Books by Eric Douglas

Thriller fiction and Non-fiction

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Invading France: June of 1944

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Four of the 46 West Virginia war veterans I interviewed as part of the West Virginia Voices of War project landed on the beaches of France as part of the Normandy Invasion on June 6, 1994, commonly referred to as D Day. What follows are excerpts from their oral histories included in the companion book Common Valor. Two of the men were involved in the invasion on June 6 and the other two followed soon after as Allied Forces began the build up to retake France.

John Cavender

We were getting ready for the invasion, stocking up the south of England with war material and everything. There was a lot of stocking up they had to do. Millions of tons of stuff that had to go. They were building hospitals and flying the nurses. You don’t just have to feed them and clothe them. You have to do all these other things. 

We took off at midnight on D-Day with a load of 82ndairborne paratroopers including General James “Jumpin’ Jim” Gavin, the commander of troops for the 82nd Airborne Division. The weather was real bad, flying through clouds. A formation of 1000 planes. We were supposed to drop our troops off at Sainte-Mère-Église. I went back through the plane and saw a man I went to school with. After the war I asked him if we dropped him right and he said “right on the money” so my troops got dropped right. They were loaded down and the Germans flooded swamps. If the paratroopers hit that they just sunk.

 

They were shooting at us. One in 10 was a tracer. For every one you see there were 10 more after you. And then there were “88” bursts around you. 

Paul Wesley Harris

I woke one morning and the roar was incredible. I didn’t know they could get that many planes in the air. A few days later I was following them. On June 17th, we were on our way to France. We landed on Utah Beach. D Day + 10. It was high tide on the beach so we couldn’t get in. We had to wait there in the open. German airplanes would come over at tree top level spraying bullets everywhere. 

Up on the hill was a little church. Out from it was a graveyard. One day, I went up there. What I saw was military personnel soaked with oil where they had fished them out of the surf. I didn’t stay long. It was heartbreaking. That was the only time I went up there.

 

Jesse Allen Frazier

Went in on Normandy Beach, but two days behind the invasion. It was rough. I was a front-line medic. You didn’t have time to think about yourself. We were busy doctoring people up so they could be evacuated. We weren’t allowed to carry weapons, just your fist. I rode across France with Patton’s army. 

Eugene Lusk

We just had enough to eat, to keep the hunger down. We went to chow one night, they asked “What do you want to eat?” It shocked us. We said “what do you mean?” We knew something was up but we didn’t know what. It lasted one day and then the next night we shipped out. 

We went inland to an old camp and then the next morning they got us up bright and early, there was a catholic chaplain and a protestant chaplain. One of them said, “Where we’re going some of you will make it and some of you won’t.” You heard some groans but that was about it.

 

We were not told until we were on that ship getting ready to land what was going on. We knew something was up, but they kept it that quiet. Went in on D-Day. 

They took us back to Plymouth and we boarded a ship, #226 on June 4. On #2 hold, it was stacked with 5 gallon jerry cans full of gas. And some of them were leaking. The whole company got on that ship. We were on the channel two full days. We were supposed to land on the fifth but a storm came up and we landed on June 6th. The channel was rough and I was sick.

 

On the morning of June 6th, we were in the tail of the convoy. We went up by Omaha Beach, but we were going on to Utah. We anchored at Utah Beach and those big battleships were broadside and firing on the beach. You would see the gun go off, and then hear it and then see the shell way back over yonder go off. 

I don’t know what time, but an LCP pulled up beside our ship and that was our ride to the beach. It bottomed out and we waded in with water clear up under our armpits. We were in a single line. If there had been a machine gun there it could have mowed every one of us down. We were sitting ducks but the beach had done been taken at that time.

Utah Beach was cut into three beaches. We were supposed to land on Tarry Green and I don’t know where we landed. The captain said if you get lost, go to the IP, Initial Point. I don’t know where that initial point is to this day. But none of us got lost. We all stayed together..

How Christ of the Abyss made it to Florida

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Update: This story was picked up by the Miami Herald. They used my photos to illustrate the story. You can see Page 1 here. and Page 2 here.  

Last week I was in Key Largo, Florida working on a new project when my friend Jim Elliot called and said he had an amazing opportunity for me. Jim is the founder and president of Diveheart, a non-profit organization that takes people with disabilities scuba diving. I know when Jim calls with an opening like that, it is going to be interesting. I was right.

