Will Dabbs

Bert Waldron was a “Break Glass in Case of War” type of soldier. America desperately needs such men. It is simply figuring out what to do with them when the bullets aren’t flying that seems to be the perennial challenge.

On May 31, 2002, Pat Tillman and his brother Kevin walked into a local recruiting office and enlisted in the US Army. Pat walked away from a $3.6 million professional football contract and Lord knows what else so he could serve his country in the immediate aftermath of 911.

The combination of a wretched upbringing, some sub-optimal raw material, and a childhood injury transformed Brenda Spencer into a certifiable monster.

A year before Commando hit the big screen, Baton Rouge, Louisiana, saw a very public example of just how far one man might go to avenge a crime committed against his child. That man’s name was Gary Plauche.

Dashing, handsome, and successful, Michael Caine is the archetypal movie star. When younger, however, he was also apparently quite the competent soldier as well.

Burke had a penchant for violence and a mean temper. These things always seem obvious in retrospect, but David Burke was also a dangerously self-centered opportunist. Though he never married, he fathered seven children by four women. Apparently, nobody could stand living with the guy for very long.

Why do soldiers fight? The movies and government propagandists would have us believe it is for grand causes. Young folk go to war to free people from oppression or defend their homeland against soulless invaders. To a degree that is true. Soldiers may indeed go to war for such stuff as this. However, what keeps them in the suck is invariably their friends.

Depending upon what you read, Bowie was shot either two or three times and received between four and seven separate stab wounds. Colonel Crain, the man who shot him in the first place, helped the injured Bowie off of the field. Bowie supposedly said, “Colonel Crain, I do not think, under the circumstances, you ought to have shot me.” 

Oftentimes truth is more compelling than fiction. Such was the case of the real War Daddy, SSG Lafayette Pool.