Dear Editor:

I am an eighth-grader. I am also a Boy Scout in Troop 456 in Wildwood, Missouri. I read your magazine a lot. I think World War II history is important to know because a lot of soldiers fought and died for freedom in our country. I also like your magazine because I like learning about the weapons, ships, different tanks, and different vehicles used in World War II.

Thank you for publishing World War II History.

Dan Underwood
Eureka, Missouri

A-26 Invader vs. B-26

Dear Editor:

I was very surprised to read the article, “Doolittle Raiders Return to Combat” (December 2010 issue).

I flew with the 319th Bomb Group in World War II. I was actually a late comer to the group, not flying a B-26 or a B-25, but rather an A-26 Invader. Colonel Holzapple was our group commanding officer—I flew with the 437th Squadron. I recall vividly how the older members bragged about the B-26s, but before the war was over, they acquired a new respect for the Invader.

By the way, the B-26s were made for the most part right here in Maryland at the Glen Martin plant where all my family worked.

Irving Distenfeld
Baltimore, Maryland

Communist Rules for Revolution

Dear Editor:

I believe Joseph Kavacic’s story about the killings after the war (Dispatches, October 2010 issue). I wasn’t there, but his story rings true.

I served in Austria during the occupation for all of 1946. Here we had no problems, no trouble. I served with our 3/4 Cav, changed to the 24th Constabulary. After serving in the U.S. Army for 26 years, I retired on August 1, 1972. I have read and learned much about our military history.

One reason I agree with Kavacic is because of a document I received from an old lady in the 1980s. Entitled “Communist Rules for Revolution,” the document was captured in Dusseldorf in May 1919 by the Allied Forces. It lists nine steps to attaining that goal:

1. Corrupt the young: get them away from religion. Get them interested in sex. Make them superficial; destroy their ruggedness.

2. Get control of all means of publicity. Get people’s minds off their government by focusing their attention on athletics, sexy books, plays, and other trivialities.

3. Divide the people into hostile groups by constantly harping on controversial matters of no importance.

4. Destroy the people’s faith in their natural leaders by holding the latter up to contempt, ridicule and obloquy.

5. Always preach true democracy, but seize power as fast and as ruthlessly as possible.

6. By encouraging government extravagance, destroy its credit, produce fear of inflation with rising prices and general discontent.

7. Foment unnecessary strikes in vital industries, encourage civil disorders, and foster a lenient and soft attitude on the part of government toward such disorders.

8. By specious argument cause a breakdown of the old moral virtues: honesty, sobriety, continence, faith in the pledged word, ruggedness.

9. Cause the registration of all firearms on some pretext with a view of confiscation of them and leaving the population helpless.

Today, here in America, it appears all but one have been completed, or mostly. The only one left is the confiscation of all guns.

Russia may have been the birthplace of communism, but it has spread like a cancer.

Jack L. Daniels
DeRidder, Louisiana

Mausers in Ireland

Dear Editor:

Mauser rifles (Ordnance, May 2010) were never used by the Defense Forces of the Irish Republic from the time of their inception in 1922. Initially they were armed with the Mk III .303 in. Short Magazine Lee Enfield rifle before progressing to the .303 in. No. 4 rifle which replaced it. In the 1960s bolt action rifles were replaced by the 7.62mm FN semi-automatic rifle which remained in service until the 1980s when it was replaced by the Steyr AUG 5.56mm rifle which is the current one in use by both the Permanent Defense Force and the Reserve Defense Force, formerly known as the F.C.A.

The writer is perhaps thinking of the 1500 single shot M1871 Mauser rifles landed at Howth, Co. Dublin and Kilcoole, Co. Wicklow, in July and August 1914 along with 42,000 rounds of ammunition by the Irish Volunteers at the height of the “Home Rule Crisis.” The Irish Volunteers used most of these rifles during the 1916 Easter Week Rising with the majority being seized by the authorities when the surrender order was issued.

James M. Scannell
2/Lt (Ret) 21 Inf Bn FCA
Dublin, Ireland

Note: Opinions expressed in “Dispatches” do not represent those of the writers, editors, or staff of WWII History or Sovereign Media.

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