The Voice before the Void: Arcana, Story, Poetry

The spectacle of that woman’s grief being exploited in the U.S. Capitol embarrassed me and disgusted me; commentators and newsreaders describing it as “moving” amplified my revulsion. The commonplace exaltation of murdered military personnel paired with the commonplace disregard of militarily murdered people remains perpetually disappointing… and embarrassing, and disgusting. -The Voice before the Void “A highly successful raid” R.L. Johnson and The Voice before the Void Children and Ryan Owens fall dying, the dust turning to soft mud in their eyes; amid gunshots and wailing and crying, the Devil alone can claim any prize. The sounds of the battle are but distant, the flashes of light dim and far away; young lives pass into death nonexistent: I read it all in the fake news today. “America First” is clearly the motto as bold leaders call Owens a hero and make a spectacle of his widow, so Americans snack and play the lotto as their soldiers die for ol’ PepsiCo and Yemeni children die for nothing.

Immigration has been a charged – and ugly – political issue in the U.S. for all of its history. It seems almost miraculous that this sonnet, and the French statue in New York, exist as components of U.S. culture. Perhaps one day a colossal metal monument of welcome to tired, poor, wretched, yearning masses will be built along the U.S.-Mexico border. This quoted in the Wikipedia article on the statue: “‘Liberty enlightening the world,’ indeed! The expression makes us sick. This government is a howling farce. It can not or rather does not protect its citizens within its own borders. Shove the Bartholdi statue, torch and all, into the ocean until the ‘liberty’ of this country is such as to make it possible for an inoffensive and industrious colored man to earn a respectable living for himself and family, without being ku-kluxed, perhaps murdered, his daughter and wife outraged, and his property destroyed. The idea of the ‘liberty’ of this country ‘enlightening the world,’ or even Patagonia, is ridiculous in the extreme.” –“Postponing Bartholdi’s statue until there is liberty for colored as well,” The Cleveland Gazette, 1886 November 27 “The New Colossus” Emma Lazarus Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame, With conquering limbs astride from land to land; Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name MOTHER OF EXILES. From her beacon-hand Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame. “Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

Orwell logically and accurately predicted the Cold War – and creeping tyranny. -The Voice before the Void “You and the Atom Bomb” George Orwell Considering how likely we all are to be blown to pieces by it within the next five years, the atomic bomb has not roused so much discussion as might have been expected. The newspapers have published numerous diagrams, not very helpful to the average man, of protons and neutrons doing their stuff, and there has been much reiteration of the useless statement that the bomb ‘ought to be put under international control.’ But curiously little has been said, at any rate in print, about the question that is of most urgent interest to all of us, namely: ‘How difficult are these things to manufacture?’ Such information as we — that is, the big public — possess on this subject has come to us in a rather indirect way, apropos of President Truman’s decision not to hand over certain secrets to the USSR. Some months ago, when the bomb was still only a rumour, there was a widespread belief that splitting the atom was merely a problem for the physicists, and that when they had solved it a new and devastating weapon would be within reach of almost everybody. (At any moment, so the rumour went, some lonely lunatic in a laboratory might blow civilisation to smithereens, as easily as touching off a firework.) Had that been true, the whole trend of history would have been abruptly altered. The distinction between great states and small states would have been wiped out, and the power of the State over the individual would have been greatly weakened. However, it appears from President Truman’s remarks, and various comments that have been made on them, that the bomb is fantastically expensive and that its manufacture demands an enormous industrial effort, such as only three or four countries in the world are capable of making. This point is of cardinal importance, because it may mean that the discovery of the atomic bomb, so far from reversing history, will simply intensify the trends which have been apparent for a dozen years past. It is a commonplace that the history of civilisation is largely the history of weapons. In particular, the connection between the discovery of gunpowder and the overthrow of feudalism by the bourgeoisie has been pointed out over and over again. And though I have no doubt exceptions can be brought forward, I think the following rule would be found generally true: that ages in which the dominant weapon is expensive or difficult to make will tend to be ages of despotism, whereas when the dominant weapon is cheap and simple, the common people have a chance. Thus, for example, tanks, battleships and bombing planes are inherently tyrannical weapons, while rifles, muskets, long-bows and hand-grenades are inherently democratic weapons. A complex weapon makes the strong stronger, while a simple weapon — so long as there is no answer to it — gives claws to the weak. The great age of democracy and of national self-determination was the age of the musket and the rifle. After the invention of the flintlock, and before the invention of the percussion cap, the musket was a fairly efficient weapon, and at the same time so simple that it could be produced almost anywhere. Its combination of qualities made possible the success of the American and French revolutions, and made a popular insurrection a more serious business than it could be in our own day. After the musket came the breech-loading rifle. This was a comparatively complex thing, but it could still be produced in scores of countries, and it was cheap, easily smuggled and economical of ammunition. Even the most backward nation could always get hold of rifles from one source or another, so that Boers, Bulgars, Abyssinians, Moroccans — even Tibetans — could put up a fight for their independence, sometimes with success.

