Category Archives: History

Let’s See the Marker from the Korean War

The widow Joyce Feazell wanted to actually see a tombstone noted by her late husband, John Feazell, on a propaganda pamphlet dropped by the North Koreans in Korea about 1952, Previously we discovered it was real and where it was likely to be.

Joyce called in a field agent to go find it: her son John N. Feazell, Jr., who lives near Savannah. Joyce reported back on 5 June 2010:

It is in the Cemetery you referred to. John went and found the marker and took this picture so it is for real.

Picture of the marker in Gravel Hill Cemetery, Bloomingdale, Georgia, by John N. Feazell, Jr., 5 June 2010.

As I remarked to Joyce:

You can see how PFC Horner’s daddy might have been upset, having already lost every other immediate relative.

Too bad the North Koreans used it in their propaganda.

She agreed.

Roll credits.

-jsq

Searching for a Marker from the Korean War

Continuing the search commissioned by the widow Joyce Feazell for a tombstone noted by her late husband, John Feazell, on a propaganda pamphlet dropped by the North Koreans in Korea about 1952. Previously we determined the tombstone was real. So where is it?

Remember the front of the pamphlet gave a location for the tombstone. A bit of work with google maps showed the highway between Bloomingdale and Pooler would be US 80. So far, so good. Let’s try to narrow it down.

The deceased’s last name was Horning, and there is something called Horning Memorial Cemetery near Bloomingdale. But that’s not on US 80; it’s on US 17 between Bloomingdale and I-16.


View Larger Map

That might be the right location, but even though google maps has pretty good resolution there for both satellite and streetview images, the stone doesn’t appear to be there.

Ah, but the book

Continue reading →

On the Case of the Korean War Marker

The widow Joyce Feazell asked me to find a tombstone noted by her late husband, John Feazell, on a propaganda pamphlet dropped by the North Koreans in Korea about 1952.

Here’s the back of the pamphlet:

Note John’s hand-written note:

Found near the fort of GI Baldy, 26 March. Is it true?
So I told Joyce I didn’t know, but I’d take the case.

The back of the pamphlet has a transcription of the tombstone pictured: Continue reading →

A Request from an Old Friend: Find Me a Tombstone

On 3 June 2010, Joyce Feazell asked me this question:
John, have you by chance ever seen this in your travels around the Savannah area? I found this in some of the stuff John had in his Korea scrapbook.
Here it is, yellowed and tattered:

John Feazell, who was principal at all three of Pine Grove Elementary, Hahira Middle School, and Lowndes High School when I was there (I sometimes thought he was protectively following me around), had a scrapbook of pictures and other material from his service in Korea as a Sergeant in the Army. He had showed me this item some years ago. It’s a propaganda flyer, one of many dropped by the North Koreans on Allied troops.

It reads:

A FATHER’S MEMORIAL TO SON KILLED IN KOREA

A Savannnah, Ga., father has ordered this big boulder-type memorial to his 19-year-old son who was killed in action in the fighting in Korea. It will be placed on the edge of the highway between Blomingdale and Pooler, Ga., U.S.A. THE POLITICIANS ELECTED IN 1952 ARE JUST AS READY TO SEE YOU KILLED AS THOSE ELECTED IN 1948. THIS WAR IS SENSELESS! GET TOGETHER TO STOP IT!

OK, it should be possible to find a large block of stone like that. The game’s afoot, as Sherlock Holmes would say!

-jsq

The Art of Managing Longleaf

The surprising thing is so few people have heard of Leon Neel. Here’s a very interesting biography of this very influential pioneer in southeastern forestry and agriculture, including many interesting stories of south Georgia and north Florida life and politics:
The Art of Managing Longleaf:
A Personal History of the Stoddard-Neel Approach,
by Leon Neel, with Paul S. Sutter and Albert G. Way.
Leon Neel was a atudent, apprentice, and successor of Herbert Stoddard, who was originally hired by quail plantation owners around Thomasville to figure out why their quail populations were decreasing. The answer included a need to thin and especially to burn their longleaf pine tree forests. Stoddard and Neel studied and practiced for almost a century between them on how to preserve and increase the amount of standing timber and species diversity while also selectively harvesting trees to pay for the whole thing. Their Stoddard-Neel Approach is written up in textbooks. In this book we learn how it came about, and how it is basically different from the clearcut-thin-thin-clearcut “efficient” timbering cycle that is the current fad among pine tree growers in the southeast.

