Waltzing with Eisenhower: A Collection of West Point Dance Cards, 1915

By Rebecca Onion, From www.slate.com. The Vault is Slate‘s new history blog.

By ANDREA RICH, @arichPO, www.publicopiniononline.com

Every mom dreams that her children, once grown, will be successful and happy, doing something meaningful with their lives. Of all the mothers who get their wish, a small group of them get it at the price of their children being far from home or even overseas, often in harm’s way. They are moms of military personnel, and find comfort and strength in their fellow military moms through a group called Blue Star Mothers of America Inc.

Suzanne Mazzei of Waynesboro is a Blue Star mom. She and her husband, Robert, have three children: Nick, Daniel and Kristen. The oldest is employed as an inventory specialist with greatseats.com; the youngest is finishing her sophomore year at Penn State University.

Daniel is a member of the United States Coast Guard. After high school, Daniel worked a few different jobs, trying to find something that he could really enjoy and apply himself to. “He took a year, but he didn’t find anything he loved,” Suzanne said.

All the Mazzei children spent part of their childhood summers with their grandparents, who live on the Florida Keys. Daniel loved the water, and became a certified scuba diver. After that first year of his adult life, Daniel told his parents he was going into the military. “I felt dread at first,” Suzanne said. “He said ‘military.’” She was mostly afraid that he would be sent overseas, and put in harm’s way. “I felt relief when he said Coast Guard. Overseas missions are few and far between,” she said, and  he recognized that protecting this nation’s shores and waterways would appeal to him.

Daniel reported for eight weeks of boot camp in Cape May, and for Suzanne, it was a difficult time. During boot camp, contact with the family is extremely limited. In that period of time a family may get to speak to their soldier twice.

The Mazzei family also received a letter from the Coast Guard telling them that Daniel had gotten sick and spent two days in the medical ward. For a mom, that’s not nearly enough detail.

She leaned heavily on an active support group of Coast Guard moms, who support each other on their group’s Facebook page. “Other moms knew what he was going through. They get tested, have swim tests” and such during boot camp. “It’s physically and mentally exhausting” for the soldiers. Suzanne said other mothers whose children had made it through boot camp were able to keep her spirits up. When she learned he was sick, they assured her that the Coast Guard’s priority was his health, and that they knew he would not be pushed or tested until he was healthy enough to succeed. “The moms assured me they were taking care of him,” she said.

It’s been two years since Daniel joined the Coast Guard. He married in December, so now his wife, Carlie, who was Miss Maryland 2011, is with him and they have an apartment where he is stationed. Daniel is assigned to the Aids To Navigation Team San Francisco.

“He loves it. He loves his job. I wish it was a little closer,” Suzanne said. “That’s the hard part, not being able to see him on holidays, Mother’s Day.” The family has been out to see him a couple of times, but in the military you don’t take a few days off when your folks come out, so those visits are limited.

Suzanne is continually thankful for the support of the Coast Guard moms. Having only lived in Waynesboro for four years, the challenge is that there aren’t many Coast Guard families around. She learned of Blue Star Mothers, which supports all branches of the military, and found their South Central Pennsylvania chapter based in the Hanovr/Gettysburg area.

Last week she joined a handful of other members from the chapter at a proclamation signing with the Franklin County Commissioners as her first official interaction with the chapter. “I want to be more active with something more local,” Suzanne said. What sets military moms apart? “All moms are proud of their kids. Because our children have chosen to do something to help the United States as a whole, it’s a special, different kind of pride,” Suzanne said. “I’m so proud of him. I’m glad he’s happy.”

About the group

Blue Star Mothers of America was founded 70 years ago to “perpetuate the memory of all men and women who have served our country in the Armed Forces, and to be patriotic, educational, social and for service; to maintain true allegiance to the government of the United States, and to educate members and others not to divulge military, naval or other government information; to assist in veterans’ ceremonies, to attend patriotic rallies and meetings, to foster true democracy and to care for the unsupported mothers who gave their sons to the service of the Nation…” (from www.bluestarmothers.org)

From the Associated Press, www.ap.org

DALLAS (AP) — After selling his Dallas oil and gas company and moving to Europe, Robert Edsel found himself in the art-drenched Italian city of Florence. Standing on the city’s famous medieval covered bridge — the Ponte Vecchio — he began to contemplate how so many famous sites and works of art in Europe survived the destruction of World War II.

