Look Out for that Axe Eugene

History is replete with ironies, if you know where to find them. Google is a pretty good place to start; you can find a lot of history by searching the web, but the irony you usually have to decipher for yourself. Searching for ironies in history can be very liberating. Like the madness of conspiracy theorists who can perceive certainty in the most insubstantial of coincidences, I can string together wholly unrelated personalities and occurrences to form a coherent schematic of human progress. Or perhaps not, depending on how relaxed your standard of logic may be, but here is an interesting tale about September 1st.

Since it is September 1, 2009 today, it was exactly 556 years ago near what is now Cordoba, Spain, the great Spanish general Gonzalo Fernández de Córdoba was born. At the time of his birth, much of southern Spain was ruled by Moorish Sultans from North Africa, which distressed the Pope to no end. Not only were his beautiful churches being used as mosques, but the infidel Moslems were not paying their Pope fan club dues in a timely manner. The poor subjects of the Moorish usurpers had to suffer through with Greek philosophy, Moorish architecture, running water, honest government and Moroccan restaurants, while the God-fearing Spanish had the holy Catholic wonders of small pox and the Inquisition. It is little wonder that at an early age Fernández de Córdoba vowed to free his fellow Spaniards from the oppressive tyranny of their hash-smoking rulers.

Being of noble birth, but lacking in substantial cash reserves, Fernández de Córdoba chose a career of military service over a life in the church, perhaps because he was not attracted to children. He rapidly rose through the ranks under the tutelage of his elder brother, and was soon a part of the court of Isabella, the future Queen of Spain. He was instrumental in Spanish success in evicting the haughty and overly-cultured Moors from Granada and acquired a reputation for personal courage and sartorial splendor. The campaign to liberate Granada was a war of sieges and static defense and Fernández de Córdoba gained renown as a master of trench warfare. He was also credited with a pedantic and boring view of war where destruction of the enemy in the field was given priority over looting and raping, and where a trained, standing army was recognized as superior to an illiterate rabble of disgruntled peasants. Pretty shrewd, that Fernández de Córdoba.

Moving on then, on September 1, 1864, the City of Atlanta finally fell to advancing Union armies under the command of William Tecumseh Sherman following a nearly four-month campaign against the outnumbered forces of General Joseph E. Johnston. Johnson, like Fernández de Córdoba, was a master of static defense and had delayed Sherman and extended his vulnerable supply lines from Chattanooga to Atlanta without significant losses to his own forces. Sherman had slowly, but perhaps impatiently, maneuvered Johnston out of each succeeding impenetrable set of fortifications throughout northern Georgia, but his losses were mounting, and an increasing number of troops were required to protect the rail lines against marauding Southern cavalry and thieving hobos. In the one instance where Sherman perhaps lost his patience, he was given a bloody nose by Johnston at the Battle of Kennesaw Mountain. Incidentally, the site of the battle is now a National Battlefield Park with miles of lovely trails where hordes of transplanted Yankee yuppies go to jog so that they can maintain the physique necessary to go to Atlanta’s numerous nightclubs and induce other transplanted Yankee yuppies to fornicate with them. Who knows what Sherman would think of this?

As General Johnston prepared to sacrifice the City of Atlanta (which was, and remains perhaps, a lost cause) with the aim of preserving his army in the field to fight another day (remember Fernández de Córdoba?), he was sacked by Confederate President Jefferson Davis, who apparently preferred to lose both Atlanta and his only viable forces in the deep South. Johnston was replaced by an imbecile by the name of John Bell Hood, an adopted Texan from Kentucky who was quite possibly his own father. Hood promptly miscalculated and attacked Sherman near Jonesborough, Georgia, was repulsed with heavy losses, and escaped with what was left of his battered army to Tennessee where he was beaten several more times before he went to Mississippi and quit. Sherman finally abandoned his rail-fed supply line and marched through Georgia stealing everything the hobos hadn’t gotten first, earning the general ire of the populace and the praise of President Lincoln. He made it to Savannah, Georgia by Christmas and promptly stole all the Christmas presents. Hood got a military base in Texas named after him.

Also on September 1st, 70 years ago today, the somewhat official beginning of World War II was launched with the German invasion of Poland. The first of approximately 1,500,000 German soldiers began crossing the border into Poland in the early morning accompanied by massive air assaults which principally succeeded in killing women and children, although realistically, said women and children were probably more of a threat to the Germans than the enthusiastic Polish cavalry. France and Britain declared war on Germany and promptly suspended mail service to Berlin in retaliation. When the Soviet Union, ever the champion of workers everywhere, stylishly stabbed Poland in the back and launched their own invasion on September 17, 1939, France and Britain conveniently forgot to declare war on them.

The German campaign was a watershed event in the history of warfare with precise coordination of ground, air and naval forces and a speed and ferocity of attack not previously seen. The German “Blitzkrieg” was the forerunner of virtually all large-scale modern military actions and decisively ended the age of the trench once and for all, with the exception of Third-World countries with no expensive weapons and no sanitary sewer. The Germans later demonstrated their considerable skill at fortification busting in Belgium and France and were later on the receiving end of it when Patton smashed through the Siegfried Line and Zhukov beat the hell out of tweens and old men on his way through the very Polish lands the Germans had seized in 1939. Fernández de Córdoba would no doubt have been proud.

On September 1, 1983, the selfsame Soviet Union shot down a Korean Passenger jet, the ironically numbered Flight 007, with 269 ill-fated souls on board. The Soviets, still ever the champion of workers everywhere, initially claimed the flight was spying, but later pretty much conceded that they had fucked up and killed all those folks by accident. Among the dead was Georgia Congressman Larry McDonald, who was a cousin of General Patton and a certified lunatic. Congressman McDonald was a founding member of the John Birch Society, which was (or is maybe) a group of delusional rednecks who foresaw and feared the imposition of a socialist world government at the expense of American gun enthusiasts and anti-abortionists, sort of like Sarah Palin, who, by the way, can see Russia from her house. Spooky, huh? Anyway, I suppose it is in bad taste and ultimately counter-productive to take pleasure in the death of any human, no matter how ignorant and ill-founded their politics, but I suppose it may be ok to hope that Congressman McDonald died quickly, if unfortunately not quickly enough.

So September 1st comes and goes year after year and faithfully comprises .237 percent of our lives, a small but invaluable piece of our existence. There are 365 other such pieces, give or take, and each holds its own unique treasure of wonders and sadness. While the supply of these days is theoretically infinite, we all know that they disappear like Coney Island hotdogs on the Fourth of July, and ultimately are similarly disposed of. Historical irony or no, we are distracted from the moaning of the ghosts by the ticking of the clock.