Moe Berg

A great story.....

Moe Berg: A second-rate baseball player but a first-rate spy.

When baseball greats Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig went on tour in Japan in 1934, some fans wondered why a third-string catcher named Moe Berg was included.

The answer was simple: Berg was a US spy. Speaking 15 languages—including Japanese—Moe Berg had two loves: baseball and spying.

In Tokyo , garbed in a kimono, Berg took flowers to the daughter of an American diplomat being treated in St. Luke’s Hospital--the tallest building in the Japanese capital. He never delivered the flowers.The ball-player ascended to the hospital roof and filmed key features: the harbor, military installations, railway yards, etc.

Eight years later, General Jimmy Doolittle studied Berg’s films in planning his spectacular raid on Tokyo .

                                          

Berg’s father, Bernard Berg, a pharmacist in Newark, New Jersey, taught his son Hebrew and Yiddish. Moe, against his wishes, began playing baseball on the street at age four. His father disapproved and never once watched his son play. In Barringer High School , Moe learned Latin, Greek and French. He graduated magna cum laude from Princeton—having added Spanish, Italian, German and Sanskrit to his linguistic quiver, During further studies at the Sorbonne, in Paris, and Columbia Law School he picked up Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Indian, Arabic, Portuguese and Hungarian—15 languages in all, plus some regional dialects.

While playing baseball for Princeton University , Moe Berg would describe plays in Latin or Sanskrit.

                                         
                                                                            

During World War II, he was parachuted into Yugoslavia to assess the value to the war effort of the two groups of partisans there. He reported back that Marshall Tito’s forces were widely supported by the people and Winston Churchill ordered all-out support for the Yugoslav underground fighter, rather than Mihajlovic’s Serbians.

The parachute jump at age 41 undoubtedly was a challenge. But there was more to come in that same year.

Berg penetrated German-held Norway , met with members of the underground and located a secret heavy water plant—part of the Nazis’ effort to build an atomic bomb. His information guided the Royal Air Force in a bombing raid to destroy the plant.

                                                      
                                                  

There still remained the question of how far had the Nazis progressed in the race to build the first Atomic bomb. If the Nazis were successful, they would win the war.

Berg (under the code name “Remus”) was sent to Switzerland to hear leading German physicist Werner Heisenberg, a Nobel Laureate, lecture and determine if the Nazis were close to building an A-bomb. Moe managed to slip past the SS guards at the auditorium., posing as a Swiss graduate student. The spy carried in his pocket a pistol and a cyanide pill. If the German indicated the Nazis were close to building a weapon, Berg was to shoot him—and then swallow the cyanide pill. Moe, sitting in the front row, determined that the Germans were nowhere near their goal, so he complimented Heisenberg on his speech and walked him back to his hotel.

                                    
                                    

Moe Berg’s report was distributed to Britain’s Prime Minister,
Winston Churchill, President Franklin D. Roosevelt and key figures in the team developing the Atomic Bomb.

Roosevelt responded: “Give my regards to the catcher.”

Most of Germany ’s leading physicists had been Jewish and had fled the Nazis mainly to Britain and the United States .

After the war, Moe Berg was awarded the Medal of Merit— America ’s highest honor for a civilian in wartime. But Berg refused to accept, as he couldn’t tell people about his exploits. After his death, his sister accepted the Medal and it hangs in the Baseball Hall of Fame, in Cooperstown, NY.

Sick in bed

Our daughter Christine chosen to be Mary for the pagent
 

This week I spent 2 days in bed with vertigo.  Vertigo is when you are off balance and everything spins, which makes walking almost impossible.  I had to stay in bed to settle down the nausea which accompanies it.  I couldn't eat or drink or I would throw up.  Being sick is sick!  I don't ever want to do that again. I know what brought it on. I was a passenger on the back of a 4-wheeler for  hours and was bounced around like a rag doll.  Vertigo always follows some kind of trauma.  Anyway, I am better now and enjoyed a hike yesterday and church today.

I was very touched by our Sacrament speaker who reminded us that Christ volunteered for the role of being our Savior.  Why would anyone volunteer for that job?  I could hardly handle my two days of  vertigo, I sure wouldn't be volunteering for everyone else's diseases, illnesses and sins.  I guess He really loves us alot more than we can comprehend. All he ask in return is that we do ALL we can do and He will cover the rest.  We need to use the atonement every day when we fall short of all the things we just can't seem to do,  yet want to do.  I always seem to be planning way to much goodness.  Yes, I have the desire to do alot of things for alot of people each and every day, but never seem to get it all done. 

