A Walk Through History...

Against All Odds: The Forgotten, Epic Stand that Saved Washington’s Army.

Historian Patrick K O'Donnell reports on how Washington's Army was saved by then-outlandish tactics on the battlefields of New York.

by Patrick K. O'Donnell
October 18, 2021

Two-hundred and forty-five years ago today, Colonel John Glover and the men from Marblehead would once again be called upon to save Washington’s Army.


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Don Surber

Tuesday, October 19, 2021

Poland may save Europe again

On September 12, 1683, forces led by King John III Sobieski of Poland swept into Austria and defeated the Ottoman Empire's army at Kahlenberg Mountain, which ended the Ottoman siege of Vienna. The Poles saved Europe from Muslim domination.

438 years later, the Poles may save Europe from bureaucratic domination.

We need more Poles doing good.

A Forgotten Genocide And The Second Amendment

By Ranjit Singh | Mar 25, 2022 5:30 PM ET


Editor’s note: The following was written by Ranjit Singh one year ago, and I’m happy to re-publish it at his request on the anniversary of one of history’s repeated and grim reminders of the importance of the right of the people to keep and bear arms to the security of a free state. As we watch the Ukrainian people defend their own nation against a tyrannical and totalitarian regime insistent on crushing their freedom and autonomy, Ranjit’s post is even more timely this year than it was 12 months ago.

Fifty years ago to this day, March 25th 1971, the world witnessed the beginning of one of the worst atrocities of modern times: the 1971 Bangladesh Genocide. On that day, the Pakistani Army in what was then known as East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) launched “Operation Searchlight,” a military operation aimed at curtailing nationalism and calls for self-determination by the Bengali people inhabiting East Pakistan.

For those unfamiliar with the history of South Asia, the roots of this conflict can be traced to the partition of India in 1947. As the British left, India became independent as two separate entities: secular, democratic India, and the Islamic Republic of Pakistan. The newly created country of Pakistan straddled India as East Pakistan by the Bay of Bengal, and West Pakistan by the Arabian Sea, separated by 1,300 miles. Tensions among the Eastern Bengalis and the West Pakistanis built up over time and came to a head in 1971.

What followed was truly horrendous. Over a nine-month period, the Pakistani Army and their associate Islamist militias of the Jamaat-e-Islami, killed between 2 to 3 million people. They targeted intellectuals for extermination to nip Bengali nationalism, not sparing even pro-independence poets. Between 200,000 to 400,000 women were subjected to genocidal rape after Jamaat-e-Islami’s Mullahs declared Bengali Hindu women “gonimoter maal” (public property). In a foreboding of what the world saw in the past decade with ISIS’ Yazidi sex slaves in Iraq, the Pakistani Army kept Hindu women as sex slaves in their camps.

The Pakistani army’s genocidal violence caused almost 10 million Bengali refugees to leave their ancestral land and flee to India with nothing but the clothes on their backs, including some of my own extended family.

President Richard Nixon and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger were informed of what was happening on the ground by U. S. Ambassador Archer Blood in what’s now called the Blood fuck off. Nixon and Kissinger chose to ignore those reports.

Eventually, India entered the war in support of Bengali revolutionaries, culminating in the decisive defeat of the Pakistani Army and the creation of the new nation of Bangladesh.

This sordid chapter in world history is unfortunately mostly unknown or forgotten. Its seriousness and severity should serve as a reminder and a warning to all Americans. As we’re witnessing in Myanmar/Burma right now, governments can and do turn against their people, unleashing barbarism on a scale too large to comprehend. Democracy is fragile and peace can’t be taken for granted.

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Last Edited by Vicious Deplorable dollop on 03/26/2022 01:18 AM

Deadliest days in world history.

Looks like the Armenian Genocide was the worst day with maybe 1.3 million murdered by the Ottoman Empire.


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Tammy Wilson

What did people do for fun 100 years ago?

I researched 1920s entertainment for a program I gave recently to my DAR chapter. The John Hoyle chapter Daughters of the American Revolution is marking its 100th anniversary this year.

Our main celebration is planned at the Hickory History Center. There will be 1920s décor, food and tours of Harper House, home of one of our early members, Corinne Harper. On the third floor was a speakeasy patronized by one of our founders, Mildred Ellis Mott, and husband Tom, but I’m sure they had plenty of company up there during Prohibition.

