End the War on Freedom

Chapter 3Poor White Boys: The Depot and the Camp(Written to the tune of “Star of the County Down” by Clinch River Pearl)Author's Note: I first heard the tale of the wayward boxcar back in the late Eighties while I was doing research on Unionists in north Alabama. Whether it was true or not I cannot say, but I know there were folks up in Winston County who believed it. What happened to it, and most importantly where it's contents are today is anybody's guess. I suppose some folks know, but they're not talkin'. “We must be the great arsenal of democracy.”-- Franklin Delano Roosevelt, December 29, 1940“The men of the mountain are down in the vale,And the flags of Shelburny are loose to the gale –And tho’ gentle the Forth, yet her sons never slight,For the mildest in peace are oft boldest in fight.”--The Wexford Insurgent, a traditional Irish BalladJanuary 22, 1945: The DepotIt was Monday and James Boatwright was late. He was late and he was cold. It was 19 degrees and he was chilled to the bone, and not just from the winter weather. As he hurried across Broad Street dodging traffic he slipped on the ice and almost ended up under a passing Ford cargo truck. The military policeman at the Broad Street Gate was laughing as James recovered and slipped-slid through the crusty brown slush at the curb. Boatwright ignored the MP and rushed through the gate, running as fast as the snow and his worn-out shoes would allow until he launched himself into the Intra-Depot Bus just as it was pulling out of “D” stop in front of the Depot headquarters building.Had the MP not recognized him and allowed him to pass without checking his ID, Boatwright would have never made it to his desk on time. But the MP had been working his post for about three months now, and he knew Boatwright to be one of the many department managers of the busy Columbus Army Service Forces Depot. In fact, though the MP did not know it, James Boatwright was one of a few of the Depot’s 14,000 man (and woman) workforce whose seniority predated the war.Built in 1918 on 281 acres of swamp & farm land well east of downtown Columbus, Ohio, the Columbus Quartermaster Reserve Depot was well-sited to take advantage of three major railroad lines. By the end of “The War to End All Wars”, the Depot had expanded to 25 warehouses. Most of these were dismantled after the war ended, and during the Twenties the Depot’s mission became reconditioning war materiel for resale.Renamed in 1930 as the Columbus General Depot, it was used during the Thirties as the District Headquarters for the “Triple Cs”—the Civilian Conservation Corps—for Ohio and West Virginia. Thus it was to the Columbus General Depot that in 1933, James Boatwright, hat in hand, applied for a floor sweeper’s job. The fact that James was a veteran of the “Great War” helped him secure his position, as did the fact that his uncle had worked at the Depot since the groundbreaking in May, 1918. If he ever felt guilty about using his family connection to get a job, James didn’t remember it. It was the “Great Depression” and his family was just short of eviction. Being hired by the Depot was the best thing that could have happened at the time, and certainly James had repaid his employers, the taxpayers of the United States of America, with years of diligent hard work. When he had time to think about it (which wasn’t often), James wondered if the current “Great War” would be followed by another depression. “I suppose we’ll have to start numbering the depressions like we number the world wars now,” James had grumbled to his wife just last week. Then came Pearl Harbor, and the Depot workers knew they would be called upon to support the war effort just like 1918. They had no idea, however, how large a task they would be asked to perform. It was a bigger war, with many fronts, and the demands of the services for arms and materiel were huge and insatiable. The Depot grew, and grew again, buildings multiplying at a ferocious pace. In August, 1942, the Quartermaster General took over the Depot and it was renamed the Columbus Quartermaster Depot. In this war, the Depot would support all the services, not just the Army. Later that year, another 295 acres were purchased and the building went on and on: more vast sheds, more rail sidings, more offices to handle the workload: Salvage Office, Lumber Office, Motor Maintenance, even Chemical Warfare. In 1943, its named had been changed yet again to the Columbus Army Service Forces Depot, but to everyone who worked there it had always been, and would always be, simply called “The Depot.”Over 14,000 war workers now bustled across the Depot’s nearly 600 acres at all hours every day, and some of them were prisoners of war. James never felt comfortable having POWs doing critical war work. It was all very well to use them on the farms growing grain and such. How much sabotage could they do there? But here, at the Depot, with vast quantities of munitions passing through there were unlimited opportunities for criminal mischief. Oh, the Italians were trustworthy enough, James reflected. Once beaten, they stayed beaten and were more docile and agreeable than the native Americans who worked at the Depot. But the Germans…..well, James Boatwright hadn’t trusted a German since 1918 and he wasn’t about to start. He kept a vigilant eye on the Germans in his immediate area and he constantly urged his supervisors and lead men to do the same. There hadn’t been a case of sabotage in his area that he knew of, and there wouldn’t be if he could make sure that the Germans were carefully watched. Not that the Germans, or anyone else, had spare time to think up mischief. They were too busy.Five thousand rail cars entered and left the Depot every month. John Carmody, a friend of James’ who kept track of such statistics from his office up front in the headquarters building, said that if all the cars were put end to end, by the end of the year they would form a train well over a thousand miles long. In February 1943 alone the Depot had shipped over 53,000 tons of guns, ammunition and other ordnance supplies to the far-flung battlefronts. Carmody also told Boatwright that the Quartermaster Section was shipping about ONE HUNDRED MILLION field ration meals a month. From fresh meat to antiaircraft guns, from clothing to bridge sections, from jeeps and trucks to medical supplies, the Depot took it in, inspected it, repackaged it, selected it, and shipped it on to its ultimate destination: the biggest war the world had ever seen. On the wall next to his desk was a clipping from the Depot newsletter, “The Log of Columbus.” Almost two years old now, it read: “The gigantic task in which all of us are engaged to bring freedom again to the nations of the world has been aptly called a war of supply. Never before has so much depended on keeping the tools of war moving to the fighting fronts. This Depot is one of the most important links in the chain of supply.” James kept the small clipping as his own little war poster, for he believed every word of it.Even before the war, the President had called the United States “the arsenal of democracy.” Looking out the bus window as he passed by the long sheds full to bursting, crated antiaircraft guns and searchlights sitting in the open storage areas and forklifts rushing to and fro, James Boatwright knew he was looking at just a small portion of that arsenal. He was proud of the job he did, even if at the moment he had no business doing it.James Boatwright was sick. The flu had been going around, and James had caught a piece of it. His temperature at the moment was about a hundred and two. He had alternately chilled and burned for two days now. His wife had not wanted him to go to work today, but he felt he had to. Not that today was any more important than any other day but merely because he knew that his sons, and a lot of other fathers’ sons, were counting on the supplies that would move through the Depot this day. James wanted to make sure that his part was done right. And there wasn’t one of his subordinates he could trust to keep an eye on all the many facets of his job.So when he made it to his desk, he hung up his hat and overcoat, put his lunchbox on the shelf and began to organize his day. First he had to clean up the mess. Over the weekend someone, probably that 4F kid Jimmy McKnight, had been using his desk as a combination dinner table and library reading room kiosk. There were crumbs everywhere. (Was that mayonnaise on his telephone handset?) Spread out across his desk was Saturday’s edition of the Columbus Evening Dispatch. James didn’t mind someone using his desk, but he darned sure wished they had the manners to clean up after themselves. Well, there was a war on, right? Standards slipped in wartime, that was a given, so James merely sighed and began to sweep the crumbs into his wastebasket.The newspaper drew Boatright’s attention. He’d been too sick to read the paper the last couple of days and this was still news to him.“REDS 204 MILES FROM BERLIN” screamed the headline in the Dispatch. “Five Red Armies Strike Nazis; Reich Invaded at Three Points,” read the next line. “Simple Ceremony Marks 4th Term Inauguration,” said a lesser headline in the upper left corner, below which was a picture of the President being sworn in by Chief Justice Harlan F. Stone. James sighed. Well, I didn’t vote for him, he thought. Mr. Boatwright had drummed a practical knowledge of the history of American constitutional jurisprudence into his son’s head to supplement James’ Catholic school education. And Mr. Roosevelt (his father had referred to him as “THAT man,” until the day he died in 1937) had bent the Constitution into a pretzel to accomplish his “New Deal”, even going so far as to threaten to pack the Supreme Court to coerce the justices into getting what he wanted. Many Americans thought Roosevelt to be a deity only slightly lesser than Jesus Christ. James had a different opinion. It was, however, a minority opinion. Well, that’s democracy for you, James thought. “Torpedoed Ship’s Crew Strafed by Japanese,” read the headline just above the fold. Just to the right of that tragedy was a story that caught James attention:“Canadian Draftees Revealed AWOL”“Ottawa, January 20 (AP) –Half of a group of Canadian home defense soldiers drafted for overseas service went absent without leave before embarkation, and 6300 are still at large, Defense Minister A.G.L. McNaughton disclosed today. Some 1500 of these 7800 returned voluntarily or were apprehended, he added, and about 500 of them sailed for Britain along with the others who did not take authorized leaves….the 6300 will be classed as deserters if they do not return within 21 days.”Boatwright snorted in derision. Canucks. That figured. Such behavior squared with his own experiences with Canadians in the First World War. Shaking his head, his eyes scanned on down to “Casualties in Central Ohio”. “Ah, blessed Heavenly Father, there’s little Vic,” James whispered. “KILLED IN ACTION”“Columbus -- Sea. 1c Enio John Centurini, 23, E. 3rd Ave, in the Pacific; Cpl. Victor R. Lake, 25, 2481 James Road, in Germany.”It wasn’t news to James, of course. The Lakes lived two doors down from the Boatwrights and Mrs. Lake had received the telegram over a week ago. The government always delayed the press release of casualties so the families wouldn’t suffer the shock of reading about it in the papers the same time as their neighbors. Still, occasionally the telegram didn’t get delivered to the right person and there was more than one father or mother or wife who read about the death of their little Jimmy or beloved Johnny over morning coffee.What a waste, James thought. Another marvelous boy cut down in the spring of life, one of millions of such boys all over the world. Ah, God in Heaven, what a waste. All because of the murderous greedy bastards who start the dirty stinking wars. The fires of Hell weren’t hot enough for Hitler, Tojo and Mussolini. Stinking bastards. May they meet their Maker swiftly.The war in Europe was close to being over. That much was clear from the headlines. We were going to win the war, the only question uppermost in James’ mind was how many American boys’ lives would be required to end it, and would one or more of his three sons be among the fallen? Hitler’s last gasp had been that Battle of the Bulge thing. Surely that WAS his last gasp. He couldn’t have another surprise like that up his sleeve, could he? But then there were the Japs. One look at the map told you that they still were in a lot of places they had to pried out of, and we hadn’t even got close to the home islands yet. How horrific was that going to be?“Jap Resistance Mounts in Fury In Luzon Fight.” Now this story drew James Boatwright’s full attention. James’ son Billy was a sergeant in the 37th “Buckeye” Division. And the Boatwrights hadn’t had a letter from Billy since last month. “Tank Battles and Artillery Duels Flare Along Invasion Front” James read on down the column. “Sisson was captured after a nerve-wracking night in which Japanese pressed the attack incessantly against American infantry and anti-tank guns pinned down by artillery firing from overlooking ridges. As soon as the Japanese armor withdrew, screaming Nipponese foot soldiers charged. They were beaten off with losses to both sides…. Similar tank and Banzai charges were reported elsewhere in the sector, where Japanese were burned out of 20 foot holes by flame-throwers….”James stopped reading. Flame-throwers. Wasn’t there something from last week about flame-throwers? Some unfinished business, he half-remembered. He discarded the newspaper into his trashcan, and began to survey his desk seriously for the first time. Rifling through his pending basket, he found it. There was a shipping order for twelve M2-2 flamethrowers. Let’s see, James scanned the attached note. Ah, that was it. James rose and walked out his office door into the bedlam beyond. Scanning the frantic activity, he spied the man he was looking for corking off by the water cooler, trying to make time with Betsy Sillers. James grinned. Sillers wouldn’t give Chief Cooper McCarthy the time of day if he was the last man on earth. Betsy had sense.“McCarthy! Come here for a second!” he yelled.McCarthy, a hard-drinking Irishman with an uncommonly big beer belly, danced across the shed runway, dodging a passing forklift. When he got within earshot he said, “Yeah. Boss?” “Did you get those flame-throwers re-crated for shipment?” Boatwright asked. “Uh, what flame-throwers?” McCarthy feigned ignorance. “You know damned well which flame-throwers, McCarthy. The ones I talked to you about twice on Saturday.”James didn’t wait for a reply. “Now get your ass over to Shed 11 and get them ready before I send you to the paymaster to pick up your last check.”Boatwright executed an about face and went back into his office, leaving the Chief Cooper spluttering what little he remembered of his father’s Gaelic curses.One of James Boatwright’s principal duties was the supervision of the Freight Consolation station. Shipments from all the various sections of the Depot that were less than a carload were brought to the FC station in the south end of Building 12. There it was sorted and consolidated to get the economical benefit of shipping in full carloads. Those flame-throwers that William O’Rourke McCarthy had been goldbricking on were all that was needed to fill out a railcar going to the port of Oakland where ships were destined for various points in the Pacific theater. And that shipment needed to leave today, if possible.James scanned down the consolidated bill of lading:2 M55 Quad Fifty Caliber anti-aircraft machine gun trailer mounts, complete with 200,000 rounds of .50 caliber belted ammunition, ball, tracer, and armor piercing incendiary, as well as extra gun-mounted ammo cans and spare barrels; 4 of the new M20 75mm Recoilless Rifles, tripod mounted complete with direct fire sights plus 400 rounds of 75mm armor piercing and high explosive ammunition…James guessed the first two items were “packaged” so they could go into immediate action. Although the destinations were different, they were probably both intended for the Phillippine theater. Then there was another big package. It consisted of 200 M3 .45 caliber submachine guns with 2,000 magazines and 120,000 rounds of .45 caliber ball; 100 M1918A2 Browning Automatic Rifles with 1200 magazines; 100 M1903A3 rifles with grenade launching attachments and crates of high explosive/antitank rifle and white phosphorus grenades with launching cartridges; there were even more crates of Mark II hand grenades. For the Springfields and BARs there were 240,000 rounds of M2 ball ammunition packed in bandoleers and 5 round stripper clips. In addition, there were boxes of web belts and ammunition pouches of the appropriate types for all the weapons, in matching quantities going to the same address.These had to be intended for some guerrilla group in Asia, thought Boatwright. Almost all shipments to U.S. military units were not bundled like this. They would ship whole boxcar loads of arms, other boxcar loads of ammo, and most often these would be shipped direct from the manufacturers or arsenals which produced them. But there were plenty of places that the Japanese still held, and these items looked like they were packaged to enable them to be re-bundled without delay and dropped behind enemy lines. James had seen packages like this before, going to the ETO. (In fact, although Boatwright never knew it, those arms had been dropped to the French Maquis by the OSS. This package was intended for a particularly effective anti-Japanese partisan group in French Indochina which the OSS had been working with for some time. Its leader was a little Communist named Ho Chi Minh.)Then there was another line item that, like the 75mm Recoilless Rifles, James had never seen before.There were 20 M3 “grease guns” like the others in the “package” but these were being shipped with silencers. No magazines or ammo were included with this shipment so presumably the recipients would already have both.And of course there were the twelve M2-2 flame throwers and 24 refill tanks, as well as organizational support maintenance kits. Sergeant Billy Boatwright had written his father about watching GIs of his division using these devil’s backpacks on Jap pillboxes on Bougainville in March of last year. James shuddered to think of the sights his youngest son had seen. His own war had been terrible enough, but he suspected that the scientific ingenuity of man had made this war even worse.There were more light items: bales of uniforms, anti-flash garments and hoods for naval gunners, aircraft carrier deck signal paddles, pith helmets, mosquito netting and MP brassards as well as ping pong balls and paddles headed for some USO or hospital. All of it was destined for the Port of Oakland. James checked the total weight of the cargo, plus the space calculations. Yes, it was not too much over the 100.000 pound maximum gross for the 50’6” long car (as measured internally) and the stuff would fit with some backing and filling by the POWs. (There was a time when James would have never considered loading a railcar more than the max, but this was war and there was a continual shortage of boxcars.) The balance would have to be right, not too much on one side of the car or the other. But the German POWs were usually pretty good at that, better than most of the Americans on the loading crew who worked the forklifts. The POWs. James Boatwright grimaced. They would bear watching with this one. One unattended POW given a minute to fool with a case of hand grenades and it could be Armageddon on his loading dock. He would watch this one himself.By the time McCarthy came back with the re-crated flame throwers (and it was record time for him), the loading of the railroad car was well under way, all under the watchful eye of James Boatwright. There was some trouble with the balance, but after taking some items off and rearranging them, it finally worked. They were just about to fit the last items in by hand when James Boatwright passed out and hit the dock floor as if he’d been pole-axed.The Depot medics were summoned and, with the assistance of the American lead man and his helper, carried James to the ambulance. Someone yelled at the POWs to “hurry up and finish the job goddammit!” In went the last boxes and the door was sealed.In the confusion, no one noticed Feldwebel Helmut Grass switch the bills of lading on the outside of the car with the next one up the track.Helmut, recently of the 252nd Panzer Grenadiers, had been waiting for such a moment for three months, ever since he had been posted to the Depot. According to the Geneva Convention, POWs weren’t supposed to be employed in war work but Helmut didn’t mind. He figured (quite correctly) that Germany probably had American POWs doing war work back home, and besides, he thought that the job would give him ample opportunity to help the Fuhrer and the Fatherland by engaging in a little sabotage. Raised in the Hitler Youth, Helmut was a big believer in the Fuhrer and the Fatherland. He liked to think he had remained faithful to his blood oath even after he was captured in Normandy. Even so, by the date of his capture on June 13, 1944, Helmut’s military ardor had cooled considerably. In fact, he had been hysterically happy to be captured. Flattened in a roadside ditch, he had pissed himself in fear while the P47 “Jabos” worked over his unit’s convoy with bombs and machineguns, again and again until the stench of roasting flesh made him puke his last three breakfasts. He was still hiding there two days later when an advancing American infantry unit scooped him up. Helmut was too demoralized to resist. Even now he dreamed every night of the smell of roasting flesh. He could still smell it. Sometimes he dreamed the flesh was his. On those nights he woke up screaming to find his mattress soaked with sweat and urine. His continual shame made him an even bigger Nazi in the POW barracks than he had been in the Hitler Youth. As for sabotage, Helmut had been sorely disappointed. He was too closely watched during his service at the Depot to as much as spit in the “Amis’” coffee. His best opportunity had been today. “25 Grenades, Hand, TNT Frag, MK.2 with fuze” read the crates that Helmut had helped position in the car. “Grenade” meant pretty much the same thing in several languages and Helmut understood exactly what was in those crates, but every time he looked up there was that verdammt American supervisor staring back at him, looking for all the world like a hawk about to sink its talons into a field mouse if it so much as twitched.When Boatwright had collapsed and the rest of the crew was distracted, Helmut seized the chance to do the only thing he could think of to wreck the American war effort: he switched bills with another railcar that the crew had earlier loaded with clothing. If he could not destroy the cargo, he could at least send it where it was not needed. He was exultant. He had struck a blow for Fuhrer and Fatherland. He had in some small measure begun to atone for puking and pissing in fear at the bottom of that French ditch.Helmut watched as the American assigned to document the loading matched the wrong bill of lading with railcar’s number. As the crew went on to loading the next car, he began to hum the “Horst Wessel Song.” His fellow POWs looked at him like he was crazy, which of course he was.February 2, 1945: The CampIt was a Friday afternoon in the warmest February Bill Hackney could remember, but then Bill was a native of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, not Aliceville, Alabama. A lumberjack by profession and a family man, Bill had initially been spared the draft. As a lumberjack he plied a trade that was ruled to be essential to the war effort, for everything that the “arsenal of democracy” turned out was shipped in wooden crates, lashed to wooden pallets, loaded onto wooden box cars, transported to wooden warehouses, and handled by men who slept in wooden barracks. But in July, 1944, Bill’s wife told him she had fallen in love with a discharged soldier, a local fellow who had come home minus his right leg below the knee after an encounter with a Jap knee mortar on New Guinea. She wanted a divorce. It was crazy, but Bill figured maybe he could save his marriage by becoming a soldier himself. If she wanted a soldier, then a soldier he would become. He went down to the recruiting office and signed the papers. She laughed when he told her. Fortunately the kids were upstairs sleeping. He slapped her face so hard it spun her around and dumped her on her butt on the kitchen floor. She wasn’t laughing when he walked out the door. But then, he wasn’t either. It was the first time he’d ever touched her in anger, and though she’d deserved it, he wasn’t proud of it.Well, at least boot camp kept him so busy he barely had time for the memory to rankle. With all the war news of casualties, casualties and more casualties, Bill figured he’d end up in a mattress cover six feet deep somewhere in France or maybe on some Central Pacific hellhole. So he was surprised when God smiled on him and he drew an assignment to the 305th Military Police Escort Guard Company stationed at the Aliceville POW Internment Camp.Located close to the railroad junction in Aliceville, Alabama, the camp had been built by the Blair Construction Company of Montgomery, Alabama and was opened for business on June 2, 1943 when the first prisoners arrived by train at the end of a long journey that had begun at El Alamein. The camp consisted of more than 400 buildings, employed more than 1200 military and civilian personnel and housed over 6000 German and Italian POWs.Throughout 1943 and 1944, the original complement grew with new arrivals from Sicily, Italy, France and Holland. Prisoners were employed mostly as agricultural laborers at local farms, and there hadn’t been an escape attempt since August, 1943, when a couple of Nazi fanatics had managed to get themselves shot trying to get through the wire. Why they didn’t walk away from a work detail when they were already miles