Jewish children to their deaths.
Lots of hypocrisy to go around everywhere I suppose.
A notable exception is Denmark. They rescued almost all Jewish Danes and the King himself put on a yellow star to protest the Nazis.
The Danes rock.
Errrr… welcome to the Boards, I suppose. You waited 8 months to post this message?
While this isn’t a debate[sup]1[/sup] on whatever country took the right (most right?) course of action regarding the Jews, it is certainly true that a significant amount of Dutch people (openly) supported the Nazis in WWII. Their motives? Who knows. Self-preservation? Fear? Blatant fascism? A mixture of all?
All I know is that they were dealt with quite harshly when the war was over, and that they were a minority.
I take offense to your implication that my posts in this thread are “what the Dutch like to talk about”. I take no personal credit whatsoever for anyones actions during WWII. Be it a Dutch resistance member, a Canadian liberator, or whomever. I started this thread to serve as an example. An example of how we, in our modern world, tend to take things for granted. Our freedom, that young men and women died for.
This is by no means meant to paint the Dutch in a more positive light than would be historically accurate. If anything, the OP doesn’t glorify the Dutch at all, but rather the Allied Forces that liberated us.
[/quote]
[sup]1[/sup] = If you are interested in debating such an issue, which is entirely possible, you’d better try our Great Debates forum.
i didn’t mean to offend, only to throw out a counterpoint to the conversation.
we Americans tend to see WWII in black and white, no greys, and we tend to be very self-congratulatory about it.
the german people weren’t all evil and the allies certainly weren’t all good.
To believe otherwise raises a couple of issues for me: It creates the idea that a noble war is a possibility rather than an oxymoron and it suggests that you can group people into types based on nationality.
Fair enough.
Since the day we in the U.S. honour those who gave their lives for the freedom we enjoy is this weekend, I was going to revive this thread if no one else did.
virtual stranger: If you would please read this thread, I think you will see that your post was in very poor taste. You appologized and Coldie accepted, so I for one will not try to add any fuel to a fire that has, I hope, been extinguished.
But there is one thing I have to point out:
[/quote]
A notable exception is Denmark. They rescued almost all Jewish Danes and the King himself put on a yellow star to protest the Nazis.
[/quote]
This is a link to a snopes article about that. According to the cite, it didn’t happen. But “[a]lthough this legend may not be true in its specifics, it was certainly true enough in spirit.”
This thread is absolutely amazing. Thank you, Coldfire. Reading the stories that everyone has to share should be the true purpose of Memorial Day, and all remembrances throughout the world, to remember to NEVER let the same tragedy happen again, and honor the soldiers that won our freedom with their lives And thank you, Coldfire (and others), for remembering the Germans who also suffered.
I have my own story to share, although it’s markedly different from most people’s here. My parents were both born in 1940 in Germany, and remember the war through a child’s eyes and memories. My mother remembers taking her little sister to the bomb shelter while my grandmother (a nurse) helped people trapped in houses. They remember standing in long lines to receive rations, and the rations running out before it was their turn. One of my grandfathers was a doctor in Russia. He witnessed the suffering German soldiers went through there–they were attacked by a horrible bacteria, the cold, not to mention the actual battles. My grandmother remembers the fear of being raped by French soldiers after the war. (Not that it was only the French–I guess they were living in the French region after the war.) War is the most horrible deed humans can ever commit, and its horror does not end after the war itself ends. It lives on in the actual after-effects, and in the bitterness that results. I understand when people accuse the Germans for the crimes they committed, whether actual war crimes, or for their passivity. But I am so grateful when other people understand why it happened, and forgive.
Well, that’s all folks, (I apologize that it’s not well written.)
(hijack)
one more thing, just mho: patriotism is exactly why Hitler was stopped. Soldiers didn’t know about the Holocaust at first, just that one country seemed to be trying to take over Europe. That scared all of the countries, so they fought Hitler and Germany. Someone said that WWII was not about patriotism, and that patriotism is, in effect, bad; but they forget that patriotism does have its benefits.
(/hijack)
Julia
Since the rescue of the Danish Jews have been brought up, I guess this would be a suitable place to mention the German diplomat Georg F. Duckwitz.
In 1943, he worked as a marine attache in the German embassy in Copenhagen, where he heard of the German plans and apparently decided that this was not something he could keep to himself. Duckwitz sent a warning to Hans Hedtoft, Danish politician, who in turn passed it on to leaders of the Jewish community, and the rest, as they say, is history.
Mr. Duckwitz survived the war and was to became the first post-war German ambassador to Denmark.
And before anyone starts going overboard in favourably comparing Denmark with other Nazi occupied territories, it should be mentioned that the Nazis were relatively lenient in Denmark due to - among other things - a widespread policy of cooperation. More Danes died fighting for the Nazists in Russia than fighting against them in Denmark and around the world, unfortunately.
S. Norman
thanks for the snopes pointer, i hate it when i perpetuate urban legends. my only defense is that i was told that story by a Dane. lame. i should’ve known better.
anyways, how’s this for more iconoclastic “bad taste”:
<rant>
pearl harbor, here we go again… more “greatest generation” Tom Brokawism. woo hoo! USA! USA! USA! Homer J. Simpsons of America, celebrate! America, you’re doomed to endlessly relive WWII one glitzy, self-congratulatory movie at a time, all inconvenient, uncomfortable history gracefully elided for your viewing pleasure! This has been sanitized for your protection.
doesn’t anyone ever tire of the jingoist nationalism?
do they really see history as being that one-sided?
don’t they see the intimate connection between patriotism and colonialism?
movies I’d like to see made:
“Hiroshima: perspective of Japanese collateral damage”
“Dresden, ahhh mommy it burns! it burns!”
“My Lai, thanks for saving our village”
“Chile, Iran, Cuba, etc. Why America doesn’t give a damn about other peoples’ right to self-determination: it isn’t in our economic interest.” (title too long, it’ll never play in Peoria)
“Africa, well you raped my continent for the last 500 years, where exactly do I get my 40 acres/mule?” (that really won’t play well in Peoria)
“Wounded Knee. Oops, where’d all the native-Americans go?”
</rant>
the bitch of it all is that i know i’m going to not only see pearl harbor but love it. that’s the power of hollywood.
and being a computer geek i too have an involuntary pavlovian drool reaction to those breath-taking CG images.
it really is hopeless, and yet strangely cathartic.
all at once.
Ehm - virtual stranger - this thread was supposed to be a tribute to veterans and other courageous people from a very bleak period of history. Your latest post would perhaps be more fitting elsewhere ?
S. Norman
i’ll rejoin the mainstream…
Gee-willikers those Nazis sure were Bad, and thank God we opened a courageous can of allied whoop-ass on them, and in the nick of time too!
[yawn]