When The Fight To Turn The World Upside Down Was In Full Flower- With The Doors The Unknown Soldier In Mind

When The Fight To Turn The World Upside Down Was In Full Flower- With The Doors The Unknown Soldier In Mind 

By Lance Lawrence  

[As of December 1, 2017 under the new regime of Greg Green, formerly of the on-line American Film Gazette website, brought in to shake things up a bit after a vote of no confidence in the previous site administrator Allan Jackson (aka Peter Paul Markin in the blogosphere) was taken among all the writers at the request of some of the younger writers abetted by one key older writer, Sam Lowell, the habit of assigning writers solely to specific topics like film, books, political commentary, and culture is over. Also over is the designation of writers in this space, young or old, by job title like senior or associate. After a short-lived experiment by Green designating everybody as “writer” seemingly in emulation of the French Revolution’s “citizen” or the Bolshevik Revolution’s “comrade” all posts will be “signed” with given names only. The Editorial Board]

[Although I am a much younger writer I today stand in agreement with Bart Webber and Si Lannon, older writers who I admire and whom I have learned a lot from about how to keep it short and sweet but in any case short on these on-line sites. Originally I had agreed with both men as far as Phil Larkin’s, what did Si call them, yes, rantings about heads rolling, about purges and would have what seems like something out of Stalin’s Russia from what I have read about that regime were  dubious at best. Now I am not sure as I have heard other younger writers rather gleefully speaking around the shop water cooler about moving certain unnamed writers out to pasture-“finally” in the words of one of them.

In any case the gripe the former two writers had about the appropriateness of this disclaimer above or whatever it purports to be by the "victorious" new regime headed by Greg Green and his so- called Editorial Board is what I support. As Bart first mentioned, I think, if nothing else this disclaimer has once again pointed told one and all, interested or not, that he, they have been “demoted.”  That I too, as Si pointed out, chafed as an Associate Book Critic and didn’t like it am now just another Everyman and don’t like it. This is the second time I have had the disclaimer above my article so I plead again once should be enough, more than enough.

In the interest of transparency I was among the leaders, among the most vociferous leaders, of what has now started to come down in the shop as urban legend “Young Turks” who fought tooth and nail both while Alan Jackson (aka Peter Paul Markin as blog moniker for reasons never made clear, at least to me) was in charge and essentially stopping young writers from developing their talents and when we decided that Allan had to go, had to “retire.” (I am sure Phil Larkin will take those innocent quotation marks as definite proof that Allan was purged although maybe I should reevaluate everything he has said in a new light.) But I agree with Bart and Si’s sentiment that those on the “losing” end in the fierce no-holds barred internal struggle had taken their "beating" and have moved on as far as I can tell. That fact should signal the end of these embarrassing and rather provocative disclaimers. Done. Lance Lawrence]

“The Unknown Soldier”    

Wait until the war is over
And we're both a little older
The unknown soldier

Breakfast where the news is read
Television children fed
Unborn living, living, dead
Bullet strikes the helmet's head
And it's all over
For the unknown soldier
It's all over
For the unknown soldier
Hut, hut, hut ho hee up
Hut, hut, hut ho hee up
Hut, hut, hut ho hee up
Comp'nee, halt
Present, arms
Make a grave for the unknown soldier
Nestled in your hollow shoulder
The unknown soldier
Breakfast where the news is read
Television children fed
Bullet strikes the helmet's head
And, it's all over
The war is over
It's all over
War is over

Well, all over, baby
All over, baby
Oh, over, yeah
All over, baby

Ooh, ha, ha, all over
All over, baby
Oh, woah, yeah, all over
All over, heh

Songwriters
Robbie Krieger;John Densmore;Jim Morrison;Ray Manzarek

From The Pen of Frank Jackman

There was no seamless thread that wrapped the 1960s up tightly. A thousand things, or it seemed like a thousand things, came together in pretty rapid succession to draw down in flames, for a while anyway although none of us though it would on be for only a while just as we thought that we would live forever, or at least fast, the dread red scare Cold War freezes of our childhood. But you could traces things a little, make your own “live free” categories of the events that chipped away the ice of those dark nights.

Start in with the mid-1950s if you like with the heat of the black struggle for some semblance of civil liberties down south (and some sense for equality up north), the first break-out of music with the crowning of rock and roll as the wave of the future (black rhythm and blues, scat, rockabilly mixed all stirred up), the “discovery” of teen alienation and angst exemplified by movie star James Dean, who lived fast, and died fast a metaphor that would work its way through youth culture over the next generation. An odd-ball mix right there. Then start to throw in the struggles against the old authority, the old certitudes that had calmed our parents’ lives in places like Frisco town where they practically ran the red-baiters in the HUAC out of town, but of course the biggest event that opened the doors for liberals, radicals, hell even thoughtful conservatives was the sweet breeze coming down the road from Boston with the election of Jack Kennedy.   

That event opened up a new psyche, that it was okay to question authority, whatever the limitations and shortness of the Camelot times with the struggles against some hoary things like segregation, the dead penalty, nuclear proliferation, the unevenness of life which would get propelled later in the decade with fight for women’s liberation, gay liberation, and the fight against the draft, the damn war in Vietnam that drove a nail into the heart of the generation. There were more things, cultural things and experimentations with new lifestyles that all got a fair workout during this period as well.    

Plenty of us in retrospective would weigh the various combinations of events differently in figuring out how the uprising started just as plenty of us have our specific dates for when the tide began to ebb, when the mean-spirited and authoritarian began their successful counter-offensive that we still live with for not taking the omens more seriously.

And then we have the photograph that graces this short screed. This photograph is almost impossible to imagine without some combination of that hell broth mix stirred up in the 1960s. Three self-assured women comfortable with the loose and individualistic fashion statements of the day from floppy hats to bare legs, bare legs that would have shocked a mother. Uncomfortable about the damn Vietnam war that was eating up boyfriends, brothers, just friends at a heavy rate and they unlike their mothers who came through World War II waiting patiently and patriotically for their military heroes to come home, come home in one piece, have a very different sense of the heroic. A sense of the heroic going back to ancient times when one group of women demanded that their men come home on their shields if they had to rather than speak of defeat and others providing a distant echo for these three women pictured here who refused their soldier boys any favors if they went off to war. More, much more of the latter, please.                     

Elegy Upon Hearing Of The Death Of Superman-“With Batman vs. Superman: Dawn Of Justice” (2016) In Mind

Elegy Upon Hearing Of The Death Of Superman-“With Batman vs. Superman: Dawn Of Justice” (2016) In Mind  

By Seth Garth

[Perhaps only a person, a man in this case, like Seth Garth who can trace his forebears gaggle of poets, bandits, stone-cold junkies, whores, whoremongers, whoremongers’ wives, midwives, witches, odd-ball aficionados, troubadours, minstrel singers, blackguards going back to medieval times in ancient France, going back on his mother’s side it is said and which explains a lot of things to the bandit/troubadour/poet exiled in his own land François Villon. Back to France when it was all cut up into pieces with little castles and moats and the world too. Only a guy like that could write a prosaic elegy without tears for a legendary figure like Superman, a super-hero whose time had passed. Site manager Greg Green]

                                                                               t

Signpost: December 7, 1941 for those who squeaked by the Great Depression hunger and cold that provoked and pervaded the land and who still charged forward slogging through the muddy beaches and forests of World War II, or waited breathlessly at home. Signpost: November 22, 1963 where every schoolboy and schoolgirl knew exactly where he or she was when the news came through the PA systems of a million schools portending I have a dream Martin death and seek a newer world Robert one too to end Camelot children dreams and Summer of Love drugs, sex and rock and roll. Signpost: 9/11 no year needed yet when everybody learned that in this wicked old world that there were people, there were unchecked forces who sought end time, sought the garden without regard. Signpost: March 26, 2016 the day when a candid world first heard that super-hero for the ages, an other-worldly guy, an alien of a different sort, Superman, had finally cashed his check.         