away from the camp was a mystery to guards and prisoners alike, but then as Sergeant Wilkie put it, “Well, ya gotta be pretty fricking stupid to be a Nazi anyways.”Most of the prisoners figured they were pretty fortunate to be sitting the war out in safety rather than fighting in some doomed last ditch ‘kessel’ on the Eastern Front. Of course even if they had escaped, where would they go? Mexico? That might be an option for somebody interned in say, Arizona. (There had been rumors of a successful escape from a camp in that state.) But Alabama? You would have to be wire happy to try. Not that there weren’t soldaten who didn’t go nuts behind the wire. The camp hospital had its own mental ward, and occasionally a suicide was found hanging by a knotted bed sheet from an overhead pipe or rafter.Hackney also had heard the rumors that every now and then some POW would make an unflattering comment about the Fuhrer and end up as an “unexplained death.” The American camp commander wasn’t too fussy about autopsies in such cases and if the Nazis still held sway in some of the tar-paper barracks there wasn’t much the 305th MPEG Company could do about it. Gerald Stabler, the mayor of Aliceville and the town undertaker still got the business generated thereby, for which services the U.S. Army reimbursed him, if not very handsomely.But if the POWs didn’t talk much politics or religion to the guards or each other, they were scrupulous about keeping to the rules when outside the wire on work details. It wasn’t uncommon for the MP guard to take the two shotgun shells he was issued out of his weapon, lean up against a tree and go to sleep with the twelve gauge across his legs. When the work was done, one of the Krauts would gently wake him, and back to the camp they would go.For their part, the guards never mistreated the prisoners (unlike some camps) and some became fast friends with POWs, although it was against the rules. The townsfolk had lined the streets and gaped at the prisoners when they first marched from the railroad station in 1943. (“As if we had horns and a tail,” one prisoner had told Hackney.) But now, almost two years later, some of them would invite POWs into their kitchens on a hot day and give them lemonade. Both MPs and POWs agreed there were worse places than Aliceville, Alabama to serve out the war. But at the moment, Private First Class William J. Hackney had a problem. In fact, he had a big problem. The problem was a railroad car that should have been loaded with the winter clothing issue for 6000 men. But when Hackney had broken the door seal on the car and the POWs had pulled open the door, instead of courdoroy pants and cotton shirts with “PW” strips sewn on them there were crates of ammunition. Instead of standard issue PW overcoats there were hand grenades. Hand grenades! Plus Lord alone knows what behind that! Hackney had followed orders and brought a work detail to the siding to unload what was supposed to be a bunch of clothes. Now he had twenty German soldiers hanging around looking at crates of munitions that they quite certainly recalled how to use. The first thing Bill did was to load his shotgun with his two puny little shells. They hardly seemed adequate for the occasion. Two shells divided by twenty Krauts: nope, Mrs. Hackney’s oldest son didn’t like the math at all. Bill didn’t see any of the more notorious camp Nazis in this bunch, but then, how do you tell a Nazi just by looking at him? He ordered the crew boss, Gunter Muller, to shut the door and move his work party away from the car a good twenty yards or so. He then told Gunter to send a man to summon Sergeant Wilkie. Gunter’s command of English was excellent and he complied with the commands instantly, barking out Hackney’s instructions in rapid-fire German. A “kreigie” went running down the siding to the supply office. Hackney moved in between the car and the Krauts. Gunter sensed how scared the Private was and ordered his men to sit down facing away from the siding.“With your permission, Sir, I have instructed ze men to sit down,” said Gunter, maintaining his distance from both the rail car and the shotgun.“Uh, yeah….Great, Gunter….Uh, and, thanks,” stammered Hackney. Gunter nodded, once, and stood very still.Like cavalry riding to the rescue, Sergeant First Class Walter “Wendell” Wilkie came barrelling down the track. “Hackney, what the hell is this Kraut all upset about?” demanded Wilkie, hooking his thumb back over his shoulder at the POW runner who followed him at a respectable distance. “Uh, Sarge, we got us a SNAFU with this car. It don’t have our cargo in it, it’s got somebody else’s,” replied the Private First Class.“All right, well get a couple of those Krauts to open her up so I can take a look,” ordered the Sergeant.“Sarge, I don’t think that’s a good idea,” replied Hackney. He leaned toward Wilkie and whispered, “There’s ammo and grenades in that car and God knows what else. It’s packed to the gills!”Sergeant Wilkie eyed Hackney suspiciously. “No shit?”Hackney nodded vigorously. “No shit, Sarge. That’s why I had ‘em move away from it.” He added, “I think we oughta get that damned thing outta here pretty damned quick.”“Private, that sounds like a damn fine idea,” agreed Wilkie. Unbuttoning the flap on his holster and touching the butt of his .45 in reassurance, the Sergeant eyed Muller and his crew. “OK, here’s how we’ll do it. You escort Gunter and the rest of them Krauts up to the headquarters building and pick up Corporal Zelenski on the way. Don’t let these guys outta your sight or let ‘em talk to anybody. You make sure Gunter keeps these mothers quiet. Tell Zelenski I said to keep these Krauts under guard and away from the rest of the camp until we get this car outta here. Tell him to get as many men as he needs from the interior guard to make that happen. When he’s got all the help he needs, tell him to send four more MPs with you back here, and tell ‘em to come with full magazines. And top off your shotgun too. You got that?”Private First Class William J. Hackney nodded, “Yes, Sarge.”“Repeat it back to me,” demanded the Sergeant. Hackney did. As the Sergeant expected, Pfc. Hackney got the first part right, and most of the second part wrong. Wilkie repeated his instructions, and this time when the Pfc. repeated it, Hackney got it right. “OK, then,” Wilkie ordered, “Get Gunter with the program and move ‘em off quick march. And come back here double time.” “Right, Sarge,” said Hackney, adding, “I’ll be back with help as soon as I can.” “You damn well better,” snapped the Sergeant, ‘or I’ll have you on permanent tower guard for the rest of the war. You’ll have to eat, sleep and shit up there.”Hackney’s head bobbed up and down in agreement. All the guards hated tower duty. He turned and issued his orders to Gunter, repeating the instruction for absolute silence. Of course Gunter had heard the Sergeant’s orders himself and, unlike Pfc. Hackney, he had understood them correctly the first time. Gunter saluted, American style, did an about face and strode down the embankment to his crew who had remained seated with their backs to the railcar. Executing another about face, Gunter commanded them to rise and fall in. The POWs leaped to their feet, quickly sorting out a line.Keeping a straight face, Gunter addressed them in German in a conversational tone: “OK, kameraden, these ‘Ami’ arschlocks are crapping bricks about what’s in that ‘wagen’. They want us to follow that frightened private ‘quick march’ to the headquarters building and to say nothing to anyone along the way. Follow me.”With their backs to the Americans, the Germans grinned. There were no Nazis in this work party, just German soldiers trying to make it home. None of them wanted to be a dead hero. But the nervousness of the Americans reminded them that they were still ‘Deustche soldaten’ and feared by their enemies. So they smiled as they faced right and marched in perfect step to the headquarters building, looking every bit the German soldiers they once had been and, in truth, still were.February 5, 1945: The Boxcar & the Preacher’s SonBy Friday evening the crisis was over. A switch engine had been summoned from the small Aliceville yard and the boxcar had been moved away from the camp and re-secured with an Ordnance Department padlock. After it left the camp area, Gunter and his men were released to go back to their barracks. The unrepentant Nazis who secretly controlled the inner camp raged that such an opportunity for “making our own Second Front” had been lost. The rest of the POWs, including Gunter, thought them mad as hatters but said nothing. Despite their disappointment at being denied the opportunity for posthumous Knight’s Crosses, the Nazis praised Gunter for the way he had maintained the German military spirit in the face of the cowardly, frightened Americans. They reluctantly agreed that there had been little else Gunter could have done in the face of Sergeant Wilkie’s vigilance.As far as the American army was concerned, the only thing left was the paperwork. Something had to be done about getting the boxcar back on the way to its correct destination. And someone had to find out “where in the pluperfect Hades” (to quote Captain Arliss who was a religious man and not disposed to profanity) the correct rail car full of the camp’s winter clothing issue was. On Monday morning, both of these jobs fell to First Sergeant Matthew Mark Luke, the NCO in charge of the 305th’s quartermaster and transportation office.Now as one might suspect from his name, Matthew Mark Luke was the first-born son of a preacher. And like many a preacher’s son, Matt Luke was a rebellious young man when he was growing up. In fact, that was how he had come to be in the army. It had been a cold night in November, 1937, when the Winston County, Alabama, probate judge caught young Matt deflowering his fair daughter in the carriage house. (Well, in fact the young lady who was not yet of legal age had been deflowered previously more than once by others, but that was a fact that was both unknown to the judge at the time and immaterial in the heat of his rage.)Matt Luke’s life was saved that night by four happy accidents. First, the judge had snatched up his pistol instead of his shotgun when he had gone in search of his daughter. Second, the sight of his young daughter screaming and leaping about “in flagrante delicto” (as the legal community calls it) and “buck nekkid” (as they say in Winston County) disconcerted the judge greatly and spoiled his aim. Third, the Lord had placed a window right above the equally nekkid Matthew M. Luke, thus facilitating his rapid egress from the scene. And last, but certainly not least, the judge was drunker than Cooter Brown and couldn’t have hit the broadside of the carriage house if his life depended on it. The only thing the judge DID manage to hit in his fusillade was a coal oil lamp that promptly exploded all over the upholstery of the judge’s Model A Ford, which began to burn like the Devil himself had just returned it after taking it for a spin around the Lake of Fire. Thus in one night did the judge lose his Model A, his carriage house and his illusions about his daughter’s virtue. It is hard to say which loss hurt him worse, but the neighbors who knew him best thought he mourned most over the Model A.As for Matthew, he paused only long enough after his unclothed run home through the backwoods of Winston County to do four things. He put tincture of iodine on his scratches (and some places hurt more than others). He jumped into a shirt, britches and shoes. He kissed his Momma goodbye. And he told her he was off to join the Army.Army life suited Matthew Mark Luke. His sergeants were easier on him than his daddy had been. He’d been snapping to attention and saying “yessir” and “nossir” since he was two, which impressed the officers. Being a Winston County boy he could shoot straighter than most of his fellow soldiers, who were primarily sickly, cross-eyed city folk who’d never handled a rifle in their lives. Such martial competence always endears a young recruit to his drill sergeants. Better than that, he got to drink when off-duty and nobody yelled at him. He also got to debauch himself with willing young women and no one tried to shoot him. And lastly, and perhaps most importantly, he had a winning smile and wholesome good looks that allowed him to locate and acquire items for his fellow soldiers that they otherwise could not obtain. Matthew Mark Luke found a home in Army.An army, especially an army in peacetime in a country in the middle of a depression, is a place defined by its scarcities. Private Matthew Mark Luke quickly came to understand that the supply clerk gets first dibs on anything that comes into the unit officially. He also understood intuitively that unofficially a supply clerk, especially a quick-witted supply clerk with a preacher-son’s nose for human frailties, can corrupt even the most straight laced officer or NCO if he can lay his hands on that man’s vice of choice. In view of future events, it probably would have been better for the good order and discipline of the Army if Matthew Mark Luke’s recruiting sergeant had met the Winston County probate judge before he signed the young man up. Unfortunately, future First Sergeant Matthew M. Luke did not introduce them. As a result, Parson Luke’s son got the best of the bargain. By the time of Pearl Harbor four years later, Matt Luke had made Staff Sergeant in the Regular Army, a meteoric ascent in peacetime. He had accomplished this by bribing his officers and blackmailing his NCOs. He also ran the post betting pool and provided moonshine to the enlisted men (though he was so slick that the Provosts could never catch him). Considering that Prohibition had ended years before, this was no mean feat. He did it by undercutting everyone else’s prices and going directly to the distiller— who just happened to be his Uncle Curtis who lived up near Natural Bridge. Curtis Stampp (his Momma’s brother) had been a moonshiner all his life, as had his daddy and his daddy’s daddy before him. It was said that the Stampps had planted more terminally surprised “revenooers” in North Alabama than any other family. The Stampp family product was quality ‘shine that never made anybody blind or killed ‘em with just a drink or two, and that was about the most you could expect from any white lightning. It also made Sergeant Matthew Mark Luke a comparatively rich man. Now like any other important and influential man, Uncle Curtis Stampp had friends. Rich friends. Important friends. Crooked friends. Some of these friends controlled the Alabama Democratic Party, which at the time was the only real party in Alabama, except in Winston County on account of the Civil War, but that’s another story and besides the Stampps had Winston sewed up anyway. Some of those friends also controlled the gambling and bawdy houses that flourished outside army posts all over the state, heck, all over the SOUTH. One of these towns was Phenix City, just across the river from Fort Benning, Georgia. Later on, after the war, some of Curtis Stampp’s friends had the Attorney General-elect of the state of Alabama assassinated because it looked like he was serious about cleaning up Phenix City. They didn’t really have a name for their group back during the war, but Curtis Stampps and his friends later on came to be called the “Dixie Mafia.” Some of their criminal descendants still call many of the shots in Alabama to this day.After Pearl Harbor, Sergeant Luke realized that he was in on the ground floor of a big opportunity. The Army, his Army, was fixing to be a LOT bigger. More soldiers meant more vice and more money in his pocket. But there was a catch. While Matthew Mark Luke was patriotic enough to wish the Japs and the Krauts were all blown to hell, he wasn’t about to risk his own hide to do it. So a considerable amount of his time was taken up with using his influence (and that of his uncle) to make sure he never left the continental United States. By February, 1945, he had been transferred, and transferred again, each time promoted to greater responsibility, always in supply. His latest assignment had been of his own choosing, and promised to outlast the war. It was convenient in that it was located in his Uncle’s “Area of Operations” as they say in the Army. He may have been in the Army, but Matthew Mark Luke was doubly home.Being the senior supply NCO at Aliceville offered many opportunities for an unscrupulous entrepreneur. The prisoners all had nothing but time to burn, and the Germans especially were skilled with their hands. They could take a tin can and make a beautiful ashtray out of it. There were woodcarvers galore, and their work (intricately carved gnomes and walking canes were the most popular) brought good money from civilians outside the wire. In return for the POWs’ art works, First Sergeant Luke traded them cigarettes, candy, liquor and on, occasion, women. By February, 1945, he was rolling in dough.But like most self-made rich men, Matt Luke never had enough money and he was always looking for new opportunities. And, like most successful thieves, he had grown a bit careless. But the boxcar presented a golden opportunity, if he could just figure out how to pull it off. It had dropped into his lap like a ripe peach, and he wasn’t going to let it get away if he could help it.First, he had to get a look at the goods. On the pretense of making sure that “nothing was missing.” First Sergeant Luke took a stroll over to the railroad depot and unlocked the door. Luke slid open the boxcar’s door and climbed up to the top of the stacked freight. Yup, there were grenades all, right, and lots of cases marked “Ammunition, Ball, .45 Caliber.” Crawling over top of the crates, working his way along the space between the roof of the car and the freight, First Sergeant Luke played his flashlight on the stenciling. “Gee-zus H. Chraaast,” Luke whispered his daddy’s Lord’s name in vain. There were cases of .45 caliber grease guns here to go with the ammo. He’d seen enough. Uncle Curtis would know where to move this merchandise.Turning himself around in the cramped space, Matthew Mark Luke banged his head on one of the smaller crates on top. He cursed, then shined his GI flashlight on the markings. “Ping pong balls?!?” Hey, he could use those! Luke made his way back to the door opening and shoved the case of ping pong balls over the edge and out the door. The crate tumbled, bouncing twice, and landed about ten feet away from the tracks, upside down. Scampering down the stacked freight, the Master Sergeant jumped out of the car, slid the door back shut and replaced the padlock. Slinging the small crate over his shoulder, First Sergeant Matthew Mark Luke headed back to town, immensely pleased with himself. Seventy five yards away, hidden in the shade of the rail yard office roof, two men watched Luke carry away the case, although at that distance it was impossible to tell what the contents of the box were. “You were right to call me, Mr. Peevey,” said the taller of the two,“Yes, sir,” replied Peevey, “I knowed that sumbitch was up ter no good.” “Don’t mention a word of this to anyone. Go home and make some notes about what just happened in case you’re asked to testify about it later. Be sure to note the day and time.”“Yes, sir,” said Peevey. “I sure will, Captain.”First Sergeant Luke turned right after he left the rail yard, easing on down the alley behind Aliceville’s main street, trying to be as inconspicuous as possible with his burden. Finally he came to the back door of the “rooming house” that everyone in town over the age of 10 knew was a discreet bordello and that almost no one knew was owned by one First Sergeant Matthew Mark Luke.Dumping the ping pong balls on the floor just inside the door, Matt Luke entered the “boarding house” kitchen and made his way to the front room where the telephone was. There was no one about at this time of the morning. The “boarders” were all still sleeping upstairs, resting from their nightly exertions.Twenty-five minutes and three phone calls later, First Sergeant Luke left the “boarding house” by the same door he had entered and made his way back to the camp. With Uncle Curtis’ assistance, he was about to steal a boxcar of United States government property. All he had to do now was to arrange with the proper office at the camp to generate the documents and make the official phone calls necessary to send the boxcar on its way. And since that office was run by one First Sergeant Matthew Mark Luke, he didn’t think that would be a problem. Smiling like the cat that ate the canary, the preacher’s son began to hum “In the Mood.” . . .Exactly one week later, First Sergeant Luke’s empire came crashing down upon his head. The crate that broke the camel’s back was filled with ping pong balls. Captain Harrison Fordyce, Provost of the Aliceville Camp, appeared suddenly one morning in the supply office, flanked by no less than four MPs. Fordyce had been investigating Luke’s extracurricular activities for six months and prior to entering the office it had already been a busy morning. MPs under Fordyce’s command had already raided Luke’s whorehouse as well as a separate gambling establishment. Local police had not been contacted about the impending raids because Fordyce knew that most of them were on Luke’s payroll. Indeed, one of Aliceville’s finest had been found snoring next to the bawdyhouse madam. A state police captain was brought in from Montgomery to give the raids in town legal cover, but the operation was entirely Fordyce’s. Luke had known from the week of Fordyce’s arrival at Aliceville Camp that he might become a problem. His sources told him that Fordyce was a bit of religious prig, and that the Captain neither smoked nor drank, did not apparently chase women and had no sense of humor whatsoever. Luke had approached the Captain from a number of angles offering various temptations but Fordyce had always ignored the hints or turned him down flat. In fact, Fordyce had been sent to Aliceville by the Army’s Criminal Investigative Division specifically to investigate complaints against First Sergeant Luke. This day represented merely another victory in the Captain’s lifelong crusade to rid the Army of vermin like the Winston County preacher’s son.But the threat of Fordyce was never enough to cause First Sergeant Luke to alter his operations. He was making too much money, having too much fun, and had grown both cocky and sloppy. Stealing the ping pong balls had been the ultimate stupidity. He had wanted them for a third enterprise he planned for Aliceville, a “recreation center” for soldiers with perfectly legal billiard and ping pong tables on the first floor and highly illegal (and profitable) slot machines on the second. He certainly could have purchased a million ping pong balls with just one day’s proceeds of his gambling and prostitution enterprises. But they were there, and he felt untouchable, and so he stole them because he could. Now that crate sat in Captain Fordyce’s office, evidence of Luke’s theft of government property. It was turning out to be a bad morning for First Sergeant Matthew Mark Luke. He was unceremoniously slapped in the camp stockade, and the official grilling of his subordinates in the supply office began.By the next day, Captain Fordyce was ready to question the First Sergeant about his nefarious activities. He had left Luke stewing in the stockade all the previous day to improve the disgraced NCO’s willingness to cooperate. Fordyce had found this technique brought results in previous investigations. And he had many questions for Luke.For example, this business of the ping pong balls was complicated by the fact that all documentation about the rail car-- its arrival at the camp, Sergeant Wilkie’s report, even the incorrect bill of lading-- was missing from the files. The crate still bore US markings it was true, but unless the ping pong balls could be proven to have been government property by some documentary trail, the theft charge was in trouble. Fordyce was just about to have Luke brought over for interrogation when two pieces of news reached him almost simultaneously.First, the boxcar was missing from the Aliceville rail yard, and Station Master Peevey had no idea where it had gone. Second, First Sergeant Matthew Mark Luke would not be available for interrogation that morning as his body had been found swinging from a bed-sheet in his cell.Captain Fordyce could not have known that the First Sergeant was a claustrophobe. Ever since his daddy had locked him in a closet for punishment when he was a boy, the preacher’s son had a positive horror of enclosed spaces. Facing what seemed to be a future of nothing but tight, airless spaces, Sgt. Luke opted out in the only way available to him.After reading his report, the Captain’s superiors did not fault him for the outcome of the investigation. The court martial of the First Sergeant, even given wartime security rules, would have been messy and embarrassing to the Army as well as the town of Aliceville. Far better that Luke had solved their problem in the way he had chosen.With Luke’s death, the problem just vanished. His little empire disappeared instantly and without a trace. No charges were filed. The prostitutes, gamblers and lesser bootleggers left town, and the clientele they had serviced now had to go further afield for diversion. The mortal remains of First Sergeant Matthew Mark Luke were transported by rail to the Natural Bridge station on the Southern Railway in Winston County, where the coffin was collected by his family. Two days later, his daddy gave a eulogy for the prodigal son. And if there was regret and remorse for the way he had lived his life, the grief and the tears at his graveside were no less real. In time, the U.S. Army provided an official headstone for the career soldier.Less than ten miles away as the crow flies, another monument to the life and times of the wayward preacher’s son sat on a deserted siding of an equally deserted old coal mine. His last and biggest scam had been successful. Not that it would do Matthew Mark Luke any good where he had gone.