With the answer, Edsel, the businessman who had developed a love for art, found a mission: Honoring and continuing the work the Monuments Men, a group from Western Allied countries made up mostly of those with an art expertise who worked with the military to protect cultural treasures as battles were waged and, in the years after the war, returned works of art to their rightful owners.

His work over the years — from founding the Monuments Men Foundation for the Preservation of Art in 2007 after his return to Dallas to writing three books, including, “Saving Italy,” released this week — has helped bring their story out of scholarly circles and to the public’s attention. That recognition is set to skyrocket in December with the premiere of a movie based on Edsel’s book, “The Monuments Men,” directed by and starring George Clooney.

“I think what they were involved in was pretty epic: Every work of art somewhere on the road during World War II, then finding these things and getting them back. I think they’ve earned the right to be recognized by name,” Edsel said.

Clarissa Post, a Sotheby’s art expert, said Edsel’s vision always included bringing the story to a wider audience. “It was always: Let’s think big here. What are we going to do to bring this message forward? Because if we can bring this message forward to a wider audience, we can then really do something to honor these people who were involved,” said Post, who started her career at the auction house researching the provenance of works, especially those that might have been involved in the art theft by the Nazis.

After his move to Europe in 1996, Edsel’s musings started to put things in motion. By 2001, he had returned to the U.S. and focused more on the story of the roughly 345 men and women from 13 countries who were part of the Monuments, Fine Arts and Archives section. The group was proposed by a commission established by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1943 to promote the preservation of cultural properties during war.

“I had friends asking me what I was working on and I’d say, ‘The only thing I’m really interested in is this whole story about World War II and what happened to all of the art.’ And lunch after lunch and dinner after dinner, I never had anybody stop me and said they that they knew about it,” Edsel said.

He tracked down Lynn Nicholas, author of “The Rape of Europa,” which details the Nazi plunder of art and the efforts by the Western Allies to save it, telling her he wanted to make a documentary on her book. Learning filmmakers already were working on it, he became a co-producer. He started compiling photographs to tell the story of the Monuments Men, which eventually became his first book: “Rescuing Da Vinci.”

He interviewed Monuments Men and got access to letters written by those who had died. “I felt that the beating heart of the story was these letters that the Monuments Men wrote home during the war,” he said.

The resulting book, “The Monuments Men,” chronicles the experiences of members in northern Europe, including Harry Ettlinger, now 87. Ettlinger, who lives in New Jersey, fled Nazi Germany with his family the day after his bar mitzvah in 1938 and returned to Europe in 1945 with the U.S. Army. Ettlinger, fluent in German, volunteered to be a Monuments Man. His first assignment was to help interview Adolf Hitler’s personal photographer and later went on to help return works of art tucked away in salt mines. He said that the group’s work earned respect from the German people. “They didn’t quite understand how you could come along and give things back,” he said, adding, “It gave you a good feeling.”

Over the years, Edsel’s foundation also has worked to continue the mission of the Monuments Men, which had members overseeing the restitution of stolen works of art for up to six years after the war ended. His foundation, for instance, has been contacted by those who realized something taken as a souvenir during WWII is a historical artifact and has helped with the repatriation of items, including the return to Germany of an album of photographs of artwork Hitler planned for his “Fuhrermuseum.”

Following their service as Monuments Men, members returned to their careers, including as architects, artists, curators and museum directors. Lola Scarpitta-Knapple, of Los Angeles, is grateful Edsel’s work has brought attention to the group that included her late father, Salvatore Scarpitta Jr., an artist.

“It’s amazing how so many people can know about something that’s so interesting but nobody takes the bull by the horns,” she said. “And Robert has the energy, the intellect and the heart to have done that. And for that all Monuments Men are happy. Because I think they all wanted to talk about it in the way that was in the public arena because it was so important.”

___

Online:

Monuments Men Foundation for the Preservation of Art: http://www.monumentsmenfoundation.org

JERUSALEM –  Once a year, Israel’s Jewish war veterans don suit jackets and uniforms dripping in Red Army medals, the shiny bronzes and silvers pinned to their chests in tight rows like armor.