The more you look, the more you find. I Googled “1922 games” and “amusements” and came up with an impressive list that included such things as amusement parks, radio, silent films, boxing and reading. Yes, Americans spent way more time with books; there was no television.


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people worked from sun up to sun down.then radio,then bed.wash repeat.hard grueling days of keeping from killing the bankers and revenuers.
just trying to dodge the drafts and feed the kids.

Fantastic!

APRIL 21, 2022

Real Talk: Which Historical Figure Would You Trust to Have Your Back?

HISTORY IS FULL OF SERIOUSLY TOUGH HOMBRES, AND WE ASKED WHICH HISTORICAL FIGURE YOU WOULD TRUST TO HAVE YOUR BACK IN A DANGEROUS SITUATION.

By JOSHUA SWANAGON


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The Classic Jungle Boot

by CLAY MARTIN on APRIL 21, 2022

First invented in the Vietnam war, the jungle boot takes another direction. It says, if we can’t avoid getting soaked, let’s slap a drain hole in the side so that water can at least flow back out. Those drain holes also promote air circulation around the foot, which further helps dry out as well as prevents trench foot.

The “Panama Sole” of the jungle boot looks simple, but still has yet to be beat for traction in the mud. It also sheds mud, which prevents the energy sapping build-up of weight. That might sound dumb if you have never slogged miles over sticky wet Earth, but it matters. A lot. The Panama Sole is like the Ag tire of boot soles. It looks simple, it is simple, but it still can’t be bested in design. It might not work as well on concrete or sand, but it is the clear champion in the arena it was built for.

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Gun Control Nearly Wiped Out My People

Ammoland Inc. Posted on April 24, 2022 by F Riehl, Editor in Chief
By Alex Madajian


USA – -(Ammoland.com)- How many people would be free and alive today were it not for the legacy of gun control?

Conversations about gun control tend to deal with abstract future forecasts. It’s good pro-gun advocates are concerned about personal freedom, burdensome regulations, or punitive punishments, but…

It’s important to remember that millions of real people and their descendants would be alive today were it not for gun control paving the way for tyrannical regimes.
We often forget the human cost behind those statistics. I will never forget because entire branches of my family were wiped out due to gun control.

Both sides of my family are Armenian – which is an ethnic group from the Caucasus mountains who have lived there for over three thousand years. However, for about the last 600 years, they have lived under the shadow of the Turks. In the time of the Ottoman Empire, they treated my ancestors as second-class citizens – forcing them to pay special taxes and endure cruel humiliations. This discrimination, fostered for hundreds of years, helped paved the way for the event known as the Armenian Genocide.

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Ben Baker: The Real-World “Q”

by WILL DABBS on JUNE 26, 2022


Conrad “Ben” Baker was part of General Douglas MacArthur’s headquarters staff during WW2. A savant at navigating and energizing the military procurement system, Baker served in the Pacific supporting the Engineers. By 1963 he was stationed in Okinawa alongside Special Forces Captain David Watts as part of the Counterinsurgency Support Office (CISO). Baker served as Deputy Director of CISO from 1963 until 1972. He drove procurement for special operations forces in theater throughout the Vietnam War.


Unlike most rear area support troops, Ben Baker gravitated towards places like this Special Forces camp at Plei Me.
Ben Baker was technically a REMF. If you aren’t familiar with that term then Google is your buddy. However, in contrast to many comfortable rear-area support pogues, Baker took his job very, very seriously. He made more than 80 excursions downrange to forward base camps deep in the suck to find out straight from the users just what they needed to accomplish their dangerous unconventional missions. Along the way, he laid the foundation for modern practical military procurement.


Ben Baker did what it took to get the job done.

The key to Baker’s effectiveness was his willingness and enthusiasm to accomplish the mission independent of military bureaucracy. By living and working near the front Baker could remain responsive. Unfettered from the cumbersome Army procurement system, he just did whatever it took to get the gear his guys needed. In his own words, “We had no ‘must buy American’ mandates. Our job was to get the best supplies needed for our troops, plain and simple.”


Ben Baker contrived “Eldest Son” exploding ammo for both AK and SKS rifles as well as 81mm mortars. Abandoned where enemy forces might find them, these rounds exploded when fired.
By sourcing gear in places like Australia, Japan, and Thailand, Baker got the stuff the special ops guys needed into their hands when and where they needed it. A few examples included Seiko watches, custom gloves, machetes, ammunition pouches fitted to support the specialized weapons used by SOG operators, jungle sleeping bags, ponchos and liners, replicas of enemy equipment and uniform items, and rucksacks that were appropriately scaled for small-statured indigenous troops.