Who knows how it happened, how it could possibly happen when all the world figured he was invincible, was always to be with us. The world became far shorter than by a head when he laid down that beautiful head of his. (Now laid out in white cross National Cemetery to be wreathed at Christmas time, flagged on Memorial Day and Armistice Day after boom-boom salutes). 

Man of steel, man of steel, man of steel, man of maximum steel.

Not born of woman, a stranger in our midst, churning cornfields into flapjacks, odd duckling in a hero-less world in desperate need of heroes. Nameless except silly earthling name horn-rimmed glasses wimpy goof Clark Kent, a dweeb, nerd, and every other foul name tyrant editor Perry White could lay on him when he came up with some of the lamest stories in newspaper history to cover his tracks, running ruses around who he was and who had deposited him pod-like in Middle America corn-fed fields of dreams.       

Mild-mannered, mild mannered, maximum mild-mannered

Caped crusader in a world filling up with vermin, with the dregs, with oceans full of flotsam and jetsam robbers and robber-barons. Filling up too with a crowd of would-bes, would be super-heroes like they could come off the assembly line ready for action. Ready to fight the creeps, the crooks, the fixer men, the gay guys who worshipped him in silent vigil rooms. Junkie-fixer men crying hero, hero worship me unto the end days, unto the return to the garden. Every sullen batman, ironman, wonder woman, black widow, hulk, thor, and a million other hucksters and hustlers, con artists claiming king or queen-ship. Looking for the man chance.      

Able to leap tall buildings, able to leap tall buildings, able to leap maximum tall buildings.

Made young boys weep for their inadequacies, cowering in corners waiting to be saved, to be born again. Made grown women wet with his bulging muscles and his devilish ways. Little did they know that timeless he was winding down, had lost a step or two, told that he was losing some of his brain power by respected John Hopkins doctors and Walter Reed medics like many aliens do when they hit the American shore and try to turn to vanilla.    

Faster than a speeding bullet, faster than a speeding bullet, faster than a speeding maximum bullet. 

I, I who hear the great world moan death attendant, I who speak for the unwashed masses, I who sing the great Whitman America we are your sons song, got caught off guard, didn’t know that he had had more than a few run-ins with the law, was selling high grade ammo to nefarious parties, was getting a few more people angry every time he took to the cape for a caper. Worried and angry since the collateral damage, a new term unfamiliar to him that he told Lois Lane one pillowy night, he didn’t give a damn about as long as he got one bad guy less to the notched world wasn’t over-shadowing the ratio. Was getting so people were calling for his arrest and exile back to Pluto or wherever they thought he was from (so hungry for a savior in a Daily Planet survey inspired by that brute Perry White only one in ten could name his planet of origin-sad)

Kryptonite, kryptonite, maximum kryptonite. 

Had missed in my plainsong that Superman had turned junkie and was selling himself to the highest bidder, toying with a holy goof named Lux Luthor who had more than one screw loose, who had a stable of poor boy super-heroes to unload on an unsuspecting world. Had a guy named batman wound up so tight that he was ready to take the caped crusader on one on one for cheap money and a shot at Lois Lane if Wonder Woman was already spoken for. Beat the bejesus out of Superman on the quiet one night and Clark Kent was AWOL for days around the Daily Planet nobody thinking it odd.

More powerful than a locomotive, more powerful than a locomotive, more powerful than a maximum locomotive.

The way the story went around, went after the coppers fucked around with the truth and the media bought the damn thing hook, line and sinker, was he was an orphan bastard of some Krypton mutant seeking revenge, seeking his death, since his mother shipped him off to joyride Earth. Ceremonial bitch father had a kryptonite-edged blade and rammed the thing straight through the kid, gone in a minute, done, cooked shamrock green from what they told on the 6 o’clock news.      

It’s a bird, it’s a plane, its Superman, it’s a bird, it’s a plane, it’s Superman, it’s a bird, it’s a plane, it’s maximum Superman.  

Yeah, it was a sad world day the day that guy laid down his head, the day we heard Superman had finally cashed his check. 

From The Living Archives Of Boston Veterans For Peace-They Ain't Your Grandfather's Veterans-By Site Manager Greg Green-First Night Against The Wars In Boston New Years Eve Day-A Ralph Morris-Sam Eaton Story

From The Living Archives Of Boston Veterans For Peace-They Ain't Your Grandfather's Veterans-By Site Manager Greg Green-First Night Against The Wars In Boston New Years Eve Day-A Ralph Morris-Sam Eaton Story

By Site Manager Greg Green  

“Everybody knows the story about how Ralph Morris and Sam Eaton met and how they got there and how they became VFP stalwarts, right?” asked Don Mack, local Boston chapter coordinator just as the post-“First Night Against The Wars” party was about to begin at his house. The event held each year at the Boston Public Library in Copley Square on the afternoon of New Year’s Eve had become a staple of the yearly activities of the organization since it had been formed by a coalition of peace and social action groups about a dozen years before. After what was usually a cold to bitter cold afternoon’s work the participants and other friends and supporters would meet at Don’s house in Brighton for the annual New Year’s Eve party which would bring in the new year in a somber if not sober way.  

The reason that Don had asked if the people present knew of the Ralph and Sam story is because Frank Jackman, usually pretty knowledgeable about the personal histories of the local members had mentioned to somebody at the anti-war stand-out within Don’s hearing that the pair had grown up together in Carver and had both been in Vietnam, although not together and not at the same times. That got Don to realize that Frank either had forgotten the particulars of their story or had had a senior moment, or both. When Don got a mixed set of answers to his question he realized that perhaps it was the time and place to tell the story, or rather have the pair who were present at the party as usual tell the story as a very good way to show a lifetime of commitment to the anti-war and social justice movements and how that came about. Don had remembered that one night when they were at Jack’s over in Cambridge after an anti-Raytheon weapons-maker stand-out that both Ralph and Sam had declared that if had not been for the Vietnam War and their reactions to what it had done to their respective sensibilities that they would not be sitting in that room ready to bleed out once again their collective story.

Here is what Ralph, then Sam had to say that night to the couple of dozen people gathered around their seats:         

I was strictly a working- class kid growing up in the rough and tumble Tappan Street section of then, as now, run down Troy upstate New York right next to Albany, the state capital. Was the son of a then struggling owner of a small high-end electronics components company which my father had scratched to make a go of. Growing up though we were pretty poor before my father caught a few breaks from the major employer in the area, General Electric, GE, when they were starting to outsource high tech electronics stuff. As you know, when Dad retired, I took over after working many years for him and now that I am retired my son, my youngest son since Ralph III didn’t want to do it finding a career as a senior software engineer has taken over.   