About 500,000 Jews served in the Soviet Red Army during World War II. Most of those still alive today — about 7,000 — are said to live in Israel.

Every year on Victory Day, which falls on Thursday this year, they parade in uniform throughout Israel to celebrate Nazi Germany’s surrender to the Soviet Union.

Afterward, they return home to their modest apartments, where some tick off the days in solitude — and poverty.

“The ceremonies are beautiful. People like to come and say nice words. But nice words don’t put food on your plate,” said Abraham Michael Grinzaid, 87, head of an association of Soviet war veterans. “The rest of the year, no one thinks of us.”

About 1.5 million Jews fought in Allied armies, including 500,000 in the Red Army, 550,000 in the American army, 100,000 in the Polish army and 30,000 in the British army, according to Israel’s Holocaust museum Yad Vashem.

Some of those who fought in the Red Army served in the highest levels of command. About 200,000 Soviet Jewish soldiers fell on the battlefield or into German captivity. Those who survived built families and careers in the Soviet Union, until the Communist regime collapsed and many of them ended up in Israel.

They formed a veterans’ association, opening 50 chapters across the country. Today, most of them are nearly 90 years old, but they gather regularly for lectures and concerts. Some sing in the 42 veterans’ choirs nationwide.

Israel is home to the world’s largest population of Holocaust survivors. Memorials to Holocaust victims and underground partisans are aplenty. But only in recent years has the Jewish state begun to salute its Jewish war veterans.

That’s mostly because many of the veterans immigrated just two decades ago and key war archives are only now being opened, allowing researchers to discover the full extent of Jewish soldiers’ role in fighting the Nazis, said Red Army scholar Yitzhak Arad.

It wasn’t until last year that Israel erected its first monument to Soviet Jewish soldiers who served in WW II. A museum dedicated to Jewish Allied fighters is still under construction.

Grinzaid, of the veterans association, complained that some Soviet war veterans in Israel receive government stipends amounting to just $50 a month, a pittance compared to the financial support Israeli Holocaust survivors receive.

But Roman Yagel, the head of another group of Soviet veterans, countered that veterans receive generous Israeli support. He accused Grinzaid of securing stipends for undeserving veterans who did not fight on the battlefield with weapons in hand — one example of bitter political infighting within the Soviet veteran community.

Holocaust survivors are frequently invited to speak about the horrors they experienced. But Soviet war veterans arrived in Israel as pensioners and most never learned Hebrew so few Israelis know their stories.

Grinzaid was 17 ½ when he enlisted in the Red Army. He was a paratrooper and served in an intelligence unit, earning five medals for his participation in battles across Europe. When Russian President Vladimir Putin came to Israel last year, he shook his hand.

Another Soviet veteran, Matvey Gershman, 87, helped liberate the Majdanek concentration camp in Poland. He remembers walking past storerooms filled with women’s hair and children’s shoes. Suddenly, he stumbled upon a woman sitting and crying. “I said, ‘Grandmother, why are you crying? It’s all over,’” Gershman recalled. “She lifted her head, looked at me, and said, ‘I am 20 years old.’”

Gersham used to march in Israel’s annual Victory Day parade before he had heart problems. One year, he walked to the parade with his daughter and grandson, wearing his navy blue uniform featuring a cascade of medallions. Israeli teenagers on the street pointed at him and laughed. “They treated him like he was a clown,” said his daughter, Rimma. “He doesn’t want to go out with these medals on anymore. He’s embarrassed. They don’t know what it is at all.”

WASHINGTON (AP) — First lady Michelle Obama announced Tuesday that companies participating in a program to help veterans find work have hired or trained 290,000 veterans and military spouses since August 2011, nearly tripling the original goal of the program with about eight months to spare. Obama said Tuesday that the program called Joining Forces has also generated pledges from businesses to hire or train another 435,000 in the next five years.

The new hiring projections came at a White House event with veterans and company executives that also featured President Barack Obama, Vice President Joe Biden and Jill Biden. The president said that too many companies still don’t recognize the skills that service members acquire as part of their military service. If they can saves live on the battlefield, they can work in an ambulance or hospital, and if they can oversee a convoy of equipment, they can help oversee a company’s supply chain, he said. “Too often, just when these men and women are looking forward to the next chapter of their lives, they are stuck in neutral,” the president said.