Gabriel Spataro was going to dive on the Christ of the Abyss statue in John Pennekamp State Park. There were two unusual things about this: Spataro is 81 years old and legally blind. He began diving in 1956 with a group of friends who formed the Illinois Council of Skin and Scuba Diving. Reportedly, John Cronin and Ralph Erickson also came together in his restaurant when they were founding the Professional Association of Scuba Diving (PADI), but that’s a different story. A Korean war veteran, he is now suffering from macular degeneration so he needs the assistance of adaptive buddy divers to dive safely. That is where Diveheart comes in.

gabe+and+christ+3.jpgThe second interesting part of the story was Gabe was instrumental in bringing the Christ of the Abyss statue to Florida in 1962, but never had the chance to dive on it. Now, 51 years later, he was going to dive on the statue for the first time. You can hear Gabe tell the story himself in the video Gabe’s Story.

In early 1962 he was asked to be the chairman of the Underwater Society of America’sconvention in Chicago. He found out that the Cressi family was making the statue, the third copy of the 9-foot-tall bronze statue, to send to the United States. Spataro was heading to Italy on a wine trip for his restaurant and met with the Cressis. They told him they were donating the statue, but it was up to him to get it to the United States. Through friends in the shipping industry, Spataro was able to bring it to Chicago from Italy for the convention and then eventually he was able to transport it to Florida. The statue finally found its home in August of 1965. This all happened with no budget, solely on the efforts of volunteers and divers.

gabe+and+christ.jpgTo make the dive happen, DJ Wood, owner of Rainbow Reef Dive Centers donated six spots on one of his dive boats. Chuck Baldwin, owner of US 1 Scuba in Pompano Beach, Florida and a Diveheart volunteer, also happened to be a Cressi Dealer so he joined Spataro on the dive and outfitted him in Cressi gear so he could experience the result of his efforts. Baldwin and Wilhelmina Stanton of the Scuba Sirens lead Spataro on the dive and it was an emotional day for him. He spent about 20 minutes touching the statue, feeling the head and holding its hands.

The Christ of the Abyss is often referred to as the most photographed underwater attraction in the world. Every diver who has been to the statue owes Gabe Spataro a debt of gratitude for getting the statue to Florida from Italy.
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Diving continues for Miskito Indians—and so does paralysis

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IMG_0854.jpgIn February of 2010, I began this blog by talking about a trip to Honduras to work with a doctor there as he treated Miskito Indians who dived for lobster on scuba. I ended up visiting Honduras four times as I worked on a documentary project about the situation, including one trip to accompany a news crew from NBC’s Rock Center with Brian Williams.

My colleague, Dr. Mathias Nochetto, and I were stunned when we made it La Ceiba, Honduras to see the clinic run by Dr. Elmer Mejia. Dr. Mejia was treating more than a hundred Miskito Indians every year, most had been severely disabled by decompression sickness—“The Bends.” They dived between eight and 16 times a day to 100 feet or more for up to 12 days. Their living conditions on board the industrial dive boats were deplorable, living without even basic sanitation for nearly three weeks at a time on board in extremely close quarters.  They harvested the lobster as many as four days boat ride from shore. That meant if they were injured while at sea, they had to wait four days before they could see a doctor.

Douglas_Daylight-CDS_007.jpgOn my second trip, I met with members of the Handicapped Lobster Divers Association. They told me that they had more than 2000 members and knew of another 400 or so divers who had died from diving. To be a member of the organization, they had some level of diving-related paralysis. This is out of an estimated 10,000 Miskito Indians involved in the lobster industry.

Dr. Mejia has had great success treating the divers. In spite of the delay to treatment, a large percentage of the divers leave his facility able to walk again after being carried inside. He has had to fight government obstruction, crime, unsafe working conditions and an overall lack of interest from the community carrying out his work. On that first visit, Dr. Mejia told us that there was a motion to suspend scuba diving for lobster in 2011. It didn’t happen. The government decided to continue diving and leave the markets open, in spite of the problems.  That last two year extension was set to end on June 30 of 2013.

National Geographic News Watch just called for Honduras to stop diving, but it didn’t happen. They have already decided to continue diving for another two years.

I’ve had people ask the question why they should care. “It’s not as if they have to dive.” Nearly all of the lobster hand caught on scuba comes to the United States in the form of lobster tails. That is hundreds of tons of lobster tails per year. We, the people of the United States, have created this market and we need to understand where our food comes from. There is no difference in this than sweat shops in third world countries churning out cheap shirts and jeans. Whenever a there is a fire in a building housing these workers, killing them by the hundreds, we are morally outraged—at least for a brief period. I see lobster advertised nearly daily on the television. It isn’t just a luxury food anymore.