The important part of growing up poor, fairly poor if not as bad as Sam who can tell his own story later was that I shared all the prejudices of my father and the neighborhood’s about things like patriotism, the horrible Russians who were ready to take our bread and freedom away, and especially about race, about keeping black people out of the Tappan Street neighborhood. Maybe those ideas were not just among the poor of Tappan Street and more pervasive in society than we thought but they were definitely a driving force on the social front. I am ashamed to admit it now and it is hard to say but the only word I knew for blacks, for black people, before I went into the Army was the “n” word. It was around the neighborhood like that too. The worse though was that when I was in high school I stood shoulder to shoulder with my father and other neighbors when a black family tried to move into the neighborhood. To keep them out come hell or high water, and we did. Did keep them out.

Given what I just said you can probably guess that it was no big deal for me when it came time to go in the Army, especially as I went in during the early days of the build-up of the damn Vietnam War, the war which would turn me around but which then was just something to do to fight the local commies in Vietnam there who wanted to snatch our bread and freedom. My father and most of the neighborhood fathers had been veterans, proud veterans of World War II and so the idea of serving was seen as a duty. I remember my father refusing a neighborhood guy, my friend Jimmy Snyder’s father Rudy a job at his shop because he had not served in their war. After high school having nothing else going and prodded on by my father to go and learn a trade, learn electronics, then pretty primitive compared to now so I could come work for him after the service. As I just mentioned in a round about way I did that except through the GI bill not through “learning” the trade in the Army. There was never any thought about waiting to be drafted or stuff like that. It just wasn’t done among the guys I grew up with. It was more likely that guys would go into the Army after getting in trouble with the law and taking the Army as the “easy way out” when the judge gave them a choice between the military and jail.       

I signed up, signed up under the gentle guidance of that bastard recruiting sergeant who is probably still laughing at me for believing word one about what he had to say. He had promised me that I would get first crack at electronics school which I mentioned was in its infancy then at least as compared to now. My idea, boosted by my father was that I would “learn a trade,” his trade for after the Army. As you also know and this is no lie just then, just 1967 or so the war in Vietnam was getting ratcheted up by Johnson, McNamara and the gang of hawks who ran the show then and the demand for infantrymen, grunts, cannon fodder as I, we, learned to call it later when we finally figured out what the hell we really were I was sent to AIT after basic training down at Fort Dix, down in New Jersey. AIT meaning Advanced Infantry Training, meaning just enough training to put your ass in trouble, big trouble when Charlie, the name we had for the VC, the Cong, the whole shooting match of soldiers under the authority of the North Vietnamese.        

After AIT, after the inevitable orders to report at Fort Lewis in Washington state for transport to Vietnam, that “inevitable orders” just then since Uncle Sam, a mythical figure who actually got his start out in my part of New York, just then was in desperate need of replacements for the infantrymen who were being chewed up and spit out like crazy when Charlie pulled the hammer down. I had no more thought of not going through with my orders than the man in the moon. Although I was uneasy about what I had been hearing as the war dragged on it kind of went over me. There was no way in my life that I would join the various resistance and refusal movements either civilian or military at the time. If anything I saw things the other way, saw the “hippies” and resisters as cowards and unpatriotic. That was then, that was before the baptism of fire.

I won’t go through my experiences in Vietnam, not for this crowd, and I don’t feel any need to. This is how I have put it for a long time. I did things, saw others do things and most importantly saw my government do things to people I had no quarrel with than even now I cannot live down although working the peace movement for this long time helps some. I was pretty shattered coming back to the “real world,” had a very hard listening to guys like my father who were still red meat hawks, hell, he would support the war even after all was lost. Got by some kind of osmosis into something of a semi-hippie mode when I met a girl who was a wild child in Albany. Overall though outside of the drugs and alcohol things were pretty hazy and loose, I was drifting.      

Then in early 1970 I was walking down the street near Russell Sage College, that wild child girlfriend was going to school there, or pretending to, in those days things were pretty loose then on the campuses when I saw, not heard, a group of guys, mostly guys, some in military garb, some looking the classic hippie look of the time walking silently down the street to some kind of marching cadence.

I saw a huge banner being carried in front by about four guys all in military garb which read “Bring The Troops Home”-signed Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW). There were other signs, home-made signs but that one stuck out. As did the only voice you could hear over the megaphone. “Any Vietnam vets who hated the war, hated what they did, join us, fall in.” And without hesitation I did. Right after the march I joined VVAW, learned more about the group, learned about the war I had fought in than I had known before and I had fought there and took part in all the demonstrations and actions they sponsored in Albany or in Washington, the ones I could make since I was taking some classes in electronics through the GI bill. That was why I was in Washington, D.C. during May Day, 1971 when National VVAW called for us to try one desperate attempt to shut down the government if it would not shut down the war. Everybody knows, and if you don’t, I was arrested that May Day and thrown in RFK stadium, the overflow holding area we were put in. That is where I met Sam when he saw my VVAW button and we started talking, talking about how I, and he, had gotten into that jam. Sam can now tell you his story, but let’s take a little break and have some wine and some food.                

And after the break with a couple of people drifting away from the talk Sam gave his story:

Its funny that I am talking about this experience since I thought everybody kind of knew about Ralph and me, thought it was kind of an unspoken legend. But maybe it is good to run this against and maybe since I am the writer of the two of us, although when Ralph gets motivated his can whip my ass writing anti-war stuff sometimes, I will write it up and put it on the website, or in the archives. I really think that one of the things that has held Ralph and me together in this antiwar business is that we came essentially from the same kind of backgrounds, working class, working poor so we knew a few bumps already unlike some of the anti-war activists from other organizations. I grew up south of here, down in Carver, down in what was then called “bog” country, down where they grew cranberries in the bogs used to product the crop.         

They called those who worked the bogs, my family, “boggers” and that was not meant as a compliment, kind of drew what I would later call the class line between us and “them” in town life. It came up in strange ways like I remember liking a girl in high school who also liked me but when she found out I was a “bogger,” or maybe her parents did that was that. Stuff like that.  

The big thing you have to know, the thing that got this whole story business rolling was that while I am a proud member of VFP I am not a veteran, am as you know we have a “supporter” member, an associate. The reason I am not a veteran, although in other circumstances I might have been, was that in 1965 just as the Vietnam War was beginning to take its bite out of a whole generation which can be felt even today my father, my “bogger” father had a massive heart attack and died leaving my mother alone with four sisters and me. I might add that whatever caused the heart attack my father was a drunk, drank away many a dollar in the town bars and elsewhere. Even now I bristle when I say this. In any case I was the sole male supporter of my family and the local draft board of the time exempted me from military service for that reason once I graduated from high school in 1967. The way I supported my mother and sisters was working in Mr. Carey’s print shop on Washington Street during high school and later when I graduated. As some of you know after my “wild days” in the early 1970s I would take over that operation from Mr. Carey when he retired and run it until my son who is much more tech savvy than I could ever be knowing which way the wind was blowing in the printing business took it over a few years ago.         

If you think about it there is nothing in that profile which would lead anybody to believe, to believe today at this far remove, that I would wind up as a long-time peace activist with some arrests for civil disobedience and other things. I, like Ralph, and many others if you heard their stories was as patriotic as the next person, drew in the full propaganda about the red menace and other Cold War bullshit. Believed that we needed to destroy the commies root and branch, go after them to save the world. Believed fully in that domino theory that was touted then as the reason to go to war in Vietnam even if I couldn’t explain the theory then. For me the thing the sole thing that switched me on the war and then on a lot of other things was the death in Vietnam of my best friend from second grade on-Jeff Mullins. Sorry, I still shed a tear every time I say his name, get worse every time I pass the town memorial or I go to the Vietnam Memorial in Washington where his name is etched in black granite with thousands of other names.    