Ben Baker’s PIR rations helped feed the indigenous troops who supported American forces in Vietnam.
Baker’s best-known creation was the SOG knife. We’ll explore that in detail in a moment. However, what really had the most profound impact was likely his PIR indigenous rations.


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Tan Son Nhut Air Base, Republic of Vietnam


December of 1961 found Specialist James T. Davis of the 3rd Radio Research Unit hard
at work. Since his arrival at Tan Son Nhut Air Base near Saigon in May, he and the 92
other members of his unit had dealt with any number of difficult challenges. Life as a U.S.
Army cryptologist was never easy, but the 100-degree temperatures and constant flooding in the
old hangar they called home often made their task even more difficult.


In the field, the situation was even more demanding. For decades, the Communist North, led by the resourceful
Ho Chi Minh, had battled to establish an independent and united Vietnam free from foreign influence. Ho’s
forces had met with great success against the Japanese in the 1940s and the French in the 1950s. By the early
1960s, many feared that if Indochina fell to the Communists, then the whole of Southeast Asia might follow.

Mao Zedong had once noted that the way to win an unconventional war was to ensure that your forces had
the capacity to “swim among the people as fish swim in the sea.” Ho’s forces had followed his advice and
through their efforts had been able to overtake portions of the population of the South.

“Ambitions Unlimited… Fate Unknown…”
The series of events that had brought James T. Davis – his friends called him “Tom” – to this strange and
dangerous land were anything but typical. In 1958, he had been pursuing his studies at Tennessee
Technological University (TTU) in Cookeville, about 20 miles from his boyhood home of Livingston. The
oldest son of a local pharmacist, himself a veteran of the European Theatre in WWII, Tom’s childhood
resembled a Norman Rockwell print. When he was not excelling on the football field for
Livingston Academy, Tom spent most of his free time hunting and fishing in the deep
woods that surrounded his hometown. At some point in his senior year at TTU, he
made the decision to end his academic studies to join the United States Army.

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Behind Enemy Lines: Guns of Vietnam's SOG Warriors

by Maj. John L. Plaster, U.S. Army (Ret.) - Tuesday, April 7, 2020

It’s unlikely that any other U.S. military unit ever fielded such an array of weaponry as did the Military Assistance Command Vietnam, Studies and Observations Group.

Behind that innocuous name, MACV-SOG ran top-secret, covert operations across Southeast Asia during the Vietnam War, especially U.S. Army Special Forces-led reconnaissance missions along the enemy’s Ho Chi Minh Trail road network in Laos, into his sanctuaries in Cambodia, and sometimes into North Vietnam, itself.

These SOG recon teams, usually four to six natives led by two or three American Green Berets, roamed deep behind enemy lines, searching out—sometimes attacking—North Vietnamese truck parks, ammunition dumps, storage sites, truck convoys, command centers and the base camps where enemy units refit between battles in South Vietnam.

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'Cool Cal' - President Coolidge’s Enduring Thoughts on the Meaning of a Free Republic


Coolidge’s Enduring Thoughts on the Meaning of a Free Republic

Craig Eyermann • Wednesday February 17, 2021 4:40 PM PST •

Nearly 100 years ago, one of the greatest addresses given by any President of the United States was delivered to an audience in Philadelphia, on the occasion of the 150th anniversary of the meeting in that city of the First Continental Congress.

It was delivered on September 25, 1924. And though the address is nearly a century old, President Calvin Coolidge, notoriously a man of few words, made each sentence seem as fresh today as when he spoke them.

In commemorating the First Continental Congress for the role it played in establishing the United States as an independent nation, President Coolidge delivered a powerful vision of what it takes, and what it means, to live as a citizen in a free republic. It is an address that, in its key elements, is fully vital and current, offering great meaning and context for today’s Americans. Here, running at just over 3,100 words long, is the text of Coolidge’s remarkable speech:

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Dr. Dabbs – America’s First School Shooting
by WILL DABBS on JUNE 25, 2023



The Massacre
The carnage began the day before when four Delaware Indian braves encountered a pregnant white woman named Susan King Cunningham out walking alone. They clubbed her to death and then cut the fetus from her womb. The Indians later passed by the occupied home of a widow woman who had her windows boarded up against the weather. Presuming the house to be vacant they did not investigate. On 26 July 1764, these four braves made their way to the small wooden schoolhouse that serviced the area.

