Wild Bill and Babe have a new book comming out on Oct 2nd. There will be a book signing in Philadelphia PA on Oct 4th at Barnes and Noble 1805 Walnut St Phila PA 19103 (215)665-0716, with more to follow in different parts of the country. There is one scheduled for the D-Day Museum in New Orleans later in Oct. Check out this site for more information.

http://www.brothersinbattlethebook.com/

This was sent to me yesterday. A fond farewell to yet another fine engineer. RIP, sir! You are with the angels now.

Hugh Winsett Nance - 146th Combat Engineer

http://www.146thecbwwii.org/Obituaries.html

http://www.americainwwii.com/stories/nextstop.html

Next Stop: Louie Louie

By Carl Zebrowski

The WWII era boasted genius songwriters and lyricists such as Cole Porter, Irving Berlin, Jerome Kern, Ira Gershwin, and Richard Rogers. It was an age when trained professionals wrote songs, usually working as teams, one writing the music and another the words. At its best, the union yielded gold—hundreds of songs dreamt up and hammered out during the war years have endured the ensuing decades to remain part of the living canon of American popular song.

The 1941 tune “Mairzy Doats” does not rank among those pop masterpieces. It was nevertheless written by professional songwriters: Milton Drake, Al Hoffman, and Jerry Livingston, all of whom also lent their talents to respectable musical endeavors. Drake took credit (or accepted the blame?) for the silly lyric of “Mairzy Doats,” saying he was inspired by his four-year-old daughter singing an old English nursery rhyme (a claim the English would probably rather ignore). The memorable lines of the children’s verse are “Cowsy tweet and sowzy tweet and libble sharksy doisters.” It didn’t take much creativity to parlay that distinctive wordsmithery into “Mairzy doats and dozy doats and liddle lamzy divey.

American history has seen many worse ways of making money than creating a meaningless, harmless, and, yes, even somewhat fun little song. So it’s hard to begrudge a dashed-off ditty its financial success. That success didn’t exactly happen overnight. It took about a year (understandably) for a publisher to see the sales potential of “Mairzy Doats.” Once the song was published, however, more than one performer recorded it and turned it into a hit. The vocal group the Merry Macs made the most of the tune, dragging it up to number one on the sales charts for a few weeks in early 1944. Marjory Garland carried the lead vocal, supported by the methodical close harmonies of the three men who rounded out the quartet. If you ignore the lyrics and listen only to the music and singing, the tune sounds much like any other vocal-group recording of the day.

If you have time to kill and spend some of it ruminating on the lyric (or if you wait for the explanation generously offered at the song’s bridge), you’ll find that the words refer to, well, ruminating—sort of. It’s about eating, specifically the eating done by cute animals you might find on a farm: “Mares eat oats and does eat oats and little lambs eat ivy.” And with that, the secret is out: our Greatest Generation parents and grandparents, with their “When I was a kid” stories, didn’t exactly hold the aesthetic high ground when they mocked rock-and-roll for its mumbled nonsense songs.

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Carl Zebrowski is the managing editor of America in WWII. This article originally appeared in the magazine's February 2007 issue.

Received an email from Captain John Fallon, 36th Combat Engineer, after he read John Eisenhower's book regarding Anzio. As many of you know, John is the son of General/President Dwight D Eisenhower.

Captain Fallon was mightily miffed upon completing his reading, and told me he would love to write to the author to give him a piece of his mind. Here is an excerpt from Capt's letter:

"...His opening is about the great way the port is being run and how great the operation was and he never once mentions the 540th Engineers who did a miraculous job in the port. He then tels us about how the 45th Div manned the Moletta River line and , yes, they did for a while until the 36th ECR took over for two months without relief. He does mention the 39th Engineers digging in the rear line and later when he says they took over for the 504th and then relinquished it to the FSSF. Again no 36th ECR. Toward the end he says that the FSSF manned the Mussolini Canal at the end when the map shows we were there and then he says that Captain Ben Souza of" Honolulu" made contact with the 48th ECB coming north Again no 36th ECR.

Then he admits that the 36th ECR was attached to the 36th ID but says that the 141st Inf Regt took Velletri..."

I wrote back to John this morning:

Dear John:

I feel your fury, but remember, engineers rarely get the credit they deserve. How many books have I picked up with NO mention of any of the VI Corps engineer units. You would think that they never existed!!! It is outrageous.

Most historians just focused on the prime units; infantry and armored, and little mention is made regarding any of the supporting units throughout the war. It is a rotten shame.

That is why it's important that my book and others like it are coming out. It is up to us to rectify this and give the engineers their due pat on the back and their rightful place in history.

It wouldn't hurt to write to John and fill him in on the VI Corps units. I'm sure he would be glad to hear from you. Tell him all you know, and give him our website too. I'm sure he'll be happy to fill in his knowledge and will be grateful for your letter.

Try this route; email the Dwight D Eisenhower library, and ask them if they would be willing to provide an address for John Eisenhower. It's worth a shot!

eisenhower.library@nara.gov

Go get im' boy,

M

This li'l piggy

“Find the Fifth Pig†was a fun little fold-up that had a lot in common with those eccentric, homegrown cartoons that make their way through offices and organizations around the world. Legend has it that the British office of special operations created it to boost morale. If so, then the concept was a complete success: the original cartoon and various offshoots started turning up all over. There were even foreign-language versions that spread beyond the British Isles to European neighbors who were forced to live under Nazi occupation and were more than receptive to a cutting joke at the führer’s expense.

The flier arrived as a flat piece of paper with cartoonish drawings of four pigs toward its corners. Directions guided the holder to make a series of folds that transformed the four little pigs into what one version of the handout termed “the biggest pig of all.â€

Of course, one man’s biggest pig was not necessarily another’s. The Greeks produced their own version of the mud-slinging puzzle after Italy invaded their homeland; the series of folds revealed the less-than-beloved face of Italian dictator Benito Mussolini.

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This article originally appeared in the April 2006 issue of America in WWII. Click on the link to see images!

http://www.americainwwii.com/stories/thislilpiggy.htm