Chapter 28.Nemesis: The Six Apostles."Who today still speaks of the extermination of the Armenians?" -- Adolf Hitler, 1939.In the Greek tragedies Nemesis appears chiefly as the avenger of crime and the punisher of hubris . . . She was sometimes called Adrasteia, . . . meaning "one from whom there is no escape"; her epithet Erinys ("implacable") is specially applied to Demeter and the Phrygian mother goddess, Cybele. -- Wikipedia.17 July 1915Aram Avakian’s father was herding his goats in the hills above their village at the base of the mountain that the Ottoman Empire called Musa Dagh but the Armenian Christians called Musa Mer when the Turkish gendarmes came, looking for a little diversion. Ordered to hide and be silent no matter what happened, little Aram hid under a large basket and listened as the Turks raped his mother, one after another. Aram could hear his mother moaning and weeping and the laughter of the gendarmes. When they were done, just before they bayoneted her, one of them asked, “Where’s your Christ to protect you now?”When they were gone, Aram ran to find his father.There were six villages of at least five thousand Armenians scattered around the base of Musa Mer and all had been ordered to evacuate and march to somewhere in the interior, away from the Mediterranean Sea. Having heard rumors of what happened to other Armenian Christians when given similar orders, most of the villagers decided to withdraw up the mountain, construct defensive positions and defy the order. Some, about 60 families, decided they would be safer if they obeyed the order. They marched off with all that they could carry, and were never heard from again.Between the six villages the Armenians had managed to hide about a hundred and twenty modern rifles and shotguns from the authorities when they had previously been ordered to give them up. In addition, they had perhaps another 350 out-dated flintlock muskets and old horse pistols.The Armenians stripped out their homes and shops of every manner of provision and carried them up the mountainside. That took them one whole day. They immediately placed sharpshooters at key points and began digging trenches and constructing road blocks.Arriving to find the Armenians gone, the Turkish Army was ordered up the mountain to round them up and kill all who resisted, which it would later turn out, had been the plan all along.On 21 July, a force of 200 Turkish soldiers moved up Musa Dagh in expectation of an easy victory. After losing a number of casualties and a mountain howitzer, they retreated. The next attack consisted on 3,000 soldiers and a large number of gendarmes and Muslim irregulars and the Turks drove to within 400 yards of the Armenian camp. Only a deep ravine separated them from their prey. By this time night had fallen and the Turks settled in, expecting to finish the job in the morning.In the darkness, having no other option, the Armenians took a page from the Bible and duplicated Gideon’s feat by infiltrating down and around the Turkish position until they had it surrounded. When they attacked, the startled Turks were first thrown into confusion, then panic. The Turkish soldiers and their irregular allies fled down the mountain, leaving their camp and considerable war material and food behind.But they did not go away. A siege now began and by late August, starvation was stalking the Armenians on Musa Mer, which means “the mountain of Moses.” A runner was dispatched through the Turkish lines to the American consul at Allepo asking for neutral aid. He never arrived. A strong swimmer made it to Alexandretta harbor looking for blockading Allied warships. There were none. Two large flags were made, one with a large red cross in the middle of it. The other read “Christians in distress: Rescue.” These were tied to tall trees, but this was the season of heavy rains and fog, so there was little chance they would be seen.The Turks attacked again, and were repulsed again, barely. It was doubtful the Armenians would be able to resist another. Aram, weak with hunger and too young to fight, said many prayers for their deliverance. God heard him.On the 53rd day of the siege, one of the Armenian lookouts spotted the French light cruiser Guichen offshore. Her lookouts had spotted the red cross banner. Guichen’s captain launched a shore party in boats to investigate, and under the protection of her big guns the Turks dared not intervene.After linking up with the Armenians and learning their plight, the Guichen’s captain wirelessed his squadron commander on his flagship, the heavy cruiser Ste. Jean d’Arc. The admiral issued orders that that all available ships proceed to Musa Dagh to take on the survivors of the siege.Aram Arkanian’s prayers were answered. Over 4,000 Armenian Christians were saved by four French ships of the admiral’s squadron and a nearby British man-of-war.French sailors had to pry the captured Turkish Mauser rifle out of the hands of his father before they would let him on board the boat taking them to the Ste. Jean d’Arc. “Never forget, Aram,” his father cautioned him as they watched from the Ste. Jean d’Arc’s stern railing as their ancestral home faded into the distance. “No matter where we go and what God brings us in the future, never forget.” Aram didn’t.Almost one century later.The basement room was black, illuminated only by the flickering images of the wide-screen television. Six men sat in various relaxed postures, scattered between couches, easy chairs and bar stools.One of them, with a tattoo on his right forearm of St. Joan of Arc, the patron saint of soldiers, in battle armor and brandishing a large flag, held the remote. Curiously, the flag Saint Joan waved was not that of the Fleur de Lis, nor the Cross of Lorraine but one bearing a simple red cross. An historian, not knowing the real story behind the tattoo, would have thought it an anachronism and in error. It was neither.On the screen Joe O'Reilly entered a room and demanded, "Jesus Christ, Mick, where the HELL have you been?""Been workin'" muttered an exhausted Michael Collins, his head down on the desk."Workin' where?" Joe shot back. Sleepily, Collins begins to give orders."I want a file drawn up on every member of the British administration. Look through whatever you can find. Who's Who. Stubb's, Society columns. I want names, addresses, clubs, where they bank down to what they eat for breakfast. Keep it up to date. Add to it every week."Michael Collins begins to rouse. "Tom?"Tom Cullen answers, "Um?""Tom!" Collins gets up from the table."Yeah!""Get me a list of the twelve best men in the Dublin division. Young. Without families.""What for," asks Cullen."Christ," Collins realizes, "the 'Twelve Apostles'. Just do it, for fook's sake!""Joe, take a letter."Collins' number two, Harry Boland enters, demanding "Where the hell have you been?"Collins ignores him and begins dictating."'To whom it may concern. This is to inform you that any further collaboration with the forces of occupation will be punishable by death. You have been warned.' Signed, 'The Irish Republican Army.'"Boland asks, incredulous, "Are you serious?""'Fraid so," answers Collins. Then he orders Joe, "Send one to every G-Man . . ."Neeson was born for this role, thought Steve Avakian."Without them the Brits would have no system. They couldn't move. Imagine the Castle like an enclave where anyone, and I mean anyone, who collaborated knew he'd be shot. They couldn't move outside those fooking walls. THAT'S how serious I am."Boland, now realizing how serious Collins is, offers, "There's only one problem.""What's that?""We'd have to do it.""Yes," says Collins. "So, could you bear it?"Avakian hit freeze on the DVD remote, and leaned over the bar to hit the alcove light switch."What's the big deal, Steve?" The man in the Lazy Boy brought it upright and stood. "We've got this damn movie memorized, you played it so often in Kabul.""I just wanted to remind you of the thinking process behind the Anglo-Irish War because Collins was successful.""Why?" asked Mark Volescu."Because of this." Steve handed out each of them a copy of a letter. "Read it, and then we'll talk."It was dated over two years before."You've got us surrounded, you poor bastards."Memo for the Record to the Next CongressTo: The Victors of the Recent National ElectionsFrom: Your gun-owning constituentsSubject: The so-called "Gun Show Loophole"Congratulations. You have just been swept into power. Enjoy the feeling.But come January, the special interests who put you there are going to be banging on your door asking for various favors. Some of them are going to be demanding more gun control legislation, among them a law to close the so-called "gun show loophole."Heretofore, the bumbling GOP has at least been able to fend off these attempts at our liberties, but those corrupt incompetents have now been justifiably swept from power for their other numerous political sins. Neither Presidential candidate mentioned the subject much during the campaign (for good reasons), but both are on record as supporting previous bills aimed at exerting complete federal control over the private sale of arms.You call this "reasonable regulation."We call it tyranny, for not even King George III was so grasping. But since you won the election, it will be your candidate who takes the oath and signs the bill. It may be assumed that the new president will sign such a bill if you place it before him. However, we do not address this memo to him. It is the darker angels of YOUR nature we are seeking to save you from, as I will explain below.The hubris derived from your own smashing electoral victory may incline you to listen to those voices demanding that you seize the moment for more gun control. If I may, let me explain the possible personal, unintended consequences of such an act to you.There are in your district, in your state and indeed all over the country, a great number of gun owners just like me. I suppose if you added us all up there at least a million or two of us.Maybe more, maybe less, but once you get into numbers like that, what's a million more or less?We are the 'cold, dead hands" types, the men and women who have sworn, as the old bumper sticker said, "When guns are outlawed, I'll be an outlaw." We have fought a political delaying action against the enemies of our traditional 2nd Amendment rights for decades now. Indeed, we have been shoved back from the free exercise of our historic firearms liberty for 70 plus years.Now it is plain that we have lost the argument at the polls.No matter.You feel a natural pride at having swept the GOP from the field. But you should know that in doing so you have removed any hope we ever had of successfully defending our right to armed self-defense in the political arena. You will also take up, and I'm certain you will pass, the Fairness Doctrine to shut up the talk radio hosts who have so bedeviled you these past twenty years. As well, you will pass an Amnesty Bill for illegal aliens, which you believe will make any further conservative success in national elections impossible. You are right on both counts. And, because you now have the votes, you will be successful. You will think you have a mandate for whatever you do. And yet . . .Consider where this puts us. We will no longer have the possibility of stopping further attacks on our God-given liberties politically. We will not even be able to vent our frustration on talk radio. I'm sure you will also get around to "hate speech regulation" of the Internet. And in the middle of this you will try to disarm us by means of a "gun show loophole" bill, or a new tougher "assault weapons ban" or a ban on "assault weapons ammunition" and "armor piercing bullets" which will include simple hunting ammunition, or probably a combination of all three. Perhaps you will stealthily try to do these things by quietly having the ATF manipulate the regulatory process.Quiet or not, we will notice.You will do this because you think you can do it without political or personal retribution. I write you today to tell you that if you do so, you will be as wrong as you could possibly be.You believe that if you pass a law backed by the threat of federal violence for non-compliance, that we will do what you order without resistance. You believe this because you are extrapolating our anticipated behavior from your own cowardice, You know that YOU would never do such a thing, so we won't either. This is a dangerous assumption on your part, perhaps fatally so. For if the discredited Republicans no longer protect us from you, then they no longer protect you from us, either.You've got us surrounded, you poor bastards.Remember that we consider our rights merely codified by the Constitution. They are, we sincerely believe, God-given and inalienable. Remember too that we are willing to die for our liberties rather than surrender them up meekly. Remember as well that men and women who are willing to die for their principles are most often willing to kill for them too.What can this possibly have to do with you?Well, it's like this. We have been doing a lot of thinking about what we would do if we ever found ourselves in this situation, and after considerable thought we have decided we agree with Bill Clinton. Back in 1999, when he was trying to pressure the Serbians into giving up Kosovo, then President Clinton expanded American rules of war to include -- as legitimate targets of deadly force -- the politicians and the news media that shaped and supported his enemy's war policy.Not to put too fine a point on it, but if you force us into resistance by further circumscribing our rights -- by sending federal police to our doors to enforce your will -- can't those same Clintonian rules of engagement be applied to you?Oh, we could certainly defend ourselves by shooting back at the hapless instruments of your tyranny -- the sons and daughters of other Americans who happen to be in federal service.But wouldn't it be wiser for us -- after the first, second or third time this happens -- to adopt Clinton's policy and go after the people who sent them? That is, to seek out the bureaucrats and politicians who decided to start the war? And, like Clinton, should we target the media talking heads and newspaper editors who clamored for it in the first place?The advocates of citizen disarmament are probably willing to fight a war down to the last dead ATF agent, but are YOU willing to fight one past the first dead politician? And how many dead editors will it take to change an editorial board policy?If you pass new gun control laws we will find out.The president of course will be the safest personage in the country under this awful scenario. Killing a president, even if he signed such an unconstitutional law, would be tantamount to firing on Fort Sumter, a discrediting move no matter what the provocation.But, one wonders, who would cry over a dead congressman or senator who voted to take people's liberty, property and lives? Especially after innocent victims of his predatory law-making were already littering the streets. You may recall the already lower-than-a-snake's-belly position in the polls that Congress currently holds.Who indeed would mourn you, beyond your family, your mistress and a few lobbyists?Also, it may be cold comfort, but we will make sure that your family remains behind to mourn you. We will do a far better job of protecting innocents than the federal government, perhaps because we don't own any Predator drones or F18s or Hellfire missiles or cluster bombs. You will get no terrorist outrages like Oklahoma City to easily discredit us - just remorseless and deadly accurate rifle bullets, one at a time. Those are OUR precision guided munitions.Do you really think that in the long run that yours will be more effective than ours?These are the uncomfortable questions that must be asked now rather than later. Unless, of course, you decide that discretion is the better part of valor and -- out of enlightened self-interest -- you refuse to meander down the bloody garden path toward civil war at the urging of the honey-tongued Sirens of "reasonable regulation" gun control.It's always important for any card player to know the rules of the game before the deck is cut. By sweeping away the sorry GOP, and stacking the deck with the Fairness Doctrine and enfranchised illegals to toil on your political plantation, you will have changed the political rules fundamentally and, perhaps, forever.Please understand that just because you can disenfranchise us, swamp us at the polls, silence us on the radio and Internet, despise us and ridicule us in the media, you still cannot take any more of our liberties without our acquiescence. And we do not, cannot and will not agree. We still get to vote with our rifles. You are welcome to believe that we are insane for adopting such a position, but even if you are right, we're still armed -- doesn't that just complicate your problem?We are resigned to being a despised minority within our own country, as long as we are a despised and FEARED minority whose rights and property are respected.You may kill us, but you cannot change our minds.Kindly, for all our sakes, remember Bill Clinton's rules of engagement. A civil war is a two-way shooting gallery. Don't sign your own target.Just so we're clear, the way you sign your own target is by voting for any bill which commands the government's seizure of power of the private, intrastate transfer of arms or for one banning the sales or possession of any kinds of heretofore legal weapons or ammunition, or for taxing them to death, or for any other combination of measures, official or unofficial which lead to the same things. Put your "Yea" on any of those, and when innocent Americans get killed by federal forces as a result, you will have placed the crosshairs over your own heart.You have been warned.If you want to curse anybody, curse Bill Clinton.It was his idea.Signed,Henry BowmanMark Volescu spoke first. "Man, you didn't write this."Steve grinned, "No I didn't. But I did send it.""Huh?"Steve told them the name of the author."He's dead, dude.""Maybe. They never did find his body.""Yeah," said Volescu, "but I've read most of his stuff and I never read this.""Well, right after we got back and I was discharged, I got on some gun rights e-mail lists and one of them was his. Anyway, he sent out a letter like this early one morning and then sent out another one a few hours later saying it was for review only, and he didn't mean for it to get out, and to please destroy any copies. He said he wasn't sure he was going to send it. Well, he didn't. It was right there at the line of being a threat to a federal official, so I guess he was advised by his friends not to send it. I never saw or heard anything more about it.""If an empty threat falls on deaf ears, was it ever really said?" paraphrased Nijima, who was the deep thinker of the team."Let me venture a wild-assed guess," offered Volsecu, "you didn't delete your copy."Avakian looked at his former SF team member and grinned."You're quick, Speedo." Volescu just grunted. He hated that nickname.Steve continued. "But when I heard he was dead, I changed it a bit, wrapped it around a dubbed copy of this scene from Michael Collins and sent it to every US Representative and Senator. It put them on notice. Like Michael Collins, I had warned them. I'm sure the FBI figured out a dead man wrote it, but they musta been scratchin' their heads how he mailed it from beyond the grave.""Yeah, well I noticed it didn't stop 'em from passing anything," Volescu retorted sourly."No," admitted Avakian, "it didn't. Which is why they've got it coming now. There's way too many dead innocents on the ground now NOT to pay them back."The men looked at one another. They loved Steve Avakian like a brother, and they knew now why they were here. They'd talked about it a hundred times on a theoretical level. And there had been worse laws since the Omnibus Crime Bill. People had died resisting them. There was a low intensity guerrilla conflict going on all over the country. The whole state of Alabama looked like it was going to war with the Feds because the administration had thrown the Constitution out the window and wouldn't let them run their own affairs.Carter, Ball and Twigg had each taken a discharge at the same time as Avakian. Volescu followed with a general six months ago by framing himself as a security risk. You couldn't get out these days just by claiming you were a homosexual. "Don't ask, don't tell" had been junked by the new administration. Now it was "Hey, brag about it and you'll get promoted."Nijima couldn't get released, his MOS was too sensitive, too needed. Consequently, Nijima was a deserter. There was a lot of that going around these days. CID was camped on his ex-wife's doorstep hoping he would surface there. Considering she was a faithless bitch who'd screwed around on "Nidge" when he was in Kandahar, it wasn't likely. But Nijima didn't mind them spying on her."Hell, Steve, you want us to help you kill the whole Congress?" This from Nijima."No," said Avakian, "just these people. They're in our AO. I don't want to have to operate in DC, it ain't home ground. These are close by." He handed the other five men a sheet with 78 names on it."There's more than congresscritters on here," observed Mike Ball."Yeah," explained Avakian, "there's TV talking heads, newspaper editors, U.S. Attorneys, supervisory federal policemen, and a grocery list of anti-gun politicians, local, state and national. I warned them too. Just notes, short and sweet: "You have been judged guilty of supporting, soliciting or assisting in the use of deadly force to impose a tyrannical scheme of gun control on the American people. Innocent Americans have died as a result. Renounce your opinions, quit your jobs, run and hide now and you can live. Continue with what you've been doing and you'll be killed as a legitimate target of war." And I signed it, 'The American Republican Army.'"Steve looked around the room, then continued."Priority goes to the congressmen and senators who voted for the Omnibus Bill and Operation Clean Sweep. I didn't put just anybody on there. They are all there because they did some specific act or acts that carried out, or gave material assistance to, the unconstitutional operations of the administration. It's Clinton's ROE, applied to gun control."Carter called out the name of a Hollywood actress, a real loud mouth who supported the regime with money and influence. "Hey, what's she on this list for?"Avakian started to tell Carter about why he'd included her and Carter cut him off. "Yeah I know she's a commie bitch from Lesbos and she gave a lot of money to gun-control politicians, but what I meant was, why's she on OUR target list? She doesn't come from here."Ball knew the answer to that one. "You don't watch 'Access Hollywood,' shithead. Her new girl-toy is from Lockwood and they got a love nest up by the ski resort. Right Steve?""You got it.""She's hot," said Carter.Ball, who had aced the LSAT and been accepted at Harvard Law, was mystified. "She's a lesbian, Mike, what does it matter to you that she's hot?""I know, but she's still hot. I want that job.""Naw," said Nijima, "that's my job. I still haven't forgiven the bitch for raising money for the Taliban that time.""Hell, Nidge," said Avakian, "we all want to kill her. We'll have to draw straws."Twigg butted in. "How about we do it like some Agatha Christie novel? Like, we each shoot her at the same time with a different caliber of weapon? Let 'em try to figure that out."They all jeered. "Agatha Christie?" groaned Avakian, "God, Twigg, you're a f-ckin' idiot." Nijima agreed and threw a couch cushion at him.Willow ignored them and commented, "You know, you kill her and Hollywood's gonna empty out like a bunch of illegals out the back door of a bodega when somebody yells 'La Migra!' in the front. There won't be a Hollywood commie left to shop on Rodeo Drive. They'll all go to the south of France for the duration.""That's what I had in mind, Willow," replied Avakian.Twigg's nickname was "Willow," because his first name was Will. Not William, not Willie, just Will. Also, because he was short and gutsy like that little dwarf character in the movie. His career had shown that his daddy had chosen his name well. For Will Twigg embodied every meaning of that word, except last will and testament, and maybe they'd get around to that one of these days.Somebody, a long time ago, had tried calling him "Twiggy." The little guy from north Alabama had walked up to the bigger man, said "I'm sorry you said that," and dumped the bigger man's ass in the dirt so fast that nobody quite knew how he'd done it.He then apologized, and offered the man a hand up. He was a devout Christian, and he never, ever cursed. They'd mocked him for it at first, until they realized he couldn't be angered and he lived what he believed. There was no doubt he was brave and he'd proved it too many times to recall. A small, compact man, he was stealthy beyond belief in the field.Once, during an FTX back at Bragg, he snuck up to the OPFOR commander, a full bird Colonel who'd sent his RTO on some dogrobber job. Twigg raised up out of the weeds about 20 feet away with his MILES equipped M-4 and announced very softly. "You are my prisoner, Sir." The officer started to swear up one side and down the other, and Twigg reproved him. "Sir, you don't have to be profane or vulgar just because you lost."That was Willow all over. He'd picked up reading Agatha Christie when they had been in the rear at Kabul. He bought the complete paperback set in the market. Dog eared when he got them, he read the murder mysteries until the covers fell off. How the books ever made it to Afghanistan, Avakian had no clue. Neither did Twigg. It wasn't a terrible vice for an explosives instructor to have, Avakian guessed, but it still was weird. At least he didn't knit in his downtime like Volescu, or make grotesque madman sketches like Carter.He glanced around the room. Counting me, there's six apostles, not twelve. And "Willow" Twigg is my Vinny Byrne. Vinny had been the youngest man on Collin's "squad." So devout a young Catholic boy that he went to Mass both before and after his hits, Vinny would always say as he approached the victim from close range, "May the Lord have mercy on your soul," just before he pulled the trigger and blew his brains out.There was no doubt that the Twelve Apostles had struck terror into the heart of the British establishment in Ireland. It was Collins' assassination campaign that compelled the Brits to seek a truce. Steve Avakian intended to do the same to the people who were responsible for this war.It would be his own Operation Nemesis."I have killed a man but I am not a murderer."When the war began in 1914 (Soghomon Tehlirian) said, Armenian soldiers, including his brother, were recruited into the Turkish army. Early in 1915, however, most were stripped of all arms and employed as pack animals to transport army supplies, after which they were shot. In