Memorial Day: Military People and Armed Citizens

Memorial Day is always a gut-punch for me, because the sacrifices our fighting men and some women made for us overwhelms me.

Our most horrible war was the Civil War. We lost 620,000 or so men, 360,000 of them in blue and 260,000 of them in gray.

By comparison, Americans suffered 400,000 deaths and beat the Germans and the Japanese in less time in World War Two. United Americans can do damn near anything.

Donald and Melania and troops honor our fallen at Arlington National Cemetery, 2019.

 

In 1968, Lyndon Johnson and the Congress decided to make Memorial Day a Monday holiday for a three day weekend. LBJ, who helped in the murder of war hero John Kennedy, did more to demoralize the military of this nation than any other president. His inept and dishonest leadership of the military led to needless losses of American lives and failure in a winnable war.

Self satisfied college punks and their worthless profs fomented hatred against soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines. Leftist politicians like the Clintons and the vast majority of Democrats since the Carter Administration fed the hatred for the military. May they burn in Hell!

Meanwhile, DC city government pissants are allegedly trying to effectively cancel the Rolling Thunder motorcycle runs for Memorial Day with their elaborate and costly permitting demands. And a news story broke saying the veterans’ group AMVETS are trying to get Democrat members of Congress to display the POW/MIA flag again. Seems many of the Dem New Copperheads took these flags down and are displaying the Rainbow Pervert flag instead. This is the fag flag that has no white, black or brown stripes — the colors of the vast majority of Americans. Tisk tisk. How exclusionary.

For now, prayers and toasts for our beloved dead in uniform.

Dad, Uncle Chuck, Uncle Rusty, and Aunt Billie were World War Two veterans. Uncle Don and Aunt Olive served in the Korean War. Virtually all of Dad’s male friends were veterans of World War Two or the Korean War.

Dad was an aircraft mechanic aboard an aircraft carrier in the Pacific Fleet. Uncle Chuck was an Army sergeant in the Pacific Theater. Aunt Billie was an Army nurse in the Pacific Theater.

Dad told me when the fleet got the word we had nuked the Japs twice, he and other crew members on the deck of their aircraft carrier cheered until they puked. They knew the war was about to end.

Uncle Rusty was an Army Air Corps sergeant in the Pacific Theater. He won a Distinguished Flying Cross for heroism during a bombing raid against the Japs. The plane’s bomb dropping gear hung up, so Uncle Rusty did a pull-up over an open bomb bay and kicked bombs out of the bomber. His was only one of three bombers to survive the raid.

Uncle Rusty, when asked why he would risk falling out of an aircraft, said he considered the risk but he really wanted to kill the Japs. Killing the enemy is the best way to shorten a war.

Aunt Olive, an Army nurse, was present during some nuclear tests. Cancer took her life in the early 1980s. I and a girlfriend of mine visited her as she lay dying in a hospital in Los Angeles, ravaged by the disease and sad my last glimpse of her would be in a condition of terrible suffering. Ironically, my only vision of her was when she was in the prime of her life, healing the sick and helping the poor.

Uncle Don was a medic in the Korean War. But that didn’t stop the Chinese bastards from shooting him at least five times. Uncle Don was a quiet hero not given to boasting about himself. When I was home on leave from the Army, Dad sent me over to Uncle Don to borrow some sheet metal tools. Uncle Don said, “Help yourself, Kev. Sheet metal tools are in the box against the left side of the garage.”

There among the tin snips, the mallets, the scribers, and his templates was a Purple Heart with a gold leaf on it. The gold leaf meant Uncle Don had been wounded in combat at least five times.

Uncle Rusty was like Bill Parcells, a loud boastful and sarcastic sort. But on his award and on other acts of heroism he performed as an airman and as a sheriff’s deputy, he said very little. Aunt Lorraine told me about Uncle Rusty’s award after he died. He dedicated his spare time to helping veterans in VA hospitals. When I had a radio show in Ohio, I would send him tapes of the shows so his veterans in Nevada could listen to them.

Generations of Service in one Family. Norman Rockwell cover for the Saturday Evening Post. My American military family tree goes back to the Mexican War.