I really don’t want the lobster industry to go away. There is nothing else for the Miskito Indians to do. I have been to their homes and seen where they live. I simply want us to harvest them in a safer manner. There is no excuse for killing an entire sub-culture of people simply to feed our appetite for cheap lobster. As a diver, I hate to see my chosen sport used to destroy lives. This is something many of us do as a recreation.

Watch the documentary video For Cheap Lobster I prepared two years ago. It follows three diving populations, but focuses on Honduras.

Visit my website for more information, photos and links to other stories on the topic, including from National Geographic, NBC, the New York Times and CCTV. It focuses on three populations of divers, but focuses on Honduras.

I didn’t have anything to do with this project, but some filmmakers created a documentary on the situation from the Nicaraguan side of the Miskito Coast: My Village My Lobster..

Celebrate May Day

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Like a lot of traditions, the idea of the May Day celebration became one thing, then another and then fell into disfavor because of a different idea all together.

May Day grew from Celtic tradition of Beltane and the Germanic Walpurgis Night. These festivals celebrate the coming of Spring. As Christianity took hold throughout Europe it became less of a pagan holiday and more of a secular one; people simply took the opportunity to get outside and celebrate.

The earliest settlers to America brought the tradition with them, although the Puritans did their best to stamp it out. One of the most notorious instances came when Thomas Morton formed a breakaway colony called Merrymount. His free-thinking colony was eventually stamped out by Governor William Bradford and Captain Miles Standish. Morton wrote:

“The inhabitants of Merrymount … did devise amongst themselves to have … Revels, and merriment after the old English custom … & therefore brewed a barrell of excellent beer, & provided a case of bottles to be spent, with other good cheer, for all comers of that day. And upon Mayday they brought the Maypole to the place appointed, with drums, guns, pistols, and other fitting instruments, for that purpose; and there erected it with the help of Savages, that came thither of purpose to see the manner of our Revels…”

In the mid-20th Century, we stopped celebrating May Day as it became associated with the Soviet Union’s International Workers Day. No one wanted anything to do with the taint of Communism. The first time I remember celebrating May Day was ironically in Russia. In 1995, I was on my fourth trip to Russia as a freelance journalist. A friend invited me to visit the Caucuses in southern Russia.

We flew to the airport in Mineralnye Vody (Mineral Water) and then traveled up to Mount Elbrus—the highest peak in Europe. Communism was over, but they didn’t want to lose the holiday. We had a picnic in the forest with fresh shashlik (shish-ka-bobs) and plenty of toasting, music and dancing. Did I mention the toasting?Wow.

Anyway, I think we are missing out by not celebrating May Day. We don’t need another “official’ holiday. That tends to take some of the fun out of holidays anyway, when they become “recognized”. I think we need to make May Day like St. Patrick’s Day…an excuse for some revelry and enjoyment. The people of Merrymount had it right and the people I met in the Caucuses did too.

I think it is time to take May Day back. Go out and get some merriment today!

Walking for the Cure on May 4

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We just picked up our walk packets.

I learn a lot from my kids. Before I had kids, I always thought it went the other way. I would teach them about this or that. Since becoming a parent, I have learned the truth of the matter. Often, they teach me humility and patience, but that isn’t exactly the lesson I learned this week. Not exactly, anyway. This week my youngest Jami taught me about what’s really important in life.

Jami brought home a form from Weberwood Elementary encouraging families and students to join their team and participate in the West Virginia Komen Race for the Cure on May 4 in Charleston. My first instinct was to blow it off, hope she forgot about or say we didn’t have the time. That Saturday is going to be pretty busy. We have a Girl Scout event and a soccer game and…
A few days ago, a girl I knew in high school died after fighting cancer for three and a half years. Throughout her battle, she wanted nothing more than to live and be healthy for her young daughter. She hated how it took over their lives. I hadn’t spoken to Teresa since graduation, although she sent me a nice note when someone sent her a copy of one of my children’s books. Her passing really affected me, though. It made me stop and think about cancer, what it does to families and my other friends who have survived it…and those who haven’t. It also made me stop and think about my two daughters and what it would be like for them to lose a parent.
So I sat down and registered us for the walk. We’ll be walking, not running. Honestly, mowing the grass the other day, I rolled my foot and definitely did some damage. I full-well expect it to hurt. Doesn’t really matter, though, in the grander scheme of things.
If you’re interested in walking, visit the Komen West Virginia page, join a team or set up your own. Get out there and walk. If you can’t be there, there’s even a Sleep In for the Cure option.  You can also make a pledge to support our walk if you want.
Do whatever you want or you can, but it really is time for little girls to stop losing their mommies.

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