Cycling with Unslim Mac

I think it’s a bit politically incorrect to call my friend Fat Mac ‘Fat Mac’ anymore, so I’ll refer to him as Unslim Mac from now on.

We arranged to go for a bike ride today.  As soon as I caught sight of him I could tell that Unslim Mac had been letting himself go again.  He used to be physically and literally fighting fit, but nowadays it’s difficult to tell the difference between him and a lump of lard.

Unslim Mac, today

I knew it wasn’t exactly going to be a joyful bike ride when I asked him what he’d been doing recently, and his answer was, “Mostly going to funerals, Rodz.”

Changing the subject didn’t do much good.  Asking, “So, how are you, Mac?” was a big mistake, and led to a detailed listing of his current ailments, which, if I remember correctly, included, but were not limited to:

Body pustulations.

Brain fog.

A strange ‘spongyitis’ swelling on the ball of his foot resulting from attempting 100,000 prostrations at the behest of his rinpoche guru.

Leprosy around the mouth.

Crutch rot/Jock itch.

The last two are obviously caused by his near-exclusive diet of beer and bread, both of which contain yeast.

After a short bike ride, he was completely out of breath, and I was glad that I’d brought my phone in case I had to call 911.  We stopped, and whilst he was recovering I tried to arrange a meetup with him and some of his champagne socialist friends – the ones who bang on about how disgusting it is that there are food banks, and how they’ve given up, in order to save the planet, eating pâté de foie gras if it comes in a plastic tub – but it appears that it will be some time before we can arrange a date, as they are all currently on an extended luxury cruise around Tahiti.

Late news: Mac called off today’s bike ride, and I’ve made up all of the above, but we’re now supposed to be cycling tomorrow, and I’m sure that what I’ve written will be pretty accurate.

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Dien Bien Phu

Dien Bien Phu was an important battle, in 1954, during the Indochina War (1946-1954) between the French colonial army and the Việt Minh, a Communist people’s army dedicated to the liberation of Vietnam.  After a 57-day siege, Dien Bien Phu fell to the Việt Minh.  The defenders (the French forces) lost a third of their 15,000 force, and many more died in captivity.  It effectively ended France’s empire in the East.

Howard Simpson points out that American advisers and observers who were involved in the Dien Bien Phu siege learned little from their experience, and this did not bode well for when the US became more directly involved in Vietnam.  As with Americans later on in the Vietnam War, by 1954 the French had started to question why their soldiers were fighting in Vietnam.  North African and West African troops in the French army also questioned why they were fighting for a colonial power.  On the other hand, the Việt Minh had the support of many of their people and also backing from Chinese communists.

Howard Simpson’s book, Dien Bien Phu: The Epic Battle America Forgot, deals with military operations and the personalities involved.  For him, the lessons that the US did not learn from the defeat of the French are mostly military ones, i.e. do not underestimate nonconventional units or a guerilla enemy; do not become overdependent on air support; do not underestimate the hostile jungle environment; and the effectiveness of a military force is directly linked to government support and backing of the people of the nation involved.  I would like to know more about the opposing forces of the Việt Minh and their motivation.  For example, how could they keep up morale when so many were killed and when such immense effort was needed to effect attacks on the colonial forces?  I had not known that a fair proportion of the local ethnic groups helped the French.  T’ai people acted as guides and the T’ai Tribal Federation remained loyal to France.  Why was this?  The Meo, Man, Yao and Lolo were also generally hostile to the Việt Minh. Why was this, and could more have been made of anti-Việt Minh sentiment?

Simpson writes of the culinary requirements of the French forces: lamb for the North African riflemen, yams for troops from West Africa, pork and noodles for the Vietnamese of the National Army, and blood sausage for the Legionnaires.

The French were hoping that the Việt Minh would attack their forces at Dien Bien Phu, be defeated by superior French fire power, and this would rally support from the French public.  General Giap, the Việt Minh commander, decided not to attack in January but instead waited for more ammunition and firepower.

The attack began on March 13th, and very gradually several of the French fortified positions were overcome.  Việt Minh artillery made the landing of French aircraft impossible, as several planes were destroyed, losses on both sides were very heavy and there was considerable close-quarter fighting.  It all went horribly wrong for the French.

