JUNE 21 = The Yankees Announce Lou Gehrig's Retirement

On June 21, 1939, the New York Yankees announced that Lou Gehrig (left), their long-time first baseman would be retiring from baseball.  "The Iron Horse", who had earned that mantle by appearing in what was then a world record 2,130 consecutive straight games had recently been diagnosed as having amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), a neuro-muscular disease which causes paralysis in those who have it, eventually resulting in death.

Lou Gehrig's Amazing Career in Baseball

Lou Gehrig, a player of amazing durability, and great offensive talent as a hitter had spent his entire career in Major League Baseball with the
New York Yankees from 1923 through 1939. He had been with then during their glorious period of dominance when they won an astonishing six World Championships between 1927 and 1938. Having come up to the Yankees in 1923, Gehrig took over the first baseman's job in 1925 from Wally Pipp. “I took the two most expensive aspirins in history.”  said Pipp, who sat out a 1925 game with a headache and lost his position to Lou Gehrig, who would play every game there for the Yankees for the remainder of his career. After that it was a ton of remarkable records for "The Iron Horse": he finished his career with an amazing lifetime batting average of .340. Add to that 2,271 runs batted in, 493 home runs a total of 1,195  runs batted in. Further, he led the American League in home runs three times, RBIs five times, and he put up eight seasons with 200+ hits.

Gehrig's Long Decline

   Starting with the 1938 season he seemed to drop off  the amazing standard which he had set for himself. He finished the season with a .295 batting average, 114 RBIs, 170 hits; a fine total for any player but not the spectacular numbers that Gehrig was used to. Gehrig himself remarked "I was tired mid-season. I don't know why, but I just couldn't get going again." As the 1939 season began. it was clear that he no longer possessed his former prowess.  He seemed slow on the base paths, and by the end of Spring Training he had not hit a single home run. When he was able to hit, he showed little power and during batting practice one afternoon, Joe DiMaggio watched in astonishment as the Yankees' hitting star missed 10 fat pitches in a row.  As the 1939 season moved through April Gehrig had only one RBI, and a lowly .143 batting average. Sports writer James Kahn wrote: "I think there is something wrong with him. Physically wrong, I mean. I don't know what it is, but I am satisfied that it goes far beyond his ball-playing...for some reason that I do not know, his old power isn't there ... He is meeting the ball, time after time, and it isn't going anywhere." Gehrig knew that he wasn't up to his own standard so on May 2, he went to Yankees manager Joe McCarthy and asked to be benched "for the good of the team."

The Diagnosis

Gehrig took a plane to Chicago and checked himself into the Mayo Clinic. There, after six days of tests, the doctors gave him the diagnosis: Gehrig was suffering from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), a disease which deprives nerve cells of their ability to interact with the body's muscles. This disease causes rapidly increasing paralysis, difficulty with swallowing or speaking, and left Lou Gehrig with a life expectancy of fewer than three years. The cause of the disease was unknown then and now. And then, as now, there is no cure.

Lou Gehrig Appreciation Day....

  The Mayo Clinic made their findings public on June 19, 1939. This led the Yankees to  announce Gehrig's retirement on this day, June 21 of that year. The game played on July 4, 1939 was designated as "Lou Gehrig Appreciation Day" at Yankee Stadium. Ceremonies to honor this great player were held between games of a double-header. In it's coverage, the New York Time's John Drebinger wrote that the ceremony was "...perhaps as colorful and dramatic a pageant as ever was enacted on a baseball field.  61,808 fans thundered a hail and farewell." Dignitaries and former Yankees players lined up to speak in tribute to Gehrig, most of them

struggling to hold back their emotions.  Babe Ruth embraced his team mate (right). Then Lou himself stepped forward and delivered a short speech that summed up the man's character, and his indomitable spirit:
       "For the past two weeks you've been reading about a bad break. (pause) Today I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth. When you look around, wouldn't you consider it a privilege to associate yourself with such fine-looking men as are standing in uniform in this ballpark today?... that I might have been given a bad break, but I've got an awful lot to live for. Thank you."