 

Dad was like Robert Stack, the original Eliot Ness. Uncle Chuck was like Lee Marvin, a good guy to have on your side but with an extra helping of meanness. Uncle Don was like Jimmy Stewart. All these actors were veterans also.

These were the men who were my role models.

Aunt Billie and Aunt Olive were two of the kindest women you’d ever want to meet. But they had inner flames too. Aunt Billie burned for her family. Aunt Olive burned for serving the poor. The world is poorer without them too.

Grandpa Sherlock, Grandpa Hurley, and Uncle Emil were World War One veterans. Grandpa Hurley and Uncle Emil were gassed and this shortened their lives. One of Grandpa Sherlock’s cousins, infantryman William Linskey, won the Distinguished Service Cross for valor in combat after he died in battle in France on July 4, 1918. Those in uniform and in the first response services can’t count on having holidays.

Cousin Tommy served in Vietnam. I served in the 1970s and the early 1980s but was fortunate not to come under enemy fire.

Granny Ruth’s Uncle George was a Spanish American War veteran. My great great Uncle Frank and his brother fought in the Civil War for Mr. Lincoln. One did hard time in the Army of the Potomac. The other served under General Sherman.

One of my distant relatives was an officer during the Mexican War. The general in charge of the outfit was the truly heroic Zachary Taylor.

My wife 99’s ancestors fought for Austria-Hungary until the day it unraveled at the end of World War One. Her dad was a tanker veteran of the Battle of the Bulge. He won the Purple Heart for wounds he suffered in that horrible action.

Other ancestors of mine were generations of rebels in Ireland … back when the people of Ireland had true faith and guts.

In most cases, these men and women did not seek military careers or military glory. Instead, it was thrust upon them and they lived up to the challenges the wars threw at them. And even though most did not die in combat, having to serve took some of the best years from their lives and the wounds or illnesses or exposure to radiation shortened their lives.

 

The average man and woman even a century ago were much tougher people than we are now.

I am mentioning this against a recent news “flash” trumpeted by the fake news.

It concerned private citizens in New Mexico who used their powers of citizen’s arrest to round up and hold for immigration authorities hundreds of illegals.

From the New York Time’s 4/18/2019 hostile article, this:

“ALBUQUERQUE — A right-wing militia group operating in southern New Mexico has begun stopping groups of migrant families and detaining them at gunpoint before handing them over to Border Patrol agents, raising tension over the tactics of armed vigilantes along the border between the United States and Mexico.

Members of the group, which calls itself the United Constitutional Patriots, filmed several of their actions in recent days, including the detention this week of a group of about 200 migrants who had recently crossed the border near Sunland Park, N.M., with the intention of seeking asylum. They uploaded videos to social media of exhausted looking migrant families, blinking in the darkness in the glare of what appeared to be the militia’s spotlights.

Professed militias have long operated along the border with attempts to curb the flow of undocumented migrants into the United States. But targeting the recent influx of families, who are legally allowed to request asylum and often quickly surrender to Border Patrol agents, is raising tension with human rights activists (aka anti-American scum) in this part of the West.

The American Civil Liberties Union denounced the militia’s actions in a letter on Thursday that asked New Mexico’s governor and attorney general to investigate the group. The A.C.L.U. said the militia had no legal authority under New Mexico or federal law to detain or arrest migrants in the United States.

“We cannot allow racist and armed vigilantes to kidnap and detain people seeking asylum,” two lawyers for the A.C.L.U., María Martínez Sánchez and Kirsten Greer Love, said in the letter.

In a statement, Hector Balderas, New Mexico’s attorney general, said: “These individuals should not attempt to exercise authority reserved for law enforcement.”

The ACLU lawyers and the pendejo attorney general of New Mexico are lying. Citizens have rights to enforce the law when the authorities can’t or won’t do so.

Rapists and Killers and Robbers, Oh my! Not to mention all the social services leeches.

 

Jim Benvie, a spokesman for the United Constitutional Patriots, said in a telephone interview that his group had been camped near El Paso for the past two months. Mr. Benvie contended that his group’s actions were legal, comparing the detention of the migrants to “a verbal citizen’s arrest.”