Like I said I had known Jeff from early childhood so I knew him pretty well, knew that when he said something it stuck. He had been gung-ho to go into the service as much for getting the hell out of “bogger” Carver to see the big wide world as he said and away from horrible parents as patriotic fervor but that was serious factor. He also bought into all the myths that I had as I mentioned before. I wish I could talk about him more about his dreams, but you get the idea.  A few months before Jeff was killed down in the Mekong Delta while on patrol, he had sent me a letter, a long letter basically foretelling his doom and his hatred for the lying war. Made me promise that if anything happened to him and he couldn’t get back to tell the real story, his story about the goddam war that I was to do so. Once we got the message that he had been killed I went crazy -and went to work.

Of course I knew there were people against the war, you could not watch the news at least in Boston without seeing somebody demonstrating against the war or resisting the draft which despite my lucky status I still supported or maybe resisting to the thing is what bothered me, but I was clueless how you would contact anybody especially down in Carver where I don’t think anybody was publicly against the war. So I started from scratch a funny scratch when you think about it since what I did was go to Cambridge one Saturday afternoon to see if anybody knew anything about the anti-war struggle. I hear laughing, knowing laughing but like I say I didn’t know anything about what was happening except that something was. I had never been to Cambridge before or at least I wasn’t aware of it so the whole thing was not only an adventure but very informative as well. As it turned out the best way then to find out what was happening was to look at a place like the world-famous kiosk in the Square at the posters that were plastered on poles or anything that would take paper and glue, or wallpaper paste. What I noticed was that there was to be a big SDS, Students for a Democratic Society, meeting later that afternoon to plan something for what was called the Spring Offensive. SDS then pretty notorious and another grouping that I had previously scorned but I figured I was young enough to fit in. 

That was decision was decisive in a lot of ways since at that meeting people were encouraged to speak up about why they were there and what they expected to do for the Spring Offensive. There were probably a hundred people in I think it was Memorial Hall, or a large room off of it and when I stood up and trembling told the crowd my reason, the death of Jeff Mullins I was applauded which I couldn’t understand until later because I thought they would hate the idea that I was doing this to support a fallen soldier. That was one off the great lies of the war that these anti-war people for the most part were hostile to the private solider. Although it would not be until about a year later that there would be any serious attempts to link up to disgruntled and war-weary soldiers. In any case off of that meeting I met Jim Thorn, the big local activist who kind of took me under his wing, taught me plenty about the ins and outs of the war and how it got out of hand and got a lot of young guys who had plenty of other stuff to do with their lives killed for no good reason. Two or three weeks later I went to my first anti-war demonstration in downtown Boston, on the Common, sponsored by SDS and a bunch of other groups, none still around at least in that form. That demo was the first leg of a planned Spring Offensive to stop the war and I was very happy to walk the walk holding a photograph of Jeff with the legend “No More.”        

That is the important part and I would attend many more such events in Boston, New York and Washington. Along the way I got my speaking voice, spoke from the heart about my mission for Jeff, and would sometimes read a few passages of that Jeff letter urging me to fight the good fight if he didn’t make it back. Along the way I got as frustrated as almost every young person and got progressively more radicalized as the Cambridge milieu went further to the left and with more aggressive tactics. That led up to my going to Washington with a Cambridge group called the Red Brigade to stop the government if it would not stop the war. And the fateful meeting with Ralph after seeing his VVAW button. Sometime let Ralph and me tell you about the details of that meeting but tonight we are about how we met. And remember Ralph was the real deal antiwar Vietnam veteran and I was and am a supporter of VFP except not a veteran. Let’s have a drink.       

***********

Save The Date- First Night Against The Wars Stand-out Copley Square Boston New Year’s Eve Afternoon December 31^st  

The Smedley Butler Brigade, VFP, Chapter 9 has helped sponsor along with other peace and social action groups the annual (this the 13^th year) First Night Against The Wars stand-out at the Boston Public Library entrance across from Copley Square on December 31^st, New Year Eve’s afternoon starting around noon until about five o’clock.

  

Usually the weather is cold on that day so we ask people to volunteer for an hour or two during the day. Dan the Bagel Man has his food for activist operating to keep us in hot drinks. If you are coming and have a flag or a poster please bring whatever you have with you. Hope to see you there. 

On The Anniversary Of Newly-Fledged German Communist Leader Rosa Luxemburg And Karl Liebknecht-Oh, What Might Have Been-From The Archives Of Marxism-Honor Lenin, Luxemburg and Liebknecht-Karl Liebknecht's Statement In Opposition To The German War Budget In 1914

On The Anniversary Of Newly-Fledged German Communist Leader Rosa Luxemburg And Karl Liebknecht-Oh, What Might Have Been-From The Archives Of Marxism-Honor Lenin, Luxemburg and Liebknecht-Karl Liebknecht's Statement In Opposition To The German War Budget In 1914

On The 100^th Anniversary Of Newly-Fledged German Communist Leader Rosa Luxemburg And Karl Liebknecht-Oh, What Might Have Been-


By Frank Jackman

History in the conditional, what might have happened if this or that thing, event, person had swerved this much or that, is always a tricky proposition. Tricky as reflected in this piece’s commemorative headline. Rosa Luxemburg the acknowledged theoretical wizard of the German Social-Democratic Party, the numero uno party of the Second, Socialist International, which was the logical organization to initiate the socialist revolution before World War II and Karl Liebknecht, the hellfire and brimstone propagandist and public speaker of that same party were assassinated in separate locale on the orders of the then ruling self-same Social-Democratic Party. The chasm between the Social-Democratic leaders trying to save Germany for “Western Civilization” in the wake of the “uncivilized” socialist revolution in Russia in 1917 had grown that wide that it was as if they were on two different planets, and maybe they were.

(By the way I am almost embarrassed to mention the term “socialist revolution” these days when people, especially young people, would be clueless as to what I was talking about or would think that this concept was so hopelessly old-fashioned that it would meet the same blank stares. Let me assure you that back in the day, yes, that back in the day, many a youth had that very term on the tips of their tongues. Could palpably feel it in the air. Hell, just ask your parents, or grandparents.)

Okay here is the conditional and maybe think about it before you dismiss the idea out of hand if only because the whole scheme is very much in the conditional. Rosa and Karl, among others made almost every mistake in the book before and during the Spartacist uprising in some of the main German cities in late 1918 after the German defeat in the war. Their biggest mistake before the uprising was sticking with the Social Democrats, as a left wing, when that party had turned at best reformist and eminently not a vehicle for the socialist revolution, or even a half-assed democratic “revolution” which is what they got with the overthrow of the Kaiser. They broke too late, and subsequently too late from a slightly more left-wing Independent Socialist Party which had split from the S-D when that party became the leading war party in Germany for all intents and purposes and the working class was raising its collective head and asking why. 

The big mistake during the uprising was not taking enough protective cover, not keeping the leadership safe, keeping out of sight like Lenin had in Finland when things were dicey in 1917 Russia and fell easy prey to the Freikorps assassins. Here is the conditional, and as always it can be expanded to some nth degree if you let things get out of hand. What if, as in Russia, Rosa and Karl had broken from that rotten (for socialism) S-D organization and had a more firmly entrenched cadre with some experience in independent existence. What if the Spartacists had protected their acknowledged leaders better. There might have been a different trajectory for the aborted and failed German left-wing revolutionary opportunities over the next several years, there certainly would have been better leadership and perhaps, just perhaps the Nazi onslaught might have been stillborn, might have left Munich 1923 as their “heroic” and last moment.  