   The Baseball Writers' Association held a special winter meeting on Dec. 7 of 1939, during which Lou Gehrig was inducted to that hall of baseball honor as a result of a special election related to his illness. Lou Gehrig died on June 2, 1941 at his home in the Bronx, New York. His wife, Eleanor, with whom he had no children never remarried, saying: "I had the best of it. I would not have traded two minutes of my life with that man for 40 years with another." She dedicated the rest of her life to the support of ALS research.  Eleanor survived her husband by 43 years, passing away on her 80'th birthday, March 6, 1984.

  It is perhaps a sad thing that the disease amyotrophic lateral sclerosis
(ALS) has come to be known as  Lou Gehrig's Disease. Just as the
neurological disorder with which I must do battle every day, "Parkinson's Disease" has come to be known by that name after the doctor who first wrote about it, James Parkinson (who wrote "Essay on the Shaking Palsy" in 1817). With both maladies there is no known cause or cure, but scientists and doctors continue to study these disorders and make gains on them every day. Perhaps one day these names will come to be associated with the great victories that will  one day be achieved when a cure for each one is found.  For this we can only pray. But if you wish to do more than that try
  http://www.alsa.org/donate/   to help with research on ALS or go to www.michaeljfox.org/  to help with research on Parkinson's.


Sources =

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lou_Gehrig

 https://baseballhall.org/hall-of-famers/gehrig-lou

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3234454/

https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Baseball_(documentary)#Inning_5:_Shadow_Ball_(1930_to_1940)

https://www.biography.com/athlete/lou-gehrig

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3234454/

JUNE 6 = "D - Day" 76 Years Later

"Omaha Beach was a night- mare. Even now it brings pain to recall what happe- ned there on June 6, 1944. I have returned many times to honor the valiant men who died on that beach. They should never be forgotten. Nor should those who lived to carry the day by the slimmest of margins. Every man who set foot on Omaha Beach that day was a hero."

- General Omar Bradley, "A General's Life", 1983

On today's date, June 6 in 1944 - 76 years ago -the forces the Western Allies landed on the beaches of Normandy in Nazi-occupied France. This was the largest amphibious operation in military history with 160,000 men hitting the beach that morning starting at 6:30 a.m. The landings were preceded by airborne attacks through the early morning hours of June 6 by 24,000 Allied paratroopers. There were 5,000 ships supporting the invasion with naval bombardment as well as carrying the troops and supplies. The enemy were the forces of Adolf Hitler's Nazi Germany who had occupied France since 1940, imposing untold brutality. The Allied forces were the armies of the United States, Great Britain, Canada, Australia, the Free French, as well as ships and contingents of many of the countries which had been overrun by the Nazis. This was quite literally democracy and freedom versus the forces of tyranny, and as would become apparent as the invading allies moved inland and uncovered the murderous death camps, the forces of darkness and evil.

These are basic facts of the operation that day, called "D Day". But this battle (code named "Operation Overlord")... this one day... was such a huge and complex undertaking that entire books, movies and TV documentaries have been devoted to it.. This one engagement would decide whether the Nazi tyranny could be overthrown, or whether it would last indefinitely. Every part of this story would qualify for a separate posting of it's own. But for our purposes here I shall choose one particular facet of the story and focus on that. And as the worst of the fighting -- the bloodiest, yet as General Bradley (commander of the U.S. forces in Normandy) tells us above the most heroic part of the story came at Omaha Beach, that is where I shall focus, attempting to relate what it was like to be there.

Omaha Beach - A Killing Field

Omaha Beach was so bloody is because of its topo- graphy and its po- sition in the Allied attack zone: right in the middle of it - a fifty mile (80 kilometer) stretch of the of northwestern France's Normandy peninsula, divided into Sword, Juno, Gold, Omaha and Utah Beach (click on the above map to enlarge). The British, Canadian, and Free French were assigned the Sword, Juno and Gold beaches, the Americans were assigned Omaha and Utah Beaches. Failure to take it could endanger the entire operation by leaving the Allied forces divided. The German commander, Field Marshall Erwin Rommel, an intelligent officer (to say the least) saw that this area would be the key to any Allied assault, and had put up the strongest defenses in Normandy here. Omaha was overlooked by tall cliffs (easily visible in the middle of the above photograph) from which the Germans could blanket the whole beach with machine gun fire. The beach leading up from the water was filled with obstacles and mines. Part of the beach was called "shingles" - a line of small stones which offered a very small amount of protection from the machine gun fire. These were lined with barbed wire which made it impassable without exposure to the machine guns. And staying by the shingles too long left the troops exposed to German mortar fire. And with high cliffs enclosing it, Omaha could not be gone around.

