Author: Tetman Callis

We are legally allowed to help each other, within limitsWe are legally allowed to help each other, within limits

Tetman Callis 0 Comments 8:55 am

“The rescue doctrine is a rule of law holding that one who sees a person in imminent danger caused by the negligence of another cannot be charged with contributory negligence in a non-reckless attempt to rescue the imperiled person. The doctrine was developed to encourage rescue and to correct the harsh inequity of barring relief under principles of contributory negligence to a person who is injured in a rescue attempt which the injured person was under no duty to undertake.” – Justice Murray, Ouellette v. Carde

I’m grateful I’ve never had to do thisI’m grateful I’ve never had to do this

Tetman Callis 0 Comments 9:06 am

“As the infantry nears the hostile position the supporting fires are forced to lift. Then must the riflemen themselves furnish both the fire and the movement. At this stage, fire without movement is useless and movement without fire is suicidal. Even with both, the last hundred yards is a touch-and-go proposition demanding a high order of leadership, sound morale, and the will to win.” – George C. Marshall, Infantry in Battle

All these men had namesAll these men had names

Tetman Callis 0 Comments 5:32 am

“And so, at the appointed hour, this brigade of 6,000 highhearted and determined men stood up and at the word of command fixed their bayonets, shouldered their rifles, and marched forward in quick time and in step to assault an intrenched enemy armed with machine guns. One can only surmise the thought in the minds of those German gunners as they saw the dense and serried waves of skirmishers marching stolidly toward them. As the leading wave approached the German position the French artillery lifted and the enemy’s artillery, machine guns and rifles opened with a concerted roar. The leading wave went down, the others surging forward were literally blown apart. In a matter of minutes the attack had melted away. A few men reached the wire in front of the German position, but there they were forced to take cover in shell holes. The entire brigade, nailed to the ground by a merciless fire, could do nothing but wait for nightfall.” – George C. Marshall, Infantry in Battle

Ten miles north of DuxfordTen miles north of Duxford

Tetman Callis 0 Comments 5:56 am

“Ten miles north of Duxford on a broad thirty-acre slope along Madingley Road lies the American Military Cemetery at Madlingley, a tiny village just west of Cambridge. There are 3,811 Americans buried here, 24 of them unknown. An occasional rose lies at the base of a marble marker, though fewer now than a generation ago, as the personal links between living and dead dwindle. A 472-foot Wall of Remembrance bears the names of 5,125 men, all missing in action.” – John McDonough, “Return to East Anglia”

Words mean things — but what?Words mean things — but what?

Tetman Callis 0 Comments 10:02 am

“The term ‘proximate cause’ is applied by the courts to those more or less undefined considerations which limit liability even where the fact of causation is clearly established. The word ‘proximate’ is a legacy of Lord Chancellor Bacon, who in his time committed other sins. The word means nothing more than near or immediate; and when it was first taken up by the courts it had connotations of proximity in time and space which have long since disappeared. It is an unfortunate word, which places an entirely wrong emphasis upon the factor of physical or mechanical closeness. For this reason ‘legal cause’ or perhaps even ‘responsible cause’ would be a more appropriate term.” – William Prosser, Prosser and Keeton on the Law of Torts

A hero is unmadeA hero is unmade

Tetman Callis 0 Comments 5:56 am

“On August 12 [1942] the Japanese High Command in Tokyo ordered Lieutenant General Haruyoshi Hyakutake’s Seventeenth Army to take over the ground action on Guadalcanal, and Rear Admiral Raizo Tanaka’s Eighth Fleet to take over at sea. The nearest thing at hand for Hyakutake’s use was a 2,000-man force of infantry, artillery, and engineers under Colonel Kiyono Ichiki that had been put together as the landing force for Midway. Tanaka put the first echelon—some 900 men—of Ichiki’s force ashore on Guadalcanal on August 18. What happened now was a calamity for the Japanese. Without waiting for the rest of his men, cocky Colonel Ichiki sent those he had across the sandspit at the Tenaru River against the Marines on the night of August 21. He lost 600 men, accomplished nothing, and expressed his chagrin by committing suicide.” – George McMillan, “I’ve Served My Time in Hell”

Come here right nowCome here right now

Tetman Callis 8 Comments 5:58 am

“Special emphasis should be laid on the language employed in orders. Leaders of all grades should be trained to test every word, every phrase, every sentence, for ambiguity and obscurity. If, by even the wildest stretch of the imagination, a phrase can be tortured out of its true meaning, the chance is always present that it will be. Short, simple sentences of simple, commonplace words, will go far toward making an order unmistakable.” – George C. Marshall, Infantry in Battle

