“What Did You Do In The Great War Grandpa?”

B.J. (Bonnie) Bryan, herself a veteran, writes that at “71 I was honored to go on the Ride for the Wall from Magalia to Washington, DC in honor of all veterans but especially the Vietnam vets as many of them did not get a welcome home.” Almost a decade later the Paradise resident has compiled her “brother-in-law’s journals during World War II that he sent me after he returned stateside.”

They appear in two large paperback volumes entitled “What Did You Do In The Great War Grandpa?: The Story Of The 749th Tank Battalion And Its Assigned Infantry Regiments In World War II” (Volume 1, $24.95; Volume 2, $18.95, from Beautiful Wrinkles Press; available from Amazon.com).

In addition to the work of Sgt. Ernest Humphries, C Company, 70th Infantry Division, Bryan has included rosters and awards, a bibliography and glossary, and almost twenty maps showing tank battalion missions.

Volume 1 begins with a dramatic speech to American troops in Britain, at the start of US involvement, by “Old Blood and Guts” himself, Lt. Gen. George S. Patton. “You are not all going to die. Only two percent of you here, in a major battle, will die. Death must not be feared. … Sure, we all want to go home. We want this thing over with, but you can’t win a war lying down. The quickest way to get it over with is to go get the bastards!”

The journal entries that follow, by contrast, are laconic. Paragraph by paragraph, Humphries documents deployments. July 4, 1944: “Enemy units were located at the front lines north of Bolleville that included the 920th, 921st, and the 922nd Inf Regts [infantry regiments] of the 243rd Inf Div. They continued a stubborn defense from hedgerow-to-hedgerow using small groups of men for this delaying action. Enemy artillery and mortar fire was steady throughout the day.” Entries will appeal especially to military aficionados.

VE Day, May, 1945 (“sabotage and sniping remain a constant threat to security with German companies in a state of chaos”), “the 311th day in combat for the 749th Tank Bn. … Clear with good visibility. Combat efficiency and morale were excellent.”

A journal for local naturalists

Scott Huber of Chico, and his young photographer son Liam, have issued an invitation for readers to step outside and look—really look—at the world of nature. And then to write down their experience. The invitation takes the form of “NorCal Naturalist: Journal And Calendar” ($16.75 spiral bound, self-published, available at Lyon Books in Chico as well as local nature centers).

The format is simple. On the right-hand side are seven numbered blank boxes (each week of the year gets an undated page) so you can turn to the appropriate week of the month and start writing. The left-hand side may contain one of the 24 color photographs (most taken by Liam) or one of Scott’s 48 short nature essays. Huber’s stories of his and Liam’s encounters with the natural world exemplify the work of a true amateur—a lover of nature (and words) with a keen eye and intense curiosity.

As the reader’s own journal takes shape, Huber recommends comparisons, month-by-month and eventually year-by-year.

The essays are miniature excursions into the natural world, one graced by hummingbirds, butterflies, bobcats, deer, wild turkeys, newts, Black-headed grosbeaks, and more. Here are photographs of White-whorled lupins and a Humboldt Lily from Chico Creek Canyon, curling manzanita bark in Butte Creek Canyon, a Blacktail deer in Forest Ranch, and a bobcat hunting voles in the Big Chico Creek Ecological Reserve.

“As avid birders,” Huber writes, “my son and I have spent countless hours listening to recorded bird songs and practicing the recognition of birds using only our ears. … My friends will confess that it’s not uncommon to see me suddenly hush them, cup my hands around my ears and tilt my head towards some sound no one else has noticed, and then exclaim, ‘Did you hear that?’”

In March 2013 it was Lawrence’s goldfinch. “There, just thirty feet away, swaying on the arcing stocks of fiddleneck flowers was not one, but a male and female pair of these striking little yellow and gray birds with dark black masks.”

My observation? It’s good to share the love. Get the book.

Local history professor delivers a compelling work of scholarship

Laird Easton, Chair of the Chico State University History Department, has completed the monumental task of editing and translating a long-lost portion of one of the greatest diaries ever written. (Samuel Pepys, step aside.) "Journey To The Abyss: The Diaries of Count Harry Kessler, 1880-1918" ($45 from Knopf; also in digital formats for Amazon Kindle, Barnes and Noble Nook, and from Google eBooks) is the compelling story, in his own words, of a cosmopolitan German free spirit who became a secret agent.

Easton will be giving a book talk on Kessler at 1078 Gallery (820 Broadway in Chico) tonight at 6:00 p.m. during a reception in his honor (5:00 - 8:00 p.m.).

Kessler's journal, which he added to over fifty-six years, opens up a "life led at the center of European art, literature, and politics during the greatest cultural and political transformations in modern history." But, as Easton notes, the section of his diary Kessler began in 1880, when he was twelve, through the First World War, was lost until 1983 when it was found in a safe on the island of Mallorca. Easton's work is the first English translation which, at 900 printed pages, is only a quarter of what Kessler produced during those years.

He was ambivalent, says Easton, about his homosexuality; even in his journal "he tiptoes around the subject of his own sexual feelings. ..." His father was a banker but Kessler was drawn to the avant-garde, influenced by Nietzsche (whose death mask he made), working with Richard Strauss, Igor Stravinsky, Sergei Diaghilev, Vaslav Nijinsky, Auguste Rodin, and lunching with George Bernard Shaw.

In San Francisco, 1892: "On the way through Golden Gate Park; wide boulevards shaded by pines, colorful flowers, tropical plants. I would have enjoyed their beauty more without the signs with endless Latin names stuck between them." Berlin, 1897: "Unfortunately I am once again drawn more and more into social life. Result, work = zero." Bern, Oct. 5, 1918: "The blackest day of the world war. ... The war is lost by our own confession."

Kessler survived (he died in 1937). Easton's work will survive, too; it is scholarly yet grandly accessible, inviting one to lose oneself in the "Belle Époque," that grand time before the abyss.