Honda Car Names and Trench Warfare

Honda makes great cars, we’ve owned several. But they missed the best possible marketing ploy for their popular small size SUV, the “CRV,” which to the Japanese executives in charge of nomenclature and branding of their products, means “Compact Recreational Vehicle.” Three members of the Alamo Rifles, my Civil War reenacting group, drive Honda CRV’s. I’ve driven mine for six years now, and the CRV has happily and efficiently hauled people, muskets, and reenacting gear all over Texas, Arkansas, Louisiana, Missouri, Tennessee, Georgia, North Carolina, and Virginia.

I dare not write how many miles I’ve driven my CRV to Civil War reenactments, because my wife reads these blog posts and can do the math to turn mileage into gasoline costs. Once she did that, I fully expect I’d find some expensive bling around her neck when I get home from the next such trip.

If Honda would just give me a call, I’d give a sterling testimonial for my CRV—my Confederate Reenactor Vehicle. The Japanese having a long proud military history they could have tapped into when naming cars for the American market. They could have deemed the CRV the SRV, “Samuri Reenactor Vehicle.” But, at least in America, Honda has not taken to in-your-face brand names, like American car companies have. I mean the McBride’s have also owned Honda cars called Accord, Civic, Fit, Odyssey, and Passport.  How absent of testosterone can a name be? None of those Barricuda, Charger, Cougar, Sting Ray, or Mustang muscle car names for Honda. But surely there’s a middle ground for Honda car names that aren’t so darned polite. 

I mean, I wouldn’t expect a Japanese car company to name a car sold in America the “Banzai.” But “Mushroom Cloud” might work, or “You Yanks Won the War and We Will Never Get Over It (Y2W4NGOI).” Those names would NOT attract young urban hipsters. Although the last one, if it were the name of Honda’s pick-up truck, would likely sell well in the states of the old Confederacy. Enough of that.

Today’s blog post is not really about the inexpensive, efficient, and dependable imported cars that helped Japan get even after WWII by showing America that Detroit was making over-priced crappy cars. Today’s post is to remember WWI in Europe, where one hundred years ago danged near every nation in Europe and many beyond, crisscrossed the landscape with thousands of miles of trenches and wire and machine guns. 

The presence of the newly developed rapid-fire machine gun made trench warfare obsolete even as the Great War began. Four European nations each sacrificed over a million young men to the remedial classes the machine guns provided. The generals on both sides saw the slaughter, but were locked into tactics they knew, regardless of the price. The USA, late to enter the war, lost over 60,000 young soldiers in our own “Banzai” attacks on German trenches. All total, WWI caused over 11 million military deaths and 7 million civilian deaths from 1916 to 1920. It’s a mind-boggling number. The 600,000 military deaths in our American Civil War pales next to the 11 million dead soldiers who fell in Europe during WWI. We are a stubborn and violent species, no doubt about it.

My Civil War link is that on this 100th anniversary summer of the horrible WWI trench warfare battle near Verdun, France, I’m writing about the trench warfare battle that took place over the summer of 1864, just 52 years earlier, around Richmond and Petersburg, Virginia. Grant and Lee didn’t need Germans, machine guns or mustard gas to cause 70,000 American casualties that summer. They both ordered attacks and counter-attacks over the killing fields between the concentric rings of earthworks surrounding Richmond, until Lee’s army was bled dry. It was a terrible time in a terrible war.

The photo this week is just one young man, not dead, but a WWI English soldier who didn’t need words to tell of the horror of his war. His manic eyes and humorless grin said it all.

As I write this week in the Defiant Honor manuscript about the Yanks from New Jersey and the Rebs from Texas who met in bloody battle on the earthworks at New Market Heights just east of Richmond, that Brit soldier’s face will haunt me. I’ve promised him that I will keep my writer’s voice somber and the characters in blue and gray appropriately defiant in the penultimate fight of the Fifth Texas regiment.

One Galveston, Two Archibalds, Three Grandkids, and Ten Thousand Views

Ten Thousand. That’s a number I’ve been watching for, and it rolled up while we were vacationing in Galveston last week. 10,032 is the number of “pageviews” that my 90 blog posts have cumulatively reached during the past two years. One pageview is when one reader opens one blog post.

I suppose 10K is small potatoes to big-time bloggers, just like 10K is a short run for marathoners. I've met a lady who writes somewhat profane in-your-face books about divorce. They are popular books. Her husband says she has an ever-renewing audience of angry women whose husbands have cheated on them and her blog has or will reach a million pageviews.