Overall, the unemployment rate for veterans is actually lower than that for non-veterans. The nation’s youngest veterans are the exception to that longstanding trend, with nearly one out of five under the age of 25 looking for a job. The unemployment rate last year was also in double-digits for those 25-34. Overall, the unemployment rate for those veterans serving since the Sept. 11 attacks stood at 9.9 percent last year, a significant improvement from the previous year.

But Mrs. Obama said more help is needed. She called on private companies to step up hiring to keep up with the demand that will occur as nearly 1 million members of the military become civilians in the next few years.

“These efforts are about so much more than a paycheck. This is about giving these men and women a source of identify and purpose,” she said. “This is about providing thousands of families with financial security and giving our veterans and military spouses the confidence that they can provide a better future for their children.”

The statistics announced Tuesday are based on totals provided by companies participating in the program. The first lady’s office said the Joining Forces program collects information from each company on either a monthly or quarterly basis.

Obama noted that he has proposed a permanent extension of a tax break that Congress approved in late 2011. Employers get up to a $5,600 tax credit for hiring a veteran out of work for more than six months, or up to $9,600 for hiring a disabled veteran out of work for the same amount of time. The White House has also been encouraging governors and state legislators to make it easier for veterans to apply their military experience when trying to get a professional license or credential at home. But, in the end, it’s up to private companies to do the hiring, the first lady said.

The emphasis on jobs for veterans gives the White House a chance to focus on an issue where there’s been progress. Meanwhile, lawmakers and veterans groups are focusing more attention of late on resolving a disability claims backlog for veterans that has gotten worse in recent years. Lawmakers from both parties have recently called on the president to get more involved and to set a clear plan for resolving claims more quickly, but they offered no specific recommendations on what changes are needed.

Associated Press writer Darlene Superville contributed to this report.

On the Net:

Joining Forces Initiative: http://www.whitehouse.gov/joiningforces

Four shot down during Vietnam War are buried at Arlington

By Michael E. Ruane, www.washingtonpost.com

Larry Duthie remembers studying his dog tags as he waited to be captured in the forest 20 miles south of Hanoi. He knew he was to give the enemy only his name, rank and serial number, and he wanted to do it correctly. A 24-year-old Navy pilot, he had just ejected from his damaged jet, smashing his right knee, and enemy gunfire had driven off the helicopter that was trying to rescue him. A few days later, Glenn W. Jackson remembers, he was at home near San Diego when the car pulled up with the pastor. He was 9, and his mother sent him outside while she learned of his father’s death in Vietnam.

It was July 1967.

On Thursday the two, who had never met, were together at Arlington National Cemetery, with dozens of others, separated by events of 45 years but linked by four men who were killed in a battle that, one way or another, had touched them all. They were four sailors, the crew of a Navy rescue helicopter, who were shot down during a brutal two-day battle to retrieve Duthie and another Navy pilot who had been brought down trying to bomb a bridge.

The North Vietnamese fought bitterly with missiles and antiaircraft guns to prevent the rescue. The Americans fought back, with jets and helicopters, to retrieve the men. Only Duthie was saved. And Navy Lt. Dennis Peterson, 28; Ensign Donald P. Frye, 23; and technicians William Jackson, 32, and Donald P. McGrane, 24, perished when their helicopter was brought down and blew up on impact.

On Thursday, in a solemn ceremony, the Pentagon buried a single casket with remains that it said represented the four men as family, friends and veterans of the ’67 fighting watched. It was quiet except for the birds and the clatter of the horses pulling the caisson bearing the flag-draped coffin. A procession of mourners followed on foot. At one point, a flight of Navy jets streaked across the clear blue sky in salute.

“They were very important guys, and unbelievably brave,” Duthie, 70, who had traveled from Walla Walla, Wash., for the funeral, said Wednesday. Glenn Jackson, 54, had traveled from Donald, Ore., “to honor my dad, for one thing,” he said Wednesday. “Also to honor the other guys that are on this crew, too. All four were heroes. You think about what they did. For basically somebody that they really didn’t know. . . . All they knew was that he was another Navy pilot and that he needed help.”

Some remains of Frye, Jackson and McGrane had been returned to the United States by the Vietnamese in 1982 and buried by their families. But the Pentagon said later searches in Vietnam in 1994 and 2000 produced dog tags, other artifacts and additional remains that were associated with all four men. Those commingled remains were buried Thursday.