the villages posters announced that everyone had to surrender arms, but the Muslims were allowed to keep theirs while Armenians, when they complied, were charged as revolutionaries and tortured. Churches were desecrated and Christian symbols defiled. But these were only the initial moves by the Turkish authorities. In May came news that all Armenian schools had to be closed and the teachers, together with the community leaders, were sent to special camps. Shortly thereafter rumors spread that those who were taken away had already been killed. They had been given the alternative of renouncing Christianity, converting to Islam, and assuming Turkish names, but none had. In the months that followed only a small number of Armenians converted, for survival and to protect their families. At the beginning of June an order came . . . that the entire Armenian population should prepare to leave Erzinga. Money and other valuables had to be delivered to the Turkish authorities for safekeeping. Three days later the Armenian population of around twenty thousand was led from the town early in the morning. They were not permitted to take goods and personal belongings . . . The deportees were formed into a long caravan of five or six columns. . . Turkish soldiers and gendarmes were present on all sides. Everyone was very tired . . . On the very first day, members of Tehlirian's family were killed. . . Several gendarmes dragged his sister off and raped her, while another split his brother's head with an ax. His mother lay dead nearby, killed, he thought, by a bullet. . . Tehlirian suddenly felt a blow to his head and fell unconscious. He didn't know how long he lay there -- one or two days, he thought. When he awoke it was dark, and he felt a great weight on his body. To his horror he discovered that the burden was his brother's corpse. Tehlirian struggled until he was able to push his brother's body aside and stand up. Despite the darkness he could see corpses all around him, and he realized that the entire caravan had been killed. He was the sole survivor, left for dead by the Turks." -- A Crime of Vengeance: An Armenian Struggle for Justice by Edward Alexander, Free Press, 1991, p. 70The Armenian Genocide by the Turkish Pashas of the old Ottoman Empire in 1915 killed between a million and a million and a half Armenian Christians. It was characterized by the use of massacres and deportations involving forced marches without food or water designed to lead to the death of the deportees. Although condemned to death by the Turkish government that replaced them, most of the plotters -- who had killed no one themselves, merely having ordered it done -- escaped at the end of the war and settled down into comfortable lives in places like Germany.To deliver justice upon them, the Armenian Revolutionary Federation crafted Operation Nemesis, a covert operation in the 1920s to assassinate these Turkish masterminds of the Genocide. It was named after the Greek goddess of divine retribution, Nemesis.Hundreds of the guilty mass murderers were hunted down and executed by the assassins of the ARF in the 1920s. All this Steve Avakian knew by heart. When he was sixteen, his dad had handed him a book called 'A Crime of Vengeance', by Edward Alexander."You need to know where you came from," he told Steve. "Read this and we'll talk."Now all eyes turned to the doorway through which entered a shy, nervous young man -- the accused Soghomon Tehlirian, seen for the first time by representatives of the world press. Clad in a black suit, he calmly walked to his place at the defense table. slight of figure and with slender features, the youth, though pale, seemed in control of himself. Now and then he looked around with what the press would call "the eyes of a fanatic," but his demeanor was gentle and restrained. . . The accused was then informed of the official charge against him:"The alleged student of mechanical engineering, Soghomon Tehlirian . . . born on April 2, 1897, in Pakaritch, Turkey, a Turkish citizen, Armenian Protestant . . . is charged with intentionally having killed the former Turkish Grand Vizier Talaat Pasha in Charlottenburg on March 15, 1921, and of having carried out the killing with premeditation. . ."Judge Lehmberg instructed the interpreters to inform the accused the contents . . . of the official charge. . . when the interpreters had finished, Judge Lehmberg turned to the accused: "How do you plead? Would you say yes or no to this accusation?""No." Defense Attorney von Gordon intervened and asked the court: "I request to ask the accused how he does not regard himself as guilty.""I do not regard myself as guilty because my conscience is at peace." Judge Lehmberg immediately pursued that with a question. . . "How is your conscience at peace?""I have killed a man but I am not a murderer." -- A Crime of Vengeance, pp. 66-67"Do you understand the difference?" his father had asked him. Steve was quiet for a moment. Finally he said, "Yeah, Dad, I get it. But how come no one ever talks about this?" he held up the slim hardback. "I've never heard of it before, except for stuff I overheard you and grandpa talk about before he died, stories about great grandpa Aram, and I didn't really understand that. They sure don't teach it in school.""Well, your Grandpa wanted to tell you when you were little, but your mother wouldn't have any of it. She made me swear not to 'traumatize' you. But you're sixteen now. You've got a right to know. A right and a duty.""A duty?""Yes, son, a duty. The Jews weren't the first people to say, 'Never again.' We Armenians were. Hitler used our genocide as a pattern for theirs. And some Jews used the book “The Forty Days of Musa Dagh” as an inspiration for last-ditch resistance. Armenians were prominent in the fight against Nazism, and Armenian peasants in the Balkan countries and in Russia hid Jews. You see, they knew what it was like. And I want your promise that you'll never stand by and watch innocent people victimized by a government – any government, even our own. We Armenians have a duty to see that it never happens again, no matter what country we live in."Steve Avakian had promised. But he never thought America could become such a country. He had grown up, joined the army, and seen how the rest of the world worked, and through it all he'd never thought that the American government could ever become that corrupt, that murderous, to its own people. He no longer thought that."So," said Volescu, "you got more than a list of names?""Yeah," replied Steve Avakian, "I do." He started handing out files. "My thought was to do the Senators and Congressman first, all within 24 hours. We begin on a holiday when they're all back in their home districts. Then we work our way down the second tier and see how far we get."He paused. "You in?"Surprisingly, Twigg was the first to reply, "Yeah, I'm in." And then he said simply, by way of explanation, "I took an oath."They all nodded. So he had. So had they all. One by one they all committed, until only Nijima was left."Nidge?" prompted Avakian.Nijima, his eyes closed, faked a snore, then an elaborate awakening. "Huh? Oh, yeah, what was you wanted me to do? Kill a bunch of evil Death Eaters, lesbian traitoresses, crooked government lawyers, pasty faced killer bureaucrats and panty waist editorial apologists, right? What's not to like?"They all laughed.Nidge continued, "Steve, it wounds me that you even thought you had to ask. I took an oath too, you know.""Right," replied Avakian. "Sorry.""So," said Volescu, who besides being a champion knitter held a PhD in International Relations, "do we tell them who we are? Or are we just going to be anonymous?""I made up some death cards on my home computer. Printed them on card stock. What do you think?" He handed each team member a card."What a babe!" offered Volescu."Yeah," said Carter,"forget that lezzy bitch, this hottie has WINGS. I want a date with HER. What's her name?"Steve Avakian smiled."Her name," he answered, "is Nemesis."Thirteen days laterThe problem was, being in a ski resort area where the rich, famous and well-connected came to play, they were suffering from an embarrassment of riches themselves – too many juicy targets. Though many of them owned property in the team’s area of operations, once Nemesis began killing these members of the regime, the rest would scurry beyond reach into their green zones far away.It also made sense to do the toughest jobs first. Three of these hard targets were selected and both for target availability and for maximum impact it had been decided to do them simultaneously if possible. Normally, the smallest formation they would have worked in was two teams of three, each with two operators to do the work and a “guardian angel” to watch over them. A third target made that impossible. And what of all those other worthies who would flee when the first shot was fired?Looking at the topo map, it was Carter who solved the three-job problem.As far as reaching out and touching the refugees, it was Nijima who provided the idea and Willow the means to execute it.“You’re not the only one who’s read up on Irish history, Steve,” Nijima had said after he told them his idea.“The problem is,” Avakian replied, “we don’t have access to enough explosives to do what you propose.”“Aw, I dunno,” drawled Willow, “Why don’t you leave that to me? I think I got a way to spread out what little we can get and make it all happen. It won’t be a loaves and fishes miracle, but it’ll work.”Avakian was skeptical. “How’s that?”So Willow told him, in detail. “That’s brilliant!” said Steve. The rest of the team nodded their heads with approval. Nijima walked over and slapped him on the shoulder. “Outstanding, man, outstanding.”“Shucks,” responded Willow modestly, “Taint nothin’ more than they taught us way back when – ‘take what the enemy gives you and use it against him.’”And now, almost two weeks later, they were ready.The prey were walking carefully these days, what with all the random killings going on all over the country. They thought they were prudent, they thought they were safe. Especially here in snow country, far away from the battlegrounds of the coasts.It was true that they had made themselves hard targets. Their homes had been hardened with what the experts represented as bullet-proof glass and fool-proof security systems. Fences, gates and doors had been strengthened and armed bodyguards hired. They WERE hard targets. It was just that they were wrong about everything else. For Nemesis was coming to visit.Stealing the propane company service truck two states away and repainting it in local colors had been tougher than stealing the recoilless rifle and its ammunition from the ski lodge.It is a little known fact that the U.S. Army has for the past sixty years or so loaned light artillery on a semi-permanent basis to the private companies who operate ski slopes. They do this for avalanche control purposes.Most often these are recoilless rifles of 106mm caliber. Off season, they are kept under strict lock and key. Security precautions when they are being used are equally tough. To the team, beneficiaries of some of the United States government’s best criminal training, it was easy as pie to lift the weapon, tripod and six rounds of high explosive ammo, along with a box of the special fifty caliber rounds for the spotting rifle mounted parallel to the recoilless that have the same ballistics as the main round.The M40A1 106mm recoilless rifle is not really 106mm, but rather 105mm. The Army added the extra millimeter to distinguish the rounds of the M40 from an earlier, unsuccessful recoilless rifle design of 105mm bore. It measures over 11 feet long and weighs almost 300 pounds. The M40 fires a 29 pound round at 1870 feet per second. Its maximum effective range for aimed shots is 2 kilometers. For area fire it is almost eight klicks.Now, the entire assembly was mounted on the ass-end of a long-bed pickup truck under a tarp, and the truck was backed up, sitting perched as far out as it could go on the rim of Lover’s Leap, a promontory that was just about equidistant from, and had line-of-sight to, the mountain retreats of a certain hollywood star with treasonous tendencies and a sitting United States Senator who had violated his oath by supporting Operation Clean Sweep. This was the spot that Carter had identified on the topo map.It was ten minutes until two o’clock on a Sunday morning. The tarp was pulled off. The parking brake was set, the wheels were chocked and the springs were jammed with steel shims to keep the vehicle bed from shifting as the long barrel swung from target to target. Each estate was well lit, making targeting simple. Both targets were abed and asleep. The star had someone in her bed. The Senator did not.“What about the girl-toy, isn’t she an innocent?” Willow had asked. Nijima had an answer for that.“They met at the Taliban fundraiser, Will,” Nidge said harshly. “She also signed the celebrity petition for the ban. They’re both domestic enemies.”Willow had shrugged. “OK, just makin’ sure.”“And are we sure about the rest of innocents? The maids and so on?” Ball asked.Carter answered that one. He had done the recon of the sites with a powerful spotting scope and a Simrad laser range finder from the vantage point of Lover’s Leap.“If the intel we got from open sources is right, and I’m sure it is, her bedroom is second-floor northwest corner, so the rounds, if we put them on target, are going to penetrate wall and window facing us and blow out the adjoining wall at an angle away from the other rooms. The Senator’s bedroom is north-east on the third floor, giving us a similar oblique shot. Because the outer walls at that end of the house are brick, I don’t expect the rounds to blow out the adjoining wall but rather to be contained in the room. Better Homes and Gardens had a photo showing the bedroom with a stone fire place and chimney on the opposite wall in the bedroom which should help to contain the blast to the Senator’s personal discomfort. In any case, the hired help are all on the lower floors. If we hit it dead-on, there shouldn’t be a problem.”“That recoilless is going is going to light up the night,” Volescu cautioned. “We’re going to have to make, what, two shots minimum on the first target, shift, and fire two more? That doesn’t count the spotting rounds. And that position is visible from lots of places across the valley and surrounding ridges. There aren’t that many routes by which we can exfil. What if some sheriff’s deputy on patrol gets there before we can boogie?”“Don’t worry, Vol,” said Avakian, “Willow’s going to make sure that they have plenty more to look at, and worry about. My bet is, nobody will be able to pick out the recoilless from everything else that’s going to be happening.”The British are, of course, a people well practised down the centuries in the use of fire as an instrument of terror. It has been said that they reached the peak of perfection in this art in Ireland after the Rising of 1798, but I do not think this is correct. Surely they excelled in the war for the conquest of South Africa, when they failed to defeat in the field a handful of Boer riflemen, but succeeded in forcing their surrender by the mass burnings of Boer homesteads and the imprisonment, under appalling conditions, of Boer women and children, many thousands of whom died. So in 1920 and 1921, the British would use against the Irish the instrument which was so successful against the Boers, previous generations of the Irish and other subject races. There was, however, one all important factor which the British evidently forgot to take into consideration. While the South Africans had no British Loyalists’ homes which could be destroyed as reprisals, Ireland was studded with castles, mansions and residences of the British Ascendancy who had made their homes here. The West Cork Brigade was slow to commence a campaign of counter-burnings, but eventually action was taken. A note was sent to the British Military Commander in west Cork, informing him that for every Republican home destroyed from that date, the homes of two British Loyalists would be burned to the ground.The British ignored this threat and two nights afterwards burned out a small farmhouse and labourer’s cottage. The following night the I.R.A. burned out four large Loyalists’ residences in the same neighbourhood. The British countered by burning four farmhouses and we promptly burned out the eight largest Loyalists’ homes in that vicinity. And so the British terror and the I.R.A. counter-terror went on. Castles, mansions and residences were sent up in flames by the I.R.A. immediately after the British fire gangs had razed the homes of Irish Republicans. Our people were suffering in this competition of terror, but the British loyalists were paying dearly, the demense walls were tumbling and the British Ascendancy was being destroyed. Our only fear was that, as time went on, there would be no more Loyalists’ homes to destroy, for we intended to go on to the bitter end. . .Very soon after our campaign of counter-burnings commenced an outcry arose from the British Loyalists themselves, demanding that the British forces should cease destroying Republican homes, as otherwise they too would be treated likewise. . . British peers in their House of Lords and members of the House of Commons, dyed in the wool Imperialists, who would gladly have destroyed the home of every Irish Nationalist, echoed those appeals. . . This outcry had its effect, and although British burnings were never officially called off, they were slowed down considerably and even halted for a time. Once again the British had reacted to the only sure method of meeting their terrorism, an effective counter-terror. – Tom Barry, Guerrilla Days in Ireland: A Personal Account of the Anglo-Irish War, pp. 116-117.It was Willow who had worked the hardest to set up the multiple strikes. He thought of it as preparing the broad canvas upon which the other team members would sketch in their smaller, but more vital, contributions.For all of their various locations and security precautions, there was one thing that all of the targets' homesteads had in common: they were all heated by propane storage tanks, some underground and some above, but all of them filled and serviced regularly by the MountainWest Corporation, known as MoWesCo.With the stolen gas service truck repainted in MoWesCo colors and Will Twigg dressed in a company uniform, the demolitions expert paid a “pre-season inspection visit” to 15 vacation properties belonging to regime supporters. At the estates where security guards or house sitters watched over the property, this was accepted as perfectly normal. At each property, Willow installed a new “leak warning system,” as he explained it to those who maintained residence there, instructing them on the necessity to evacuate the premises without delay if, in the wildly unlikely event, they ever heard it. He reinforced this message with graphic photographs of previous propane tank explosions he had downloaded from the Internet at the public library in Cantor (where there were no surveillance cameras), neatly displayed in a MoWesCo three-ring binder he’d picked up at a thrift store in Lockwood. The guards and house-sitters were suitably impressed at this extra precaution taken for their safety.Of course, Willow explained, there would be no charge for this new company service. He lied.Now despite what you have seen in Hollywood action fakeries, propane contained in well-maintained tanks is actually rather hard to detonate with both reliability and maximum effect. The best way is to suddenly compromise the tank so that the gas leaks out rapidly into a cloud and then detonate the cloud with a second charge in a low-order fuel-air explosion. This takes knowledge and experience. Willow had both. It took him three long days, shuttling about on county roads, to install the very visible alarms and the invisible demolitions and their triggering mechanisms. Nowhere did anyone question him about what he was doing. He, like them, was hired help, unimportant and eminently ignorable.Now, at six minutes to H-Hour, Will Twigg pulled a cell phone out of his pocket and pushed a speed-dial number. In fifteen houses spread out over almost twenty-two square miles, alarms began to sound, and frightened people tumbled out of bed, and fled the premises as fast as they could go.Willow gave them five minutes, and speed-dialed another number. You could hear, with various sound levels, the reports of the cutting charges. When the first ignition charge went off with a distant flash and boom, the recoilless, with Steve Avakian as gunner and Will Twigg as loader, fired the first spotting round at the Senator’s house 1600 meters distant.Normally, in avalanche work, the 106s were fired from enclosures by remote control since there had been a few cases of deadly in-tube detonations which had occurred thanks to defective, over-age ammunition. Here, the team would not have time to use such protection. The rounds had to be fired as swiftly as possible to catch the targets in their beds. That meant risk. Steve Avakian had briefed them all of the dangers and asked for volunteers. To a man, they all were willing. Steve chose Willow because the firing of the recoilless had to be closely coordinated with the detonation of Twigg’s charges anyway. Nidge was in overwatch back where the access to Lover’s Leap met the county highway.Spotting rounds have an incendiary composition in the projectile so that when it slams into the target the gunner can see the flash and know that he can fire the main charge and hit within a foot or two. If, that is, everything works right. The spotting round struck the bricks on the outside wall about six feet above Senator Richland Hamilton’s head, glancing away without much penetration because of the angle, but waking him from an erotic dream involving the First Lady of the United States.“What the hell?!?” he exclaimed as he rolled out of bed, naked as the day his mother brought him into the world.Avakian immediately held up his left hand to warn Willow, closed his eyes to preserve his night vision and fired the main gun. Even with double hearing protection the explosion of hot gasses out the back of the recoilless was painful to the hearing of both men and the concussion slammed at the air in their lungs. The flash would have blinded them had they not had their eyes shut. The broad blast cone blew the windows out of the pickup truck and inside the seat covers and dash began to burn.A 106 round, even at 1870 feet per second, takes a bit to reach a target that is a kilometer and a half away. Had it been daylight and if Senator Hamilton had possessed x-ray vision, he might have seen death approaching.As it wasn’t and he couldn’t, Richland Hamilton was still wondering what to do, and bemused by his erection, when the high explosive blew in his bedroom wall and tore off the top of his head, as well as other body parts. The second round that followed, struck the wall four feet to the left and lower down and deposited his mutilated body out the opposite wall’s window and left it hanging upside down in a tall pine tree. This would later complicate the county medical examiner’s job.All things being more or less equal, the distance between Senator Hamilton’s death and the sleeping ears of Daisy O’Connell was a little over 2 kilometers. The crack of the spotting round didn’t wake her up. The reverberating “boom . . . BOOM!” of the first round did, despite the sleeping pill she had taken. By the time the second round blew the remains of Richland Hamilton out his window, both she and Felicia were moving toward their own double-reinforced bullet-resistant window.As the big recoilless rifle swung toward them in the darkness beyond the illumination of the lodge’s exterior lights, they stared out the window toward the fires that were licking out from the holes in Senator Hamilton’s bedroom walls.Steve Avakian saw them through the sight in the reflected yard lights. Fearing they might figure out what was about to happen to them and knowing that the range was almost identical to his first two shots, he dispensed with the spotting round. Up went his left hand, he closed his eyes, and pulled the trigger. The backblast flash got Felicia’s attention, and she pointed, exclaiming “What was tha . . .”The 106 projectile hit the “bullet-proof” window’s bottom ledge, about four feet to the couple’s left.Given the angle and the proximity of the explosion, there was no need for a second shot.Which was a good thing, because the cab of the pickup was now well enveloped in flames. So, too, was much of the nearby brush. There was nothing to do but leave, which they did, driving away in the propane company truck down the road with flames on both sides. They paused only long enough to pick up Nijima at the junction, and then they proceeded as if nothing had happened, and drove to the rally point.Carter, Ball and Volescu had the easiest assignment. Congressman Haynes’ chalet was further down the ridge from two of Willow’s propane jobs. When the warning horns began to sound, they woke up the Congressman and his wife, who came out on their back deck just in time to see both estates blown to smithereens. At that moment, Volescu, who was sitting in a hide with Ball as his spotter about 725 meters away, put a .338 Lapua Magnum bullet just above his sternum. His wife was convinced that a piece of shrapnel from one of the nearby explosions must have killed her husband. The coroner didn’t think so, and the autopsy proved his suspicions had been correct.By the next morning, two newspaper editors, another congressman and three supervisory employees of the ATF and FBI were dead. People identified with the administration, gun control and especially Operation Clean Sweep continued to die with regularity over a period of about five weeks. By that time, everyone on Steve Avakian’s list was dead or had fled the team’s area of operations.At two that afternoon, the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation flew in to get a personal briefing on the death of Senator Hamilton. At 4:52PM, while he was touring the senator’s ravaged estate with a bevy of press, someone shot the Director through his body armor with a .50 caliber Barrett bolt-action rifle from 1205 meters away. Even experts said it was an impossible shot.He died at the Lockwood City Hospital two hours later.It took the FBI two days to find the sniper’s hide. As with the other crime scenes, there was little forensic evidence to identify the perpetrators.His killer was never identified, and in time the Director became just another statistic of the latest American civil war that the administration he served had done its best to start.The only thing that tied all the cases together was an image found at, or mailed to, the address of each victim.It was a death card with the classical painting of a Greek goddess on it -- Nemesis, the avenger of crime and the punisher of hubris.

