Courage and Remembrance Song Listing

During his wilderness years of the 1930s, Winston Churchill warned Britain about rearmament in Nazi Germany. The cello symbolizes Churchill, wise and insistent, urging his countrymen not to ignore the gathering storm. Since 1965, on the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Battle of Britain, the floor inside the west entrance of Westminster Cathedral has borne on a sheet of green marble this simple inscription: Remember Winston Churchill.

Churchill said over the BBC on July 14, 1940: "There are vast numbers, not only in this Island but in every land, who will render faithful service in this war, but whose names will never be known, whose deeds will never be recorded." After the Anschlüss in 1938, several thousand Austrians who resisted the Nazis were arrested. Franz Sidak, a tailor in Vienna, was one. The Gestapo apprehended him in January 1940. His arrest records indicate that he had received unauthorized radio messages. Presumably, he was executed. I learned of the courage of this distant relative when, more than 65 years later, an institute in Austria—the Dokumentationsarchiv des österreichischen Widerstandes—posted the arrest records of the Gestapo in Vienna on the Internet so that Franz and the others like him would be "nicht mehr anonym." This composition celebrates the life rather than mourns the death of this unknown warrior. The fretless bass and punctuated guitar riffs of the opening and closing sections suggest the furtive movements of a resistance fighter.

After the Dunkirk evacuation and the fall of France, Britain braced for an amphibious and airborne invasion by the German army across the English Channel. It never happened. The Battle of Britain was not fought on the beaches and in the fields of England. It was fought in the sky and won by "The Few." So named by Churchill, the Royal Air Force repulsed the Luftwaffe's larger force of fighters and bombers. Churchill's allusion was to the words that Shakespeare imagined Henry V speaking to rally his outnumbered soldiers at Agincourt on St. Crispin's Day:

     And Crispin Crispian shall ne'er go by,
     From this day to the ending of the world,
     But we in it shall be remembered—
     We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;

After visiting RAF bases in southern England in the summer of 1940, Churchill found these words of tribute for the courage of the aviators, which he delivered to the House of Commons:

     Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.

It fairly could be said of Churchill, that never was a tribute to individual courage so powerfully expressed. This piece of music is composed and arranged in the style of Yes, circa 1971. It begins with the start of the Battle of Britain and the pilots scrambling to their planes. The solo, played over a 6/4 beat, depicts the RAF pilots flying through the clouds to spot and engage the Luftwaffe. The xylophone signals the combat. It gives way to a Celtic theme honoring the sacrifice of those who did not return and the bravery of those who will fly again another day. Then, in the part characterized by the propulsive bass line, the RAF starts to take the upper hand. The turning point of the Battle of Britain is the high riff played on the bass during the second stanza of the harmony guitar section. 

In December 1941, my grandparents in Hartington, Nebraska received news that their oldest son, Julius "Bud" Sidak, had been gravely wounded in the attack on Pearl Harbor. Bud was the black sheep of the family and had been estranged from his father since he had left the farm in October 1936 to join the Army. By 1941, he had become a sergeant in the Army Air Corps at Hickam Field, where he maintained the B-17 bombers deployed to Hawaii earlier that year. In case of war, he wrote to his mother, he would be gunner on a bomber. When the Japanese attacked, Bud was the last man to reach the bomb shelter inside his hangar. He did not make it to safety in time and was hit by shrapnel. While he was being evacuated on a stretcher across the emptiness of the runway, the strafing of the second wave of the attack began. Bud pleaded with his rescuers to set him down on the tarmac and run for cover, but they pressed on. Miraculously, they survived. According to the Hartington newspaper, my grandfather said that he was sorry that he was too old to get into the Army to fight the Japanese. In this piece, the opening and closing phrase, played by strings, expresses a disoriented sense of grief and disbelief. It yields to a noble theme, consciously presented in the harmonic style of Aaron Copland's grand American music. The chords are introduced on strings but are soon taken over by the solo piano. The chords express the resolve to lift one's self off the ground and fight. The solo piano is my grandfather's voice. It is followed by the full string section, which symbolizes all his countrymen adding their voices. But this expression of collective determination cannot prevent, on the individual level, a father's recurring sense of grief over the suffering of his son, if not also a sense of guilt for having been estranged from him. And so, the piece ends by restating the unsettled phrase with which it opens.

