You Wanted The Best?

Friends,

Right now, as I type these words, on your local PBS station, Ken Burns new documentary The War is playing. And, I have only seen a scant few minutes of it, but this is absolutely amazing for a few reasons. One, I know very little about World War 2, besides what my public school education has taught me (the basics: your Nazis, your bigger battles, the rationing) and this documentary is showing me so much, just all the brutality of this war, and yes, the humanity of it as it is also showing the homefront reaction (including bits from a small Minnesota town). Two, this is Ken Burns, who at least for my money, is the best PBS Documentarian there is...no man can make you listen to someone reading a war-time letter compelling like Ken Burns. Three, evidence that the mustache is truly the man ornament.

Let me elaborate on number three.

During the documentary, a particular ball turret gunner tells a story. While on a mission, the windows to his left and right were blown out, and a .20 caliber aircraft shell blasted into his arm, crushed the bone, and continued to kill another gunner on the air fortress he was flying in. The man tied a tourniquet to save his arm, something he attributed to his Eagle Scout training, and stayed at his post, in the ball turret, those glass balls that hang under planes, for another four hours. Now, the plane was flying at I believe he said 35,000 feet, and the temperature was 35 to 45 degrees below zero. So, as he was bleeding from the wound, the blood would freeze and the roll around the ball turret. And, as the man explained with a chuckle, "You had to pick up your own blood and throw it out, or you'd have to mop it up when you landed." Jesus Christ! Oh, and that man who told that story...MUSTACHE. Any guy who can laugh about picking up chunks of his frozen blood and throwing it out is a man.

Another story, a man from Alabama, in his early 20s, after already surviving that infamous Bataan death march, and double pneumonia while being a prisoner of war of the Japanese, was walking in Osaka while still a POW. It was cold, so he put his hands in his pockets. He was then pulled aside by soliders, and presented to Japanese superior officeris. And was told by a Japanese major (military not college)through an interpreter that soldiers don't walk with hands in their pockets, he needn't do that. The man then told the major that he was not a soldier, he was a prisoner of war. That pissed off the major, who pulled his sword and held it to the throat of the young man. The sword had pricked the neck of the man, and he could feel himself bleeding. The major said something, which the interpreter relayed: "He's going to make an example of you. He's going to execute you. Do you have any last words?" The man looked right into the major's eyes and said, "You can kill me, but you cannot kill my spirit, and it will leave me, and lodge into you and haunt you until the day you die." The major reeled back three steps, holstered the sword, and ordered the man locked up. Naturally, he survived...and naturally it takes some serious balls to say something like that to a man who is holding a sword to your neck...so naturally, that man has a mustache.

Watch this documentary ladies and gentlemen. It's amazing...and very long. The first episode is something like 2 and half hours long....I only saw a few minutes and was mesmerized by it.

Here's a PBS Preview of It:



VIVA EL MUSTACHE y VIVA EL GREATEST GENERATION!