I cannot continue with the blog and write at the same time. Not in part, not at all. Ergo, no more blog. Period. Comments, the most time consuming of this process, will not be read or posted. If you have something you think I need to see, email me. Thanks.Absolved chapters will continue to be posted now that I have made the time to do so. New visitors are invited to peruse the old posts.I will resume posting when Absolved is done. MikeIII

Bill Mullins asks: "Now, Dutchman, I want to know if I can resist the black-BDU-gang BEFORE they actually kill one of us or do I have to wait for them to actually kill one of us first."You can "resist" them by your refusal to comply. But you can only resist them by force of arms (which is I think what you're asking) after one, or more than one, of us is dead by their hands.They have to cross the line and that means dead bodies on our side. It is the only way. The fact that some of us are willing to accept those rules as the price of the game does not mean that all are. I understand that.Now, I am NOT saying that if they attack you, you have to stand there and take it. That's ridiculous. You have the absolute right to defend yourself and your property with deadly force. Bob Wright and I were chatting about this topic the other day and he repeated something that he always said over the years -- that when it does kick off it will be over something that no one expects, in a place they would last guess, over an issue that comes as a surprise to everyone, except in retrospect.But yes, I am saying that somebody on our side's got to die a victim of federal aggression before the rest of us take it as a tripwire and respond.Because this tripwire could be literally anybody over just about any infringement ought to make the jack booted thugs more cautious. So far, there is little concrete evidence of that.So, for now, I will continue to wave my arms and insult the interstellar cockroach, yelling, "Eat me!" It is not fair to propose the gambit if you are unwilling to be the bait yourself.LATER:We also have this --Anonymous has left a new comment on your post ""No Fort Sumters" means exactly that.": Haven't they killed enough people already? Why do you want to wait for ONE more? Are you afraid to right what has already been done? Or are you just afraid to commit your humming bird ass to your aligator mouth? Well, my brave anonymous friend, it is actually "hummingbird" and "alligator." And since I live what I preach and put my name on it every day, and if I am willing to be that "one more," tell me, brave boy, what is it that you are doing? Really? You don't even have the stones to put a name on your insult. What a wuss.MikeIII

