My father was born on November 4, 1917, 108 years ago today.
Although interventionist breezes blew strongly before that pivotal year — witness the Spanish-American War, for example — such did not compare to the hurricane force winds of 1917 which saw American troops shipped to France to engage in war on that continent for the first time in our history.
According to John Barry’s The Great Influenza, the cataclysmic “Spanish Flu” was propelled by troop shipments initiated in that year, although the catastrophic evidence of that pandemic would not be widely seen until the following year. Barry documents how government officials, as mendacious back then as they are today, were quick to call the flu “Spanish” even though all the evidence was that it originated either on the American continent or perhaps in Asia — it is debated to this day.
These officials also strove mightily to obscure the exact nature of the epidemic in order to not bring the war effort into question.
Regardless, that flu cost an estimated 100 Million lives. There are reports of men getting symptoms in the morning and being dead by nightfall. The age group most affected were children 5 and under. The exact opposite of a more recent infectious event. In sum, the flu killed far more people than all the soldiers and civilians killed in the war.
A few days after my father’s birth, the Russian Civil War broke out between the “Whites” and “Reds”, eventuating in the ultimate installation of the Leninist and Stalinist tyranny which ruled most of Eurasia for the next 70-plus years and still rules in China, albeit not as overtly as during Mao’s despotic rule. The Leninist – Stalinist rule is encapsulated well in their treatment of the royal family. If the reader would like to know more about this, Robert K. Massie’s Nicholas and Alexandra is an excellent source.
The family and a small entourage was arrested earlier in 1917. After several relocations, they were eventually situated in the outskirts of Siberia and, anticipating a “Whites” victory in 1918, were massacred: The czar and his wife along with their five children, Olga, Tatiana, María, Anastasia, and Alexis. Also their entourage — the doctor, Eugene Botkin, who cared for Alexis, who suffered from hemophilia; lady-in-waiting Anna Demidova; footman Alexei Trupp; and cook Ivan Kharitonov.
Their guards were changed, not only from location to location, but also in the same location up to a day or two prior to the murders. This was done because Lenin, a man completely unacquainted with pity, insisted that no opportunity be given for guards to come to feel compassion for the family.
The bodies were taken to the Koptyaki forest, stripped, mutilated with grenades and acid to prevent identification and buried. The “Whites” did take over the city and investigated the room where the massacre had so obviously occurred. The Soviets only admitted to the atrocity in the mid-1920s.
Demonstrating yet again, that there is nothing new under the sun, despite official denials and stonewalling and obstructions, the burial site was finally discovered, by an amateur detective in 1979, but another 10 years had to slip by before DNA forensics could confirm the identities as being from the royal family. The remains were reinterred in 1998, exactly 80 years after their terrible murders. Incredibly, the remains of Alexis and a sister were discovered in another, smaller grave by — surprise! — amateur archaeologists. These were also reinterred.
My father was one year old when the Armistice was accepted by Germany on November 11, 1918, and not yet two years old when the Versailles Treaty was signed in June, 1919.
As a toddler, he knew about as much as the great minds of Europe on that day as to the eventual failure not only of that treaty but of the godless Socialist theories which eventuated in more blood shed and lives lost in that century than in all other centuries combined.
My father was not yet two. He can be excused. But what is the excuse of grown men ostensibly educated by the greatest colleges and universities, all with Christian heritages, which should have told them that anything built on lies not only cannot endure but must end in catastrophe.
Like most men in 20th Century America, my father voted for Franklin D Roosevelt; but unlike most, he came to regret his vote and felt honored in voting for Ronald R Reagan in 1980, the last general election he would witness. Not because President Reagan was God — he most certainly was not. But rather because he at least tipped his hat to eternal verities and sought to govern thusly, although he was not successful in many respects.
My father did not speak much about his work in the Army special unit. But every once in a while he would express his dismay at the shenanigans of the United States State Department and other departments and their seeming obliviousness to Socialist ideology and their nonchalant attitude towards the intellectual growth of such in our society and culture. He was incredulous at our media and our government as they expressed obliviousness towards Fidel Castro in Cuba — we now know they were not so oblivious after all.
All the men my father worked with or for are now gone. I can share a seemingly insignificant event which illustrates how far my father’s distrust grew over the course of the century. After a decade or so of non-activity, he received a communication summoning him to a meeting somewhere — I’ll voluntarily redact the location except to say it was not on the mainland but accessible.
Years later, my father told me about it. He decided not to attend.
Why? I asked.
I cannot trust them.
My throat tightens as I write this. My father was not a coward. But he was realistic and he did see that not only had times changed, but the people he knew and respected were no longer in the drivers’ seats. It was another team and their fruit was not good.
As serious as all this is, I must insert here that my father had a wonderful sense of humor and laughed with ease, as eager to tell a joke as to hear one. Being a sportsman, he was able to take wins with enthusiasm and losses with a determination to do better next time.
Not being enthusiasts for foreign interventions, we can nevertheless see God’s Providence working in all things — good and bad. As I read about the Spanish-American War, I am not a fan. Nevertheless it was that war that brought my grandfather from Massachusetts to Cuba where he remained after the war and married my grandmother and it was where my father was born.
And many years after that war, I worked for a public accounting firm in Puerto Rico, another fruit of that war, where I eventually met my own wife whom my father also met shortly before his own departure.
So, paradoxically, I am thankful for that war.
My father was murdered in October, 1982 in the Atlanta, Georgia area.
He continues to exert a powerful, beneficial influence on me and on my siblings.
And I am grateful.
Room where the Romanovs were murdered, the night of July 16-17, 1918
My grandfather, Max A Barnes (1874-1950)
My grandmother, Eustaquia R. Barnes (1893-1951)
My father and I, visiting family in Stockbridge, Massachussets, circa 1962
My father, Charles M. Barnes (1917-1982), circa 1948