The contemplation of suicide in the aftermath of loss. -The Voice before the Void “Oh, For a Home of Rest!” Eliza Paul Kirkbride Gurney Oh, for a home of rest! Time lags alone so slow, so wearily; Couldst thou but smile on me, I should be blest. Alas, alas! that never more may be. Oh, for the sky-lark’s wing to soar to thee! This earth I would forsake For starry realms whose sky’s forever fair; There, tears are shed not, hearts will cease to ache, And sorrow’s plaintive voice shall never break The heavenly stillness that is reigning there. Life’s every charm has fled, The world is all a wilderness to me; “For thou art numbered with the silent dead.” Oh, how my heart o’er this dark thought has bled! How I have longed for wings to follow thee! In visions of the night With angel smile thou beckon’st me away, Pointing to worlds where hope is free from blight; And then a cloud comes o’er that brow of light, Seeming to chide me for my long delay.

Watching a YouTube video. This one: youtube.com/watch?v=7PC7CG1qj6M -The Voice before the Void Stargate in the Gulf of Aden Alsazzi Terrato and The Voice before the Void

Ambiguity breeds speculation. -The Voice before the Void “Piri Reis map” Wikipedia The Piri Reis map is a world map compiled in 1513 from military intelligence by the Ottoman admiral and cartographer Piri Reis. Approximately one third of the map survives; it shows the western coasts of Europe and North Africa and the coast of Brazil with reasonable accuracy. Various Atlantic islands, including the Azores and Canary Islands, are depicted, as is the mythical island of Antillia and possibly Japan. The historical importance of the map lies in its demonstration of the extent of exploration of the New World by approximately 1510, and in its claim to have used Columbus’s maps, otherwise lost, as a source. It used ten Arab sources, four Indian maps sourced from the Portuguese, and one map of Columbus. More recently, it has been the focus of pseudohistoric claims for the pre-modern exploration of the Antarctic coast. 1. Description The map is the extant western third of a world map drawn on gazelle skin parchment, with dimensions reported as 90 cm × 63 cm, 86 cm × 60 cm, 90 cm × 65 cm, 85 cm × 60 cm, 87 cm × 63 cm, and 86 cm × 62 cm. These discrepancies are largely due to the damaged corner. The surviving portion primarily details the western coast of Africa and the eastern coast of South America. The map was signed by Piri Reis, an Ottoman-Turkish admiral, geographer and cartographer, and dated to the month of Muharram in the Islamic year 919 AH, equivalent to 1513 AD. It was presented to Ottoman Sultan Selim I in 1517. In the map’s legend, Piri inscribed that the map was based on about twenty charts and mappae mundi. According to Piri, these maps included eight Ptolemaic maps, an Arabic map of India, four newly drawn Portuguese maps from Sindh, Pakistan and a map by Christopher Columbus of the western lands. From Inscription 6 on the map: “From eight Jaferyas of that kind and one Arabic map of Hind [India], and from four newly drawn Portuguese maps which show the countries of Sind [now in modern day Pakistan], Hind and Çin [China] geometrically drawn, and also from a map drawn by Qulūnbū [Columbus] in the western region, I have extracted it. By reducing all these maps to one scale this final form was arrived at, so that this map of these lands is regarded by seamen as accurate and as reliable as the accuracy and reliability of the Seven Seas on the aforesaid maps.” There is some scholarly debate over whether the 20 charts and mappae mundi in Piri’s inscriptions includes the eight Ptolemaic maps, the four Portuguese maps, the Arabic map and the Columbus map. From one perspective, the number of charts and mappae mundi used by Piri equals 20, while in the other, it could mean a total of 34. Some have claimed that the source maps were found in the ancient Library of Alexandria, based on Piri’s allusions to Alexander the Great, the founder of Alexandria, Ptolemy I, who ruled Alexandria in the 4th century BC, and Claudius Ptolemy, the Greek geographer and cartographer who lived in Alexandria during the 2nd century AD. Gregory McIntosh states: “Arab writers often confused Claudius Ptolemy, the geographer of the second century C.E., with Ptolemy I, one of Alexander’s generals… Piri Reis has undoubtedly made the same error, resulting in his believing the charts and maps were from the time of Ptolemy I instead of Claudius Ptolemy.” 2. History The map was discovered serendipitously on 9 October 1929, through the philological work of the German theologian Gustav Adolf Deissmann (1866-1937). He had been commissioned by the Turkish Ministry of Education to catalogue the Topkapı Palace library...

