Thanks, TC. One very small point: I have read that it was only the correspondents who called Halsey Bull. Those who were close to him always called him Bill. I'm sure you know the terrific (but perhaps one-sided) biopic of him, The Gallant Hours, with Jimmy Cagney playing the Admiral. I have often thought I was born too late--I was a tru…
Thanks, TC. One very small point: I have read that it was only the correspondents who called Halsey Bull. Those who were close to him always called him Bill. I'm sure you know the terrific (but perhaps one-sided) biopic of him, The Gallant Hours, with Jimmy Cagney playing the Admiral. I have often thought I was born too late--I was a true child of the Atomic Age, being born a day after Hiroshima was bombed. I think I should have been born so that I could have flown with the RAF in the Battle of Britain, or with the dive bombers at Midway. (In such maunderings, I never pay attention to the marginal eyesight or general clumsiness that would have kept me from doing either thing.)
I frequently think that. Had my Civil War ancestors not waited till they were in their mid-30s to marry and have children, and had their children not done the same, there would be no "missing generation" in my line and I would have been born ca 1920, early enough to have been one of the guys in my books.
The Gallant Hours covers the period of Halsey's command time for which no one disputes he was The Right Man In The Right Place At The Right Time. When he took command of SoPac in mid-October 1942, there was strong doubt by everyone that Guadalcanal could be held. He led by sheer force of personality - like Patton with the 3rd Army after D-Day - and turned morale and belief they could win 180 degrees.
Thanks, TC. One very small point: I have read that it was only the correspondents who called Halsey Bull. Those who were close to him always called him Bill. I'm sure you know the terrific (but perhaps one-sided) biopic of him, The Gallant Hours, with Jimmy Cagney playing the Admiral. I have often thought I was born too late--I was a true child of the Atomic Age, being born a day after Hiroshima was bombed. I think I should have been born so that I could have flown with the RAF in the Battle of Britain, or with the dive bombers at Midway. (In such maunderings, I never pay attention to the marginal eyesight or general clumsiness that would have kept me from doing either thing.)
I frequently think that. Had my Civil War ancestors not waited till they were in their mid-30s to marry and have children, and had their children not done the same, there would be no "missing generation" in my line and I would have been born ca 1920, early enough to have been one of the guys in my books.
The Gallant Hours covers the period of Halsey's command time for which no one disputes he was The Right Man In The Right Place At The Right Time. When he took command of SoPac in mid-October 1942, there was strong doubt by everyone that Guadalcanal could be held. He led by sheer force of personality - like Patton with the 3rd Army after D-Day - and turned morale and belief they could win 180 degrees.