"A hurricane of enemy machine gun fire..."

As if the above was not enough, the German forces defending Omaha were not the soft, half-loyal Russian and Polish conscripts that Allied intelligence had reported, but the crack, battle-hardened 352'nd Division. Their artillery made it nearly impossible for the men to be taken close to the beach. Thus from the moment they left their landing craft, the American infantry was in high water under heavy fire. As General Bradley sorrowfully recorded: "All men instantly came under a hurricane of enemy machine gun, mortar and artillery fire. Dozens died or fell wounded, many drowning in the sea. There was no cover. The men lay in the sand or shallow water, unable to return fire, or crouched behind stranded landing craft. For several hours, the beach and the water just beyond was a bloody chaos."

Bradley gives "unstint- ing praise" to the ships of the U.S. navy, whose destroy- ers repeatedly risked running aground by steaming in close enough to the beach to give the Army troops cover with their big naval guns. But Omaha was still nearly impassable. Nearly entire regiments were wiped out within a few minutes, leaving many survivors disoriented. Sgt. Thomas Valance of the 116'th Regiment recalled that after being severely wounded, he "... staggered up against the seawall and sort of collapsed there, and as a matter of fact spent the whole day in that same position. Essentially my part in the invasion ended by having been wiped out as most of my company was. The bodies of my buddies were washing ashore and I was the one live body in amongst so many of my friends, all of whom were dead, in many cases severely blown to pieces."

Private John Mc Phee of the 16'th regiment recalled being exhausted by all of the heavy equipment he had to carry: "Our life expectancy was about zero. We were burdened down with too much weight. We were just pack mules. I was very young in excellent shape. I could walk for miles, endure a great deal of physical hardship, but I was so seasick I thought I would die. In fact, I wished I had. I was totally exhausted." Pvt. Mc Phee was hit three times, and luckily for him was dragged to safety by his buddies and evacuated.

Dealing With Chaos and Moving Off the Beach

With so many higher ranking officers being wounded or killed it was frequently left to Captains and lower ranking officers to organize the chaos from different parts of units being thrown together in the chaos of battle and find some way of moving off the very slim sliver of beach they were holding onto and moving up the cliffs. Lieutenant John Spaulding of the 16'th regiment's E Company lead one such movement, climbing one of the many bluffs looking down on the beach: "We still could see no one to the right and there was no one up to us on the left... we didn't know what had become of the rest of E Company. Back in the water boats were in flames. I saw a tank ashore, knocked out. After a couple of looks back, we decided we wouldn't look back anymore." Spaulding lead his men through a minefield with the help of Sergeant Fred Bisco, who yelled "Lieutenant, watch out for the damn mines... but we lost no men coming through them, although H Company coming along the same trail a few hours later lost several men. The Lord was with us and we had an angel on each shoulder on that trip." 

Captain Joseph T. Dawson was leading a company of men through a similar minefield situation when he met up with Spaulding's group. They were proceeding "... up to the crest of the ridge which overlooked the beach. We got about halfway up when we met the remnants of a platoon from E Company, commanded by Lt. Spaulding. This was the only group -- somewhere less than twenty men -- we encountered who had gotten off the beach." The group then organized an attack: "Above me, right on top of the ridge, the Germans had a line of defenses with an excellent field of fire. I kept the men behind and along with my communications sergeant and his assistant, worked our way up to the crest of the ridge. Just before the crest was a sharp perpendicular drop, and we were able to get up the crest without being seen by the enemy. I could now hear the Germans talking in the machine gun nest immediately above me. I then threw two grenades, which were successful in eliminating the enemy and silencing the machine gun which had been holding up our approach." 

