The Last of the Doughboys - Memorial Day 2010

In Flanders Fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses row on row…

This weekend we will again observe Memorial Day; a holiday first set aside to honor the fallen soldiers who fought for the Union during the Civil War, and which has since become a day to recognize all those who died in military service. Unofficially, the day is an occasion to honor all our nation’s veterans, especially those who have died, either in service or later in life.

Every Memorial Day I take a mental trip back to my hometown in southern Minnesota, where they have a community observance rooted in decades-long tradition, and of which, playing in the high school band, I always had a ringside view.

The day started in the cool of the morning with a parade forming for a march down Main Street. There would be a veteran’s organization color guard, followed by the band, scout troops, veterans groups, and Gold Star Mothers. After reaching the edge of town we’d hop in a bus for a short ride to the city cemetery a mile out of town. At the cemetery there would be a program which always included recitations of Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address and the poem, “In Flanders Fields,” a speech by some area politician, and concluding with a firing squad’s salute and, of course, the poignant tones of Taps.

The elder statesmen of the veterans groups marching on those humid Memorial Day mornings were the World War I veterans, the Doughboys who went to France and added the needed surge of military energy to finally end the war on November 11, 1918. They were, in my youth, the civic leaders and established businessmen of our community. One of them operated the local theater where he sat in a tiny ticket booth, and inside, where his wife, my mother’s cousin, took our tickets and sold popcorn. Another of those veterans was the city manager and one of my first bosses when I had a summer job in 1959 digging ditches (really).

The last time I was back home over Memorial Day was over 30 years ago and the last few local veterans of the Great War rode down Main Street in the back of a convertible.
Those old veterans are now all gone, having taken their last rides down Main Street years ago.

In fact, of the 65 million or so soldiers, sailors and marines from around the globe who fought in that terrible war there are just, at last count, three veterans whose service is verifiable, all age 109, still living. Claude Choules, the last surviving seaman, joined the Royal Navy at age 15 in 1916. He moved to Australia after the war and later served in the Royal Australian Navy in WWII. Florence Green is the last female veteran and the last veteran living in the U.K. Frank Buckles is the last American veteran. Buckles served as an ambulance driver on the Western Front. He was held as a prisoner in WWII as a civilian. He lives in West Virginia. The last known person who fought for Germany in the war died January 1, 2008 at age 107. Canada’s last veteran, who lived in the U.S. after the war, died last year.

The poem, “In Flanders Fields,” was written by Lt. Col. John McCrae, a Canadian Army physician who witnessed at first hand the horrors of war in the Ypres sector of the war. He wrote the poem the day after he personally conducted the funeral for a friend, a Canadian lieutenant killed in a bomb burst. Col. McCrae, himself, didn’t survive the war, dying of pneumonia in 1918.

Traditionally, we observed Memorial Day on May 30, but that changed to the last Monday of May in 1971, following passage of the Uniform Holidays Bill in 1968. Whether this holiday is the first holiday weekend of summer or the last holiday of winter, as it often is in Montana, let’s not forget those whom we honor this weekend.

…if ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

The Not So Silent Prairie

When we think of prairies we usually think in terms of open vistas of rolling plains and grasslands. We don’t often dwell on the sounds of the prairie.

We took a springtime trip across Montana to Minot, North Dakota this past week to see our son, Kevin, and his family. While there, we went fishing, of course. It’s a good reason to go there in the spring.

Fishing, of course, doesn’t come with guarantees. All you can do is wet a line and hope for the best. Sometimes, spring trips produce a lot of fishing action but this wasn’t one of them. The end of April and beginning of May seemed unseasonably cold here in western Montana, and that was also the case in North Dakota. One of the things TV weathermen keep tabs on in North Dakota is soil temperature, and while we were there soil temperatures were dropping—which is bad news for farmers putting in their crops.

While fishing was slow, there was lots of activity going on all around us.

We spent one day fishing at Devils Lake, the massive eastern North Dakota lake complex that has, in the last 20 years, tripled in size. Kevin pointed out that a few years back he’d go there and marvel at fishing spots we went to back in the 1970s and 1980s that were no longer accessible, as they’re all under water. Now it seems to be a yearly thing. You look for a spot where you fished the year before, and now it’s gone. Farms are continually going under water—and it has nothing to do with the mortgage bust.

But birds are everywhere. There are incredible populations of waterfowl, with ducks of all kinds, giant Canada geese, and shorebirds everywhere. The Devils Lake area is a magnet for birdwatchers that come there just for the myriad shorebirds.

On another day I went to Lake Sakakawea, the big Missouri impoundment downstream from Montana. I fished along a shallow bay, hoping the sheltered waters would be warming a bit. It was a good plan, even if the fish didn’t go along with it. In recent years I’ve spent a lot more time hunting pheasants along the lakeshore than fishing, and it was hard not to think of pheasants on this pleasant spring day.