My pre-owned copy of Dien Bien Phu: The Epic Battle America Forgot, came with several inserts, including a copy of an article mentioning the battle in the Sunday Việt Nam News, December 15, 2002, and an obituary for Howard Simpson.  My copy was once owned by someone called Lawrence Jones (according to a sticker inside the front cover) from San Francisco.  Inserted in the book was a copy of his Funeral Mass in 2016.  From the picture on its front page, it looks as if he was in the military.

The Cat from Huế

The Cat from Huế, by John Laurence, is a big book – in fact, it is 850 pages long.  However, it received glowing reviews, and that was enough motivation for me to get interested.  The introduction, covering seven days from February 19th, 1968 to February 26th, 1968 and featuring the Battle of Huế and the early troubles of the cat in the book’s title, is also long.  It’s not until page 90 that John Laurence writes “So here is my story. Come, if you will.”  By then I was glued, so I came along.

John Laurence was a reporter who covered numerous conflicts, including the Vietnam War, the topic of this book.  Wars are terrifying and Laurence was often afraid.  Vietnam suffered from various conflicts for hundreds of years – just look at this list and you can see that the Vietnam War was one of many, many conflicts.

As well as being terrible things, wars can result in innovations.  Imagine the creation of a 15,000 member force in the 1960s, the US 1st Cavalry, and the decision to move entirely by air using 450 helicopters.  This was an entirely new military concept for the mobility of troops and looked likely to succeed.  In addition, the Americans had plans to spearhead a social and economic revolution in the rural areas of Vietnam, aiming at redistributing land, improving living conditions in the countryside, the introduction of generous new programs to help communities develop and put an end to corruption.

What could possibly go wrong?

It is easy to see how the first wave of Americans arriving in Vietnam would have felt very positive about their involvement in Vietnam.  First, they needed to get rid of the threat posed by the Viet Cong.  With thousands of U.S. military personnel arriving every day in 1965, supported by the latest combat hardware and an impressive airforce, the expectation was that victory would not take long.  Even the pessimists said that it should be over in a year.  By a near-unanimous majority of the US Congress, the administration had been given a blank cheque to preserve South Vietnam as a non-Communist state and thereby demonstrate that the Communist world, especially China and the Soviet Union, would be defeated in their attempts at subversion and armed aggression.

As a professional journalist, Laurence wanted to be honest in his reporting, and be a bridge between the American troops and the American public.  He certainly was not a propagandist, but like virtually everyone else in the West in 1965, he regarded the cause as honourable, and expected a US victory in short time.

He followed troops into battle, put himself in extreme danger, got shot at, and gradually saw why the VC were so difficult to defeat – mainly because the VC often avoided pitched battles and faded into the bush only to return to villages once the Americans and South Vietnamese forces pulled out.  Laurence loses friends in battles.

After the death of a journalist colleague, Laurence goes back to the US for a while, but eventually is drawn once again to Vietnam where he experiences a terrifying battle at Con Thien.  He gradually sees the pointlessness of the whole war, and that the Americans who came to liberate the people end up killing more and more of them, and getting killed themselves.  Later on again, he is on the ground during the Cambodia Campaign.

As for what happens to the cat, I won’t spoil it.  You’ll have to read the book yourself.

One of the characters mentioned in the book is Sean Flynn, a journalist and the son of Errol Flynn.  Sean was a friend of John Laurence.  Sean, along with Dana Stone, another friend of Laurence, went missing in Cambodia (as did several other journalists).  A few years ago, and again more recently, somebody reckoned they’d found their bones.

Making a bench

My grandfather was a carpenter.  I don’t seem to have inherited many of his skills, but I enjoyed woodwork at secondary school in Doncaster, and was disappointed when I couldn’t continue the subject when we moved to Elgin.  In the distant past I made a kitchen, and a bed which is actually still in use.  More recently I decided to have an attempt at making a bench under the window in our breakfast room.

Above is the room with its original decor.  It took three coats of paint to make it presentable.

I found some boards in our shed, and bought some more wood from B&Q, then set to work.

Lindsey tested the structure.

The next stage was painting the uprights and front edge the same colour as I’d painted the skirting boards.