Instead we have a still sad 100^th anniversary of the assassination of two great international socialist fighters who headed to the danger not away always worthy of a nod and me left having to face those blank stares who are looking for way forward but might as well be on a different planet-from me. 

Markin comment:

The name Karl Liebknecht stands on its own and needs no additional comment from me. Except this. Every time some bourgeois congressman decides to get up the nerve to vote against one of the various parts of the American war budget just remember he or she, at worst, at least at worst for now, might not get reelected. Karl Liebknecht's stand led to charges of treason and jail. Yes, Karl Liebknecht's  name stands on its own and needs no additional comment from me.

Workers Vanguard No. 972
21 January 2010

Honor Lenin, Luxemburg and Liebknecht

(From the Archives of Marxism)

In the tradition of the early Communist International, each January we commemorate the “Three Ls”: Bolshevik leader V.I. Lenin, who died on 21 January 1924, and revolutionary Marxists Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg, who were assassinated in Berlin on 15 January 1919 by the reactionary Freikorps as part of the German Social Democratic government’s suppression of the Spartakist uprising.

Although not well known today, Karl Liebknecht’s name is synonymous with intransigent opposition to one’s “own” bourgeoisie in the crucible of imperialist war. Despite his individual opposition to German imperialism from the outset of World War I, on 4 August 1914 Liebknecht submitted to the discipline of the Social Democratic Party and voted for war credits along with the rest of the party fraction in the Reichstag (parliament). But Liebknecht became increasingly vocal in his opposition to the party’s betrayal of the proletariat. When the party fraction resolved to support a new vote for the Kaiser’s military budget at the Reichstag session of 2 December 1914, Liebknecht broke ranks and cast the sole vote opposing war credits.

Liebknecht was prohibited from delivering a statement motivating his vote on the floor of the Reichstag or having it printed in the body’s official record. Barred from the German press, the statement was published in a Dutch socialist newspaper and translated into English in the Socialist New York Call. Below we reprint the statement as it appeared in the February 1915 issue of the U.S. leftist journal The Masses. Liebknecht’s stand inspired proletarian militants in Germany and internationally, not least in Russia, where the working class under the leadership of the Bolshevik Party would seize power in the October Revolution of 1917.

In a May 1915 leaflet, Liebknecht declared, “The main enemy is at home,” which for generations afterward became the watchword for revolutionaries at a time of war between imperialist powers. As he denounced the slaughter of World War I at a May Day rally in 1916, Liebknecht was dragged from the platform and thrown into prison on charges of treason. Released in October 1918, Liebknecht along with Luxemburg founded the German Communist Party at the end of the year. They were assassinated two weeks later.

In honoring the Three Ls, we fight to carry on their revolutionary tradition. As Liebknecht declared the day before his murder: “Whether or not we are alive when it arrives, our program will live, and it will reign in a world of redeemed humanity. Despite everything!”

* * *

My vote against the war credit is based upon the following considerations:

This war, which none of the peoples engaged therein has wished, is not caused in the interest of the prosperity of the German or any other nation. This is an imperialistic war, a war for the domination of the world market, for the political domination over important fields of operation for industrial and bank capital. On the part of the competition in armaments this is a war mutually fostered by German and Austrian war parties in the darkness of half absolutism and secret diplomacy in order to steal a march on the adversary.

At the same time this war is a Bonapartistic effort to blot out the growing labor movement. This has been demonstrated with ever-increasing plainness in the past few months, in spite of a deliberate purpose to confuse the heads.

The German motto, “Against Czarism,” as well as the present English and French cries, “Against Militarism,” have the deliberate purpose of bringing into play in behalf of race hatred the noblest inclinations and the revolutionary feelings and ideals of the people. To Germany, the accomplice of Czarism, an example of political backwardness down to the present day, does not belong the calling of the liberator of nations. The liberation of the Russian as well as the German people should be their own task.

This war is not a German defense war. Its historical character and its development thus far make it impossible to trust the assertion of a capitalistic government that the purpose for which credits are asked is the defense of the fatherland.

The credits for succor have my approval, with the understanding that the asked amount seems far from being sufficient. Not less eagerly do I vote for everything that will alleviate the hard lot of our brothers in the field, as well as that of the wounded and the sick, for whom I have the deepest sympathy. But I do vote against the demanded war credits, under protest against the war and against those who are responsible for it and have caused it, against the capitalistic purposes for which it is being used, against the annexation plans, against the violation of the Belgian and Luxemburg neutrality, against the unlimited authority of rulers of war and against the neglect of the social and political duties of which the government and the ruling classes stand convicted.

On The Anniversary Of Newly-Fledged German Communist Leader Rosa Luxemburg And Karl Liebknecht-Oh, What Might Have Been-From The Archives Of Marxism-Honor Lenin, Luxemburg and Liebknecht-Karl Liebknecht's Statement In Opposition To The German War Budget In 1914

On The Anniversary Of Newly-Fledged German Communist Leader Rosa Luxemburg And Karl Liebknecht-Oh, What Might Have Been-From The Archives Of Marxism-Honor Lenin, Luxemburg and Liebknecht-Karl Liebknecht's Statement In Opposition To The German War Budget In 1914

On The 100^th Anniversary Of Newly-Fledged German Communist Leader Rosa Luxemburg And Karl Liebknecht-Oh, What Might Have Been-


By Frank Jackman

History in the conditional, what might have happened if this or that thing, event, person had swerved this much or that, is always a tricky proposition. Tricky as reflected in this piece’s commemorative headline. Rosa Luxemburg the acknowledged theoretical wizard of the German Social-Democratic Party, the numero uno party of the Second, Socialist International, which was the logical organization to initiate the socialist revolution before World War II and Karl Liebknecht, the hellfire and brimstone propagandist and public speaker of that same party were assassinated in separate locale on the orders of the then ruling self-same Social-Democratic Party. The chasm between the Social-Democratic leaders trying to save Germany for “Western Civilization” in the wake of the “uncivilized” socialist revolution in Russia in 1917 had grown that wide that it was as if they were on two different planets, and maybe they were.

(By the way I am almost embarrassed to mention the term “socialist revolution” these days when people, especially young people, would be clueless as to what I was talking about or would think that this concept was so hopelessly old-fashioned that it would meet the same blank stares. Let me assure you that back in the day, yes, that back in the day, many a youth had that very term on the tips of their tongues. Could palpably feel it in the air. Hell, just ask your parents, or grandparents.)

Okay here is the conditional and maybe think about it before you dismiss the idea out of hand if only because the whole scheme is very much in the conditional. Rosa and Karl, among others made almost every mistake in the book before and during the Spartacist uprising in some of the main German cities in late 1918 after the German defeat in the war. Their biggest mistake before the uprising was sticking with the Social Democrats, as a left wing, when that party had turned at best reformist and eminently not a vehicle for the socialist revolution, or even a half-assed democratic “revolution” which is what they got with the overthrow of the Kaiser. They broke too late, and subsequently too late from a slightly more left-wing Independent Socialist Party which had split from the S-D when that party became the leading war party in Germany for all intents and purposes and the working class was raising its collective head and asking why. 