General Eisenhower Pays Tribute

Overall the Allies suffered 12,000 casualties (men killed or wounded) in operations that took place on June 6, 1944. These included operations of airborne troops, naval vessels, and medical corpsmen operating on the beach, whose heroic contributions to the victory won that day we simply didn't have room to include in this posting, as extended as it is. In an interview with Walter Cronkite on the 20'th Anniversary of D Day in 1964 Dwight D. Eisenhower the Supreme Allied Commander who gave the order to go ahead with the invasion on June 6 said:

"It's a wonderful thing to remember what those fellows twenty years ago were fighting for and sacrificing for, what they did to preserve our way of life. Not to conquer any territory, not for any ambitions of our own. But to make sure that Hitler could not destroy freedom in the world. I think it's overwhelming. To think of the lives that were given for that principle, paying a terrible price on this beach alone on that one day... But they did it so that the world could be free. It just shows what free men will do rather than be slaves."

Sources:

by Omar N. Bradley & Clay Blair, Simon & Schuster, New York, 1983

by Stephen E. Ambrose, Touchstone Books, New York, 1995.

edited by Jon E. Lewis, Carroll & Graf Publ. Inc., New York, 1998.









http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normandy_landings

+ 4146.
+ 279.

READERS!! If you would like to comment on this, or any "Today in History" posting, I would love to hear from you!! You can either sign up to be a member of this blog and post a comment in the space provided below, or you can simply e-mail me directly at:krustybassist@gmail.com I seem to be getting hits on this site all over the world, so please do write and let me know how you like what I'm writing (or not!)!!

JUNE 2 = The Last Confederate Army Surrenders

 The American Civil War began on April 12, 1861, when the guns in the harbor of Charleston Bay opened fire upon the Federal held Fort Sumter across the Bay. This would be the start of the longest and bloodiest war in our nation's history. Four years later, General Edmund Kirby Smith (left) signed the final surrender document of the last Confederate army still in existence at Galveston on board the U.S.S. Fort Jackson on today's date, June 2, in 1865. The Confederacy had at long last come to her end.

The Death of the  Confederacy  

We've covered two other parts of the death of the Confederacy - the main event, which was of course General Lee's surrender to General Grant on April 9, 1865. And we have also covered the last battle of the Civil War, the Battle of Palmetto Ranch which begun on May 12 in 1865. But there were any number of Confederate troops still under arms after not only Appomattox but also Palmetto Ranch. General Joseph E. Johnston's Army of the Tennessee was still officially in the field with @100,000 men spread over several states from the Carolinas to Florida. Johnston surrendered his troops to General Sherman on April 26, 1865 at Bennett Place in Durham, North Carolina.

Smith Commands the Trans-Mississippi

On January 14, 1863, Smith was sent to command the Trans-
Mississippi Department. But with the South's defeat at the Battle of Vicksburg, (July, 1863) the Mississippi River fell under the control of the Union. Thus all of the Confederate troops to the west of the Mississippi were cut off from communication with Lee and the rest of the command structure of the Southern forces (see map below). They were effectively on their own.  With Smith at their helm the Rebel

forces were able to score some successes, but cut off from everything east of the Mississippi, and unable to send anything east, their effectiveness was shrinking.  By 1865 the Confederate troops under Smith's command remained  unbeaten and were still in existence as an army numbering some 20,000 men. Utilizing supplies that they had been able to get from Mexico, Gen. Smith still had thoughts of continuing to fight on in what was clearly a dying struggle against the Union. But Smith's Chief of Staff had been in talks with Union Gen.

 Edward Canby (left) with the idea of surrendering the Trans-Mississippi. At this time, Smith, still having hopes of going on with the struggle had been on his way to Houston. Arriving there on May 27, he found the rebel forces disorganized and falling apart. With this realization upon him, Smith regretfully concluded that the right course was surrender. With this in mind, he went to Galveston, Texas, and signed the final document of surrender aboard the U.S.S. Fort Jackson. With this surrender of the last rebel army, the Confederacy at last died, and the American Civil War finally came to an end. That fuse which had been lit back in April of 1861 wound up costing @  620,000 dead total on both sides. Smith himself returned to the United States from his exile in Cuba and took an oath of amnesty at Lynchburg, Virginia, on November 14, 1865. He died on March  28, 1893.

Sources =

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edmund_Kirby_Smith

https://www.facebook.com/ShilohNMP/posts/gen-kirby-smith-finally-surrenders-june-2-1865gen-edmund-kirby-smith-was-the-las/831680786921909/

 https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/american-civil-war-ends 

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edmund_Kirby_Smith

https://www.thoughtco.com/general-edmund-kirby-smith-2360303