The Great Denmans
Night after night, day after day, I, your humble servant, lie in bed next to my goddess wife, Alexandra Denman. Usually, we watch documentaries about the rise and fall of Nazism. These start out with the rise of Hitler, swimming in a sea of hatred of the world generated by the loss of the First World War, boiling into rage as Germans were overwhelmed by starvation, inflation, mass unemployment, and disdain by France and Britain, and (to a much smaller extent) the USA.
We see how the proud German people were stirred up by Hitler and his National Socialist Party. This rage was rapidly channeled into insane fury at German Jews. There never was even the slightest evidence that German Jews had anything to do with Germany losing the war.
Nevertheless, Hitler and his henchmen figured out that Germans wanted someone to blame for Versailles. Jews were a tiny fraction of Germans. They sometimes were prosperous and looked different from other Germans. Hitler was a wizard speaker. And he soon had an army of followers shouting hate slogans against Jews and using their typical German discipline to build a mighty Army, Navy, and Air Force (Luftwaffe).
In an astonishing hurry, Germany had an army that could subdue the previously thought to be invincible French army. Shortly before that, Germany under Der Führer conquered Norway, Holland, Belgium, almost all of Eastern Europe, and an immense slice of the USSR.
Only the British, with their mighty Navy and RAF, resisted Hitler. And then the Russians, after losing millions of men and women, stopped the Nazis in the snows of Stalingrad and Moscow and Leningrad, beat the Wehrmacht to a pulp. Then the glorious USA, fighting against Japan and Germany in the Atlantic and the Pacific, sending men and arms thousands of miles, completed the defeat of Hitler’s thousand-year Reich.
I began this story by mentioning my wonderful wife lying in bed with me, watching documentaries about the war and Hitler.
There is a reason that I began by talking about my wife.
She is a Denman, and the blood of the Warrior Angel Denmans runs in her veins. My wife’s father, Col. Dale Denman Jr., was a West Point Grad. His diploma from USMA was awarded to him on June 6, 1944, the same day as the Allied landing on the Beaches of Normandy. Soon after that, he was on the soil of Festung Europa. And soon after that, he was fighting for his life — and those of his men at the gates of “Gunskirchen Lager” — a notoriously vicious Nazi Death Camp in Austria. Col. Denman, then a Lieutenant, ran through a hail of Nazi machine gun ordnance so intense that it knocked the heels off both of his boots.
He reached the second floor of a farmhouse. He then called in U.S. Army artillery that knocked out the Germans, and the battle was won. In our house, there are medals galore — especially the Silver Star for his gallantry at Gunskirchen Lager. My wife and I pray to God for his blessings on all of the Denmans every night.
Col. Denman then fought all the way to VE Day.
Twenty years later, as a middle-aged man, he fought for a solid year in Vietnam against the Communists. He urged my wife and me to demonstrate against the war — which he called “an unwinnable meat grinder.”
I am so proud of this wife — my invincible Denman — I could burst, and she never brags. Never. But without men like Dale Denman Jr., who knows what we would be “celebrating” today?
God bless the Denmans.
Great Inventions
There have been many great inventions in my lifetime: the polio vaccine, auto airbags, jet airliners, fresh salmon, and many others.
The one that has benefited my wife and me the most is simple: streaming TV. This amazing breakthrough allows my wifey and me to watch great movies and TV shows on our home TV for low prices, on TV sets with amazingly sharp color and super sound.
This glorious invention allows our marriage to stay together for no money at all.
We can be happy until late at night, lifting up our hearts and keeping us together as a couple for far longer than we deserve. We don’t have to go out into scary shopping centers. Don’t have to spend forty dollars for popcorn. Don’t have to be surrounded by people who would just as soon as kill us as look at us if we ask them to hush up.
We can and do enjoy genuinely great art while holding hands with each other.
Motion pictures are the great art form of our era. If we can do it for a bargain price, without risking our lives, we have indeed made progress. Thank you, dear Lord. Thank you for saving us in comfort.
Thank you.
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