Wild Bill Donovan’s statue graces the lobby of the CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, today. In 2011 Vanity Fair writer Evan Douglas described Donovan’s exploits as “a brave, noble, headlong, gleeful, sometimes outrageous pursuit of action and skullduggery.” Wild Bill Donovan was the real freaking deal.
Historical Guns
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The Walther P1: From War Baby to NATO Surplus Sweetheart
BY Mark Miller Updated: April 17, 2022The P1 is a fun and affordable piece of history. If you have ever thought about owning one, now is the time. In a few years, they will be collectible and un-affordable. Your kids and grandkids will thank you.
Bert Waldron: Nature versus Nurture, A Sniper’s Story
BY Will Dabbs Updated: April 17, 2022Bert 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.
Pat Tillman: Portrait of an American Hero
BY Will Dabbs Updated: April 10, 2022On 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.
Brenda Spencer: The Genesis Monster
BY Will Dabbs Updated: April 2, 2022The combination of a wretched upbringing, some sub-optimal raw material, and a childhood injury transformed Brenda Spencer into a certifiable monster.
Sir Maurice Mickelwhite CBE
BY Will Dabbs Updated: March 20, 2022Dashing, handsome, and successful, Michael Caine is the archetypal movie star. When younger, however, he was also apparently quite the competent soldier as well.
David Burke: I am the Problem
BY Will Dabbs Updated: March 12, 2022Burke 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.
Alexander Prokhorenko: The Russian Rambo
BY Will Dabbs Updated: March 4, 2022Why 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.
Jim Bowie and the Vidalia Sandbar Fight
BY Will Dabbs Updated: February 26, 2022Depending 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.”
SSG Lafayette Pool: The Real War Daddy
BY Will Dabbs Updated: February 19, 2022Oftentimes truth is more compelling than fiction. Such was the case of the real War Daddy, SSG Lafayette Pool.