As all is unknown. -The Voice before the Void “At the Piano” Anna Katharine Green Play on! Play on! As softly glides The low refrain, I seem, I seem To float, to float on golden tides, By sunlit isles, where life and dream Are one, are one; and hope and bliss Move hand in hand, and thrilling, kiss ‘Neath bowery blooms, In twilight glooms, And love is life, and life is love. Play on! Play on! As higher rise The lifted strains, I seem, I seem To mount, to mount through roseate skies, Through drifted cloud and golden gleam, To realms, to realms of thought and fire, Where angels walk and souls aspire, And sorrow comes but as the night That brings a star for our delight. Play on! Play on! The spirit fails, The star grows dim, the glory pales, The depths are roused—the depths, and oh! The heart that wakes, the hopes that glow! The depths are roused: their billows call The soul from heights to slip and fall; To slip and fall and faint and be Made part of their immensity; To slip from Heaven; to fall and find In love the only perfect mind; To slip and fall and faint and be Lost, drowned within this melody, As life is lost and thought in thee. Ah, sweet, art thou the star, the star That draws my soul afar, afar? Thy voice the silvery tide on which I float to islands rare and rich? Thy love the ocean, deep and strong, In which my hopes and being long To sink and faint and fail away? I cannot know. I cannot say. But play, play on.

U.S. Inauguration Day: The portentousness can be petrifying. As the First World War was obliterating millions of lives in Europe, before the United States entered that war, military “preparedness” was a key political topic in the U.S.: Should a nation presently at peace prepare for potential future war? Clergyman Jefferson argues here that to refuse to arm yourself against your fellow humans is an act of pure strength; to arm yourself, an act of pure fear; and, Clergyman Jefferson writes, “Christians” ought have nobler emotions than fear to motivate their actions. Genuine “Christian” morality of uncompromising pacifism and self-sacrificing charity – pacifism even when your enemies murder you; charity even when you starve – is as powerful and as impressive and as deserving of veneration as it is rare to find publicly expressed, either eloquently or vulgarly; and, where expressed, it can be expected to be popularly ignored if not outright derided. Clergyman Jefferson also writes that if you “create a war machine,” you cannot know who will use it, nor whether the next U.S. president will be a “megalomaniac… who, when he wants a thing, takes it.” -The Voice before the Void Money for the Machinery of Human Slaughter from “Military Preparedness a Danger to Democracy” Charles Edward Jefferson published in The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 1916 July edited by William Dudley and The Voice before the Void

“Oho,” indeed. -The Voice before the Void “A Fairy Glee” Eugene Field From the land of murk and mist Fairy folk are coming To the mead the dew has kissed, And they dance where’er they list To the cricket’s thrumming. Circling here and circling there, Light as thought and free as air, Hear them cry, “Oho, oho,” As they round the rosey go. Appleblossom, Summerdew, Thistleblow, and Ganderfeather! Join the airy fairy crew Dancing on the sward together! Till the cock on yonder steeple Gives all faery lusty warning, Sing and dance, my little people,— Dance and sing “Oho” till morning!