Several present said they had been at the 1982 funerals, but felt they needed to attend this time, too. “If they throw another funeral, we’ll come,” said Frye’s older sister, Linda Kay Frye, who had come from Los Angeles. “My brother was standing up for everybody all his life.”

The deaths of the four men came amid a brutal duel between the Americans and the North Vietnamese over a small bridge south of Hanoi. Duthie, a lieutenant junior grade, was flying an A-4 attack jet laden with 5,500 pounds of bombs and extra fuel. He and Lt. Cmdr. Richard D. Hartman, in another A-4, were part of a 35-plane group sent to attack the bridge on July 18, 1967.

As the Americans closed in, enemy antiaircraft artillery and missiles scattered the formation, Duthie said. As he and Hartman regrouped, they spotted two surface-to-air missiles heading for them. They dodged the missiles, which crashed into the ground, but shortly thereafter Hartman’s jet was hit by antiaircraft fire and broke into two flaming pieces, Duthie said. Somehow, Hartman parachuted free. Moments later, Duthie, too, was hit and ejected from his burning plane.

A rescue helicopter spotted Duthie, but just as it was about to pick him up, it was driven off by enemy gunfire that killed one of its crew. Duthie could see the smoke from the North Vietnamese weapon and figured he was about to be captured. “I got out my dog tags and just stared at it,” he said. Name, rank, serial number. “I just went over that figuring, ‘Here’s what I’ve got to do next.’ ” But no enemy appeared, and a short time later he was plucked from the ground by another rescue helicopter.

The search for Hartman continued into the next day, with, among others, the helicopter manned by Peterson, Frye, Jackson and McGrane. But enemy gunfire was again ferocious and caught the helicopter, which crashed and exploded. Hartman died in enemy hands. Before the burial Thursday, the families mingled to chat about old times. “We wanted to celebrate him being home,” said Dennise Wilson, 45, Peterson’s daughter, who was born two weeks after her father died. No remains associated with Peterson had been found until now. Dennis Peterson’s widow, Sharon, died two years ago.

“We never had a burial, service or anything like that,” his daughter, Kirsten Peterson, 47, said. “I think it’s a positive thing for us as a family, but I think it’s also his turn. Forty -five years. That’s a long time.” McGrane’s widow, Karen Fischer, 69, said, “We think that Donald just wants us not to forget him. That’s the we way we feel. We won’t forget him.”

Sgt. John Harley Robertson (movieunclaimed.com)

“Unclaimed,” a new documentary premiering at Toronto’s Hot Docs film festival on Tuesday night, tells the story of Special Forces Green Beret Master Sgt. John Hartley Robertson, who was shot down over Laos in 1968 and was long presumed dead.

The documentary actually follows fellow Vietnam vet Tom Faunce, who heard about Robertson’s whereabouts while on a humanitarian mission and wants to find him. Faunce does track down someone claiming to be Robertson in a remote village in south-central Vietnam. The man, according to the Toronto Star, was a “wiry 76-year-old” who “trembles with frustration or pounds his forehead when he is unable to remember his birthday or his American children’s names. He is only able to speak Vietnamese.”

According to the documentary, directed by Edmonton filmmaker Michael Jorgensen, Robertson was captured by North Vietnam forces and tortured, but eventually escaped. Rather than return to his wife and children in the U.S., he stayed in Vietnam and married another woman, assuming the name of her deceased husband, Dang Tan Ngoc. An article from the Toronto Star says that in the years since, he has apparently forgotten how to speak English.

The Globe and Mail writes that the man was “prone to weeping and fits of dementia. His memory was in tatters, unable to conjure even a seemingly simple fact like his birthday or the names of his two American children. And when he did remember, the recollections often were wrong or difficult to confirm. The U.S. military, moreover, refused any help or information.”

Whether or not the man is indeed Robertson remains unproved. But, as the Toronto Star puts it, the film “makes a compelling case”:

There is physical proof of Robertson’s birthplace, collected in dramatic fashion onscreen; a tearful meeting in Vietnam with a soldier who was trained by Robertson in 1960 and said he knew him on sight; and a heart-wrenching reunion with his only surviving sister—80-year-old Jean Robertson-Holly—in Edmonton in December 2012 that left the audience at the Toronto screening wiping away tears.