It starts back in the old days of Leon Neel’s youth when his daddy taught him to hunt quail: Continue reading →

Suicide in India and How to Stop It

Vandana Shiva writes in Huffington Post about India:
200,000 farmers have ended their lives since 1997.
In just one Indian state:
1593 farmers committed suicide in Chattisgarh in 2007. Before 2000 no farmers suicides are reported in the state.
Why?
In 1998, the World Bank’s structural adjustment policies forced India to open up its seed sector to global corporations like Cargill, Monsanto and Syngenta. The global corporations changed the input economy overnight. Farm saved seeds were replaced by corporate seeds, which need fertilizers and pesticides and cannot be saved.

Corporations prevent seed savings through patents and by engineering seeds with non-renewable traits. As a result, poor peasants have to buy new seeds for every planting season and what was traditionally a free resource, available by putting aside a small portion of the crop, becomes a commodity. This new expense increases poverty and leads to indebtness.

And that’s not all: Continue reading →

Clear-cutting led to flood disaster

Alex J. Chepstow-Lusty talks about a tree from Peru, “huarango, a tree that lives in highly arid zones and stabilizes the soil with some of the deepest roots of any tree known-and can live up to 1000 years”:
“At the bottom of the profile, I found lots of huarango pollen. This indicates that large forests were originally growing in that area.

Subsequently, I saw cotton pollen and other weeds, but still a lot of huarango pollen. It seems at this stage farming was in balance with the environment,” Chepstow-Lusty said.

Then, about 400 A.D., the Nazca apparently stopped growing cotton, switching to large crops of maize.

The researchers found a major reduction of huarango pollen, indicating that people started clearing the forests to plant more crops.

But the agricultural gain from clearing forests was short-lived. When a mega El Nino event hit the south coast of Peru in about 500 A.D., there were no huarango roots to anchor the landscape.

The fields and canal systems were washed away, leaving a desert environment. Today, only pollen from plants adapted to salty and arid conditions can be found, Chepstow-Lusty said.

“The bottom line is that the Nazca could have survived the devastating El Nino floods had they kept their forests alive. Basically, the huarango trees would have cushioned that major event,” Beresford-Jones said.

Hm, around here we’ve only seen a 700-year flood last year. When it happens again in a year or so, what will we call it?

Ecology of a Cracker Childhood

The other day somebody asked me to recommend some books about longleaf forests, how they used to be, what happened to them, what can be done now.

I was going to start by posting a short list, but each item was turning into a review, so I’ll just post them one by one as reviews.

Ecology of a Cracker Childhood (The World As Home), by Janisse Ray.

How dirt poor crackers and corporate greed destroyed most of the most diverse ecosystem in North America; yet these same people are the tragic heroes of the book. Half autobiography, half ecology, this book will either get you with Janisse’s “stunning voice” or you won’t get it. If you’re from around here, you’ll hear the wind in the pines, feel the breeze, and see the summer tanagers yellow in the sun. If you’re not, here’s your chance to meet a “heraldry of longleaf” up close and personal.

“I will rise from my grave with the hunger of wildcat, wings of kestrel….”
See Janisse read in Moultrie. “More precious than handfuls of money.” See her wikipedia page for a pretty good bio.

But read the book. If nothing else, you’ll never think the same again about Amazon deforestation once you realize we already did that to ourselves, and in the south we live in the devastated remnants of what was one of the most extensive forests on earth, with longleaf pine trees 100 feet tall and 500 years old, maintained by fire, protecting everything from the Lord God bird to the lowly Bachman’s sparrow, from the rattlesnake-eating indigo snake to the beetles that live in gopher tortoise burrows. The forest can return, because reforestation can pay. Meanwhile, there are still places where you can see how it used to be. Janisse Ray had a lot to do with preserving Moody Forest, too, but that’s another story.

-jsq

Elsie Quarterman Cedar Glade Festival

Dr. Elsie Quarterman, Vanderbilt Professor of Plant Ecology Emerita, with students and some grand-students:

Grand-students

This is Elsie’s 100th year: Continue reading →