“The matter is not settled.” “Ortega hypothesis” Wikipedia The Ortega hypothesis holds that average or mediocre scientists contribute substantially to the advancement of science. According to this hypothesis, scientific progress occurs mainly by the accumulation of a mass of modest, narrowly specialized intellectual contributions. On this view, major breakthroughs draw heavily upon a large body of minor and little-known work, without which the major advances could not happen. 1. Citation research The Ortega hypothesis is widely held, but a number of systematic studies of scientific citations have favored the opposing “Newton hypothesis,” which says that scientific progress is mostly the work of a relatively small number of great scientists (after Isaac Newton’s statement that he “stood on the shoulders of giants”). The most important papers mostly cite other important papers by a small number of outstanding scientists, suggesting that the breakthroughs do not actually draw heavily on a large body of minor work. Rather, the pattern of citations suggests that most minor work draws heavily on a small number of outstanding papers and outstanding scientists. Even minor papers by the most eminent scientists are cited much more than papers by relatively unknown scientists; and these elite scientists are clustered mostly in a small group of elite departments and universities. The same pattern of disproportionate citation of a small number of scholars appears in fields as diverse as physics and criminology. The matter is not settled. No research has established that citation counts reflect the real influence or worth of scientific work. So, the apparent disproof of the Ortega hypothesis may be an artifact of inappropriately chosen data. Stratification within the social networks of scientists may skew the citation statistics. Many authors cite research papers without actually reading them or being influenced by them. Experimental results in physics make heavy use of techniques and devices that have been honed by many previous inventors and researchers, but these are seldom cited in reports on those results. Theoretical papers have the broadest relevance to future research, while reports of experimental results have a narrower relevance but form the basis of the theories. This suggests that citation counts merely favor theoretical results. 2. The name The name of the hypothesis refers to José Ortega y Gasset, who wrote in The Revolt of the Masses that “astoundingly mediocre” men of narrow specialties do most of the work of experimental science. Ortega most likely would have disagreed with the hypothesis that has been named after him, as he held not that scientific progress is driven mainly by the accumulation of small works by mediocrities, but that scientific geniuses create a framework within which intellectually commonplace people can work successfully. For example, Ortega thought that Albert Einstein drew upon the ideas of Immanuel Kant and Ernst Mach to form his own synthesis, and that Einstein did not draw upon masses of tiny results produced systematically by mediocrities. According to Ortega, science is mostly the work of geniuses, and geniuses mostly build on each other’s work, but in some fields there is a real need for systematic laboratory work that could be done by almost anyone. The name “Ortega hypothesis” refers only to this last element of Ortega’s theory, not the main thrust of it. Ortega characterized this latter type of research as “mechanical work of the mind” that does not require special talent or even much understanding of the results, performed by people who specialize in one narrow corner of one science and hold no curiosity beyond it.

U.S. Inauguration Day: “All the multiple manifestations of a free and democratic society fail of their predicted issue, and we find ourselves lapped in confusion and numb with disappointment and chagrin.” “Why We Do Not Behave Like Human Beings” Ralph Adams Cram The Ancient doctrine of progressive evolution which became dominant during the last half of the nineteenth century, was, I suggest, next to the religious and philosophical dogmas of Dr. Calvin and the political and social doctrines of M. Rousseau, the most calamitous happening of the last millennium. In union with Protestantism and democracy, and apparently justified in its works by the amazing technological civilization fostered by coal, iron, steam and electricity, it is responsible for the present estate of society, from which there is no escape, it would seem, except through comprehensive calamity. I state my thesis thus bluntly in order to get it over with. Its justification as well as its implications I shall now expound as best I can. Let me say that I was born and bred in the briar-patch of this same progressive evolution. By the time I was of age I had read all of Spencer’s “Synthetic Philosophy” as well as the greater part of the writings of Darwin, Tyndal and Huxley, though, fortunately I believe, with a strong admixture of Ruskin, Emerson, Matthew Arnold and Carlyle, the latter group acting as a counter-agent that became operative and dominant after the passage of years. Now the point I make is that the entire scheme was based on what was then a very partial and limited knowledge of geological, biological and anthropological facts and on a particularly faulty deductive process, whereby the nature of man, his period of existence in time and space, his relationship to other forms of life, his inherent potency and his ultimate destiny were gravely misinterpreted, with the result that during the last century he has been possessed by “delusions of grandeur” that have made it impossible for him justly to estimate his own acts, to acquire a right standard of values, or consciously to provide against the issue of his own follies and parlous courses. According to the old doctrines of my youth, now showing so thin and thread-bare, man was the crown of an immemorial sequence of inevitable and even mechanical development from lower to higher, engineered by myriads of small upward steps from primeval slime through one vertebrate to another, through femur and anthropoid ape to homo sapiens, Paleolithic and Neolithic man, to the Babylonian, Egyptian, Greek and Roman and their successors, ever in an ascending line, to the glorious product of the Victorian era. As there had always been a constant, though intermittent upward progress to this delectable event, so, logically, this must continue indefinitely with an ever extending horizon of ever increasing glory and honour. The prospect was alluring and it is no wonder that it was accepted with avidity. Coming in the midst of a bewildering epoch of discovery, invention and material aggrandizement, almost, though by no means quite, equal to that that we now know, occurred between 4000 and 3500 B.C., it gave a cachet of sublimity to events then transpiring and fixed the assurance that, as it was then most erroneously assumed, the Greeks were greater than the Egyptians, the Romans than the Greeks, the Renaissance than Hellenism. (They naively slurred over the thousand years of Christian civilization as an anomalous retrogression made amends for by the sixteenth century recovery.) Therefore, and inevitably, the new era of Protestantism, democracy and industrialism must be better than the Renaissance, with God knew what of glory in the proximate future if only all those things going strong were pushed to the limit and the old and outworn things relentlessly cast aside. As I say then,