Robertson-Holly was offered a chance to take a DNA test to prove the relationship, but declined, saying she didn’t need to to know the man is her brother, according to the Toronto Star. Jorgensen told the paper that Robertson’s American wife and two children initially offered to participate in DNA testing, but later withdrew the offer.

While speaking to the Globe and Mail about his film and what’s next for the man believed to be Robertson, Jorgensen said, “There’s maybe a bit of a misconception; everybody assumes: ‘Well, obviously, he wants to come back to North America. But at this point he’s happier being back there, taking care of his wife, to whom he feels an incredible amount of loyalty, and their kids.”

Below, the trailer for “Unclaimed.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=qEg3f65ctUc

WASHINGTON (AP) — Built to dominate the enemy in combat, the Army‘s hulking Abrams tank is proving equally hard to beat in a budget battle. Lawmakers from both parties have devoted nearly half a billion dollars in taxpayer money over the past two years to build improved versions of the 70-ton Abrams.

But senior Army officials have said repeatedly, “No thanks.” It’s the inverse of the federal budget world these days, in which automatic spending cuts are leaving sought-after pet programs struggling or unpaid altogether. Republicans and Democrats for years have fought so bitterly that lawmaking in Washington ground to a near-halt.

Yet in the case of the Abrams tank, there’s a bipartisan push to spend an extra $436 million on a weapon the experts explicitly say is not needed. “If we had our choice, we would use that money in a different way,” Gen. Ray Odierno, the Army’s chief of staff, told The Associated Press this past week.

Why are the tank dollars still flowing? Politics. Keeping the Abrams production line rolling protects businesses and good paying jobs in congressional districts where the tank’s many suppliers are located. If there’s a home of the Abrams, it’s politically important Ohio. The nation’s only tank plant is in Lima. So it’s no coincidence that the champions for more tanks are Rep. Jim Jordan and Sen. Rob Portman, two of Capitol’s Hill most prominent deficit hawks, as well as Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown. They said their support is rooted in protecting national security, not in pork-barrel politics. “The one area where we are supposed to spend taxpayer money is in defense of the country,” said Jordan, whose district in the northwest part of the state includes the tank plant.

The Abrams dilemma underscores the challenge that Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel faces as he seeks to purge programs that the military considers unnecessary or too expensive in order to ensure there’s enough money for essential operations, training and equipment.

Hagel, a former Republican senator from Nebraska, faces a daunting task in persuading members of Congress to eliminate or scale back projects favored by constituents. Federal budgets are always peppered with money for pet projects. What sets the Abrams example apart is the certainty of the Army’s position.

Sean Kennedy, director of research for the nonpartisan Citizens Against Government Waste, said Congress should listen when one of the military services says no to more equipment. “When an institution as risk averse as the Defense Department says they have enough tanks, we can probably believe them,” Kennedy said.

Congressional backers of the Abrams upgrades view the vast network of companies, many of them small businesses, that manufacture the tanks’ materials and parts as a critical asset that has to be preserved. The money, they say, is a modest investment that will keep important tooling and manufacturing skills from being lost if the Abrams line were to be shut down.

The Lima plant is a study in how federal dollars affect local communities, which in turn hold tight to the federal dollars. The facility is owned by the federal government but operated by the land systems division of General Dynamics, a major defense contractor that spent close to $11 million last year on lobbying, according to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics.

The plant is Lima’s fifth-largest employer with close to 700 employees, down from about 1,100 just a few years ago, according to Mayor David Berger. But the facility is still crucial to the local economy. “All of those jobs and their spending activity in the community and the company’s spending probably have about a $100 million impact annually,” Berger said.

Jordan, a House conservative leader who has pushed for deep reductions in federal spending, supported the automatic cuts known as the sequester that require $42 billion to be shaved from the Pentagon’s budget by the end of September. The military also has to absorb a $487 billion reduction in defense spending over the next 10 years, as required by the Budget Control Act passed in 2011.

Still, said Jordan, it would be a big mistake to stop producing tanks. “Look, (the plant) is in the 4th Congressional District and my job is to represent the 4th Congressional District, so I understand that,” he said. “But the fact remains, if it was not in the best interests of the national defense for the United States of America, then you would not see me supporting it like we do.”