“We’re just here to support the Border Patrol and show the public the reality of the border,” said Mr. Benvie, 43, who recently came to New Mexico from Minnesota. He said the organization plans to remain on the border until the extended wall proposed by President Trump is built or Congress changes immigration laws to make it harder for migrants to request asylum.

Militias have recently stepped up their activities in New Mexico and other states as the authorities scramble to respond to a surge in families from Central America, with total apprehensions on the border reaching more than 92,000 in March. Elsewhere on the border, the mayor of Yuma, Ariz., declared an emergency this week as the city sought federal and state assistance to deal with migrant arrivals.

Mr. Benvie, the spokesman for the United Constitutional Patriots, declined to specify how many of its members were in Sunland Park, a city in New Mexico about nine miles west of El Paso. He said the group included people with military or law enforcement experience.

“If these people follow our verbal commands, we hold them until Border Patrol comes,” Mr. Benvie said. “Border Patrol has never asked us to stand down.”

The governor of New Mexico, Michelle Lujan Grisham, said in a statement that it was “completely unacceptable” that migrant families “might be menaced or threatened in any way, shape or form when they arrive at our border.”

Michelle Grisham is one of the few Democrats who makes Alexandria Ocasio Cortez sound lucid. Occasionally. Again, Border Patrol agents and rational politicians like the mayor of Yuma need and want help.

A day later, FBI agents, from the same agency of badged cowards whose leaders wouldn’t arrest Hillary for her many crimes, who wouldn’t arrest Bill Clinton for molesting an Air Force enlisted woman aboard Air Force One, who incompetently failed to stop school shootings and Moslem shootings and bombings and 9-11 even though they had evidence in hand, and who have blamed the murders of dozen of country music fans on a lone gunman when the evidence points to more than one, arrested the leader of the “United Constitutional Patriots” on a gun charge.

Per Reuters, 4/20/2019, whose story I am sourcing for the arrest, “Asked what the group would do if told to leave by state police, Benvie said they would probably go and, if they felt the order violated their constitutional rights, sue the state of New Mexico.”

Balderas, the cabrón who is the New Mexico attorney general, applauded the FBI’s fake tough-guy move. The FBI knew the citizens would not shoot at FBI people. FBI people stay away from border enforcement because too many of their top people want illegals in the country and because the illegals and their coyotes will shoot. The FBI are not so tough when people are of a mind to shoot at THEM.

Ironically, Balderas and his chieftess New Mexico governor Michelle “Chupacabra” (Goatsucker) Grisham had not asked the UCP or other citizens to leave the state or back off. If they knew the leader was a felon with firearms, as the FBI said, then why didn’t New Mexico authorities do anything about him? Balderas and Grisham, instead of doing their jobs, merely postured in the media for their crooked and stupid voters.

The Border Patrol people didn’t ask the citizens to leave either. If they were helping round up illegals, they were part of the solution instead of part of the problem.

I am in favor of armed citizens protecting the public, especially when our government people can’t or won’t. The Founders knew armed citizens were necessary to the life of a Republic, and enemies of a grasping authoritarian State.

On November 28, 1903, a posse of farmers in northern Indiana shot and captured the Car Barn Bandits, a group of Chicago punks who murdered my Czech great-great-grandfather Bohumil (Bennie) Legro, a patron in his saloon, two Chicago police officers, and four other people.

The Bandits killed the second policeman when he and others tried to capture them in northern Indiana. (One was already in jail by this time.) They got away from the cops, hijacked a train, and killed a railroad brakeman who tried to stop them.

For two illustrated articles on these criminals and their well-deserved demises, click here:

car barn bandits https___chicagology

 

 

But they couldn’t escape enraged Indiana farmers, who possed up to cut them down.

From a Chicago Tribune article 11/23/1914, this:

“A locomotive, steam up, stood on the track coupled to some cars. Brandishing their automatic guns, the two sprang into the cab, commanding Engineer Coffey and Brakeman Scovin to cut loose from the cars and “beat it” down the track. The brakeman refused and attempted to clinch with one of the murderers. His body was the eighth to be added to the murder string of the quartet.

