We meet again…. 😒

Some people want to be rich. Some want to be powerful. Some want to be champion at some sport.

Right now literally all you want tonight is to hold someone you care about and watch a movie. Any movie. More. Less. You don’t even care anymore.

It literally never works for you. Never. You’ve tried every way that you can think of, but no one you’re interested in is interested in you, and you’re not interested in those who might be.

You’ve tried to get past the latter on occasion and hurt some really nice girls. Not gonna do that again because now that will be taking advantage of them.

Life is an adventure that you want to share with someone else. Someone that you love and trust completely. The overwhelming majority of people on the planet have it and you don’t.

And honestly it doesn’t look like that’s going to change soon. Frankly it’s getting insulting. Why be who you are?

You were meant to love someone. Be a good man and eventually a good husband. Maybe even a good father but you’ve given up on that.

Another Friday night. You’ve done the bar thing. The Match thing. The volunteer thing. The church thing.

Because you don’t believe in settling. And your standards are high, but there are plenty of women who could meet them.

Another Friday night. Yeah this is why you stay late. Try to build a career. To save up to have vacations you spend alone. Weekends.

Run the numbers. You’re statistically halfway to the grave, and she’s nowhere in sight.

You have the kind of happiness that you will be fine no matter what at the end of the day. God owes you nothing, and you have infinitely more to be thankful for than to wish for.

But even the Bible in its first story tales of someone lonely who wished to have a companion to share their life with.

This is getting so fucking old. Either she is missing in action or you just don’t have it together yet. You’ve got to stay positive and find a way to get whatever it is together. Just don’t hurt anyone.

Just don’t hurt anyone.

You can’t even imagine…

If someone were to ask you who was the bravest person in the entire world, most people wouldn’t really know because, well, there are a lot of brave people… And who could actually find one above others to name?

30 years ago this week, the entire world knew who the bravest person in the world was. But that’s literally all we knew, and would ever know.

We have no idea what his name was. What he was doing in Tiananmen Square. If he had a family. What he did for a living. What groceries he had in his bag. And whatever poor fate befell him.

Those were the protests where convoys of military trucks came in en masse… half filled with soldiers, and the other half empty.

Words cannot describe how fortunate we are. How blessed. And yet how quickly we will forget in our daily struggles this unknown man who wanted for his people to be able to have the daily difficulties we complain about.

And today, it’s fair to say that very few of his nation’s people have even seen this image of his sacrifice.

What do you have to get outraged about? What causes you daily stress?

What is there to complain about, compared to what there is to be thankful for?

Find peace. It’s so much easier for you than it was for this man. Even now in stormy seas, no matter how bad they get.

You’re going to complain tomorrow at work. Something always seems to come up to give you reason to, doesn’t it? Fill your heart with joy being able to laugh at yourself.

Remember the man that stood up to the tanks, armed only with a bag of groceries… and dreams of the world that you take for granted.

A Manager, his Assistant, one old woman and her young daughter are traveling in a train and during the course of time get themselves introduced to each other and become temporary friends. The train goes through a tunnel and it gets completely dark. Suddenly there is a kissing sound and then a slap! The train comes out of the tunnel. The women and the Assistant are sitting there looking perplexed. The Manager is bending over holding his face, which is red from an apparent slap. All of them remain diplomatic and nobody says anything.

The Old woman is thinking:

 These Managers are all crazy after girls. He must have kissed my daughter in the tunnel. Very proper that she slapped him.

The Young girl is thinking:

 The Manager must have tried to kiss me but kissed my mother instead and got slapped.

The Manager is thinking:

 Damn it. My Assistant must have kissed the young girl. She might have thought it was me and slapped me.

The Assistant is thinking:

 If this train goes through another tunnel I will make another kissing sound and slap my Manager again.

Soooooooo don’t want to work today….

You’ve always loved this painting. HMS Renown charging off into a stormy sea. Ships do not often lend them selves to pareidolia, but every once in a while, one seems to have a mood.

She was the only British battle cruiser to survive The Second World War and the last of her kind.

That doesn’t really have any impact on the painting. Except maybe subconsciously a slight added sense of burden, which seems to go well with a night like this.

A burden you’re intimidated by, yet strangely comfortable with. Well more than one, actually.

Time charges on just like the turbulent seas… and it’s up to you to charge on just like Renown across it.

What you would give to find a port…

When you see it….

 

The pilots aboard the carrier Ark Royal were skeptical. They had every reason to be. Bismarck was a brand new modern battleship. She’d just destroyed the Mighty Hood, chased off Britain’s newest battleship Prince of Wales, and even already fought off another air strike by the carrier Victorious. They had no reason for hope. 

Ark Royal’s aircraft were Fairey Swordfishes, ancient biplanes of designs older than even the Hood. The World War I era designed planes could carry one small torpedo each. They were made of steel frames covered with fabric, and as slow as they were weak. Bismarck was cutting-edge, bristling with state of the art anti-aircraft weaponry.    

And desperation had become the order of the day.

When the the Mighty Hood sank by Bismarck’s guns, it shocked the whole fleet. The whole nation. The whole world. All the fears the Royal Navy had had about Bismarck seemed to be justified…and fear was becoming the norm.

France had fallen. Britain herself lay in ruins thanks to the Luftwaffe. She fought alone. Her armies in Africa were being routed by Rommel, who threatened Egypt and the Suez – which would cut Britain off from her empire…and Middle East oil. Germany had finished her conquest of mainland Europe, having just invaded Yugoslavia and Greece. Only the Soviet Union remained as any threat to Hitler, and it was an ally of his, having helped to carve up Poland.