The tanks that Congress is requiring the Army to buy aren’t brand new. Earlier models are being outfitted with a sophisticated suite of electronics that gives the vehicles better microprocessors, color flat panel displays, a more capable communications system, and other improvements. The upgraded tanks cost about $7.5 million each, according to the Army.

Out of a fleet of nearly 2,400 tanks, roughly two-thirds are the improved versions, which the Army refers to with a moniker that befits their heft: the M1A2SEPv2, and service officials said they have plenty of them. “The Army is on record saying we do not require any additional M1A2s,” Davis Welch, deputy director of the Army budget office, said this month.

The tank fleet, on average, is less than 3 years old. The Abrams is named after Gen. Creighton Abrams, one of the top tank commanders during World War II and a former Army chief of staff.

The Army’s plan was to stop buying tanks until 2017, when production of a newly designed Abrams would begin. Orders for Abrams tanks from U.S. allies help fill the gap created by the loss of tanks for the Army, according to service officials, but congressional proponents of the program feared there would not be enough international business to keep the Abrams line going.

This pause in tank production for the U.S. would allow the Army to spend its money on research and development work for the new and improved model, said Ashley Givens, a spokeswoman for the Army’s Ground Combat Systems office. The first editions of the Abrams tank were fielded in the early 1980s. Over the decades, the Abrams supply chain has become embedded in communities across the country.

General Dynamics estimated in 2011 that there were more than 560 subcontractors throughout the country involved in the Abrams program and that they employed as many as 18,000 people. More than 40 of the companies are in Pennsylvania, according to Sen. Robert Casey, D-Pa., also a staunch backer of continued tank production.

A letter signed by 173 Democratic and Republican members of the House last year and sent to then-Defense Secretary Leon Panetta demonstrated the depth of bipartisan support for the Abrams program on Capitol Hill. They chided the Obama administration for neglecting the industrial base and proposing to terminate tank production in the United States for the first time since World War II.

Portman, who served as President George W. Bush’s budget director before being elected to the Senate, said allowing the line to wither and close would create a financial mess. “People can’t sit around for three years on unemployment insurance and wait for the government to come back,” Portman said. “That supply chain is going to be much more costly and much more inefficient to create if you mothball the plant.”

Pete Keating, a General Dynamics spokesman, said the money from Congress is allowing for a stable base of production for the Army, which receives about four tanks a month. With the line open, Lima also can fill international orders, bringing more work to Lima and preserving American jobs, he said.

Current foreign customers are Saudi Arabia, which is getting about five tanks a month, and Egypt, which is getting four. Each country pays all of their own costs. That’s a “success story during a period of economic pain,” Keating said. Still, far fewer tanks are coming out of the Lima plant than in years past. The drop-off has affected companies such as Verhoff Machine and Welding in Continental, Ohio, which makes seats and other parts for the Abrams. Ed Verhoff, the company’s president, said his sales have dropped from $20 million to $7 million over the past two years. He’s also had to lay off about 25 skilled employees and he expects to be issuing more pink slips in the future. “When we start to lose this base of people, what are we going to do? Buy our tanks from China?” Verhoff said.

Steven Grundman, a defense expert at the Atlantic Council in Washington, said the difficulty of reviving defense industrial capabilities tends to be overstated. “From the fairly insular world in which the defense industry operates, these capabilities seem to be unique and in many cases extraordinarily high art,” said Grundman, a former deputy undersecretary of defense for industrial affairs and installations during the Clinton administration. “But in the greater scope of the economy, they tend not to be.”

Online:

Abrams tank: http://www.army.mil/factfiles/equipment/tracked/abrams.html

From the Associated Press, www.ap.orgBERLIN (AP) — They were feasts of sublime asparagus — laced with fear. And for more than half a century, Margot Woelk kept her secret hidden from the world, even from her husband. Then, a few months after her 95th birthday, she revealed the truth about her wartime role: Adolf Hitler’s food taster.

Woelk, then in her mid-twenties, spent two and a half years as one of 15 young women who sampled Hitler’s food to make sure it wasn’t poisoned before it was served to the Nazi leader in his “Wolf’s Lair,” the heavily guarded command center in what is now Poland, where he spent much of his time in the final years of World War II.