What a great poem. -The Voice before the Void “A Late Good Night” Robert Fuller Murray My lamp is out, my task is done, And up the stair with lingering feet I climb. The staircase clock strikes one. Good night, my love! good night, my sweet! My solitary room I gain. A single star makes incomplete The blackness of the window pane. Good night, my love! good night, my sweet! Dim and more dim its sparkle grows, And ere my head the pillows meet, My lids are fain themselves to close. Good night, my love! good night, my sweet! My lips no other words can say, But still they murmur and repeat To you, who slumber far away, Good night, my love! good night, my sweet!

Thirty years old. -The Voice before the Void “Robert Fuller Murray” Wikipedia Robert Fuller Murray (1863–1894), was a Victorian poet. Although born in the United States, Murray lived most of his life in the United Kingdom, most notably in St Andrews, Scotland. He wrote two books of poetry and was published occasionally in periodicals. Murray was born 26 December 1863 in Roxbury, Massachusetts, son of Emmeline and John Murray, the latter a Scotsman and a Unitarian minister. In 1869 his father took him to Kelso and from that point on, except for a brief visit to Egypt, he stayed in the U.K. He attended grammar school in Ilminster and Crewkerne and in 1881 he entered the University of St Andrews. In 1886 his father died. He worked for a while assisting John M.D. Meiklejohn, Professor of the Theory, History, and Practice of Education at the University of St Andrews, and contributed some poems to the school newspaper. In 1889 he left St Andrews and worked in Edinburgh at low-level journalism, including a period of employment at the Scottish Leader. He began to have frequent bouts of colds. In 1890 he returned to St Andrews, where he contributed occasionally to Longman’s Magazine. At this point it became clear he had the beginnings of “consumption” (likely tuberculosis). In 1891 he went to Egypt, but his stay was short as he disliked it. He again returned to St Andrews, and his first book, The Scarlet Gown, was published. His second book, Robert F. Murray: His Poems with a Memoir, was published in 1894 after his death. The volume includes a lengthy biographical introduction by Andrew Lang. In attempting to place Murray in the context of his contemporaries, Lang wrote: …the Victorian age produced Scottish practitioners of the art of light verse who are not remembered as they deserve to be. Lord Neaves, perhaps, is no more than a ready and rollicking versifier, but George Outram is an accomplished wit, and Robert Fuller Murray a disciple of Calverley who might well have rivalled his master had death not taken him while still in his pupilage.

