BONUS: Author's story may be better than the war story

Fans support Springsteen as `Badlands' anthem resonates in current events

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At the start, Mike Croissant just wanted to find out what happened to his uncle after World War II.

That's how it begins for many writers. A tiny scrap of curiosity grows, multiplies with one story leading to another, one fact building upon a another - sometimes shocking and surprising - until a narrative has been assembled.

Croissant was a CIA analyst. He described what he did as assembling facts into a picture others could see. He used his skills to find find information and documents about his uncle and the war, then produced book that was 17 years in the making and told the story of the final brutal bombing mission in Europe before the end of the war.

The author's story might be better than the resulting book Bombing Hitler's Hometown.

Eighty years ago in the dying weeks of the European campaign, B-17 and B-24 bombers were dispatched from Italy to the heavily fortified city of Linz, Austria, a rail center that happened to be Adolph HItter's hometown. One of the men on that raid was a bombardier named Ellsworth Croissant.

That was the starting point for the author.

Author Mike Croissant speaking at the National World War II Museum about his book “Bombing Hitler’s Hometown.”

"The prevailing sentiment was, `Why are we doing this?' The war is almost over," Croissant said the reaction to the mission.

Ellsworth Croissant's legacy is a cruel story about surviving 21 combat missions only to die in crash after returning to the States.

But as Croissant learned about his uncle, he gradually uncovered the stories of dozens of others who participated in the hellish final mission over Linz just thirteen days before Germany surrendered.

What started as a hobby, a personal project in 2007 became the overriding passion of his life as he interviewed 55 different men who participated in the raid.

"Many had never spoke about that day," Croissant said from the stage at National World War II Museum in New Orleans with a vintage C-47 Skytrain hanging over his head. "A handful, I became very close to. The last of them died just before the book came out (in 2024)."

It was the first of several times where the emotions got the best of Croissant.

"It impacted my life in so many ways that I can't really describe," Croissant said. "Many moments chilled me to the bone."

The easy part was delving into the records at the National Archives.

He read bomb group association newsletters and unit histories as he pieced together his story.

"The more I read, the more one mission piqued my interest - the raid on Linz Austria on 25 April 1945," Croissant writes in the introduction to the book.

He found the same story repeated over and over again.

"The volume of anti-aircraft artillery fire from German guns defending the city was horrific, blasting holes in machines and men in numbers that even the most seasoned air warriors found shocking," Croissant wrote. "All those who survived it walked away knowing they had experienced something extraordinary, and they were lucky to be alive."

Jack Lengsfield was the "waist gunner" on one of the bombers.

Over lunch with Croissant in New Orleans in 2014, he tried to describe how intense the flak was over Linz.

Croissant drew black dots with a pen on a white cocktail napkin as an example of light flak. Then he doubled it for medium flak.

"If this was moderate flak, what was it like over Linz," Croissant asked.

The old airmen reached out and put his finger on a solid black wooden column nearby.

The sky had turned black over Linz.

"Moments like that chilled me to the bone," Croissant said.

The first bomber was shot down four minutes into the attack. It was the first of 15 bombers that were lost of the 500 bombers deployed. Ninety percent of the planes suffered damage and limped back to their bases in Italy. Many of those that were shot down were captured behind enemy lines.

When Croissant was done with the airmen, he said the story felt one-sided and needed the viewpoints of those on the ground in Linz. He went back to Europe and talked to civilians who were the target of the bombing.

"I talked to dozens of German, Austrian civilians who where there," Croissant said. "None held a grudge."

What was amazing was that the book project continued after more than a decade.

"I was stubborn enough not to let this die.," Croissant said.

"Learning about his life and death was a gift to me," Croissant said of his Uncle Ellsworth. "I didn't know him, but when it was done, I went and laid a copy of the book on his grave."

But even after getting all sides of the story, Croissant went even further and dug deep into how the mission later affected the rest of their lives.

"It was so brutal for them," Croissant said. "The memories were extremely vivid. One navigator told me how he had never looked outside during any of his missions, but that day over Linz he decided to take a look. He said it scared the hell out of him.

"It deeply affected the men," Croissant said. "If you came home from that mission you were not the same man. For one guy the PTSD was so bad, he just filed the memories away like they were in Fort Knox. He even forgot the names of his crew. This was a shattered man. He got a lot of pages in the book. In his final days, he called me to talk to me. The most excruciating parts of this are when men are still trying to get over it."