All that sustained her were the Atlantic convoys, besieged by U-Boats. But even that threat was nothing compared to fears of the Bismarck. U-Boats could not stay out at sea for months on end, with mountains of ammunition and impenetrable armor. Bismarck could. 

Now with her flagship sunk, things had gone from worse to desperate. Britain had been queen of the seas for centuries, and even her battered and aging fleet could not appear to save her. Churchill knew that desperate times called for desperate measures, and knew what he must do.

Every British warship in the Atlantic was called to sink the Bismarck. Everything. Every destroyer. Convoy escort. Carrier. Cruiser. Everything. Eleven convoys would be unescorted. One with a huge amount of badly needed troops. It was all or nothing.

Ark Royal and Force H sailed north from Gibraltar, figuring they were too far away to do any good, even if they were actually equipped to. 

But even in the darkest moments, silver linings can be found. 

Unbeknownst to the British, in the battle with Hood and Prince of Wales, the latter battleship actually had landed a 14-inch shell on Bismark before being forced to retreat. It was a pinprick at most, but a pinprick in the fuel lines. The behemoth was losing fuel, and would have to return to port in occupied France sooner rather than later… and so she turned east – and towards Ark Royal.

Two gallant cruisers shadowed Bismarck, but lost her in bad weather, and when she was located again, she was but ten mere hours from the cover of the Luftwaffe in occupied France. There, she could join the battlecruisers Scharnhorst and Gneisenau and reunite with the cruiser Prinz Eugan and sail out to their hearts content to destroy convoys.  

The whole of the Home Fleet could chase Bismarck, but it was of no good if they were out of position and too far behind. Everything depended on Force H…and its mere 15 obsolete biplanes. They would only have time for two strikes.

The Swordfish took flight north, and in the bad weather found the large ship, mounting as strong an attack as they could make, but their torpedoes had faulty magnetic detonators and failed to damage their target. Even to add insult to injury they had mistaken the HMS Sheffield for Bismarck, and had squandered a vital chance to scratch the behemoth. The deck crews raced to rearm the biplanes, ditching the magnetic detonators, and readied them for their second and last chance. 

 Not long after, they got their chance. On a dark and rough sea, Bismarck loomed before the thirty men in the fifteen biplanes. The anti-aircraft fire was murderous, but the Swordfish carried onward. The first few launched their torpedoes, but Bismarck easily avoided all but one, one even exploding on contact with the water, having hit a strong wave and detonating. The lone hit was meaningless; the torpedo was nothing compared to Bismarck’s armor.

The rear seat pilot on one of the last remaining armed planes unsnapped his harness and physically climbed out onto the lower wing of the slow-moving obsolete plane. He held on for dear life, physically staring at the churning waves below to time the torpedo’s launch, knowing that they couldn’t risk a false detonation. “Now!” and the pilot pulled the lever. One last torpedo struck Bismarck, but the ship continued onward, seemingly unfazed. The Swordfish returned to Ark Royal, tasting final defeat, unaware of how they were even still alive.

And then…the unthinkable…

Bismarck had turned away from the safety of occupied France, and back towards the pursuing main British fleet. The Swordfish’s torpedo exploded harmlessly on the rear armor of Bismarck, but the force of the tiny explosion was just barely enough to jam her rudder, and send her steaming in circles. It was a one-in-a-thousand chance hit. Bismarck couldn’t maneuver, or reach safety. 

Hours later, the British Battleships King George V and Rodney, both low on fuel finally caught up to the wounded Bismarck. The two ships and their various escorts bombarded the German ship for hours, taking dangerous fire themselves. Though unable to maneuver, Bismarck was still a wounded animal, and the two British ships alone expended over 700 shells and she still wouldn’t sink. 

Eventually King George V and Rodney had to turn for home lest run out of fuel, and the cruiser Dorsetshire was tasked with sinking the battered and burning hulk with torpedoes. Explosions rocked the Bismarck one final time just after the torpedoes hit, as her crew detonated scuttling charges, seeking to deny the Royal Navy any prize.

>>>>> <<<<<

All the ferocity of the action from May 24-27’s Bismarck Chase, and everything hinged on two metaphorical slingshots: the lone consequential hit from Prince of Wales and the miraculous hit by one of Ark Royal’s outdated Swordfish.

Bismarck’s crew went from ecstatic in having evaded the whole of the British Home Fleet to crestfallen instantly when they received word the rudder was jammed. For the British, endlessly tragic news for the last two years, defeat after defeat after defeat, and those two slingshots proved to finally give them relief that the monstrous battleship wouldn’t threaten their lifeline. 

There would be endless horror and death still to come, but the desperately-needed victory all hinged upon the smallest of circumstances, each unknown to the British at the time. Whether it was anger or fear that motivated them, they knew the stakes, and sought to fight with whatever tools they could, despite being devastatingly outgunned. 

Their best wasn’t good enough to beat the Bismarck. Far from it. Their best was Bismarck’s first victim, blowing up like a Roman Candle. But in their desperation they fought nevertheless, with everything they had within reach. 

And two miracles came out of nowhere and bridged the gap, turning defeat into victory.

Just one, and it could be attributed to sheer luck. 

Never give up. Strive to hold true. Miracles happen.