The thing you notice when attempting to make such things as this bench is that nothing is perfect.  The floor is not 100% level, the walls are not 100% straight, and even the wood planks I bought at B&Q turned out to have slightly different dimensions.  My saw cuts were also not completely straight, but in the end it doesn’t matter.  More important is that the bench is structurally stable, and level, which it is.

The finished bench with cushions. This will give a maximum of five extra seating spaces.  Unfortunately, there’s a slight design problem with the bench!  The cushions were harder than I expected, and as a result, the height of the finished bench is slightly too high for some people, but it still functions.

Ghosts of Happy Valley

In Ghosts of Happy Valley, Juliet Barnes writes about the houses built and owned by a group of white, hedonistic aristocrats in the area of Kenya known as the ‘Happy Valley’, a region of the Wanjohi Valley near the Aberdare mountain range, from the 1920s to the 1940s.  The Happy Valley got its name from all of the debauchery and naughty goings-on that happened there, largely led by Lady Idina Sackville.  You may have seen the White Mischief movie, which featured some of the participants.

The buildings in question were not fantastic constructions, and there were not all that many of them, and some of them are now little more than ruins, but Juliet Barnes makes them come alive once more in the pages of this book.  Barnes made numerous visits to Wanjohi Valley, mostly in the company of a chap called Solomon Gitau, who works tirelessly for various conservation projects and who despises the recent destruction of large parts of the Aberdare forest as a result of population growth and unenforced regulations.

Ghosts of Happy Valley is a fascinating book, though at times I found it difficult to follow all of the historical characters involved, as they are numerous and many had nicknames.  An awful lot of them seem to have had character flaws, many became alcoholics and several met with untimely deaths from one cause or another.  The murder of Josslyn Hay (Lord Erroll), who was married to Lady Idina, has fascinated a lot of people, as no-one was ever convicted of the crime, and Barnes examines the evidence once more.

Katanga 1960-63

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, there was a scramble for Africa by European countries.  This process helped to avoid conflict among the Europeans but had a lasting effect on Africa.  At the Berlin Conference of 1884, spheres of interest were agreed and lines were drawn on maps.  It is generally agreed that the interests and traditions of the indigenous peoples were completely ignored.  The new boundaries often bisected ethnic groups.

I wouldn’t for one moment defend this process, but it is interesting to consider the alternatives.  For example, the European powers could have stayed out of African politics.  This would probably have been impossible, as European traders and settlers were already on the ground, and, to some extent, the new boundary agreements sometimes kept them at bay by providing a legal structure and some level of control.  Of course, the boundaries could have been drawn in a much more sensitive way with respect to ethnic groups, but at the time knowledge of such things, in several large areas, was scant.  By 1884 numerous boundaries had in any case already been agreed.  There were, and had been for some time, ideas about a French empire stretching from west to east Africa and a British empire stretching from Cairo to Cape Town.  In West Africa, the colonial powers had already created countries stretching, on the whole, from south to north.  These completely ignored the traditional ethnic groupings in that region which tended to stretch from west to east (those in the coastal regions, those further inland, and those in savanna and semi-arid parts).  There are something like 3,000 distinct ethnic groups in Africa, with 2,000 languages, and a political map based on all such groups would have created a very complex situation.

Nevertheless, when King Leopold II of Belgium helped himself to an enormous chunk of Central Africa, which became known until 1908 as the Congo Free State, it was a land grab of massive proportions with extremely little logic, and virtually no consideration for the interests of indigenous people in that region.  The Congo Free State contained over 250 ethnic groups.  Some, such as the Bakonga were sliced in half by the new border.  The new boundary fenced together other groups who had been enemies for centuries.  It was a disaster waiting to happen, and it didn’t take long for problems to emerge.

Despite all the criticism of European powers creating unworkable countries out of Africa, it is a sad case that when those various African countries became independent from the 1950s onwards there were few peaceful, organised attempts to rectify traditional borders.  Two examples of where this did happen were in Western Togoland and the Volta Region and British Cameroons.  In most other cases attempts to change boundaries and attempts by groups to secede led to wars, which were then often directly or indirectly sponsored by western powers as part of the Cold War, and the result was that those conflicts were more brutal and longer lasting than they might otherwise have been.

