Two Second World War Stories

Riots today in Tobruk and Benghazi, places largely known to me from films and histories and comics of the Second World War. The scale of that conflict is, in some ways, ever-harder for people of my generation to grasp. Not only has there been nothing like it since (mercifully), it’s hard to imagine anything like it happening again. Of course, that’s what people have thought about war before.

Two things popped up in my RSS feed today, telling stories of unknown or little-remembered aspects of the war. First, from Tom Ricks:

During World War II, the [United States] Army intentionally formed a unit chockablock with fascisti and their suspected sympathizers.

[…] This is all discussed in the new issue of Army Lawyer , where Fred “Three Sticks” Borch has a fascinating article about PFC Dale Maple, a brilliant young man who was born in San Diego in 1920 and who graduated from Harvard with honors but then, because he was bad, was found guilty of treason and sentenced to be hanged by the neck until dead.