Engineer Coffey, though a brave man, saw the futility of refusing. He opened wide the throttle. His engine responded and rushed madly careening down the rails. A locked switch forced him to retrace his course. Seeing they were about to be delivered into the hands of their enemies, the two told Coffey to stop his engine. They jumped off and sped across open country.

The telegraph instruments in all the surrounding way stations clicked their message of terror to the operators. The lost no time in spreading the news broadcast. Posses were hurriedly formed in many places.

The electrifying news found its way to a hunting party. This party took up the trail and followed it to a marsh, where the desperate pair of killers were hiding. Deciding to wage battle to the last ditch, they turned with snarls and oaths upon their pursuers.

A shotgun carried by one of the hunters belched its contents into the face of one of the bandits. Blinded by his own blood, he whined to his pal that they give up the fight. They did, and were delivered by the hunters into the custody of the squad of police under the personal command of Schuettler.

Three of the slayers had been rounded up; the fourth remained at large. He had found his way to Ætna. In the station fatigue and exhaustion overtook him. His bravado forsook him. He cursed the automatic revolver, threw it from him, fell upon a bench, and went to sleep. A few hours later he was captured.”

The author got my relative’s name wrong. He called him “Ben La Cross.”

Another Chicago Tribune article (2/5/1939), said this:

“There the final act In the drama of blood was staged. The entire countryside had been aroused. Farmers had seized their shotguns and rifles and formed posses that rode the highways in buggies and spring wagons. When they heard Coffey’s story they gathered, encircled the field and poured buckshot freely into the withered cornstalks. The weary fugitives, bird shot, but not seriously wounded, walked out with upraised hands. The hunt was over.”

The Car Barn Bandits stood trial in Chicago in January 1904. Jurors found them guilty and ordered them hanged. One got a life sentence because there was some doubt as to whether he killed anyone. The other three admitted their murders, and even bragged about them.

In April 1904, lawmen hanged the three admitted murderers in the Cook County Jail. Screw the ACLU and the New Mexico New Copperhead governor and AG. The farmers did the right thing, and so did today’s citizens.

Authorities didn’t hassle the farmers. They were grateful for the help.

About a century ago, Pancho Villa’s gang murdered some American soldiers in a raid on Columbus, New Mexico. Men have died for your our nation at Valley Forge, at Put-In-Bay, at Buena Vista, at Gettysburg, at Chateau-Thierry, on a beach in Normandy during D-Day, and on Iwo Jima. They have also died in Indian wars, in jungle skirmishes in Asia, and in sandboxes and cat-litter box countries in the Middle East. And a few died here.

Pancho Villa

 

Armed citizens and junior-ranking servicemen saved the day. Here’s what happened:

In the 1910s and early 1920s, the people of Mexico suffered a long series of wars between rival politicians, military leaders, and bandit chiefs in the wake of the overthrow of dictator Porfirio Diaz. Mexico lost about a million people dead — killed on various battlefields, murdered for reasons ranging from terror to revenge to removing future opposition to sport, or as victims of disease or starvation due to the warring between factions. One of the main characters in the tragedy of Mexico, Pancho Villa, would play a role not too much different than future ally turned enemy of America Osama bin Laden.

Villa was a mix of government official, military leader, and bandit chieftain. US President Woodrow Wilson favored the side Villa was fighting on. During the wars in Mexico, Villa was able to buy weapons, horses, and supplies in America. Later there was a falling out between Villa and his erstwhile allies. Wilson chose to side with Carranza, one of the other Mexican leaders, and not Villa. Wilson allowed Carranza’s men to use American railroads to bypass Villa’s positions in northern Mexico and attack his men from the United States. So Villa took a page out of the book of many prominent Latin American criminals. He decided to blame his country’s problems on his former gringo benefactors.

Villa’s men pulled about 20 Texas mining engineers off a train in northern Mexico in January 1916 during a train robbery and murdered them. Wilson and/or his officials responded in an idiotic or cowardly fashion by declaring martial law in the El Paso area, presumably to stop enraged Texans from crossing into Mexico to seek vengeance.