Fort Sumter, Charleston Harbor. THIS is where the South lost the War Between the States, right at the beginning.Let me explain. First, Oath Keepers CAN'T fire first. It would be a violation of their oath. To do so would muddy the differences between them and the real revolutionaries, the real usurpers, the real tyrants.Second, the moral high ground is lost by the side who fires first.This does not mean that one side cannot set the stage so the other side discredits themselves by firing first. Indeed, this is what our enemies are hoping. Why else have they provided all the provocations?The entire unconstitutional federal leviathan which has been erected to supplant the Founders' Republic in the past 75 years rests on one assumption, which the leviathan uses at every turn to achieve their purposes: if you defy us we will destroy you, either economically or with deadly force. As long as these usurpations were in the least bearable, we did not resist by force of arms, counting upon the political system and courts for redress. But these usurpations are no longer bearable, any hope of political redress hangs by the smallest of threads in 2010 (assuming we have another election) and the federal courts have demonstrated their inability to check the leviathan on the most outrageous federal misconduct. Just ask David Olofson.My earlier outburst at Obama's simpering disingenuousness comes from the fact that he knows, as does everyone, that a. whether the Intolerable Act in its final form provides directly for jail time, or for a fine which, if you refuse to pay it will land you in jail, is a distinction without a difference, and b. if you refuse to pay the fine and they come to house to force you to go to prison as a result and you resist, they will kill you.He knows how the federal government exercises its power and he could care less. He believes he has the right to force us to his will. He will wrap his arguments in lies and good intentions, but in the end, absent the Constitution and the rule of law as codified by the Founders there is only force.But even with these latest federal constitutional crimes about to happen, it must be the collectivist federals who fire first and that is simply achieved by our refusal to knuckle under. If, for example, in the case of "health care" we refuse to pay the fines, they will seek to arrest us and jail us as an example to the others. Their entire system would collapse if someone successfully resists, as it is based upon the illusion of omnipotence, omniscience, and inevitablity.If we simply REFUSE to cooperate in our own oppression, eventually some federal thug is going to feel compelled to kill one or more of us for our temerity, likely on our own doorstep, in our homes, with our family watching (or, made casualties themselves).This is the gambit. If we take it, they are lost. If they take, they are lost.Lincoln hoped and prayed that the South would fire on Fort Sumter, just as these tyrannical bastards are hoping to get the same reaction from us. Lincoln got his wish. We should not give the present day tyrant wannabes theirs.If we refuse to bow to their tyranny, however, eventually it is they who lose patience. Time is against them once people start defying them. They MUST scare the rest of the sheep in order to maintain power.And so they will come to us with deadly force. Then we can resist with deadly force. En masse. Together. And we will finish these domestic enemies of the Founders Republic by giving them incentives to leave or die.AFTER they start it.In legitimate self-defense.Seems simple enough to me.Why there is such confusion over this principle I do not understand.MikeIII