The big mistake during the uprising was not taking enough protective cover, not keeping the leadership safe, keeping out of sight like Lenin had in Finland when things were dicey in 1917 Russia and fell easy prey to the Freikorps assassins. Here is the conditional, and as always it can be expanded to some nth degree if you let things get out of hand. What if, as in Russia, Rosa and Karl had broken from that rotten (for socialism) S-D organization and had a more firmly entrenched cadre with some experience in independent existence. What if the Spartacists had protected their acknowledged leaders better. There might have been a different trajectory for the aborted and failed German left-wing revolutionary opportunities over the next several years, there certainly would have been better leadership and perhaps, just perhaps the Nazi onslaught might have been stillborn, might have left Munich 1923 as their “heroic” and last moment.  

Instead we have a still sad 100^th anniversary of the assassination of two great international socialist fighters who headed to the danger not away always worthy of a nod and me left having to face those blank stares who are looking for way forward but might as well be on a different planet-from me. 

Markin comment:

The name Karl Liebknecht stands on its own and needs no additional comment from me. Except this. Every time some bourgeois congressman decides to get up the nerve to vote against one of the various parts of the American war budget just remember he or she, at worst, at least at worst for now, might not get reelected. Karl Liebknecht's stand led to charges of treason and jail. Yes, Karl Liebknecht's  name stands on its own and needs no additional comment from me.

Workers Vanguard No. 972
21 January 2010

Honor Lenin, Luxemburg and Liebknecht

(From the Archives of Marxism)

In the tradition of the early Communist International, each January we commemorate the “Three Ls”: Bolshevik leader V.I. Lenin, who died on 21 January 1924, and revolutionary Marxists Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg, who were assassinated in Berlin on 15 January 1919 by the reactionary Freikorps as part of the German Social Democratic government’s suppression of the Spartakist uprising.

Although not well known today, Karl Liebknecht’s name is synonymous with intransigent opposition to one’s “own” bourgeoisie in the crucible of imperialist war. Despite his individual opposition to German imperialism from the outset of World War I, on 4 August 1914 Liebknecht submitted to the discipline of the Social Democratic Party and voted for war credits along with the rest of the party fraction in the Reichstag (parliament). But Liebknecht became increasingly vocal in his opposition to the party’s betrayal of the proletariat. When the party fraction resolved to support a new vote for the Kaiser’s military budget at the Reichstag session of 2 December 1914, Liebknecht broke ranks and cast the sole vote opposing war credits.

Liebknecht was prohibited from delivering a statement motivating his vote on the floor of the Reichstag or having it printed in the body’s official record. Barred from the German press, the statement was published in a Dutch socialist newspaper and translated into English in the Socialist New York Call. Below we reprint the statement as it appeared in the February 1915 issue of the U.S. leftist journal The Masses. Liebknecht’s stand inspired proletarian militants in Germany and internationally, not least in Russia, where the working class under the leadership of the Bolshevik Party would seize power in the October Revolution of 1917.

In a May 1915 leaflet, Liebknecht declared, “The main enemy is at home,” which for generations afterward became the watchword for revolutionaries at a time of war between imperialist powers. As he denounced the slaughter of World War I at a May Day rally in 1916, Liebknecht was dragged from the platform and thrown into prison on charges of treason. Released in October 1918, Liebknecht along with Luxemburg founded the German Communist Party at the end of the year. They were assassinated two weeks later.

In honoring the Three Ls, we fight to carry on their revolutionary tradition. As Liebknecht declared the day before his murder: “Whether or not we are alive when it arrives, our program will live, and it will reign in a world of redeemed humanity. Despite everything!”

* * *

My vote against the war credit is based upon the following considerations:

This war, which none of the peoples engaged therein has wished, is not caused in the interest of the prosperity of the German or any other nation. This is an imperialistic war, a war for the domination of the world market, for the political domination over important fields of operation for industrial and bank capital. On the part of the competition in armaments this is a war mutually fostered by German and Austrian war parties in the darkness of half absolutism and secret diplomacy in order to steal a march on the adversary.

At the same time this war is a Bonapartistic effort to blot out the growing labor movement. This has been demonstrated with ever-increasing plainness in the past few months, in spite of a deliberate purpose to confuse the heads.

The German motto, “Against Czarism,” as well as the present English and French cries, “Against Militarism,” have the deliberate purpose of bringing into play in behalf of race hatred the noblest inclinations and the revolutionary feelings and ideals of the people. To Germany, the accomplice of Czarism, an example of political backwardness down to the present day, does not belong the calling of the liberator of nations. The liberation of the Russian as well as the German people should be their own task.

This war is not a German defense war. Its historical character and its development thus far make it impossible to trust the assertion of a capitalistic government that the purpose for which credits are asked is the defense of the fatherland.

The credits for succor have my approval, with the understanding that the asked amount seems far from being sufficient. Not less eagerly do I vote for everything that will alleviate the hard lot of our brothers in the field, as well as that of the wounded and the sick, for whom I have the deepest sympathy. But I do vote against the demanded war credits, under protest against the war and against those who are responsible for it and have caused it, against the capitalistic purposes for which it is being used, against the annexation plans, against the violation of the Belgian and Luxemburg neutrality, against the unlimited authority of rulers of war and against the neglect of the social and political duties of which the government and the ruling classes stand convicted.

On The Anniversary (1919) Of Newly-Fledged German Communist Leaders Rosa Luxemburg And Karl Liebknecht-Oh, What Might Have Been-*HONOR ROSA LUXEMBURG-THE ROSE OF THE REVOLUTION

On The Anniversary (1919) Of Newly-Fledged German Communist Leaders Rosa Luxemburg And Karl Liebknecht-Oh, What Might Have Been-*HONOR ROSA LUXEMBURG-THE ROSE OF THE REVOLUTION


By Frank Jackman

History in the conditional, what might have happened if this or that thing, event, person had swerved this much or that, is always a tricky proposition. Tricky as reflected in this piece’s commemorative headline. Rosa Luxemburg the acknowledged theoretical wizard of the German Social-Democratic Party, the numero uno party of the Second, Socialist International, which was the logical organization to initiate the socialist revolution before World War II and Karl Liebknecht, the hellfire and brimstone propagandist and public speaker of that same party were assassinated in separate locale on the orders of the then ruling self-same Social-Democratic Party. The chasm between the Social-Democratic leaders trying to save Germany for “Western Civilization” in the wake of the “uncivilized” socialist revolution in Russia in 1917 had grown that wide that it was as if they were on two different planets, and maybe they were.

(By the way I am almost embarrassed to mention the term “socialist revolution” these days when people, especially young people, would be clueless as to what I was talking about or would think that this concept was so hopelessly old-fashioned that it would meet the same blank stares. Let me assure you that back in the day, yes, that back in the day, many a youth had that very term on the tips of their tongues. Could palpably feel it in the air. Hell, just ask your parents, or grandparents.)

Okay here is the conditional and maybe think about it before you dismiss the idea out of hand if only because the whole scheme is very much in the conditional. Rosa and Karl, among others made almost every mistake in the book before and during the Spartacist uprising in some of the main German cities in late 1918 after the German defeat in the war. Their biggest mistake before the uprising was sticking with the Social Democrats, as a left wing, when that party had turned at best reformist and eminently not a vehicle for the socialist revolution, or even a half-assed democratic “revolution” which is what they got with the overthrow of the Kaiser. They broke too late, and subsequently too late from a slightly more left-wing Independent Socialist Party which had split from the S-D when that party became the leading war party in Germany for all intents and purposes and the working class was raising its collective head and asking why. 