One such war occurred in Katanga and is the subject of Katanga 1960-63: Mercenaries, spies and the African nation that waged war on the world, by Christopher Othen.  The war in Katanga was a most peculiar conflict.  There was very little sympathy anywhere for the State of Katanga/Republic of Katanga when Moïse Tshombe declared its independence from the Republic of the Congo (as the Congo Free State had become), and few saw it as a legitimate nationalist movement or an attempt to rectify old colonial anomalies, despite the fact that there was considerable support for independence in the southern parts of the new state amongst the indigenous population.  In fact, the new republic created new anomalies and split the baLuba, in the north of Katanga, who were opposed to independence.  Katanga was generally seen by most as the creation of white colonials who wanted to retain control over a mineral-rich region.  Just about everyone else quickly lined up against the new state.

As explained at Goodreads, “It was a fantastically uneven battle. The UN fielded soldiers from twenty nations, America paid the bills, and the Soviets intrigued behind the scenes. Yet to everyone’s surprise the new nation’s rag-tag army of local gendarmes, jungle tribesmen and, controversially, European mercenaries, refused to give in. For two and a half years Katanga, the scrawniest underdog ever to fight a war, held off the world with guerrilla warfare, two-faced diplomacy, and some shady financial backing. It even looked as if the Katangese might win.”

This conflict is therefore fascinating for historians, and Christopher Othen provides the detail.

Leading on the one side for a while, was Patrice Lumumba, the Prime Minister of the Republic of the Congo, and on the other was Moïse Tshombe, the self-declared President of Katanga.  After UN forces succeeded in suppressing Katanga, Tschombe fled to exile.  However a few years later he returned as prime minister of the Congo in a new coalition government.  Lumumba, in the meantime, had been quickly replaced in a coup d’etat by Mobutu, who sent Lumumba to Élisabethville (now known as Lubumbashi), where he was executed by a firing squad under the command of Katangan authorities.  Later on, as Prime Minister of the Congo, and despite his previous history, Tschombe was very much against concilliation with the Simba rebels (supporters of the late Lumumba), who had previously also declared independence from the Congo as the Free Republic of the Congo. Tshombe was subsequently dismissed by President Kasa-Vubu, and then General Mobutu, who staged a successful coup against Kasa-Vubu, brought charges of treason against Tshombe, who again fled the country and settled in Francoist Spain.  Much later, in 2006, Antoine Gizenga who had previously in 1960 declared independence of the Free Republic of the Congo and who subsequently spent various periods in prison and then fled the country, became Prime Minister of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (as the Republic of the Congo is now known (after being known as Zaire from 1971 to 1997)).

Belgium provided some support for Tschombe in Katanga, the US backed Mobutu, and the Russians meddled a lot and leant moral and financial support to Lumumba and also Gizenga.  A few Brits, some Rhodesians and also Roy Welensky, thought that the new Katanga might want to join the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland. Numerous mercenaries then pitched up, looking for action.  Tschombe favoured a new federation of countries formed out of the Republic of the Congo.

Is all of that crystal clear?  It shows how fluid politics could be in those parts of Africa in those days.  With so much external meddling, what chance was there for home-grown politics, which were in any case immensely complex, and usually based on ethnic groupings which were often hostile to each other?

There was a lot of bad nastiness, torture, killings and rapes, in various regions immediately after the Republic of the Congo gained its independence, and this continued for some time across the country.  The United Nations sent many troups, arrested and deported mercenaries, and then forcefully took over parts of Katanga.  Then the Katangese forces, aided by mercenaries (French, Belgian, British and a few from elsewhere) started to fight back, and chaos ensued.

One biased section almost spoils this otherwise excellent book

Scotland’s Last Frontier: A Journey Along the Highland Line, by Alistair Moffat, jumps around a bit, both geographically and chronologically, but doesn’t suffer as a result, and I enjoyed most of the book and learned a lot from it, mostly about ancient, medieval and local history concerning various parts of Scotland but especially those areas around the ‘highland line’ with which this work is concerned.  I have been to presentations by Moffat in the past, and appreciated his expertise and speaking skills.  I have no idea, therefore, why he practically spoils what is otherwise a good and informative read by including a ridiculously biased section.