Found this on Drudge - -http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2009/11/interview-with-the-president-jail-time-for-those-without-health-care-insurance.htmlPolitical Punch Power, pop, and probings from ABC News Senior White House Correspondent Jake Tapper Interview with the President: Jail Time for Those without Health Care Insurance? November 09, 2009 6:30 PMFrom Sunlen Miller: During an exclusive interview with ABC News’ Jake Tapper today, President Obama said that penalties are appropriate for people who try to “free ride” the health care system but stopped short of endorsing the threat of jail time for those who refuse to pay a fine for not having insurance. “What I think is appropriate is that in the same way that everybody has to get auto insurance and if you don't, you're subject to some penalty, that in this situation, if you have the ability to buy insurance, it's affordable and you choose not to do so, forcing you and me and everybody else to subsidize you, you know, there's a thousand dollar hidden tax that families all across America are -- are burdened by because of the fact that people don't have health insurance, you know, there's nothing wrong with a penalty.”Under the House bill those who can afford to buy insurance and don’t’ pay a fine. If the refuse to pay that fine there’s a threat – as with a lot of tax fines – of jail time. The Senate removed that provision in the Senate Finance Committee. Mr. Obama said penalties have to be high enough for people to not game the system, but it’s also important to not be “so punitive” that people who are having a hard time find themselves suddenly worse off, thus why hardship exemptions have been built in the legislation. “I think the general broad principle is simply that people who are paying for their health insurance aren't subsidizing folks who simply choose not to until they get sick and then suddenly they expect free health insurance. That's -- that's basic concept of responsibility that I think most Americans abide by,” Mr. Obama said, “penalties are appropriate for people who try to free ride the system and force others to pay for their health insurance.”The President said that he didn’t think the question over the appropriateness of possible jail time is the “biggest question” the House and Senate are facing right now. Read more from Jake Tapper’s interview with President Obama HERE.-Sunlen Miller Ironic, ain't it? They're going to call in the deadly force of the federal leviathan to force people into their system, which will be resisted -- believe me on this -- at the point of a gun. The resulting hundreds of thousands of dead in the civil war this guy starts are supposed to be chalked up to "health care"? Notice how he mealy-mouths around the answer. This guy can't even tell the plain truth when the language is in the bill and, him being a big hi-falutin' "constitutional" lawyer and all, he knows damn well that they are forcing all of us to play or pay -- and that at the end of that "pay," ultimately, points the muzzle of a federal gun. To call this guy a lying anal sphincter does a disservice to honest, hard-working anal sphincters everywhere.Oh, well, they said he was the "new Lincoln." Didn't his election start a civil war that ended in hundreds of thousands of dead Americans? Yup, I think I recollect that. So I guess we've been warned, huh?May God judge these tyrannical, power-hungry warmongers by turning them over to the deepest depths of Hell. Murdering bastards. And they think they have the right to condemn us all to servitude and kill us if we don't submit. They'll find out differently. We ain't the defenseless fetuses their policies have been murdering for decades. We can shoot back."Game the system"? "GAME THE SYSTEM"!?!?How about we "game the system" with hundreds of thousands of these, Mr. President?How long do you think your "system" will last then?Mike VanderboeghIII

Well, here I am at the Tea Party Express rally in Birmingham yesterday. That is, you could see me if it weren't for the bald-headed guy in the grey jacket and the lady in the black tee-shirt (toward the right of the image). See that Threeper flag peeking out over her right shoulder? That's me, taking the load off my feet in a folding chair, with a perfectly great view of their butts.I wasn't going to go, but my buddy Jerry called and provided the ride (my Blazer needs a starter and we're down to one car for a while).Here's what the Birmingham News said about it:Tea Party Express makes stop in Birmingham's Kelly Ingram ParkBy Robert K. Gordon -- The Birmingham News November 09, 2009, 3:35PMAn estimated 500 to 600 people converged on Kelly Ingram Park today to criticize President Obama, health care reform and government bailouts.The Tea Party Express made its way to Birmingham, the 32nd stop on its cross country tour. The grassroots organization is in a get-out-the-vote mode a year ahead of the mid-term elections.Speakers decried Obama's policies as socialism and criticized the president for ignoring troops in Afghanistan and for his "failure to act against the Muslim terrorist who slaughtered troops at Fort Hood."The event was part revival and part carnival with songs to liven an already energetic crowd and items for sale such as T-shirts, books, CDs and caps."I'm here for freedom," said Pinson resident Tim Emala. "We need to get back to the Constitution. We seemed to have strayed away from it. The politicians need to read it."Emala said issues such as health care, global warming and government bailouts are all about government control. "I don't see where the government can do better than the people," he said.It was a great rally, plenty of energy, if a bit short on specifics -- Get out the vote, that sort of thing. One of the national speakers who came in on the bus -- a FOX News contributor, he said -- read the punitive provisions of Pelosi's Intolerable Act and swore that he would disobey it if it came to be law. We need more of that.Met a bunch of Oath Keepers and handed out a bunch more Oath Keeper cards. I also chatted with the black counter-demonstrators who were upset that someone was dissing Obama in Kelly Ingram Park, scene of many of Bull Connor's police brutality outrages in the 60s. I tried to enagage them, talking about the Deacons for Defense. Didn't make a scratch, they'd never heard of them. They got pissed off when I asked them why they were getting a lesson in their own history from a fat, old white guy who they wanted to eject from their sacred ground.Then something happened that I thought I'd never see. You know how middle-class folks are so respectful of the cops? Well, the rally ran over and the lady at the mike said we had been ordered by the cops to disperse or else. The crowd, which had been in a good humor, instantly turned universally ugly."Tell them to come and make us!" more than one shouted. "Tell 'em to go to hell!" shouted others. Boos and shouts of defiance came from every sector of the crowd. One guy in an NRA cap yelled, "Piss on them!" (Only to shushed by his wife because there were kids present. He looked angry and shamefaced at the same time.)The rally ended shortly afterward and the cops did not intervene, but I had never seen such folks so immediately ready to confront cops. The pendulum is swinging back the other way, people. Try not to get hit when it swings by you.MikeIII

Marines in Fallujah, Iraq.Nov. 10, 1775 -- Continental Congress establishes Marine Corps On 10 November 1775, the Continental Congress meeting in Philadelphia passed a resolution stating that "two Battalions of Marines be raised" for service as landing forces with the fleet. This resolution, sponsored by John Adams, established the Continental Marines and marked the birth date of the United States Marine Corps. Serving on land and at sea, these first Marines distinguished themselves in a number of important operations, including their first amphibious raid into the Bahamas in March 1776, under the command of Captain (later Major) Samuel Nicholas. Nicholas, the first commissioned officer in the Continental Marines, remained the senior Marine officer throughout the American Revolution and is considered to be the first Marine Commandant. -- "Chronological Outline of the United States Marine Corps History, 1775-1915," History of the United States Marines.

A Berlin synagogue after Kristallnacht.Kristallnacht; literally "Crystal night" or the Night of Broken Glass was an anti-Jewish pogrom in Nazi Germany and Austria on 9 to 10 November 1938. It is also known as Novemberpogrome, Reichskristallnacht, Reichspogromnacht or Pogromnacht in German.Kristallnacht was triggered by the assassination of German diplomat Ernst vom Rath by Herschel Grynszpan, a German-born Polish Jew. In a coordinated attack on Jewish people and their property, 99 Jews were murdered and 25,000 to 30,000 were arrested and placed in concentration camps. 267 synagogues were destroyed and thousands of homes and businesses were ransacked. This was done by the Hitler Youth, Gestapo, SS and SA. Kristallnacht also served as a pretext and a means for the wholesale confiscation of firearms from German Jews. -- Wikipedia

This is said to be a first-hand account of the Ft Hood shooting. It has the flavor of it but I do not know its provenance, so caveat lector. If true, the female officer may have been "Jessica Lynched," that is, her role may have been exaggerated because the Army needed a hero. I don't make such a conclusion based on one piece of unsourced evidence, but it is odd that Bob Wright and I were talking about this very possibility just yesterday on the phone.MikeIIISubject: inside story from Ft. HoodDate: Sun, 8 Nov 2009 18:00:05 -0500Since I don't know when I'll sleep (it's 4 am now) I'll write what happened (the abbreviated version.....the long one is already part of the investigation with more to come). I'll not write about any part of the investigation that I've learned about since (as a witness I know more than I should since inevitably my JAG brothers and sisters are deeply involved in the investigation). Don't assume that most of the current media accounts are very accurate. They're not. They'll improve with time. Only those of us who were there really know what went down. But as they collate our statements they'll get it right. I did my SRP last week (Soldier Readiness Processing) but you're supposed to come back a week later to have them look at the smallpox vaccination site (it's this big itchy growth on your shoulder). I am probably alive because I pulled a ---------- and entered the wrong building first (the main SRP building). The Medical SRP building is off to the side. Realizing my mistake I left the main building and walked down the sidewalk to the medical SRP building. As I'm walking up to it the gunshots start. Slow and methodical. But continuous. Two ambulatory wounded came out. Then two soldiers dragging a third who was covered in blood. Hearing the shots but not seeing the shooter, along with a couple other soldiers I stood in the street and yelled at everyone who came running that it was clear but to "RUN!". I kept motioning people fast. about 6-10 minutes later (the shooting continuous), two cops ran up. one male, one female. we pointed in the direction of the shots. they headed that way (the medical SRP building was about 50 meters away). then a lot more gunfire. a couple minutes later a balding man in ACU's came around the building carrying a pistol and holding it tactically. He started shooting at us and we all dived back to the cars behind us. I don't think he hit the couple other guys who were there. I did see the bullet holes later in the cars. First I went behind a tire and then looked under the body of the car. I've been trained how to respond to gunfire...but with my own weapon. To have no weapon I don't know how to explain what that felt like. I hadn't run away and stayed because I had thought about the consequences or anything like that. I wasn't thinking anything through. Please understand, there was no intention. I was just staying there because I didn't think about running. It never occurred to me that he might shoot me. Until he started shooting in my direction and I realized I was unarmed. Then the female cop comes around the corner. He shoots her. (according to the news accounts she got a round into him. I believe it, I just didn't see it. he didn't go down.) She goes down. He starts reloading. He's fiddling with his mags. Weirdly he hasn't dropped the one that was in his weapon. He's holding the fresh one and the old one (you do that on the range when time is not of the essence but in combat you would just let the old mag go). I see the male cop around the left corner of the building. (I'm about 15-20 meters from the shooter.) I yell at the cop, "He's reloading, he's reloading. Shoot him! Shoot him!) You have to understand, everything was quiet at this point. The cop appears to hear me and comes around the corner and shoots the shooter. He goes down. The cop kicks his weapon further away. I sprint up to the downed female cop. Another captain (I think he was with me behind the cars) comes up as well. She's bleeding profusely out of her thigh. We take our belts off and tourniquet her just like we've been trained (I hope we did it right...we didn't have any CLS (combat lifesaver) bags with their awesome tourniquets on us, so we worked with what we had). Meanwhile, in the most bizarre moment of the day, a photographer was standing over us taking pictures. I suppose I'll be seeing those tomorrow. Then a soldier came up and identified himself as a medic. I then realized her weapon was lying there unsecured (and on "fire"). I stood over it and when I saw a cop yelled for him to come over and secure her weapon (I would have done so but I was worried someone would mistake me for a bad guy). I then went over to the shooter. He was unconscious. A Lt Colonel was there and had secured his primary weapon for the time being. He also had a revolver. I couldn't believe he was one of ours. I didn't want to believe it. Then I saw his name and rank and realized this wasn't just some specialist with mental issues. At this point there was a guy there from CID and I asked him if he knew he was the shooter and had him secured. He said he did. I then went over the slaughter house. the medical SRP building. No human should ever have to see what that looked like. and I won't tell you. Just believe me. Please. there was nothing to be done there. Someone then said there was someone critically wounded around the corner. I ran around (while seeing this floor to ceiling window that someone had jumped through movie style) and saw a large African-American soldier lying on his back with two or three soldiers attending. I ran up and identified two entrance wounds on the right side of his stomach, one exit wound on the left side and one head wound. He was not bleeding externally from the stomach wounds (though almost certainly internally) but was bleeding from the head wound. A soldier was using a shirt to try and stop the head bleeding. He was conscious so I began talking to him to keep him so. He was 42, from North Carolina, he was named something Jr., his son was named something III and he had a daughter as well. His children lived with him. He was divorced. I told him the blubber on his stomach saved his life. He smiled. a young soldier in civvies showed up and identified himself as a combat medic. We debated whether to put him on the back of a pickup truck. A doctor (well, an audiologist) showed up and said you can't move him, he has a head wound. we finally sat tight. I went back to the slaughterhouse. they weren't letting anyone in there. not even medics. finally, after about 45 minutes had elapsed some cops showed up in tactical vests. someone said the TBI building was unsecured. They headed into there. All of a sudden a couple more shots were fired. People shouted there was a second shooter. a half hour later the SWAT showed up. there was no second shooter. that had been an impetuous cop apparently. but that confused things for a while. meanwhile I went back to the shooter. the female cop had been taken away. a medic was pumping plasma into the shooter. I'm not proud of this but I went up to her and said "this is the shooter, is there anyone else who needs attention...do them first". she indicated everyone else living was attended to. I still hadn't seen any EMTs or ambulances. I had so much blood on me that people kept asking me if I was ok. but that was all other people's blood. eventually (an hour and a half to two hours after the shootings) they started landing choppers. they took out the big African American guy and the shooter. I guess the ambulatory wounded were all at the SRP building. Everyone else in my area was dead. I suppose the emergency responders were told there were multiple shooters. I heard that was the delay with the choppers (they were all civilian helicopters). they needed a secure LZ. but other than the initial cops who did everything right, I didnt' see a lot of them for a while. I did see many a soldier rush out to help their fellows/sisters. there was one female soldier, I dont' know her name or rank but I would recognize her anywhere who was everywhere helping people. a couple people, mainly civilians, were hysterical, but only a couple. one civilian freaked out when I tried to comfort her when she saw my uniform. I guess she had seen the shooter up close. a lot of soldiers were rushing out to help even when we thought there was another gunman out there. this Army is not broken no matter what the pundits say. not the Army I saw. and then they kept me for a long time to come. oh, and perhaps the most surreal thing, at 1500 (the end of the workday on Thursdays) when the bugle sounded we all came to attention and saluted the flag. in the middle of it all. this is what I saw. it can't have been real. but this is my small corner of what happened.