Villa then led several hundred of his mounted soldiers, mercenaries, and bandits in a pre-dawn raid on tiny Columbus, New Mexico and on a nearby U.S. Army camp, where about 300 men, largely cavalrymen, were stationed. Villa’s varmints were looking to steal horses, firearms, ammunition, food, and money. During the March 9, 1916 raid, which lasted for several hours, Villa’s villains burned much of the little town to the ground, looted stores, stole money, and murdered 10 American civilians and eight soldiers.

 

How did they get away with it? Wilson’s War Department goofuses and/or the chain of command, much like many cowardly Defense Department functionaries of today, ordered the men to lock their rifles and machine guns in rifle racks instead of having them at the ready. So only a few sentries were armed, and Villa’s villains overwhelmed them. Likewise, the colonel of the soldiers had ignored the signs of an impending raid, including a warning report of a Mexican ranch foreman who saw Villa’s men assembling, and the fleeing from the area of many civilians of Mexican blood.

However, thanks to the courage of some soldiers and armed civilians, the raid cost Villa much more than he gained. During the raid, 30 to 40 junior officers and enlisted men were able to get machine guns and rifles from the locked rifle racks, and start blasting the bandidos. These men drove the raiders out of camp and out of town. Armed citizens in town grabbed their rifles and handguns and shot at Villa’s invaders. Some of the cavalrymen pursued Villa’s vermin across the border into Mexico and killed more of them before they ran out of ammunition and had to return to camp. Our soldiers and armed civilians killed at least 100 of Villa’s men and wounded another 300 or so. Villa had planned to steal the cavalrymen’s horses, but our soldiers and armed citizens killed many of Villa’s own horses.

The Columbus, New Mexico raid was the most spectacular of the raids Mexican outlaws and/or government hoodlums perpetrated against Americans in 1915 and 1916. Villa’s raid on the little border town and the outcry against him in America finally prompted Woodrow Wilson to order the U.S. Army and the National Guard to do something about his former pal. General John Pershing led a punitive expedition of about 7000 men (eventually reinforced to about 10,000 men) several hundred miles into Mexico against Villa.

Again, Wilson put an intolerable leash on Americans. He would not allow Pershing to attack Carranza’s men, because he viewed Carranza as the rightful leader of Mexico for now. Carranza’s federales often attacked Pershing’s men instead of helping them round up Villa like Carranza promised. Wilson put tens of thousands of National Guard men on the border with Mexico, but forbade them to aid Pershing’s men. Meanwhile, traitorous arms dealers in the El Paso area sold Villa more guns and ammo. Like Obama’s Justice Department BATFags did during “Fast and Furious,” which cost Border Patrol agent Brian Terry his life.

Brian Terry   RIP

He died for his country too.

 

Pershing had to withdraw to a base camp much closer to the American border. Pershing’s men at least hurt Villa’s abilities to make attacks by keeping him on the run and killing many of his followers. Villa was still at large in February 1917, when Wilson recalled Pershing’s punitive expedition to prepare for entering America into World War One.

Villa would not quite live out the series of upheavals in Mexico which cost the unhappy people of that country a million dead in the 1910s and early 1920s. Several of Villa’s many enemies would gun him down in his car in 1923, much like American lawmen would ventilate Bonnie and Clyde in 1934.

Here are some other facts on the Villa raid:

An armed citizen saved a teenage boy by shooting two bandidos who had stripped him to his underwear. Mexicans who lived in Columbus saved many of the American women and children in town.

A soldier who couldn’t get his rifle killed and wounded Villa varmints with a baseball bat. The camp’s cooks, who were out of the rack early fixing breakfast, attacked the bandidos with shotguns, axes, mess utensils, and scalding water.