Bud was moved to Letterman Army Hospital in San Francisco, where he underwent months of agonizing skin-graft operations to salvage a leg. Doctors less interested in experimenting with treatment of wartime casualties might have simply ordered amputation. My father traveled from San Diego to visit his brother. For the rest of his life, my father could not enjoy a visit to San Francisco. The fog was a reminder of the gloom of Letterman Hospital in 1942. The title for this piece is borrowed from William Blake's poem, The Price of Experience, which begins:

     What is the price of experience? Do men buy it for a song?
     Or wisdom for a dance in the street? No, it is bought with the price
     Of all a man hath, his house, his wife, his children.
     Wisdom is sold in the desolate market where none come to buy,
     And in the wither'd field where the farmer plows for bread in vain.

The free-form guitar solos are the thoughts and cries of the patients at Letterman. They give way to precise ostenati on guitar that depict the doctors meticulously treating the wounded. The slow underlying tempo, and the droning bass during the ostinati, convey how slowly time passes for the wounded.

In the Battle of Midway, American naval aviators sank four Japanese aircraft carriers and changed the course of the war in the Pacific. All but three American torpedo bombers, flying low without any fighter escort, were shot down by the Japanese Zeros defending their carriers. However, the torpedo bombers had succeeded in diverting the Zeros away from the U.S. dive bombers that came swooping down from a higher altitude to strike the first three carriers. If not for the courage and sacrifice of the pilots of the torpedo bombers, the Imperial Japanese Navy might have escaped the devastating blow it received, and the war in the Pacific would have taken a different course. In this piece, the short figure played at the opening by horns and at the end by electric guitar is Morse code spelling, M-I-D-W-A-Y. An oscillating sequence of the underlying chord progression symbolizes the breaking of the Japanese naval code by American and British cryptanalysts, which enabled the U.S. Navy to know when, where, and how the Imperial Japanese Navy intended to attack. A six-measure figure shifts from guitar to tsugaru shamisen to symbolize the American and Japanese ships and planes hunting for one another in the vicinity of Midway on June 4, 1942. The guitar and shamisen join in unison when the opposing forces have spotted one another. The guitar solo seeks to convey the ferocity of the attack by the American pilots.

After the Battle of Midway, my father’s younger brother, Don, left the family farm in Nebraska. Over his parents’ objections, he enlisted on his eighteenth birthday to become a naval aviator. By the age of 20, Don had earned his wings and become a torpedo bomber pilot on an aircraft carrier. This piece conveys the bravado—and genuine bravery—of the young naval aviator who is, to borrow Neil Peart's lyric, "only immortal for a limited time." An injury from a Navy boxing match delayed Don's deployment to the Pacific and probably spared his life. Instead of leaving the service at the end of the war, he stayed to fight the coming war, the Cold War, if it were to erupt into open hostilities. In the newly created Strategic Air Command, he accepted a mission as suicidal as flying a torpedo bomber: piloting a B-47 that would deliver nuclear retaliation on the Soviet Union.

In January 1943, four chaplains—a Dutch Reformed, a Methodist, a Roman Catholic, and a Jew—were aboard the troop transport Dorchester when it was torpedoed at night in the North Atlantic by a German submarine. The ship was sinking rapidly, and in the chaos and darkness too few life jackets could be found for those aboard. After dispensing all the life jackets available, the four chaplains removed their own life jackets and gave them to others. Together, the chaplains prayed and sang hymns until the Dorchester sank and carried them below. A stained glass window in the War Memorial Chapel of the Washington National Cathedral honors their devotion. "Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends." John 15:13. The overlay of Amazing Grace at a steady march tempo conveys the calm and resolve of the chaplains as they face death. The piece is intended to have the celebratory but respectful mood of a Scottish drinking song: a pint or dram should be raised to toast the valor of the four chaplains during the chorus of Amazing Grace. It is arranged in the style of a song that Yes might have recorded circa 1971.