The big mistake during the uprising was not taking enough protective cover, not keeping the leadership safe, keeping out of sight like Lenin had in Finland when things were dicey in 1917 Russia and fell easy prey to the Freikorps assassins. Here is the conditional, and as always it can be expanded to some nth degree if you let things get out of hand. What if, as in Russia, Rosa and Karl had broken from that rotten (for socialism) S-D organization and had a more firmly entrenched cadre with some experience in independent existence. What if the Spartacists had protected their acknowledged leaders better. There might have been a different trajectory for the aborted and failed German left-wing revolutionary opportunities over the next several years, there certainly would have been better leadership and perhaps, just perhaps the Nazi onslaught might have been stillborn, might have left Munich 1923 as their “heroic” and last moment.  

Instead we have a still sad 100^th anniversary of the assassination of two great international socialist fighters who headed to the danger not away always worthy of a nod and me left having to face those blank stares who are looking for way forward but might as well be on a different planet-from me. 

COMMENTARY

HONOR THE THREE L’S-LENIN, LUXEMBURG, LIEBKNECHT

Every January leftists honor three revolutionaries who died in that month, V.I. Lenin of Russia in 1924, Karl Liebknecht of Germany and Rosa Luxemburg of Poland in 1919 murdered after leading the defeated Spartacist uprising in Berlin. Lenin needs no special commendation. I made my political points about the heroic Karl Liebknecht and his parliamentary fight against the German war budget in World War I in this space earlier (see review in April 2006 archives) so I would like to make some special points here about the life of Rosa Luxemburg. These comments come at a time when the question of a woman President is the buzz in the political atmosphere in the United States in the lead up to the upcoming 2008 elections. Rosa Luxemburg, who died almost a century ago, puts all such pretenders to so-called ‘progressive’ political leadership in the shade.

The early Marxist movement, like virtually all progressive political movements in the past, was heavily dominated by men. I say this as a statement of fact and not as something that was necessarily intentional or good. It is only fairly late in the 20th century that the political emancipation of women, mainly through the granting of the vote earlier in the century, led to mass participation of women in politics as voters or politicians. Although, socialists, particularly revolutionary socialists, have placed the social, political and economic emancipation of women at the center of their various programs from the early days that fact was honored more in the breech than the observance.

All of this is by way of saying that the political career of the physically frail but intellectually robust Rosa Luxemburg was all the more remarkable because she had the capacity to hold her own politically and theoretically with the male leadership of the international social democratic movement in the pre-World War I period. While the writings of the likes of then leading German Social Democratic theoretician Karl Kautsky are safely left in the basket Rosa’s writings today still retain a freshness, insightfulness and vigor that anti-imperialist militants can benefit from by reading. Her book Accumulation of Capital alone would place her in the select company of important Marxist thinkers.

But Rosa Luxemburg was more than a Marxist thinker. She was also deeply involved in the daily political struggles pushing for left-wing solutions. Yes, the more bureaucratic types, comfortable in their party and trade union niches, hated her for it (and she, in turn, hated them) but she fought hard for her positions on an anti-class collaborationist, anti-militarist and anti-imperialist left-wing of the international social democratic movement throughout this period. And she did this not merely as an adjunct leader of a women’s section of a social democratic party but as a fully established leader of left-wing men and women, as a fully socialist leader. In fact one of the interesting things about her life is how little she wrote on the women question as a separate issue from the broader socialist question of the emancipation of women. Militant women today take note.

One of the easy ways for leftists, particularly later leftists influenced by Stalinist ideology, to denigrate the importance of Rosa Luxemburg’s thought and theoretical contributions to Marxism was to write her off as too soft on the question of the necessity of a hard vanguard revolutionary organization to lead the socialist revolution. Underpinning that theme was the accusation that she relied too much on the 'spontaneous' upsurge of the masses as a corrective to either the lack of hard organization or the impediments reformist socialist elements throw up to derail the revolutionary process. A close examination of her own organization, the Socialist Party of the Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania, shows that this was not the case; this was a small replica of a Bolshevik-type organization. That organization, moreover, made several important political blocs with the Russian Bolsheviks in the aftermath of the defeat of the Russian revolution of 1905. Yes, there were political differences between the organizations, particularly over the critical question for both the Polish and Russian parties of the correct approach to the right of national self-determination, but the need for a hard organization does not appear to be one of them.

Furthermore, no less a stalwart Bolshevik revolutionary than Leon Trotsky, writing in her defense in the 1930’s, dismissed charges of Rosa’s supposed ‘spontaneous uprising’ fetish as so much hot air. Her tragic fate, murdered with the complicity of her former Social Democratic comrades, after the defeated Spartacist uprising in Berlin in 1919 (at the same time as her comrade, Karl Liebknecht), had causes related to the smallness of the group, its political immaturity and indecisiveness than in its spontaneousness. If one is to accuse Rosa Luxemburg of any political mistake it is in not pulling the Spartacist group out of Kautsky’s Independent Social Democrats (itself a split from the main Social Democratic party during the war, over the war issue ) sooner than late 1918. However, as the future history of the communist movement would painfully demonstrate revolutionaries have to take advantage of the revolutionary opportunities that come their way, even if not the most opportune or of their own making.

All of the above controversies aside, let me be clear, Rosa Luxemburg did not then need nor does she now need a certificate of revolutionary good conduct from today’s leftists, the reader of this space or this writer. For her revolutionary opposition to World War I when it counted, at a time when many supposed socialists had capitulated to their respective ruling classes including her comrades in the German Social Democratic Party, she holds a place of honor. Today, as we face the fourth year of the war in Iraq we could use a few more Rosas, and a few less tepid, timid parliamentary opponents. For this revolutionary opposition she went to jail like her comrade Karl Liebknecht. For revolutionaries it goes with the territory. And even in jail she wrote, she always wrote, about the fight against the ongoing imperialist war (especially in the Junius pamphlets on the need for a new International). Yes, Rosa was at her post then. And she died at her post later in the Spartacist fight doing her internationalist duty trying to lead the German socialist revolution that would have gone a long way to saving the Russian Revolution. This is a woman leader I could follow who, moreover, places today’s bourgeois women parliamentary politicians in the shade. As the political atmosphere gets heated up over the next couple years, remember what a real fighting revolutionary woman politician looked like. Remember Rosa Luxemburg, the Rose of the Revolution.

On The 70th Anniversary- Magical Realism One-On-One- With Humphrey Bogart And Lauren Bacall’s “Dark Passage” (1947)

On The 70^th Anniversary- Magical Realism One-On-One- With Humphrey Bogart And Lauren Bacall’s “Dark Passage” (1947)

By Seth Garth

[At this point I am not involved in the so-called controversy between the younger and older writers of which I am one since I have moved on, have been actually trying to put stories together not let my bile jump up at me. Yes, I voted to retain my old friend Allan Jackson, but what of it-S.G]

It is a funny thing about breaks, about how things twist and turn in this crazy old world. Hey I should know, I, Pat Lynch, who has been in the private detection business for the past thirty-five years ever since I got out of the Army back at the end of World War II. (By the way private detection, detective is the way I like to hear it said not shamus, gumshoe, key-hole peeper like they say on television or in those silly crime detection novels as much as I liked reading guys like Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler back before I got into the real profession and found they were mostly blowing smoke.) Take the Humphrey Bogart case, or what turned out to be the name of the case, a name I was told he did not use among his various names, his aliases, his akas as we say in the business, since he hated it from childhood when the kids thought he was humpty-dumpty and later when dope, marijuana was exotic and illegal hipsters would say “don’t bogart that joint.”

