The battle that didn’t happen
Author Jim Shneer next to the door of an old ammunition storage bunker near the Rancho Palos Verdes City Hall. The letters U.S.E.D. stand for United States Engineering Division, an early name for the Corps of Engineers. Photo After the fall of the Roman Empire, barbarians walked the streets of cities they could never have built themselves. One can imagine some warrior stabling his horse where senators debated, or perhaps cursing as he tripped over a fallen statue of Minerva, Goddess of Wisdom. This seems like an unlikely scenario in the modern world, but that ignores a fact of human nature: most people aren’t very curious about history. This is doubly true about local history, because familiarity makes even interesting things invisible. Jim Shneer is one of the rare people who notices his environment and wants to understand it. He moved here from West LA with his wife Diane in 1970 and became curious about some of the massive concrete structures that are scattered around the Peninsula. These are the remains of defensive fortifications that date back as much as much as a century and they are the topic of his new book, “Exploring the Military History of Fort MacArthur and Palos…
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