Kristol Clear #114

Memorial Day, originally called Decoration Day, is a post-Civil War holiday. It was first instituted by the Grand Army of the Republic, on May 30, 1868, “for the purpose of strewing with flowers, or otherwise decorating the graves of comrades who died in defense of their country during the late rebellion, and whose bodies now lie in almost every city, village, hamlet, and churchyard in the land.” If the Fourth of July renews the memory of the birth of the nation, Decoration Day renews the memory of those who gave their lives that that nation might live. Or again, in Lincoln’s words, “That this nation shall have a new birth of freedom.” After World War I, Memorial Day was expanded to commemorate the lives of all those who have died in service to our country.

The muffled drum’s sad roll has beat
The soldier’s last tattoo;
No more on life’s parade shall meet
The brave and daring few.
On Fame’s eternal camping-ground
Their silent tents are spread,
And Glory guards, with solemn round
The bivouac of the dead.

Jane Fawcett, a British code-breaker during World War II who deciphered a key German message that led to the sinking of the battleship Bismarck — one of Britain’s greatest naval victories during the war — died May 21 at her home in Oxford, England. She was 95….
Mrs. Fawcett was still in her teens when she received a letter from a friend in February 1940, in the early months of the war.
“I’m at Bletchley and it’s perfectly frightful,” her friend wrote. “We’re so overworked, so desperately busy. You must come and join us.”
Fluent in German and driven by curiosity, Mrs. Fawcett — then known by her maiden name, Jane Hughes — found work at Britain’s top-secret code-breaking facility at Bletchley Park, about 50 miles northwest of London. Of the 12,000 people who worked there, about 8,000 were women….
Mrs. Fawcett was assigned to Hut 6. She was part of an all-female team whose job was to monitor messages from the German army and air force. Conditions in the single-story wooden buildings were hardly ideal.
“It was just horrid; there were very leaky windows,” Mrs. Fawcett recalled in a 2015 interview with the Telegraph, “so it was very cold with just a frightful old stove in the middle of the room that let out lots of fumes but not much heat, and just one electric bulb hanging on a string, which was quite inadequate. We were always working against time, there was always a crisis, a lot of stress and a lot of excitement.”
In May 1941, the British navy was searching for Germany’s most formidable battleship, the Bismarck, which had last been seen near Norway. Mrs. Fawcett was transcribing an intercepted message from the headquarters of the Luftwaffe, or German air force, when she noticed a reference to the French city of Brest.
In a reply to a Luftwaffe general whose son was aboard the Bismarck, a German officer noted that the battleship was headed to Brest for repairs.
Mrs. Fawcett relayed her discovery to her supervisors, and within a day the Bismarck was spotted by the U.S. Navy in the Atlantic Ocean, about 700 miles off the coast of Brittany. British warplanes and naval vessels descended on the Bismarck, which was sunk on May 27, 1941. More than 2,000 German crew members were killed.
The sinking of the Bismarck marked the first time that British code-breakers had decrypted a message that led directly to a victory in battle. Cheers erupted among the staff at Bletchley Park, but their celebration remained private.
Mrs. Fawcett’s work was not made public for decades. Along with everyone else at Bletchley Park, she agreed to comply with Britain’s Official Secrets Act, which imposed a lifetime prohibition on revealing any code-breaking activities. It wasn’t until the late 1990s that her role in the sinking of the Bismarck began to come to light.
“My husband had been in the navy and done all these heroic things in every quarter, so of course we all talked about him and those brilliant young adventurers who saved Britain — well, saved the world,” Mrs. Fawcett said last year.
“So when everything we had done, which we knew had been very hard work and incredibly demanding, suddenly showed its head and we were being asked to talk about it, it felt quite overwhelming. I’d never told a soul, not even my husband. My grandchildren were very surprised….”