Saturday, July 13, 2019
It's all blockades now 2
Via BBC again:
Ocracoke Island in the Outer Banks has a peculiar enclave of official British territory. It's a little war memorial cemetery, holding the graves of a few British sailors who died fighting Krauts.
Starting in 1940 we were shipping war supplies to British forces as a way of participating while remaining technically neutral. Neutrality was a meaningful concept then, so the Krauts avoided bombing our ships. After Pearl Harbor the restriction was gone, and the Krauts used submarines just off the east coast. Thus the Outer Banks, unlike most of the US mainland, had a real taste of war. Stray shells, flying debris, bodies washing ashore.
Because Ocracoke was low-tech, British sailors had to be buried quickly, not stored for proper military handling. Later the accidental cemetery was made official, and declared to be British territory in honor of Britain's blockade-breaking service.
BBC's article shows sympathy for the islanders who had to suffer indirect consequences of Kraut blockades. Why doesn't BBC have equal sympathy for the direct and indirect victims of USA STRONG blockades? Many of the indirect victims are British companies which were accustomed to doing normal business with Persia and Russia. No sympathy for them.
We're the Krauts now.
¶ 12:21 AM 