As the saying goes, in springtime a young man’s fancy turns to love, and that’s certainly the case with pheasants. Cock pheasants in springtime are a vocal group, presumably advertising to hen pheasants their availability for a good time, as well as letting other roosters know that the territory is already staked out.

A discordant note comes from an oil-drilling tower at the head of the bay I was fishing. Western North Dakota is a beehive of oil drilling, exploration and pumping, along with heavy truck traffic. In fact, it’s downright mind-boggling. A few weeks ago, the New York Times did a feature story on the difficulties oil patch workers have finding housing in Williston, the informal capitol of the western North Dakota oil fields. There are lots of jobs, but finding a place to live after work is tricky.


On another outing, this time to a small lake away from oil country, at the public access point I was greeted by a chorus of birds, including the usual ducks, geese and shorebirds, but also song birds of various kinds concentrated in a patch of trees and shrubs. There were dozens of bird songs happening all at once, with birds trying to out-do each other in making themselves heard above the crowds. And, again, pheasants were calling from their hangouts on the prairie hillsides.

While the prairie was full of sounds, tiny prairie wildflowers were in bloom, adding bits of color to the green shoots of grass and last year’s dried grasses.

At the end of the day, birds settle down, but there are new sounds. Stepping outside Kevin’s house one evening, frogs were talking from a nearby wetland and open field. “Those are western chorus frogs,” Kevin explained, as we enjoyed the sounds of the chilly evening.

The photo above is Kevin and our Labs in the Devils Lake area. A year ago, farmers were driving tractors and farm trucks down this road.

Poison Ivy Can Ruin Your Day!

A long ago hunt for ruffed grouse on an early fall day in North Dakota hangs in my memory. I don’t recall whether I brought home any grouse. I do remember, however, developing a rash on my left arm a few days later. Somehow I brushed up with some poison ivy.

The rash healed up after about a week, and while I haven’t had any more of those unpleasant encounters I’d rather not have another. Accordingly, I perked up when Gary Burris of Tec Laboratories, of Albany, Oregon, made a presentation on poison ivy and oak at the annual conference of the Northwest Outdoor Writers Association, held a couple weeks ago at Seeley Lake, Montana.

The nasty ingredient that makes life miserable for people who encounter poison ivy, poison oak and poison sumac is urushiol, a resin-type oil contained in the leaves and stems of these plants. It’s powerful stuff. “The amount of urushiol on the tip of a needle is enough to give 100 people a rash,” Burris said. Looking at it another way, urushiol would have to be diluted in olive oil at 60,000 to one before it wouldn’t cause problems.

Urushiol also doesn’t break down with age. Burris told of a piece of poison ivy wood that had been in a museum for 100 years. After that period, someone moved it and a few days later came down with a rash. Also, burning can release urushiol in smoke, and if inhaled can cause major problems.

The best remedy for poison ivy and poison oak problems is to avoid it. The old saying, “groups of three: leave it be,” is still the rule of thumb when it comes to these toxic plants. According to the USDA-NRCS website, both poison ivy and poison oak are present in Montana, from one end of the state to the other, though not in all counties. It’s not present in Silver Bow County, but is found in Madison, Gallatin and Park Counties in southwest Montana. I haven’t knowingly seen any, though I’ve heard from others about poison oak along the lower Madison River in the Beartrap Canyon area. Poison sumac is not found in Montana.

As to what to do if exposed to poison ivy and poison oak, the first thing to do is get it off, and it takes something that can break down the resins in urushiol. A pumice-based soap, such as Lava, is effective, as is Dawn dishwashing detergent.
Tec Laboratories makes a product, Tecnu, which the company’s founder, Dr. Robert Smith, developed in the 1960s to wash off atomic dust particles, back in that backyard bomb shelter era. The Cold War never turned hot, but after the Smith family moved to Oregon their children all became exposed to poison oak. In a fit of anger, Mrs. Smith went out and pulled up, with her bare hands, all the poison oak on their property. Her work complete she decided she’d better wash up and spotted a container of fallout scrub and washed with that—and avoided the nasty rash altogether.

That was the beginning of Tec Laboratory’s line of poison ivy and poison oak remedies.
Other remedies on the market include Zanfel and Terrafil.

Burris further recommended that besides washing skin surfaces, clothing should be washed with Tide laundry detergent. Tools and gear should be wiped down with a Tecnu-saturated cloth. Pets, such as dogs, normally don’t react to poison ivy, though an animal exposed to urushiol can certainly pass that nasty resin on to humans. Burris also mentioned that his company’s product is also effective for removing skunk spray, as well as creosote and tar.

Once a poison ivy rash develops things get more complicated. It’s important to avoid scratching as that can spread the urushiol to other parts of the body. Caladryl and hydrocortisone-based ointments can relieve the itching, and, yes, his company makes those, as well.

Some people, roughly one in 100, don’t react to poison ivy and poison oak. On the other hand, that immunity isn’t necessarily permanent. If you spot these nasty plants, avoid touching them and you’ll avoid a lot of potential misery.