“He was a vegetarian. He never ate any meat during the entire time I was there,” Woelk said of the Nazi leader. “And Hitler was so paranoid that the British would poison him — that’s why he had 15 girls taste the food before he ate it himself.”

With many Germans contending with food shortages and a bland diet as the war dragged on, sampling Hitler’s food had its advantages. “The food was delicious, only the best vegetables, asparagus, bell peppers, everything you can imagine. And always with a side of rice or pasta,” she recalled. “But this constant fear — we knew of all those poisoning rumors and could never enjoy the food. Every day we feared it was going to be our last meal.”

The petite widow’s story is a tale of the horror, pain and dislocation endured by people of all sides who survived World War II. Only now in the sunset of her life has she been willing to relate her experiences, which she had buried because of shame and the fear of prosecution for having worked with the Nazis, although she insists she was never a party member. She told her story as she flipped through a photo album with pictures of her as a young woman, in the same Berlin apartment where she was born in 1917.

Woelk first revealed her secret to a local Berlin reporter a few months ago. Since then interest in her life story has been overwhelming. School teachers wrote and asked her for photos and autographs to bring history alive for their students. Several researchers from a museum visited to ask for details about her life as Hitler’s taster.

Woelk says her association with Hitler began after she fled Berlin to escape Allied air attacks. With her husband gone and serving in the German army, she moved in with relatives about 435 miles (700 kilometers) to the east in Rastenburg, then part of Germany; now it is Ketrzyn, in what became Poland after the war.

There she was drafted into civilian service and assigned for the next two and a half years as a food taster and kitchen bookkeeper at the Wolf’s Lair complex, located a few miles (kilometers) outside the town. Hitler was secretive, even in the relative safety of his headquarters, that she never saw him in person — only his German shepherd Blondie and his SS guards, who chatted with the women.

Hitler’s security fears were not unfounded. On July 20, 1944, a trusted colonel detonated a bomb in the Wolf’s Lair in an attempt to kill Hitler. He survived, but nearly 5,000 people were executed following the assassination attempt, including the bomber.

“We were sitting on wooden benches when we heard and felt an incredible big bang,” she said of the 1944 bombing. “We fell off the benches, and I heard someone shouting ‘Hitler is dead!’ But he wasn’t. “

Following the blast, tension rose around the headquarters. Woelk said the Nazis ordered her to leave her relatives’ home and move into an abandoned school closer to the compound. With the Soviet army on the offensive and the war going badly for Germany, one of her SS friends advised her to leave the Wolf’s Lair.

She said she returned by train to Berlin and went into hiding. Woelk said the other women on the food tasting team decided to remain in Rastenburg since their families were all there and it was their home. “Later, I found out that the Russians shot all of the 14 other girls,” she said. It was after Soviet troops overran the headquarters in January 1945.

When she returned to Berlin, she found a city facing complete destruction. Round-the-clock bombing by U.S. and British planes was grinding the city center to rubble.  On April 20, 1945, Soviet artillery began shelling the outskirts of Berlin and ground forces pushed through toward the heart of the capital against strong resistance by die-hard SS and Hitler Youth fighters.

After about two weeks of heavy fighting, the city surrendered on May 2 — after Hitler, who had abandoned the Wolf’s Lair about five months before, had committed suicide. His successor surrendered a week later, ending the war in Europe. For many Berlin civilians — their homes destroyed, family members missing or dead and food almost gone — the horror did not end with capitulation. “The Russians then came to Berlin and got me, too,” Woelk said. “They took me to a doctor’s apartment and raped me for 14 consecutive days. That’s why I could never have children. They destroyed everything.”

Like millions of Germans and other Europeans, Woelk began rebuilding her life and trying to forget as best she could her bitter memories and the shame of her association with a criminal regime that had destroyed much of Europe. She worked in a variety of jobs, mostly as a secretary or administrative assistant. Her husband returned from the war but died 23 years ago, she said.

With the frailty of advanced age and the lack of an elevator in her building, she has not left her apartment for the past eight years. Nurses visit several times a day, and a niece stops by frequently, she said. Now at the end of her life, she feels the need to purge the memories by talking about her story. “For decades, I tried to shake off those memories,” she said. “But they always came back to haunt me at night.”