When Croissant was done speaking, I had to ask him how his interviews with these men, their stories and experiences had shaped him and his view of war.

"I will remember this (working on the book) as some of the best years of my life," Croissant said. "These men made me a better man, a better American. It has left a vacuum in my life, but it was worth every minute."

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Supporting Bruce

The meme on Facebook was simple and asked what people thought about Bruce Springsteen. There was over 100,000 likes when I looked at it on Thursday morning.

There were also thousands of comments, but this one spoke to me as a reflection of our times from his classic "Badlands:"

"I am a Jersey guy and LIVED a lot of his music. He said it best:

"Poor men want to be rich;

rich men want to be king;

and kings ain't satisfied until they rule EVERYTHING"!"

Long live"The Boss" Bruce Springsteen.

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Frightening

From the New York Times about the appointment of Ed Martin as part of the Justice Departments "weaponization" group. It is another erosion to the rule of law in our country.

Ed Martin, the self-described “captain” of the Justice Department’s “weaponization” group, made a candid if unsurprising admission: He plans to use his authority to expose and discredit those he believes to be guilty, even if he cannot find sufficient evidence to prosecute them — weaponizing an institution he has been hired to de-weaponize, in the view of critics.

If they can be charged, we’ll charge them,” Mr. Martin told reporters before stepping down as interim U.S. attorney in Washington. “But if they can’t be charged, we will name them. And we will name them, and in a culture that respects shame, they should be people that are ashamed.”

I believe that is called harassment.

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Fact check

President Trump made a lot of charges against the South African president during his visit to the Oval Office on Wednesday.

Politifact checked on the veracity of Trump's claims and found them to be false. Here is what it found:

PolitiFact Senior Correspondent Amy Sherman examined the topic in detail this week, finding that experts rejected the characterization of white Afrikaners being killed in targeted violence or a genocide. Murders of white farmers account for less than 1% of more than 27,000 annual murders nationwide.

The idea of a ‘white genocide’ taking place in South Africa is completely false," said Gareth Newham, who heads a justice and violence prevention program at the Institute for Security Studies in South Africa.

When a reporter asked what it would take for Trump to stop characterizing it as a “genocide” of white people in South Africa, President Cyril Ramaphosa said, “It will take President Trump listening to the voices of South Africans.

Newham said the primary motive for almost all farm attacks is robbery, which has long been documented.

The majority of murder victims nationwide are poor, under- or unemployed young Black males, Newham said.

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Final budget stats

The House of Representative passed its version of the budget bill as the sun was coming up Thursday morning.

If it is allowed to stand by the Senate, this is what the impact could be, according to The Associated Press.

The AP reported that the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates 8.6 million fewer people would have health care coverage and 3 million less people a month would have SNAP food stamps benefits with the proposed changes.

The CBO, remember it is nonpartisan, said the new budget would "increase federal deficits by $3.8 trillion over the decade, while the changes to Medicaid, food stamps and other services would tally $1 trillion in reduced spending."

The impact would mean the poorest households in the U.S. would see their resources drop, while the highest ones would see a boost.

Substack columnist and historian Heather Cox Richardson noticed that the budget passage coincided with President Lyndon Johnson's University of Michigan speech in 1964 that kicked off his "Great Society" agenda. She called the new budget the dismantling of the Great Society and replacing its "vision with the idea that the government must work for the wealthy few."

Reflecting on those words from President Johnson, it was a time of hope and promise. Check it out:

For better or worse your generation has been appointed by history to deal with those problems and to lead America toward a new age. You have the chance never before afforded to any people in any age. You can help build a society where the demands of morality, and the needs of the spirit, can be realized in the life of the Nation.

So, will you join in the battle to give every citizen the full equality which God enjoins and the law requires, whatever his belief, or race, or the color of his skin? Will you join in the battle to give every citizen an escape from the crushing weight of poverty?...

There are those timid souls who say this battle cannot be won; that we are condemned to a soulless wealth. I do not agree. We have the power to shape the civilization that we want. But we need your will, your labor, your hearts, if we are to build that kind of society.

It appears we are destined to a "soulless wealth as a country without a moral or ethical center.

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Ken Tingley spent more than four decades working in small community newspapers in upstate New York. Since retirement in 2020 he has written three books and is currently adapting his second book "The Last American Newspaper" into a play. He currently lives in Queensbury, N.Y.