Their Arms Hurt Too Much To Sleep

[Spock]

Reading a collection of Ernie Pyle's pre-WW2 columns and ran across something interesting (to me).

He described meeting a cow milker in New Mexico whose arms hurt so much from milking that he often walked the floor all night in pain.

Spock family lore has it that my paternal grandparents' arms hurt so bad from milking (in the 1930's) that they could not sleep and were reaching the end of their tether. I had never run across similar examples in any readings.

Family lore then describes that a bachelor (Sig) looking for work showed up when they were at their low point. He stayed for 30 years and lived in the house and became part of the family-This was common in those years.

Sig died when I was under 18 months old and I distinctly remember sitting on his lap listening to his pocket watch. So that is kind of cool that I can place a memory to under 18 months of age.

[mellytu74]

Spock -

I highly recommend the collection of Ernie Pyle war correspondent columns - I'll get the name of the book because I can't remember off the top of my head (Ernie Pyle's War seems too simple).

Outstanding.

[Spock]

Spock -

I highly recommend the collection of Ernie Pyle war correspondent columns - I'll get the name of the book because I can't remember off the top of my head (Ernie Pyle's War seems too simple).

Outstanding.

"Brave Men" might be the main one-I read it when I was about 12, and it is in my stack. There might be a couple other lesser known books also.

[silverscreenselect]

Spock:

I read a book recently that might interest you. It's called The Hinge Factor by Erik Durschmied (and it's on Amazon), and he discusses how many history-changing events (usually battles) have turned on some rather fluke or minor occurrence, thus the old saying, "For want of a nail..." Actually, as he discusses in the book, want of a nail (or in this case a number of nails) may have cost the French the Battle of Waterloo. The battle actually could have gone either way, and at one point a French cavalry charge captured a number of British cannons. However, the French didn't have any nails with them (which were used at the time to spike captured artillery and render it useless). As a result, the British soon counterattacked and recaptured their cannons and were able to use them to turn the tide of the battle.

Durschmied has also written a second book called The Weather Factor in which he looks specifically how weather affected historical events. I haven't read that one.

[Spock]

Spock:

I read a book recently that might interest you. It's called The Hinge Factor by Erik Durschmied (and it's on Amazon), and he discusses how many history-changing events (usually battles) have turned on some rather fluke or minor occurrence, thus the old saying, "For want of a nail..." Actually, as he discusses in the book, want of a nail (or in this case a number of nails) may have cost the French the Battle of Waterloo. The battle actually could have gone either way, and at one point a French cavalry charge captured a number of British cannons. However, the French didn't have any nails with them (which were used at the time to spike captured artillery and render it useless). As a result, the British soon counterattacked and recaptured their cannons and were able to use them to turn the tide of the battle.

Durschmied has also written a second book called The Weather Factor in which he looks specifically how weather affected historical events. I haven't read that one.

I will check them out, Thanks.

Just read "No Friends But the Mountains" about trouble zones in the high country. Interesting anecdote was that 50,000 men died on the Italian-Austrian WW1 Front in the Alps in avalanches-staggeringly. 10,000 of them in one day.

Reading an alt-history of WW2 -called "Afrika Reich"-some here may like it.

[ghostjmf]

You might enjoy "Love and War in the Appenines" by Eric Newby. At least I think that's the one I'm after. I've read all his books.

Newby, British, was sheltered for a long while in WWII in the Italian mountains by people who weren't particularly pro-Allies, they just despised Mussolini & the alliance he had locked them into w/ the Nazis.

Eventually somebody rats on Newby, who winds up in a prisoner-of-war camp where he meets his Yugoslavian (I think I remember) future wife, who bicycles to the camp with food for the prisoners. I think I remember she helps him escape.

[Spock]

You might enjoy "Love and War in the Appenines" by Eric Newby. At least I think that's the one I'm after. I've read all his books.

Newby, British, was sheltered for a long while in WWII in the Italian mountains by people who weren't particularly pro-Allies, they just despised Mussolini & the alliance he had locked them into w/ the Nazis.

Eventually somebody rats on Newby, who winds up in a prisoner-of-war camp where he meets his Yugoslavian (I think I remember) future wife, who bicycles to the camp with food for the prisoners. I think I remember she helps him escape.

I don't know much about Eric Newby, but he is one of those guys that is at the edge of my thought process as sounds good, I hope to get to him sometime.

Rightly, or wrongly, I group him with Patrick Leigh Fermor who currently has a fairly high position in my TBR pile. Maybe Newby would be better?

[ghostjmf]

I've never heard of Fermor 'til now, so can't rate by comparison. Newby is mainly known as a travel writer, based on his wife & his travels (& living abroad; they eventually moved to Italy for part of each year, with very characteristically Italian-unique neighbors, like the guy whose feuding nature wouldn't allow the Newbys the easy road to their house because it ran through his property, though that was in a long legal dispute) but I thought you'd appreciate the one that takes place during the war.

Probably his most famous book is his 1st, "The Last Grain Race", in which he runs away to sea as a teenager as crew on one of the last commercial sailing ships. The grain race brought grain from Australia to Britain; it wasn't really a race, as all the ships couldn't occupy the same shipping lanes at once, but they timed the trips & there was a prize for fastest.