Failing crops and poor health drove my father to leave his parents'  farm in Nebraska in 1936 to find work. By December 1939, he arrived in San Diego with six cents in his pocket. In January 1941, he was hired by the Solar Aircraft Company. Housed in the same factory that produced The Spirit of St. Louis for Charles Lindbergh, Solar was one of the many companies that built the parts that made the planes that won the war. After the Pearl Harbor attack, two of my father's sisters—Wilma and Julia—also moved from Nebraska to work at Solar. After my father's years of wandering, Solar and the war effort identified his calling. He gained the dignity of holding a steady job, and he was able to contribute as best he could to avenging the attack on his brother and his countrymen. He spent the next 35 years with the company. In this composition, the opening and closing parts express the relentless progress of the assembly lines in places like San Diego, Long Beach, and Burbank. The recurring melody depicts the individual dedication of the men and women who kept the factories running, day and night.

Early in the war, my aunt Wilma married a high school classmate named Larson. Like so many others, he left to become an aviator. All that I know about him is that, during a bombing run several weeks before D-Day, he became one of the 52,000 American airmen killed in action. Wilma had become a widow in her early twenties. 

This piece is my attempt to depict aurally the landing on Omaha Beach on D-Day. In a nod to Aaron Copland, I borrow the Shaker hymn Simple Gifts, which Copland used in Appalachian Spring, written in 1944. Also quoted are Amazing Grace, My Country, ‘Tis of Thee, and The Battle Hymn of the Republic, which harmonizes with Simple Gifts. The American patriotic melodies and hymn connote the power of American idealism, which, for me, the landing on Omaha Beach reifies more than any other event of the Twentieth Century. However, the passage from My Country, ‘Tis of Thee has a detached quality to depict the concern of soldiers on Omaha Beach that the landing may fail. The quote of Amazing Grace (actually based on an Irish or Scottish melody called New Britain) connotes, for the soldiers landing on Omaha Beach, the consciousness of mortality expressed in the well-known words by John Newton that are sung to the melody. This portrayal of the Normandy invasion opens quietly with a violin, as the landing craft are still at sea. The persistent, stereo-flanged bass line signals the imminent conflict. The thunderous electric guitar chord that recurs represents the fury of the Allied attack. The banjo represents the 29th Infantry Division, mainly from Virginia, which took devastating losses. The drum soloing represents the courage of individual action, and the steady rock beat represents the courage of collective action. Both were necessary for the landing to succeed.

No visitor to the beaches of the Normandy invasion beholds the perpendicular cliffs of Pointe du Hoc without humility and awe. From this windswept spit of land German forces delivered crossfire, down Omaha Beach to the east and Utah Beach to the west, and acted as forward observers for the heavy artillery that had been moved a mile inland two days earlier. Army Rangers climbed straight up the cliffs by ropes and grapnels to capture the fortifications at the top. In this piece, the beginning bass line conveys the Rangers' sense of purpose. The digitally delayed guitar ostinato represents their ascent, hand over hand. The choir and organ depict the Rangers reaching the top and capturing this critical position.

The motto of the Army Rangers comes from the events of June 6, 1944. Encountering heavy resistance from German forces, the landing on Omaha Beach was in danger of collapsing unless American soldiers could clear the beaches and move inland. To save the landing from failure, the commanding general ordered, "Rangers, lead the way!" They did. The opening fanfare is, again, a nod to Copland. I once read that his Third Symphony of 1946, which incorporates Fanfare for the Common Man, was dedicated to the American soldiers of the Normandy invasion—and, perhaps more specifically, the Rangers who captured Pointe du Hoc, though I have been unable to confirm this proposition.