Our speaker told us that the outcome of our future has already been decided.  Because of Christ we are WINNERS!  Just one thing we need to do! Our part! Oh yes, repent, repent and repent, try to keep the commandments and obey the promptings of the Holy Ghost and then, it is a done deal! 

We are here on earth to figure out if we want to follow Christ plan or Satan’s.  Christ has done the hard part for us.  We need to give each day our best.  As members and missionaries of His church we need to spread the message of his endless love to the world, that they can have JOY!  Few people in the world realized they are supposed to have JOY!  They live in misery, regret, remorse and they don’t even know why.  Christ promises us ultimate JOY!  True joy can only come from the Savior.

If we could only see for a moment who we REALLY ARE!  Who we are to become, we would understand why the Savior did for us what He did, we are each individually magnificent humans in the making.

Even in the worst of pain, or terrible disease we cannot comprehend the suffering He went through for us.  Yet, we have been told that, no disease no pain will accompany us in the next life.

LIFE is not easy said Elder Holland, it’s hard because Salvation is not easily obtained.

He quoted a statement about the value of bearing your testimony many times a day, because anyone who hears it, knows they have heard something familiar, for just a moment the veil is thin and they are remembering something they knew from before.  Testimonies are powerful.   Stand tall when you share your testimony, for you stand with Christ, and people will feel His goodness and the truth of what you say.

This week’s mission:  Be filled with joy, share my testimony daily,  ask for His  atonement to work for me as I turn my shortcomings over to Him.

 

A parable - through a dream

A very dear friend of mine shared with me her dream.  She didn't realize until the end of the dream that it was about her life.  She has had some unusual challenges.  It wasn't until I finished reading the dream that I realized this parable was for me.  Then I realized it is a parable that you may also find applicable in your life.

 

I dreamed a parable.  There was a boy in an English class whose teacher told them to write a paragraph in one period.  It was a weighty assignment and the boy knew he needed to do his best.  He didn’t even have a piece of paper so he asked the teacher for a piece and was turned down.  He searched through his notebook and finally found a piece of paper that had only doodling across the top.  He hoped the teacher wouldn’t mind the sketches, and perhaps would even like them. 

So he started writing.  The words flowed to him easily, and he was surprised because he felt it was really turning into something very good.  But he was using a little stub of a pencil and the brilliant words were looking pretty shabby, and hard to read.  Some other boys came into the room and created a big disturbance and made it difficult for the boy to continue writing. 

Near the end of class, the teacher asked the boy to read his paragraph.  Even though it wasn’t completely written down, the boy read the paragraph out loud.  Both the teacher and the students were obviously moved by the paragraph.  The bell rang and the teacher took the incomplete paragraph from the boy and left.

The boy was determined to get his words down and to turn it in to the teacher.  So he looked for another piece of paper.  His girl friend came to him and was telling him about something very important to her and stomped away in a huff because he was so distracted.  But it was very important to him to get this paragraph that was in his mind down on paper. 

He found a small label machine which required searching for each letter and choosing it.  It would be very laborious to get anything down this way, but he decided that it would be worth it.  So he spent the next hour putting down his sentences letter by letter.  For some reason, between each word it printed formatting words in green like “hard return” or “capitalization.” 

When he was finished he took the paper to his teacher.  The teacher looked at the two pages, one with sketches across the top, written in blunt, scratchy pencil, and the other with bright green formatting indications between each word. 

The boy thought that the teacher would probably not even take the trouble to read his paragraph in this state of disarray.  But the look on the teacher’s face told the boy of the teacher’s reaction.  His teacher valued his words very highly, not only for their brilliant content, but also because of what it took for the boy to write it down and get it to him. 

When I woke, I was told that this dream was a parable for mortality.  The fall made it very difficult for us to express and to fulfill the magnificent things that are inside us from before we were born.  Every righteous thing we try to accomplish is much more difficult than it would have been in other circumstances.  But even though the product may turn out less than we desire, our loving Father looks at what it cost us to do, and He recognizes the pure grain of truth and beauty in what we have accomplished.  He treasures not only our effort, but the beautiful person we are including who we were before we were born, who we have become here in this life, and all we will become and do in the eternal worlds ahead.