Good luck with thatGood luck with that

Tetman Callis 0 Comments 5:58 am

“Even if information be lacking, the leader must produce decisions. In most cases a poor decision will be better than no decision at all. Negligence and hesitation are more serious faults than errors in choice of means. No rule can tell us how to time decisions correctly.” – George C. Marshall, Infantry in Battle

There are laws and conventionsThere are laws and conventions

Tetman Callis 0 Comments 5:30 am

“The art of war has no traffic with rules, for the infinitely varied circumstances and conditions of combat never produce exactly the same situation twice. Mission, terrain, weather, dispositions, armament, morale, supply, and comparative strength are variables whose mutations always combine to form a new tactical pattern. Thus, in battle, each situation is unique and must be solved on its own merits.” – George C. Marshall, Infantry in Battle

A man for his timesA man for his times

Tetman Callis 0 Comments 6:09 am

“Hitler’s name justifiably stands for all time as that of the chief instigator of the most profound collapse of civilization in modern times. The extreme form of personal rule which an ill-educated beerhall demagogue and racist bigot, a narcissistic, megalomaniac, self-styled national saviour was allowed to acquire and exercise in a modern, economically advanced, and cultured land known for its philosophers and poets, was absolutely decisive in the unfolding of events.” – Ian Kershaw, Hitler 1936-1945: Nemesis

Mistakes were madeMistakes were made

Tetman Callis 0 Comments 7:17 am

“Few of those forced to account for their actions under Hitler showed remorse or contrition, let alone guilt. With scant exception, they showed themselves, when called to book, incapable of acknowledging their own contribution to the remorseless slide into barbarism during the Nazi era. Alongside the inevitable lies, distortions, and excuses often went, it seems, a psychological block on recognizing responsibility for their actions.” – Ian Kershaw, Hitler 1936-1945: Nemesis

Trails of tearsTrails of tears

Tetman Callis 0 Comments 6:17 am

“There were still over 65,000 prisoners of numerous nationalities—the majority of them Jewish—in Auschwitz and its numerous subsidiary camps in mid-January 1945, as the Red Army approached. . . . arrangements to evacuate the camps were improvised with great haste. . . . For five days, beginning on 17 January, long columns of emaciated, starving, and frozen prisoners left the camp complex and were driven westwards by SS guards in forced marches of up to 250 kilometres. . . . On 26 January, an SS unit blew up the last of the crematoria in Birkenau. The next day, the SS guards retreated in heavy fighting as Soviet troops liberated the 7,000 exhausted, skeleton-like prisoners they found in the Auschwitz camp-complex. They also found 368,820 men’s suits, 836,244 women’s coats and dresses, 5,525 pairs of women’s shoes, 13,964 carpets, large quantities of children’s clothes, toothbrushes, false teeth, pots and pans, and a vast amount of human hair.” – Ian Kershaw, Hitler 1936-1945: Nemesis

Tied to the tracksTied to the tracks

Tetman Callis 0 Comments 6:13 am

“There was no way out. The failure of the conspiracy to remove Hitler took away the last opportunity of a negotiated end to the war. For the German people, it ensured the near total destruction of their country. Whatever the varied reactions to the events of 20 July [1944] and their aftermath, ordinary Germans were exposed over the next eight months to the laying waste of their cities in relentless bombing-raids against which there was as good as no defence, to the painful losses of loved ones fighting an obviously futile war against vastly superior enemy forces, to acute privations in the material conditions of their daily lives, and to intensified fear and repression at the hands of a regime that would stop at nothing. The horrors of a war which Germany had inflicted on the rest of Europe were rebounding—if, even now, in far milder form—on to the Reich itself. With internal resistance crushed, and a leadership unable to bring victory, incapable of staving off defeat, and unwilling to attempt to find peace, only total military destruction could bring a release.” – Ian Kershaw, Hitler 1936-1945: Nemesis

We call it “the news”We call it “the news”

Tetman Callis 0 Comments 6:21 am

“On any given day in a courthouse anywhere in America, you are far more likely to see a civil trial that involves a car wreck or a divorce than a trial involving intentional torts. This is not because people do not intentionally injure each other. Unfortunately, people hurt, maim, and kill each other every day.” – Neal R. Bevans, Tort Law for Paralegals