The section I object to is about the Highland Clearances.  Prior to misrepresenting the Highland Clearance process, Moffat writes about the bitter harvests and famine in Aberdeenshire in the 1690s which resulted from temporary climate changes.  He writes about the Monymusk Estate, near Inverurie, and the improvements made by the Grants, the landowners in the early 18th century.  Moffat describes the tumbledown houses of the locals, the open grounds divided into small parcels, the inefficient methods of cultivation, the ditches with weeds and stones in them, all of which were essentially an example of the medieval landscape of much of Scotland at that time.  Grant planted trees, millions of them, and he drained the land and cleared stones, making ditches around new fields.  He introduced new crops and new rotations, and better fields which allowed more milking cows to be kept alive during winter which in turn improved the health of the locals.  In addition, the invention of the swing plough virtually revolutionised agriculture by enabling deeper furrows (better drainage) with a requirement for fewer draught animals and labour.  Many areas east of the highland line turned to more efficient cereal production.  Moffat recognises that these agricultural changes often came with a human cost, but he sees them as improvements which transformed society for the better and helped new industries, such as textiles, to thrive.  During this same period, the early 18th century, in the Highlands there were fewer agricultural changes, due to the different geography of that region, though one benefit of the Act of Union in 1707 was to open up new markets for highland cattle.  He writes, “Highland chiefs and landowners were generally paid rents in kind rather than cash and cattle was the main currency.  Landowners also acted as agents for tenant farmers who had surplus to sell or they bought from them directly.  Many crofter-farmers had to sell their beasts on before the winter in any case since they did not have easy access to the new sources of fodder being grown in the Lowlands.  And cattle supplied their own transport.  They walked to market.”

So far, so good.  Moffat has accurately described the process of land improvement, enclosure, and agricultural and industrial transformations in the Lowlands which resulted in economic and health benefits for those concerned, and mentioned that in the Highlands developments had been much more piecemeal with a continuing subsistence-based economy supplemented by the sale of highland cattle (a trade which suffered after the end of the Napoleonic Wars).  Then he turns to the Highland Clearances (Fuadach nan Gaidheal) and rather loses the plot.  He writes “Increasingly absent and anglicised clan chiefs came to value their estates not for the number (and loyalty) of the people they could support but for how much of an income they could produce.”  In truth, the highland chiefs had become no more ‘anglicised’ than any of the numerous landowners elsewhere and in the Lowlands, (many of whom were also absent) who had improved their land, so why suddenly use that term, and in an inferred derogatory sense?  The Highland landowners had the same aspirations as their Lowland counterparts.  The poorer highlanders were also no different from their Lowland equivalents (apart from the language they spoke, as the Gaelic language had become much less common outside the Highlands).  Many of the Highland landowners also tried to improve their land, a little later than had happened in the Lowlands, but the desire to improve was no different.  The differences, however, and these are very important, were that their land was generally less fertile, the pressures on land from population growth by this time were more acute, and, unlike in the Lowlands, the new industries often failed (for numerous reasons).  Moffat doesn’t seem to grasp much of this, but instead falls into a fairly common trap of calling Highland landlords ‘brutal’, ‘ignorant’ and having ‘careless contempt’ for their tenants.  As I have written previously, this is an example of perpetuating some myths of the Highland Clearances.  Sir Tom Devine has written much more accurately on the matter.  Moffat even heaps praise on the ‘historian’ John Prebble.  As I have pointed out in other posts on this blog, Prebble never let actual facts get in the way of his yarns.  Prebble’s inaccurate interpretations have unfortunately had much influence on popular, especially nationalistic, perspectives of Highland history.

In the remaining chapters of Scotland’s Last Frontier, normal service is resumed.  There’s a very interesting description of the archaeological digs that revealed the enormous Roman fort at Inchtuthil, built after the Roman victory at the Battle of Mons Graupius (AD83) and abandoned five years later.  There is also an amusing account of the bungling, ham-fisted removal/theft/liberation of the Stone of Destiny from Westminster Abbey by Ian Hamilton in 1950; another story about a fight to the death between 30 men from Clan Cameron and 30 men from Clan Chattan in 1396; and an account of James Macpherson and the ‘lost’ poems of Ossian.

If only Moffat hadn’t been so biased in his interpretation of the Highland Clearances, this would have been a better book.