gandalf23 has a couple of pertinent praxis questions. The first:Any hints on where to find helmets for those prices? The local surplus store wants a lot for the PASGT helmet, and does not have any old style steel pots. Looking online they still seem to run north of $100. Gandalf, write me an email and I'll make some suggestions. On his second question, I would like to get feedback from anyone who has experience with dyeing and/or painting MOLLE gear.Also, got a question. I've ended up with a lot of three color desert gear (matches the DCU): mag pouches, vests, canteen covers, grenade pouches, basically I've got enough to outfit four or five riflemen in three color desert web gear. My cousin and some of the guys in his unit gave most of them to me when they got new stuff issued to them in ACU, the rest I got cheap from the local surplus place. The problem is that although I'm in Texas, there is not a whole lot of desert around here where I am. I was thinking of dyeing the gear to something more suitable, like coyote/earth brown or gray/green that would blend in much better here in Central/East Texas.. Any thoughts on that? Has anyone out there done that? I know in FM 21-15 it says not to dye the older style web gear, but does not say why. The .pdf on Molle II gear by SDS also says not to dye the gear. I assume the thinking is that the dye somehow weakens the fabric? Or perhaps the fabric will not retain dye? Dunno. Most of the pouches, and the vests, I have are made by SDS, a few are made by Michael Bsomething, if that helps. If dyeing does not work well, what about spray painting? I would imagine it would flake off quite a bit. I have a few old canvas mail sacks that were dyed green then spray painted camouflage and the paint flakes off all the time, which is why I have not tried that yet on the molle gear, but maybe some of y'all have done so successfully? Or maybe the molle gear fabric holds paint better? Thanks for any assistance you can provide on this!

I've had little time to do anything but sift through the comments and take out the repugnant ones. I have not had time to issue my own comments to the borderline ones. Lest anyone get the wrong (or right) impression, here is what I think on the latest kerfluffles:Gay marriage. Marriages should be happy, yes, but between a man and a woman. If homosexuals wish to live together, I have no legal objection. The problem comes when such couples wish to have their unions codified in law. If the state gets out of the marriage business entirely, that's fine with me. Until they don't, I object. So sue me.Muslims in the military. I have no legal problem with anyone of any faith, or no faith at all, being in the United States military as long as they take the Oath and are faithful to it. I have a huge problem with jihadists who infiltrate the military only to violate that Oath. I also have a problem with the command structure that sets our soldiers up as defenseless ducks in a shooting gallery. This isn't "risk averse," it is insane.Response to Pelosi's Intolerable Act. I am as angry as the next man, maybe more, at this unconstitutional abomination. However, direct threats of unilateral action violate the Threeper prime directive of "No Fort Sumters." Like gun control, they will eventually set themselves up to come crack some of the more public recalcitrant heads. When that happens, when they have fired the first shots, then we can respond in kind. Until then, we should be thinking of non-violent ways to wreck the Act and make it unenforceable. Rocks, anybody?MikeIII

This just in from David Codrea:Saw Dedicated Dad's comment on Sipsey St.Here's a consequence for those who defy "Obey or be destroyed" that, curiously, none of the professional "gun lobby" groups seem to have noticed.http://www.examiner.com/x-1417-Gun-Rights-Examiner~y2009m11d9-Will-House-health-care-bill-create-new-class-of-prohibited-personsPerhaps it can be exploited to help wreck this train in the Senate.CUM ULLA SELLA IN PUGNO TABERNA!David Codrea

Dedicated Dad commented on my post "The Hand Grenade Within Pelosi's Intolerable Act." It is so good, I want to highlight it on its own. Though I find much in the life, philosophy and words of Malcolm X with which I disagree, there is one phrase of which I am perhaps more fond than he:By Any Means Necessary.This great Republic is filled with men who - like me - will not submit to tyranny.Though I have maintained medical insurance throughout my adult life - at great expense, especially during periods of unemployment - This I vow: if this disgusting travesty is signed into law I will immediately and permanently drop my coverage.Further, I will take any and all possible steps to avoid paying any taxes or penalties associated with this ridiculous abuse of power.Let me be plain: I hereby announce my intention to do everything within my power to willfully violate the so-called "coverage mandate" - for no other reason than the fact that I am a free man and will not be subjugated by this or any other regime.Let this statement serve as my declaration and confession of guilt - if I am without coverage it is due to a deliberate and willful act on my part.Further, let this serve as a warning that I will resist any and all attempts to use physical force to compel my compliance (or punish my non-compliance) by any and all means which are or may come to my disposal.By Any Means Necessary.Let me be clear: I have always maintained health insurance and will continue to do so - but an out-of-control government's demand that I do is probably the only thing which could PREVENT me from doing so.I am a citizen, not a subject.I will not submit.I will resist.By Any Means Necessary.

Sipsey Street reader Daniel J. Almond has created a new term in reaction to "Pelosi's Intolerable Act Passes the House.": Americans In Name Only (AINO's) passed this unconstitutional, illegitimate, un-American, socialist bill. I like it.MikeIII

Tomorrow, the House of Representatives will vote on a 2,000 page bill to give the federal government the power to micromanage the health care of every single American. The bill will no doubt pass. It will raise your taxes, steal your freedom, invade your privacy, and ration your health care. Even the Republicans have introduced their version of Obamacare Lite. It, too, if passed, will compel employers to provide coverage, bribe the states to change their court rules, and tell insurance companies whom to insure.We do not have two political parties in this country, America. We have one party; called the Big Government Party. The Republican wing likes deficits, war, and assaults on civil liberties. The Democratic wing likes wealth transfer, taxes, and assaults on commercial liberties. Both parties like power; and neither is interested in your freedoms. Think about it. Government is the negation of freedom. Freedom is your power and ability to follow your own free will and your own conscience. The government wants you to follow the will of some faceless bureaucrat.When I recently asked Congressman James Clyburn, the third ranking Democrat in the House, to tell me "Where in the Constitution the federal government is authorized to regulate everyone's healthcare--," he replied that most of what Congress does is not authorized by the Constitution, but they do it anyway. There you have it. Congress recognizes no limits on its power. It doesn't care about the Constitution, it doesn't care about your inalienable rights, it doesn't care about the liberties protected by the Bill of Rights, it doesn't even read the laws it writes.America, this is not an academic issue. If this health care bill becomes law, life as you have known it, freedom as you have exercised it, privacy as you have enjoyed it, will cease to be. When Congress takes away our freedoms, they will be gone forever. What will you do to prevent this from happening? -- Judge Andrew Napolitano, Fox News Channel's senior judicial analyst.An excellent question.This is why I have dubbed the Health Care bill "the Intolerable Act." The Denver Post's David Harsanyi, writing at RealClearPolitics, suggests the only way the bill could be read and believed is with the concurrent imbibing of large quantities of alcohol:The King James version of the Bible runs more than 600 pages and is crammed with celestial regulations. Newton's Principia Mathematica distilled many of the rules of physics in a mere 974 pages.Neither have anything on Nancy Pelosi's new fiendishly entertaining health-care opus, which tops 1,900 pages.So curl up by a fire with a fifth of whiskey and just dive in. But drink quickly. In the new world, your insurance choices will be tethered to decisions made by people with Orwellian titles ("1984" was only 268 pages!) like the "Health Choices Commissioner" or "Inspector General for the Health Choices Administration."You will, of course, need to be plastered to buy Pelosi's fantastical proposition that 450,000 words of new regulations, rules, mandates, penalties, price controls, taxes and bureaucracy will have the transformative power to "provide affordable, quality health care for all Americans and reduce the growth in health care spending . . . ."It's going to take some time to deconstruct this lengthy masterpiece, but as you flip through the pages of the House bill, you will notice the word "regulation" appears 181 times. "Tax" is there 214 times. "Fees," 103 times. As we all know, nothing says "affordability" like higher taxes and fees.The word "shall" - as in "must" or "required to" - appears over 3,000 times. The word, alas, is never preceded by the patriotic phrase "mind our own freaking business." Not once.To vote for the bill, a legislator must believe a $1 trillion price tag is "revenue neutral," or that it alleviates any of the pain higher costs bring to the average American. This would require alcohol.Mark well that word, "shall," and mark as well the arrogance implicit in it.But for all the lunacies and outrages in the bill, this is the hidden hand grenade in the Intolerable Act:PELOSI: Buy a $15,000 Policy or Go to Jail JCT Confirms Failure to Comply with Democrats’ Mandate Can Lead to 5 Years in Jail Friday, November 06, 2009 Today, Ranking Member of the House Ways and Means Committee Dave Camp (R-MI) released a letter from the non-partisan Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT) confirming that the failure to comply with the individual mandate to buy health insurance contained in the Pelosi health care bill (H.R. 3962, as amended) could land people in jail. The JCT letter makes clear that Americans who do not maintain “acceptable health insurance coverage” and who choose not to pay the bill’s new individual mandate tax (generally 2.5% of income), are subject to numerous civil and criminal penalties, including criminal fines of up to $250,000 and imprisonment of up to five years.In response to the JCT letter, Camp said: “This is the ultimate example of the Democrats’ command-and-control style of governing – buy what we tell you or go to jail. It is outrageous and it should be stopped immediately.”Key excerpts from the JCT letter appear below:“H.R. 3962 provides that an individual (or a husband and wife in the case of a joint return) who does not, at any time during the taxable year, maintain acceptable health insurance coverage for himself or herself and each of his or her qualifying children is subject to an additional tax.” [page 1]- - - - - - - - - - “If the government determines that the taxpayer’s unpaid tax liability results from willful behavior, the following penalties could apply…” [page 2]- - - - - - - - - - “Criminal penaltiesProsecution is authorized under the Code for a variety of offenses. Depending on the level of the noncompliance, the following penalties could apply to an individual: • Section 7203 – misdemeanor willful failure to pay is punishable by a fine of up to $25,000 and/or imprisonment of up to one year. • Section 7201 – felony willful evasion is punishable by a fine of up to $250,000 and/or imprisonment of up to five years.” [page 3]When confronted with this same issue during its consideration of a similar individual mandate tax, the Senate Finance Committee worked on a bipartisan basis to include language in its bill that shielded Americans from civil and criminal penalties. The Pelosi bill, however, contains no similar language protecting American citizens from civil and criminal tax penalties that could include a $250,000 fine and five years in jail.“The Senate Finance Committee had the good sense to eliminate the extreme penalty of incarceration. Speaker Pelosi’s decision to leave in the jail time provision is a threat to every family who cannot afford the $15,000 premium her plan creates. Fortunately, Republicans have an alternative that will lower health insurance costs without raising taxes or cutting Medicare,” said Camp.According to the Congressional Budget Office the lowest cost family non-group plan under the Speaker’s bill would cost $15,000 in 2016.Now, we are told by Jeffrey H. Anderson, senior fellow in health-care studies at the Pacific Research Institute, that we need not worry excessively because:The House bill has passed — barely and belatedly — and it is now dead. Nothing like it will ever pass the Senate. The question now is whether anything will, now that the voters have spoken in New Jersey and Virginia — and now that the exceedingly narrow margin in the House will likely invite even greater scrutiny of that which is being proposed.Greater scrutiny will not help the Democrats' efforts. In truth, their hopes for passage largely hinge on successfully hiding two plain facts from the voters: One, the House Republicans and the Congressional Budget Office have now shown that a bill costing $61 billion can lower Americans' insurance premiums, while bills costing $1.7 trillion cannot (and instead would raise them substantially). Two, the Democrats' plans would be paid for only if they follow through on plans to siphon hundreds of billions of dollars out of already-barely-solvent Medicare, and to do so just in time for the baby boomers' retirement. Given the magnitude of the challenge of continuing to hide these plain facts from an increasingly attentive citizenry, the Democratic health-care train has a very bumpy ride ahead — as it rolls into the chamber that the American Founders thought from the beginning would ultimately decide our fate: the Senate.Leaving aside Anderson's arguable proposition that the Founders intended the Senate to be the arbiters of our fate, the fact of the matter is that both versions of the bill, Senate and House, contain the same hand grenade: the compulsory participation of all citizens.By what authority in the Constitution is this possible? There is no such language and they cannot credibly twist the plain words to their porposes. This is merely the argument of force. THEY have decided that WE will ALL play their tyrannical game or WE will pay the consequences of our refusal.Socialism enforced at the barrel of a federal gun is communism and it is tyranny. It is, in fact, the final breakdown of the Founders' system that they inserted the Second Amendment to deal with.It does not matter if the Senate removes the incarceration clause, or reduces the fine. Whatever the final language of the bill this is certain: We WILL be compelled to participate OR ELSE.But I do not think that these arrogant sods understand what "or else" really means.For, as I have said many times before, when democracy turns to tyranny, those who possess firearms still get to vote.Ironic, isn't it? That a so-called "health care bill" could lead to armed resistance, death and civil war? Yet that is the hand grenade within this Intolerable Act. They should have tried harder to disarm us first. But they made a fundamental mistake. They thought all the real Americans of the cut of the Founders were dead and buried and all that remained was Europeanized sheep to be easily herded about.I think they will find out to their eternal sorrow that they were dead wrong.We return then to Judge Napolitano's question:"When Congress takes away our freedoms, they will be gone forever. What will you do to prevent this from happening?" Look in the mirror and ask yourself, "What will you do?" Mike VanderboeghThe alleged leader of a merry band of Three PercentersGeorgeMason1776@aol.comsipseystreetirregulars.blogspot.com

The latest from RWE:The Nyberg "III" Flag Wooldand patch is now available from Raven's Wood Enterprises, LLC. $3 each post paid. The patches measure approximately 1.9 X 3 inches and are of the same quality that our coveted "Threeper" patches are. If combining orders for "Threeper" patches and Nyberg flag patches, ensure you specify how many you want of each type. The "Threeper" patches are $4 each, post paid. Only Woodland "Threeper" patches are available. USPS Money Orders, Cashier's & Certified Checks and cash (though any orders in cash are at the sender's sole risk) get immediate processing and shipment. Personal & business check orders are held 10 days until the check clears. Send all orders to: Raven's Wood Enterprises, LLCPO Box 962Birmingham, MI 48009 Please note that any orders received between 13 November and Thanksgiving won't be processed until December 1, 2009 in observance of Michigan's deer season and the holiday! Thanks! RWE-III

More here later on the handgrenade she just baked in her little socialist cake. MikeIII

Go.Read.Reflect Act.http://westernrifleshooters.blogspot.com/2009/11/truth-from-across-pond.html