Admiral was so admirable
QUESTION Was the Paul McCartney song Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey based on real people?
The fifth song on Paul and Linda McCartney’s acclaimed 1971 album Ram, Uncle Albert/Admiral halsey, became the singer-songwriter’s first U.S. No. 1 single after leaving The Beatles.
The song resembles the medley that closes Abbey Road as it is constructed of various unfinished song fragments weaved together by McCartney and enhanced by George Martin’s orchestration with the New York Philharmonic.
The song juxtaposes two very different characters. Uncle Albert Kendall worked as a clerk with McCartney’s father Jim at the Liverpudlian cotton merchants A. hannay & Co.
he married Jim’s sister Milly, making him Paul’s uncle by marriage.
Paul was very fond of Albert and reminisced how he would get drunk and recite passages from the Bible: ‘I had an uncle, Albert Kendall, who was a lot of fun, and when I came to write Uncle Albert/Admiral halsey it was loosely about addressing that older generation, half-thinking: “What would they think of the way my generation does things?”
‘That’s why I wrote the line: “We’re so sorry, Uncle Albert.” ’
On the other hand, McCartney saw Admiral halsey as a figure of ridicule. ‘he is symbolic of authority and, therefore, not to be taken too seriously,’ he said.
Jim Sullivan, Formby, Merseyside. PAUL McCARTNeY may not have done his research when he decided to satirise Admiral halsey.
The tough, uncompromising and dedicated attitude of Admiral William Frederick halsey Jr, commonly known as Bill or Bull halsey, was key to the U.S. victory in the Pacific in World War II.
Following Japan’s attack on Pearl harbor in December 1941, halsey’s ships were almost the only operational American vessels left in the Pacific.
While the U.S. rebuilt its fleet, halsey went on the offensive. he led surprise assaults on the Japanese-held Marshall and Gilbert Islands as well as on Wake Island. In April 1942, he carried out the Doolittle Raid against the Japanese capital Tokyo and other cities, the first air raid to strike the Japanese mainland, which lifted American morale.
halsey’s slogan ‘hit hard, hit fast, hit often’ became a byword for the Navy.
Despite his gruff exterior, the stress of these operations precipitated a severe attack of psoriasis, which caused intolerable itching and prevented halsey from sleeping.
After a six-week leave of absence to recover, halsey was appointed in October 1942 as commander of the South Pacific Area. he played a vital role in the Battle of Santa Cruz Islands and the bloody Battle of Guadalcanal and was promoted to Admiral. For 18 months, he directed the U. S. campaign in the Solomon Islands.
In June 1944, halsey became commander of the 3rd Fleet and led his aircraft carrier task force in brilliant air strikes.
he supported U.S. land operations as well as finding and destroying much of the Japanese fleet in the Battle of Leyte Gulf in October 1944.
he led U.S. forces in the final naval operations around Okinawa to September 2, 1945, when the Japanese surrendered. The surrender was signed on board his flagship, the USS Missouri.
In December 1945, halsey was promoted to the rank of Admiral of the Fleet. he retired in 1947 and in the 1950s served as president of International Telecommunications Laboratories. he died in New York in 1959, aged 76.
Arthur B. Stuart, Melton Mowbray, Leics.
QUESTION Do we call it sand because it’s between the sea and the land?
NO, ThIS idea is a modern folk belief. historically, the word sand didn’t refer to the substance we find on the beach.
It comes from the Old Dutch/protoGermanic and has nothing to do with sea or land, but referred to unstable ground, as found near rivers.
The modern definition of sand is based on particle size. It is larger than clay or silt, but smaller than gravel. Technically, sand is a particle with a diameter of between 0.074mm and 4.75mm.
Dr Ian Smith, Cambridge.
QUESTION What medical experiment caused the isolation of the Welsh village of Glyncorrwg?
ThIS village in the Afan Valley, southern Wales, was home to Dr Julian Tudor hart, a GP who pioneered much of what is now accepted as routine preventive care.
A lifelong socialist, Communist Party candidate and supporter of the founding principles of the NhS, he worked in Glyncorrwg for almost 30 years.
he coined the term inverse care law in 1971 to argue that communities most in need of good healthcare are those least likely to receive it.
Glyncorrwg was only isolated in the sense that patients were the test subjects for his research.
The close-knit and stable community enabled him to build a database on which he formed the basis of his ground-breaking work in blood pressure monitoring, the effects of salt in the diet and the benefits of warfarin as a preventive medication.
he established a health centre committee with a public health focus and demonstrated the benefit of systematic case-finding and regular follow-ups.
The Glyncorrwg practice was the first to win funding from the Medical Research Council. Death rates for the village in the 1980s were found to be 28 per cent lower than for a comparable community, while smoking rates fell over 25 years from 56 per cent of adults to 20 per cent.
This led to a system of rewarding GPs for meeting targets for intervention in the management of disease.
Jan Gower, Cardiff. IS THERE a question to which you want to know the answer? Or do you know the answer to a question here? Write to: Charles Legge, Answers To Correspondents, Daily Mail, 2 Derry Street, London W8 5TT; or email charles.legge@dailymail.co.uk. A selection is published, but we’re unable to enter into individual correspondence.