First, fire.. chronicled by Kurt V.

Now the floods.. \ufffd l\ufffd Florence many years ago - except Florence had many treasures to be rescued from water damage - irreplaceable art works, manuscripts (a friend was there and helped in the rescue, drying out - exhausting work which went on forever; imagine what Wet paper weighs)

But Dresden.. not the same problem today, since the fire-storming of this art center (little military presence) razed the place. Formerly it had been spared for these reasons. That night it was an intentional fire-storm: interspersed between dropping hundreds of thousands of tiny incendiaries, we dropped HE too, to keep the firemen away and create more kindling (none of the bombs were 'targeted' BTW - just.. make kindling).

This is Kurt's version of it and, he was there in a meat locker underground. Others merely slightly 'underground' were mummified by the thousands: a firestorm uses up most of the oxygen everywhere in and around. (I guess I'll take his word re the military too; he's not known to exaggerate when speaking of events - just critique them separately.) This all is mentioned in Mother Night, which is mostly about Howard W. Campbell, Jr. -- as well as being the obvious main theme of Slaughterhouse Five.

I suppose this is one way to diminish the loss of a future flood - burn it all first.


Ashton