This Bogart case I worked off and on for the better part of twenty years in the days when the coppers, the public coppers, were offering five thou, big money then for the whereabouts dead or alive of the guy. Big money especially to a guy starting out a few years after the war in order to bring this guy to justice, or back to justice since he had escaped San Quentin, the Q and while on the lam he killed his best friend, some frail, some ex-girlfriend and some two-bit small time crook, con man really. They laid the whole mess on it in any case so it was the same thing.  Never did find him and I went to South America and Europe to try to collar him so he could be dead or alive some place. All I know is the case had plenty of twists and turns and Bogart got his share of bumps and breaks along the way so what I just said is true about breaks. And a little idea that maybe Bogart didn’t commit all those murders and was framed. Like I said breaks.            

Maybe you don’t remember the Bogart case? Back in the late 1940s it was all the rage in the papers for about six months in the days when they would run with a news story like that forever not like today when even murder cases get a day or two and then go with the breeze. This Bogart was supposed to have killed his wife in a rage with an iron from the fireplace. He did admit to having a quarrel with that wife before he left but he never hit her that day (neighbor testimony told a story that he was on other occasions abusive, had hit her at least one and she had had a black-eye to show for it). At trial which like I say was “page one” for weeks in Frisco though he was done in by that ex-girlfriend he later allegedly killed during his escape. She claimed she saw him hit that wife from the window outside the Bogart residence and the defense could never shake her story. So that and Bogarts’ being the only fingerprints on the iron doomed him. On defense Bogart claimed that this frail, this ex-girlfriend, Agnes, had never been his girlfriend, that she was jealous of the wife and despite their marital troubles he never had plans to leave that wife. The jury didn’t buy the story-life, life without parole.                

Which who knows should have been the end of the story and the only place Bogart should next have been seen anyway outside the Q was at his potter’s field funeral. But this Bogart was not only lucky in some ways which you have to be to escape any serious secured prison but he had planned it for years staying mostly to himself working out plans in his head (he had been an engineer before he fell down, before he took the big fall). Easy as pie from what I gathered as long as you don’t care about placing yourself in a garage barrel when they come to get rid of the trash on the outside. And Bogart didn’t. The next parts are a little murky since it was mostly pieced together from a lot of information that seemed contradictory-seemed to tempt the fates too much.     

He got out okay and along the road he jiggles the barrel enough to have it flip off the road down an embankment the clueless driver not noticing anything fall off the truck. In any case the coppers, once the warden declared an escape, were on the trail fast-caught up with that truck driver who knowing nothing noticed one barrel missing. So the cops started heading back up the road they had just come from.  Here is where luck plays a small role, part one, Bogart after discarding his shirt grabbed a ride from a passing car, from that two-bit small time con man. That funny little con man asked too many questions though and he bonked him one leaving him off to the side of the road. While he was doing that a stray car, a station wagon since she had to carry her art supplies around, pulled up and told him to get in, told him by name. This Lauren, Lauren Bacall, known in the Bay Area as something of an artist but also with dough left by a step-father who killed her mother and got the big sent-off, step-off really at Q for it had been following his case for years, had been at the trial (shades of her father’s case where she thought he too was innocent) and hearing the police reports over the radio decided to help Bogart along. Yeah, I know.

That’s the story anyway, once I heard the story from Bob, the dame’s boyfriend at the time who got wise once things didn’t add up about why she was giving him the deep freeze, the heave-ho really and she told him flat out she had another man after he found men’s clothing in her bedroom. But this was well after the whereabouts of Bogart, and Lauren, reached a dead end and I was looking for anything to get back on track.            

The way it figures from there is that she brought him to her place over on Russian Hill to keep him under wraps for a while. But a guy who every copper in California was looking for needed to hide out somewhere else. Needed that hideaway since he was going to get some plastic surgery done to change his looks enough to blow town, head to South America where they don’t ask questions, especially from gringos with a little dough to stop the questions. That is where his good friend, a stand-up guy, George was supposed to help keep him undercover after the surgery. No play. After the surgery Bogart went back to George’s place but he had been murdered by a party or parties unknown, and so back to Lauren’s place and some better plan because six, two and even he was going to take the fall for that George one too which if you at the frozen dead-ass cold files today you will see the Frisco coppers did.

So the surgery took after a week under the bandages. It was during this period that boyfriend Bob started getting the cold shoulder and later that is where his speculation started. Problem at this point is that nobody including Lauren would have known it was Bogart (Lauren would know once the bandages came off before all she had seen was a guy like a million other guys turned in another guy like a million other guys.) I had heard a rumor that a cabdriver was bragging to his buddies at the Irish Grille over off Fisherman’s Wharf that he would have the last laugh since he was probably the only guy alive who knew what Bogart looked after he tied him onto a disbarred plastic surgeon. Young and raw as I was at the time I still had some waterfront, skid row dive contacts who would have known who that surgeon was, or if there was more than one, it would be small work to locate him.

Bingo Doc Jamison who had been on the back alley work for several years after he botched a big-time starlet’s face so that not even her parents would recognize her. Doc was very upfront that he had done the job and what of it. The beauty for him is that after putting on the bandages he was as clueless as anybody about Bogart’s appearance, so he said. I could never shake anything out of him even after offering money. All we knew was he was five foot-ten, brown hair, brown eyes.           

Once Bogart was up and around, going out, with or without Lauren, was when he started going by the name of Parry, Victor Parry, which is ironic since that was the name of another guy in the Q who had murdered his wife. They got that bit of information from the real Victor Parry, a couple of months later after the trail was dead-ass cold, when he bargained for a reduction of sentence. So we had a name although a name which petered out after a place called Benson, Arizona. Benson is important to the story because that has been a jump-off point for people on the run since the old Wild West days. Once in Mexico, as I subsequently found out, the trail got even colder, colder than a witch’s tit as we used to say as kids, maybe they still do.           

So you know Bogart got away, you know Lauren blew town shortly after so it figured they had a meet-up place who knows where. End of five thou dreams. That is when I started working on the case from a different angle purely for professional reasons. Started to work an angle that he might have been framed, been the fall guy. When you think about it why would a guy who was on the lam bump off his best friend, a guy he had drinks with, a guy who just wanted according to Jimmy Lee at the Kit Kat Club to blow high white notes out to the China seas. That brings you up to who else had a motive to bump off Bogart’s wife. After talking to Bob, that ex-boyfriend of Lauren’s given the colds by her brought up that Agnes, that so-called ex of Bogart’s. According to Bob she was venomous like a snake enough to take advantage of what she saw looking into the Bogart apartment. Hated that wife with a passion the way she told it later after she put the big frame around Bogart. Problem, big problem which you might not remember from when I started. Agnes fell out a window under mysterious circumstances and shortly after a tenant saw a guy who’s over-all characteristics fit Bogart to a tee. So the coppers tagged him for it and let it sleep. What the hell he was going to hang for the other raps anyway so let him have every unsolved crime that needed cold storage.              

So you see where I was blocked even trying to work that other angle. Nothing, nothing except that added murder rap of that small time hood who may have had some information because when you put two and two together he might have been a guy who knew both ends of the Bogart face. He had after all picked Bogart upon that escape route before being tossed. Being, by all accounts, a guy who was always looking for the silver lining, he told one of his confederates that he was going to make a big score, a very big score , although cagey enough not be give details. So what if he figured the Bogart-Bacall connection. We’ll never know because he fell down on the rocks under the Golden Gate Bridge. See what I mean by breaks-both ways.