Inside was schoolmaster Enoch Brown and eleven students. School accommodated all ages back then, so the accumulated kids were of sundry sizes. Brown could tell immediately what the Indians intended to do.


The taking of scalps is a curiously ghastly tradition that dates back centuries.
Brown pleaded with the Indians, two of whom were apparently fairly old, to take his life but spare the children. In response, the warriors shot him and took his scalp. They then clubbed and scalped the rest of the children in attendance.


The details of the attack are inscribed on a historical marker at the spot today.
Time has muddled the details somewhat. I found two major narratives. The most common had ten of eleven children perishing in the attack. The eleventh, a young man named Archie McCullough, apparently lost consciousness and came to after the Indians had departed. He purportedly climbed into the fireplace until he was certain the Indians were gone and then made his way to a nearby stream to clean his wounds. He was found there by locals who investigated further and discovered the horror in the schoolhouse. Period reports claimed that the schoolmaster Mr. Brown died with a Bible in one hand trying to protect his charges.

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Independence Day and the freedom to keep and bear arms

By Cam Edwards | 8:30 AM on July 04, 2023

I know, I know. The Founding Fathers could never have envisioned this much violence, right? Wrong. Homicide rates during the War of Independence are estimated to have been around 30 per 100,000 people, or about five times higher than the estimated 6.5 per 100K for 2022. Those homicide figures don’t include battlefield casualties either. The United States was a dangerous and violent place during that time period, yet there was no real thought to combatting that problem by disarming the citizenry of their muskets, pistols, hatchets, or knives.

James Madison says that our right to keep and bear arms is a check on tyranny, and I believe that to be true against both authoritarian governments and the petty tyranny of violent criminals. The United States is not, has never been, and will never be heaven on earth, but the Second Amendment has helped to safeguard our liberties for more than two centuries, and hopefully that will continue to be the case long after you and I have joined the Founding Fathers in the great beyond. In our current turmoil I do indeed hold the blessings of liberty dear, imperfect and incomplete though they may be, that were bestowed upon us by that generation who declared independence and blazed a path towards freedom that few other nations on earth have dared to follow.

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Right to Arms in American Colonies Predated Bill of Rights

Ammoland Inc. Posted on July 21, 2023 by Dean Weingarten


By the time of ratification of the American Bill of Rights and the Second Amendment in 1791, the American colonists had 185 years of experience in the necessity and utility of the right to arms. The experience of the Revolutionary War, where the British repeatedly attempted to disarm the American colonists, was probably the strongest example. It was fresh in the memory of the successful American revolutionaries (the founding fathers). The 170 years of previous experience had served to cement the right as long established before the war.

In addition, the doctrine of the natural rights of man had come to dominate the thought of the founding fathers, which re-enforced the moral certitude of the right to arms.


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There’s an old jocular saying attributed to 19th century lawyer, writer, and politician Gideon J. Tucker:

“No man’s life, liberty or property are safe while the Legislature is in session.”

Two Spears Against Polar Bears: Survival on Svalbard, 1743-1749

Ammoland Inc. Posted on August 24, 2023 by Dean Weingarten

Polar bears are very large, dangerous adversaries. Surviving for six years after a shipwreck in the Arctic, four Russian hunters killed ten of them with two homemade spears. The story is told in the modern book Four Against the Arctic by David Roberts, published in 2003.

In May 1743, a ship of Russian walrus hunters was blown off course in the vicinity of Edgeøya, part of the Svalbard archipelago.

Their ship was captured in the pack ice, about two miles from the shore of an island. The pilot, Aleksei Inkov, recognized the place from stories and remembered a tale of an early version of a prefabricated hut being built on the island many years earlier.

He, his godson, and two other hunters volunteered to see if this was the place and if the hut was there. They had to traverse two miles of treacherous ice-pack. They took very little in equipment or supplies, as listed:


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"All political lives, unless they are cut off in midstream at a happy juncture, end in failure, because that is the nature of politics and of human affairs."
Joseph Chamberlain (1977)

Knowledge was only interesting when I thought it would free me. And by free me, I mean from you.

