AstroDataBlog: Military

Showing posts with label Military. Show all posts

Saturday, 27 February 2016

William March, 1893–1954 (American fiction writer and US Marine)

* William March, a writer of psychological fiction, authored six novels and four short-story collections. March was praised by critics but never attained great popularity.

March grew up in rural Alabama in a family so poor that he could not finish high school, and he did not earn a high school equivalency until he was 20. He later studied law but was again unable to afford to finish his studies. In 1917, while working in a Manhattan law office, he volunteered for the US Marines and saw action in World War I, for which he was decorated with some of the highest honors—the French Croix de Guerre, the American Distinguished Service Cross, and the U.S. Navy Cross. After the war he again worked in a law office before embarking on a financially successful business career.

He also began writing, first short stories, then in 1933 a novel based on his war experiences, Company K. His follow-up work was the "Pearl County" series, novels and short fiction set in his native south Alabama, the most successful of which is the novel The Looking-Glass. However, literary success eluded him. His last novel, The Bad Seed, was published in 1954, the year March died (on 15 May). It became a bestseller, but he never saw his story adapted first for the stage in 1954, and then for film in 1956 and 1985.

NATAL DATA and ASTROLOGY CHART

BIRTH DATA: William Edward Campbell, 18 September 1893, 15:00 (3pm) CST (+6), Mobile, Alabama, USA (30n41, 88w02). ASC: 00 Aquarius. RR: B (from biography). SOURCE: Sy Scholfield quotes from The Two Worlds of William March by Roy S. Simmonds (University of Alabama, 2011), p. 1: "It was here in Mobile, at three o'clock in the afternoon, September 18, 1893, in a house at the northwest corner of Broad and Conti Streets, that the second child of John Leonard Campbell and Susan March Campbell was born with a complete caul." Simmonds notes that various records including the family bible give 1894 but March insisted he was born in 1893.

Sunday, 21 April 2013

Nathanael Greene, 1742-1786 (Major general of the Continental Army in the American Revolutionary War)

* Nathanael Greene, who rose from the lowest military rank to that of Major General, had transformative Pluto conjunct his Moon, both in Scorpio.

Nathanael Greene (August 7 [O.S. July 27] 1742 – June 19, 1786, frequently misspelled Nathaniel) was a major general of the Continental Army in the American Revolutionary War. When the war began, Greene was a militia private, the lowest rank possible; he emerged from the war with a reputation as George Washington's most gifted and dependable officer. Many places in the United States are named for him. Greene suffered financial difficulties in the post-war years and died suddenly of sunstroke in 1786.

Sunday, 24 March 2013

Harry Wickwire Foster (News Astrology data and chart)

* Harry Wickwire Foster - who presided over the court martial of Canada’s top prisoner of war - was born shortly after midnight, 2 April 1902, after his father exclaimed to his mother, "Janie! Control yourself. I'll not have our firstborn arrive on April Fools!"

Major General Harry Wickwire Foster, CBE, DSO, (April 2, 1902 – August 6, 1964) was a Canadian Army officer who commanded two Canadian army divisions during World War II. He served in both the Pacific and European theatres.

After the [second world] war, Foster (with four brigadiers) presided over the court martial of Canada’s top prisoner of war, SS General Kurt Meyer. The trial was a showcase for Canada, the first time that the country had conducted an international prosecution of this sort. Meyer was found guilty of three of five charges and sentenced to death. The sentence was later commuted to life imprisonment. When asked by his son (author Tony Foster) why the death sentence had been imposed he replied, "Because I had no choice according to those rules of warfare dreamt up by a bunch of bloody barrack-room lawyers who had never heard a shot fired in anger."