70th Birthday Tributes Pour In
President Bush: ‘Fog’ Was Secret Weapon
WASHINGTON, D.C. – From the White House to the West Coast, best wishes were being sent to Columbus, Ohio today on the 70th birthday of Robert E. (Fog) Curtin.
President Bush touched off the national outpouring by announcing that newly-declassified intelligence data, including some secret diaries of German dictator Adolf Hitler, reveal that Curtin – and the role he played in plotting coordinates for artillery strikes against the Germans in northern Italy – played a major role in winning ‘the Big One.’
“For decades, American schoolchildren have been taught that the Allied invasion of Normandy on June 6, 1944 was a turning point in the European theater in World War II,” Bush said during a Rose Garden press conference.”
“Well, I guess we’re going to have to revise the textbooks a little,” Bush said. “This newly-declassified information appears to show that Normandy was a diversionary tactic, devised by General Eisenhower to shroud his secret little weapon – Curtin – in northern Italy.”
Curtin, who was a first lieutenant in the Army’s 10th Mountain Division, was astounded upon learning that he was a subject of Hitler’s diaries and Eisenhower’s strategic planning.
“Hell, me and (Joe) McCarthy spent most of our time over there gathering up stuff the retreating Germans were leaving behind,” Curtin said. “You know, some of them German girlie movies and beers and champagnes. As a matter of fact, I hardly remember plotting any coordinates at all. I think I was into the second chapter of Cartesian Coordinates Made Easy about the time the war ended.”
Bush, saying he is certain the newly-declassified information is accurate, waved off Curtin’s comments as typical modesty.
“Ike knew exactly what he was doing,” Bush said. “He knew that Curtin had this reputation of being a little foggy, working his way slowly through that Cartesian Coordinates book. He knew that Curtin would be the last guy the Germans would suspect of putting together our comprehensive artillery attack program.
Actually, Ike underestimated Hitler’s shrewdness and ability to figure out what was going on.
“When Curtin’s coordinate directions resulted in a few howitzer shots landing near Allied ships in the Adriatic, most military observers – and several furious admirals – thought it was the work of some fog-headed artillery commander.
“But Ike was relying heavily on Curtin’s heretofore underappreciated bait-and-switch tactics. When that stuff was exploding in the Adriatic, Hitler was the first to recognize there must be some genius behind what appeared – on the surface – to be helter-skelter artillery bombardments.”
Bush displayed several pages from the newly-discovered Hitler diaries. “look right here,” Bush said. “This is Hitler’s own handwriting. ‘There is obvsiously somebody in the 10th Mountain Division who is dumb as a fox. What appear on first glance as indiscriminate artillery bombardments can be seen, on closer inspection, to be a well-coordinated program to confuse us about their real lines of attack.'”
Upon watching Bush make the announcement on television, McCarthy was dumbstruck. “You gotta be kidding!” said Curtin’s long-time buddy. “I will swear to you that Curtin had no idea what he was doing. In fact, I distinctly remember his most frequent line to me was, “Well, Joe, your guess is as good as mine. Here she goes.”
But experts who have spent several months examining the newly-declassified information are unified in their assessment of it.
Don Bromfeld, resident scholar at the American Institute of Forensic History at Stanford University, remarked, “There can be no dispute. This evidence is very clear. We are firm in our conclusion that Hitler went mad – not from the knowledge that Americans were developing the atom bomb or from venereal disease – but from his discovery that some unknown first lieutenant had developed an artillery scheme that could not be figured out. It had no apparent pattern. It was downright maddening.
The diary goes on to disclose that Hitler assigned an elite team of intelligence officers to discover who this Curtin guy was. And what really ticked him off was learning that Curtin was of German descent.
“When Hitler learned Curtin’s mom was named Hedwig, he really went off the cliff,” Bromfeld said. “Hitler became disoriented. He began drinking heavily. He continually mumbled, ‘Who is this Curtin guy.’ The lack of German leadership began to have its effects, and the Allies went on to roll over the Axis positions. Future schoolchildren will have to know this.”
Highlights of 1922
- Fog Curtin is born.
- Teapot Dome scandal breaks.
- James Doolittle makes first one-day transcontinental flight
- King Tut’s tomb opened
- Radio catches on
- 1922 Ad Pitch for Pillsbury’s
Health Bran:
“It is common knowledge today that intestinal putrefaction causes brain fatigue, often reducing efficiency 50 percent and more.”
1922 Literature:
- T.S. Eliot: The Waste Land
- F. Scott Fitzgerald: The beautiful and the Damned
- Hermann Hesse: Siddhartha
- James Joyce: Ulysses
1922 Music:
- Irving Berlin: April Showers
- Louis Armstrong debuts in Chicago
- Arthur Bliss: A Color Symphony
1922 Science:
- Dr. Alexis Carrel discovers white corpuscles
- Sir Patrick Manson pioneers malaria research
- T.H. Morgan experiments with heredity of fruit flies
1922 Sports:
- Heavyweight boxing champion – Jack Dempsey
- Kentucky Derby winner – Morvich
- Rose Bowl: Washington & Jefferson 0; California 0
- U.S. Open champion: Gene Sarazen
- World Series: New York Giants, 4 games; New York Yankees, 2 games.