...,

Behind the Bullet: 7mm Remington Magnum

by PHILIP MASSARO posted on September 29, 2017
NEWS, GUNS & GEAR, AMMO

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Metric caliber designations in America have always seemed to pose an issue; perhaps they don’t roll off the tongue as easily as decimal portions of an inch, or perhaps the metric system still confounds so many of us that it seems like a foreign language to us. No matter the reason, until the recent rise of the 6.5mm cartridges, the metric-labeled cartridges have never really had the commercial success that others have—with the exception of the 7mm Rem. Mag.

It came along in 1962, introduced in the new-fangled Remington Model 700 rifle. Banking on the success of the Winchester trio of belted magnums—the .264, .338 and .458—which were introduced in the 1950s, Remington used the same formula for their 7mm Rem. Mag. Using the belted .375 H&H case, shortened to a length of 2.500” in order to fit in a long-action receiver, the steep-shouldered, fatter case gave plenty of room for powder, and yet positive headspacing off the shoulder. The belt, you see, is how the .375 H&H and .300 H&H cases are headspaced, but it serves no real purpose in any of the other bottlenecked cartridges that were derived from them.


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cool

Throwback Thursday: Audie Murphy, WWII Hero & Movie Star

From the battlefield to the box office, Audie was a true American hero.

by DAVID HERMAN posted on February 9, 2023
NEWS, FAMILY & ADVENTURE


During the golden age of Hollywood, few stars shone more brightly than those who donned Stetsons, and portrayed cowboys on sets mocked up like old-time Western plains. Though there were many in this popular genre, including such legends as John Wayne and Gary Cooper, one Audie Murphy is always remembered among the best, due not only to his acting, but to his estimable character and personal history. Audie, as it happened, was the most decorated soldier of the Second World War, receiving every military combat award for valor available from the U.S. Army, the Medal of Honor, and numerous French and Belgian awards for heroism.

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Behind the Bullet: .338 Winchester Magnum

by PHILIP MASSARO posted on April 28, 2017
NEWS, GUNS & GEAR, AMMO

Winchester’s mid-1950s endeavor into developing cartridges started a whirlwind; though Roy Weatherby had been experimenting with the shortened and modified H&H Belted cases, few companies had the clout and marketing power that Winchester did. The Winchester engineers had shortened the .375 H&H case to 2.500”, and necked it either up or down to hold .458”, .338” and .264” diameter bullets, releasing the trio of new magnums in 1958. The .458” and .264” bore diameters were certainly no strangers to the hunting and shooting community; those bore diameters date back to the latter-half of the 19th century in the guise of the .45-70 Government, .450 Nitro Express and 6.5x55 Swedish Mauser and 6.5x54 Mannlicher-Schoenauer.


What Winchester did in 1958, was to provide those hunters who pursued the great bears and larger cervids of North America with a perfect choice for their endeavors, as well as developing one the most logical choices for an African light rifle. The original loadings featured 200, 250 and 300-grain bullets, all at respectable muzzle velocities, and offering a ballistic answer to the gap that existed between the .30-06 Sprg./.300 H&H Mag. and the .375 H&H Mag., in a high-quality, affordable American bolt gun.


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Ammoland Inc. Posted on June 12, 2018 by AmmoLand Editor Duncan Johnson

Oakland, CA —-(Ammoland.com)- Countless books have addressed the atrocities committed by Hitler’s dictatorship, but none have focused on the Nazis’ repression of gun owners until legal scholar and historian Stephen P. Halbrook’s eye-opening 2013 exposé, Gun Control in the Third Reich: Disarming the blah and “Enemies of the State.” Now Halbrook uses his considerable investigative and storytelling talents to reveal another forgotten chapter in the history of World War II in his latest book, Gun Control in Nazi-Occupied France: Tyranny and Resistance.

Focusing on the years 1934 through 1945, Halbrook provides the key that unlocks the secret history of France’s occupation under a brutal regime and the developments that helped lay the groundwork. Here at last is the story of France’s pre-war political convulsions, its restrictions of free assembly, its gun-registration laws, the invasion and occupation by Nazi Germany, the repression and execution of gun owners, popular resistance and, ultimately, liberation.


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"A man's rights rest in three boxes: the ballot box, the jury box, and the cartridge box"


Origins
Stephen Decatur Miller may have originated the concept during a speech at Stateburg, South Carolina, in September 1830. He said "There are three and only three ways to reform our Congressional legislation, familiarly called, the ballot box, the jury box, and the cartridge box". This became his campaign slogan in his successful bid for the Senate on a platform advocating the abolition of tariffs


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