Xmas: The most glorious misanthrope, Bierce, gives the best holiday greetings. -The Voice before the Void “A Social Call” Ambrose Bierce Well, well, old Father Christmas, is it you, With your thick neck and thin pretense of virtue? Less redness in the nose—nay, even some blue Would not, I think, particularly hurt you. When seen close to, not mounted in your car, You look the drunkard and the pig you are. No matter, sit you down, for I am not In a gray study, as you sometimes find me. Merry? O, no, nor wish to be, God wot, But there’s another year of pain behind me. That’s something to be thankful for: the more There are behind, the fewer are before. I know you, Father Christmas, for a scamp, But Heaven endowed me at my soul’s creation With an affinity to every tramp That walks the world and steals its admiration. For admiration is like linen left Upon the line—got easiest by theft. Good God! old man, just think of it! I’ve stood, With brains and honesty, some five-and-twenty Long years as champion of all that’s good, And taken on the mazzard thwacks a-plenty. Yet now whose praises do the people bawl? Those of the fellows whom I live to maul! Why, this is odd!—the more I try to talk Of you the more my tongue grows egotistic To prattle of myself! I’ll try to balk Its waywardness and be more altruistic. So let us speak of others—how they sin, And what a devil of a state they ‘re in! That’s all I have to say. Good-bye, old man. Next year you possibly may find me scolding— Or miss me altogether: Nature’s plan Includes, as I suppose, a final folding Of these poor empty hands. Then drop a tear To think they’ll never box another ear.

Charlie Brown and Franz Stigler Incident Anniversary: War is a crime and war stories are horrific, but any story of mercy is a great story; any story that humanizes an enemy is a great story; and any story of friendship is a great story. This story is triply great. -The Voice before the Void “Charlie Brown and Franz Stigler incident” Wikipedia The Charlie Brown and Franz Stigler incident occurred on the 20th of December, 1943, when, after a successful bomb run on Bremen, 2nd Lt. Charles “Charlie” Brown’s B-17 Flying Fortress (named “Ye Olde Pub”) was severely damaged by German fighters. Luftwaffe ace Franz Stigler had the opportunity to shoot down the crippled bomber, but for humane reasons, he decided to allow the crew to fly back to England. After an extensive search by Brown, the two pilots met each other over 40 years later and developed a friendship that lasted until Stigler’s death in March 2008. 1. Pilots 2nd Lt. Charles L. “Charlie” Brown (“a farm boy from Weston, West Virginia,” in his own words) was a B-17F pilot with the 379th Bombardment Group of the United States Army Air Forces’ 8th Air Force, stationed at RAF Kimbolton in England. Franz Stigler, a former airline pilot from Bavaria, was a veteran Luftwaffe fighter pilot attached to Jagdgeschwader 27; at the time, he had 22 aerial victories to his name and would be eligible for the coveted Knight’s Cross with one more downed enemy bomber. 2. Bremen mission The mission was the Ye Olde Pub crew’s first and targeted the Focke-Wulf 190 aircraft production facility in Bremen. The men of the 527th Bombardment Squadron were informed in a pre-mission briefing that they might encounter hundreds of German fighters. Bremen was guarded by 250 flak guns, operated by the elite Officer Candidate School of gunners. Brown’s crew was assigned to fly “Purple Heart Corner,” a spot on the edge of the formation that was considered especially dangerous. Bomb run Brown’s B-17 began its 10-minute bomb run at 8,300 m with an outside air temperature of −60 °C. Before the bomber released its bomb load, accurate flak shattered the Plexiglas nose, knocked out the number two engine, and further damaged the number four engine, which was already in questionable condition and had to be throttled back to prevent overspeeding. The damage slowed the bomber and Brown was unable to remain with his formation and fell back as a straggler – a position from which he came under sustained enemy attacks. Attacks by fighters Brown’s straggling B-17 was now attacked by over a dozen enemy fighters (a mixture of Messerschmitt Bf 109s and Focke-Wulf Fw 190s) of JG 11 for over 10 minutes. Further damage was sustained, including damage to the number three engine, which would produce only half power (meaning that the aircraft had at best 40% of its total rated power available). The bomber’s internal oxygen, hydraulic, and electrical systems were also damaged, and the bomber lost half of its rudder and its port elevator, as well as its nose cone. Many of the gunners’ weapons then jammed, probably as a result of improper pre-mission oiling, leaving the bomber with only two dorsal turret guns and one of three forward-firing nose guns (from eleven available) for defense. Most of the crew were wounded: the tail gunner, Eckenrode, had been killed by a direct hit from a fighter shell, while Yelesanko was critically wounded in the leg by shrapnel, Pechout had been hit in the eye by a shell fragment, and Brown was wounded in his right shoulder. The morphine syrettes onboard froze, complicating first aid efforts by the crew, while the radio was destroyed and the bomber’s exterior heavily damaged. Franz Stigler Brown’s damaged bomber was spotted by Germans on the ground,