I'm not writing about divorce, but there is romance in my novels about a war that ended over 150 years ago. And I’m thrilled that you, my friends and readers have taken my blog to the 10,000 pageview mark. Thank You.

Last week our family of two sons, two daughters-in-law, three grandkids, and one more in the oven, joined Nita and me for a week on the beach on Galveston Island. Nita and I have always enjoyed the place. Nothing like beaches, seafood, and fine old homes. I’ve also reenacted there several times, since the historical Strand section of the city of Galveston is one of the rare Civil War battle sites in Texas.

Being old, even at the beach I'd wake early, start the coffee pot, open the laptop and write on the newest chapter of Defiant Honor. Most days I got in a few pages before the whirlwind granddaughters and lap-seeking grandson awoke. Then I'd shut her down and morph from Hemingway to Granddaddy and cook bacon, eggs, and biscuits for eight, before we all hit the sand and surf.

During those few early morning hours I brought Galveston into the manuscript. Neptune made me do it. I mentioned the Tremont Hotel and St. Joseph’s Church by name, since the little clapboard-sided St. Joseph’s was built in 1859 and is where son Todd married daughter-in-law Maggie five years ago. The Tremont Hotel opened for business even earlier, and after being rebuilt twice after fires, and cleaned out after hurricanes, is still open. It's also where Todd and Maggie rode in a carriage from St. Joseph’s for their first night as Mr. and Mrs. McBride.

During the Civil War, the protected bay made Galveston Island a haven to the sleek ocean-going blockade runner ships and their captains. Thus, the Tremont Hotel  and St. Joseph’s Church seem fitting locations to slide John McBee into the world of blockade runners.

Here’s a historically terrific Civil War image of three blockade running ships at the wharf in Galveston.  Even in this grainy image, you can see the size of the ships by finding the horses standing on a dock near one of them. Each ship has visible sail masts and slanted steam engine smokestacks for their side-mounted paddle wheels.  They were indeed the greyhounds of the Gulf. Oddly, the long sleek vessels with low profiles remind me of the WWII submarine we toured at Seawolf Park on Galveston Island.

In searching for an appropriate historical sea-going ship captain to "borrow" for my plot, I uncovered a real blockade-running gent by the name of Archibald McNeill, whose plantation house is now the centerpiece of a little state park in Florida. It was McNeill who smuggled the real Confederate Secretary of State Judah Benjamin out of the country in May of 1865 while he was being hunted by Union cavalry right after the war ended. Remember that Benjamin is already a character in the McBee story.

A Google search for the name of Archibald McNeill, I found another Archibald McNeill. This one was an ex-Congressman from North Carolina who emigrated to Texas in the 1830's when Texas was a Republic, before statehood, before the Civil War. He disappeared in the Arizona desert during a storm while leading a band of gold-diggers from Texas to California during the 1840’s gold rush. 

I don’t subscribe to Ancestor.com, so I wasn’t able to search for a possible familial connection between the two historical Archibald McNeill’s. But the timing and location of the two Archie’s fit my writing needs, so I dubbed them father and son and crossed the paths of the younger Archie and John McBee, in Galveston, of course.

The McNeill family and the port of Galveston also allowed me to insert a past, thwarted romance for John McBee, back before Faith first heals his bloody feet in Virginia. I thought learning of her new husband’s old flame would be just the thing to show another facet of Faith’s character, especially when that old flame is now a widow who pops up unexpectedly. If you intend to read Defiant Honor when it’s published in a few months, I hope that little preview titillates, but doesn’t spoil.

Speaking of injured feet, here’s one last modern Galveston warning: Beware the ocean. We’d read about a new bad bacteria that’s floating in the surf around Galveston Island. It has seriously infected a few swimmers. I am lucky living proof. Look at this photo. It’s my diseased feet. I caught “Croc Pox” on the Galveston beach. 

Actually, my foot pox came before I waded into the surf. It seems the air holes in the tops of my beloved orange Crocs drew the sun like a magnifying glass and burned little round “pox” marks onto my dainty feet. You just can’t be too careful. And don't always take me too seriously. 

Finally, after ten months of offering my first two Civil War novels as Kindle downloads on Amazon priced at 99 cents, I’ve upped the price back up to a whopping $2.99. Nita and both sons were adamant that they don’t buy books that even the author thinks are only worth 99 cents. I had lowered the price of the two books as a marketing ploy to tempt Amazon shoppers to try the first McBee book, Tangled Honor, and then get hooked. Now we’ll see if the 99 cent tag helped sales or actually dissuaded would-be buyers.