This piece is a portrait of courage in microcosm, dedicated to Raymond Geddes, Jr., a member of the 501st Parachute Infantry Regiment of the 101st Airborne Division. He jumped from 350 feet at 1:25 a.m. on June 6, 1944. He was wounded the morning of June 8 at St. Come-du-Mont, shortly before the assault on Carentan. The slow waltz tempo over a martial beat expresses respect. The solo violin expresses the hope and fear of an individual soldier in the 101st Airborne as he parachutes into Normandy and advances across Europe.

The defeat of the Nazi Germany was "the broad sunlit uplands" of which Churchill spoke in 1940 when rallying his countrymen to fight. The hints of skiffle and reggae beats suggest dancing and express the elation in Britain that the war in Europe has ended.

The war continued in the Pacific and continued to demand factories to produce the planes to win the war. After she came to San Diego to work at Solar, my aunt Julia met a Marine paratrooper from Texas named Hollie. They married. Hollie shipped out for the Pacific. Julia, Wilma, and my father lived together in a modest bungalow. I can imagine Julia, sitting on the front porch at night, praying for her husband's safe return, and then dreaming of dancing with him again, as she did on her wedding day. Hollie returned safely and, after spending 20 years in the Marines, went to work for Solar. The suggestion of dance in this piece is not based on any attempt to emulate the big bands of the 1940s. Rather, I have alluded to Latin, reggae, and calypso rhythms and have added a guitar figure that suggests a whirling sensation.

The battles on Iwo Jima in February and March of 1945 and on Okinawa in March through June of 1945 were land invasions of Japanese territory. The Japanese fought fiercely. My uncle Hollie fought in both battles. From him, I first heard the crack, "With the help of God and a few Marines, Macarthur returned to the Philippines." The first clause actually comes from the title of a book about the Marines in World War I, and the second clause is a matter of some dispute (on the ground that the Army deserves credit for retaking the Philippines). But I always understood the rhyme to convey a simpler, uncontroversial proposition consistent with my uncle's can-do Texan attitude: the daunting challenges of war that most require God's help are those where a few Marines are always welcome. In this piece, the music's rawness conveys the intensity of these battles. David Gilmour's guitar style seemed suitable for expressing that rawness, and my solo alludes to several Gilmour riffs from his Pink Floyd days.

The alternative to the land invasion of Japan—which would require repeating the battles on Iwo Jima and Okinawa on a vaster scale—was to use the product of the Manhattan Project. This piece is dedicated to Russ, the father of a friend of mine from childhood. I did not know until 2007 that Russ was stationed as a Navy engineer on Tinian, where he worked to build the runway from which the Enola Gay departed for her mission on August 6, 1945. After the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Russ went to evaluate the devastation and was poisoned by the radiation. He never mentioned a word to his son of the horrors he documented. It was only after Russ died that my friend found a shoebox in a closet containing photographs that his father had taken in Japan in 1945 and had directed be destroyed after his death. This solemn piece is intended to convey the soul searching of those on Tinian during the final hours that they prepared the Enola Gay to depart on her mission to end the war.

Just before launching this website, I realized that I needed to add a piece that fits the famous photograph of the sailor kissing the nurse on Broadway on the day the war ended in 1945. The photograph expresses joy, and so this piece attempts to do so as well, alluding to the swing of a big band. 

This song is for Bud, Russ, and the millions of other American soldiers who, having answered the call of duty, faced the challenge of returning to peace and civilian life after being forever changed by the indescribable horrors of war. Many, like Russ, succeeded in putting the worst memories in metaphorical shoeboxes that they tucked away. Others, like Bud, did not. He suffered in body and mind and was a ward of the Veterans Administration for the rest of his life. He was buried in Hartington, Nebraska with military honors.

This triumphant theme honors the courage of millions and the magnitude of their sacrifices. They left a legacy of freedom "bought with the price of all a man hath."