Posted on 05/30/2018 5:12:22 AM PDT by harpygoddess
"Well, the supermen marched us, without food, water or sleep to Limberg, a distance of about sixty miles, I think, where we were loaded and locked up, sixty men to each small, unventilated, unheated box car. There were no sanitary accommodations -- the floors were covered with fresh cow dung. There wasn't room for all of us to lie down. Half slept while the other half stood. We spent several days, including Christmas, on that Limberg siding.
On Christmas eve the Royal Air Force bombed and strafed our unmarked train. They killed about one-hundred-and-fifty of us. We got a little water Christmas Day and moved slowly across Germany to a large P.O.W. Camp in Muhlburg, South of Berlin. We were released from the box cars on New Year's Day. The Germans herded us through scalding delousing showers. Many men died from shock in the showers after ten days of starvation, thirst and exposure. But I didn't.
Under the Geneva Convention, Officers and Non-commissioned Officers are not obliged to work when taken prisoner. I am, as you know, a Private. One-hundred-and-fifty such minor beings were shipped to a Dresden work camp on January 10th."
In Dresden they were imprisoned in an underground slaughterhouse known by German soldiers as "Schlachthof Fünf" (Slaughterhouse Five), which, of course, he used 25 years later as the title and organizing principle of his best-known book. During the bombing of Dresden, which took place in four raids between February 13th and 15th, the subterranean nature of the prison saved their lives.
(Excerpt) Read more at vaviper.blogspot.com ...
The Russians are crazy about Americans. The Russians picked us up in Dresden. We rode from there to the American lines at Halle in Lend-Lease Ford trucks. We’ve since been flown to Le Havre.
I’m writing from a Red Cross Club in the Le Havre P.O.W. Repatriation Camp. I’m being wonderfully well feed and entertained. The state-bound ships are jammed, naturally, so I’ll have to be patient. I hope to be home in a month.
—
Mueller would want to interview Vonnegut about his Russian collusion, except for the inconvenient truth that he died back in 2007.
This author led a really charmed life. I enjoyed his brand of dark humor. Got to see him once in the 70s when in college.
He was a brilliant writer. My favorite book was Cat’s Cradle. I love in Slaughterhouse five how the main character Billy loves the fictional author Kilgore Trout paperback science fiction writer and his favorite book “Venus on the Half Shell”. Years later I came across the paperback! Vonnegut created this persona Kilgore Trout and even wrote a book as Kilgore Trout. Hilarious...
Another great Vonnegut moment came in the movie “Back to School” where Rodney Dangerfield goes to college to be with his son. Instead of actually doing the work, Dangerfield hires all of these experts to do his homework including having Vonnegut do a book report on a Kurt Vonnegut book. He gets an ‘F’ on the report card and the teacher (Sally Kellerman) tells him whoever wrote this knows nothing of Vonnegut....
Read most of his novels. Enjoyed them. He was however quite left of center on most issues. He outed himself often during the Bush 43 administration.
>>Mueller would want to interview Vonnegut about his Russian collusion, except for the inconvenient truth that he died back in 2007.<<
That is no problem. Vonnegut’s statement was prepared well in advance of any interview.
No. That Kilgore Trout book was Venus on the Half-shell written by philip José Farmer under permission of Vonnegut
Ironically, his “Harrison Bergeron” is one of influences on me becoming a conservative.
I always thought that Vonnegut wrote that. It was a kind of unforgettable read. A sort of run of the mill fair to middling science fiction work, which is exactly how Trout was described, a somewhat failed Sci Fi writer. Probably the best thing about it was the lurid picture on the cover....
I read “God Bless You Mr. Rosewater” in sixth grade. I found it nihilistic, though I don’t think I used the word at the time. Never found any reason to revisit him.
Thank you for publishing this.
Venus on the half shell was blatantly stollen and turned into, both concept and much of the story into Douglas Adams, money making project Hitchhikers Guide, series.
In the book the main character traveled throughout the universe, he observed that intelligent creatures everywhere solved their problems with alcohol and sex.
As I recall pretty funny.
Unfortunately, we are living in early Harrison Bergeron type times.
Bingo the giant cockroach. He said God went out for a beer one day and he never came back.
And to quote the wheel people…”gotta keep Rollin’ “
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