Border Security the Old-Fashioned Way

 

Riding into Columbus against her will with Villa’s villains was a pretty young American woman rancher. She was a captive of Villa’s; his men had killed her husband after taking them from their ranch on the Mexican side of the border days earlier. Villa was probably reserving her for rape. However, one of Villa’s men cut her loose and let her go when she begged for her freedom. She came across another rancher woman whose husband Villa’s men stripped and stabbed to death before her eyes. American soldiers rescued the women and had them medically treated.

The soldiers turned over the Villistos they captured to federal and New Mexico authorities. New Mexico lawmen executed several of these raiders after trials. Republican governor Octaviano Larrazolo pardoned Villa’s men and boys who General Pershing’s men captured in Mexico weeks and months after the raid on Columbus. Although this was probably the right thing to do, because there was little or no proof they participated in the murder of American civilians in the Columbus raid, and because some of them may have been coerced to join Villa’s ranks, Larrazolo’s pardons cost him any chance he had at re-election. Later in the 1920s, a more forgiving New Mexico electorate sent Larrazolo to the U.S. Senate.

(Sources include Joe Griffith’s article “In Pursuit of Pancho Villa 1916-1917” (written for the Historical Society of the Georgia National Guard), Leon Wolff’s article in the April 1962 issue of American Heritage, Jessie Thompson’s article “My Brush With History” in the December 1996 issue of American Heritage (Villa’s people burned her grandfather’s hotel and killed him during the raid; she came for his funeral in Columbus), Don Bullis’ 12/15/2005 article in the Rio Rancho, New Mexico Observer, Bill Rakocy’s book Villa Raids Columbus, N.Mex., and the Railroad Depot Museum in Columbus, New Mexico. I also interviewed New Mexico historian Richard Dean (a grandson of one of the Villa raid victims) in 2009 for help in resolving source conflicts. Dean is a nationally-known expert on the Villa raid.)

American armed civilians aided American soldiers in driving off Villa’s vermin. The right to protect oneself, including from foreign invaders or our own government authorities acting immorally and illegally like they have been doing against President Trump and the rest of us for years, is one of the cornerstones of our nation’s laws and founding principles.

The right to one’s good name is also a cornerstone of American jurisprudence. The latest false claim against President Trump – that he prefers Kim Jung Un to Jo Biden – has prompted the President to push for sterner libel laws. Right now, most of the media puts out false info on the President and his people daily.

That applies in death. Leftists hate this nation so much they want to tear down every hero we have ever had. Washington, Jefferson, Jackson, Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, and other great Americans have all been defamed in death by these maggots.

They do not want anything great to be part of their narrative. Since they are inadequate losers, many of whom can’t even decide which bathroom they need to use, moral and mental midgets, they have to cut down the giants. So like termites, they have been doing so.

Recently University of South Georgia perverts, errr, academicians, claimed Revolutionary War hero and fervent Catholic Casimir Pulaski was “intersex” because of observations they made on the pelvis of his skeleton. They claimed they were trying to verify the skeleton in the Pulaski monument in Savannah, Georgia was his.

 

Casimir Pulaski 1745 – 1779. RIP!

Adopted American, Patriot, Hero

 

They overlook the facts that the unmarried Pulaski had an affair with a Polish noblewoman who would eventually marry another noble after Pulaski was branded a potential regicide and forced to leave Poland. They admit his parents declared him male in his baptism record, they admit he had male pattern baldness (and enough facial hair for an impressive mustache), they admit they found plenty of male Y chromosomes in the right places in his DNA when they tested his remains, and they admit he was a macho man in combat for his native Poland against Russians, Prussians, and Turks, and for his adopted United States against the Brits. Pulaski and his men saved Washington’s life at Germantown, and he foraged the Pennsylvania countryside for food for the men of at Valley Forge. Pulaski died from wounds he suffered in combat leading American and French cavalrymen at the siege of Savannah in October 1779. The “LGBT” innuendo by these losers is false and uncalled for.

Pulaski too is a veteran we should be honoring this Memorial Day.

Pulaski, when asked why he decided to serve under the American flag, said, “”I came here, where freedom is being defended, to serve it, and to live or die for it.”

That is the unspoken motto of our beloved military dead, and their loved ones. If only it was the motto of more of our political leaders, media people, entertainers, and alleged academics!

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