war

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.

Jackson commanded a brigade at the First Battle of Bull Run. At a critical moment in the fight, Jackson beat back a determined Union assault. Barnard Elliot Bee, himself a distinguished Confederate General who ultimately lost his life in combat, referred to Jackson as a “stone wall” in the face of the enemy. The name stuck.

Labalaba spent his childhood on an island and craved adventure. He initially enlisted with the Royal Ulster Rifles and also served with the Royal Irish Rangers. He was a stone-cold warrior.

When the incoming fire seemed overwhelming and his comrades were falling LCPL Amarjit Pun unlimbered his Sterling submachine gun and won the day. Sometimes big things do indeed come in small packages.

I have some friends that found themselves on the Mexican border during Spring Break several years ago with some spending money and a little time. They were young, bulletproof, and immortal, so they figured they’d wander over and spend the day exploring Juarez on foot.

Somalis were the first people to domesticate the camel some 2,500 years before Christ. Early in the 20thcentury the Somali Dervishes successfully repulsed English military operations four different times, no mean feat at the height of the British Empire.

The Guinness Book lists the carnage in Ramree Island’s mangrove swamps as the worst example of crocodile predation on humans in history. There were 500 or so troops who remained unaccounted for that night. Theirs was an undeniably ghastly end.

One small tragic drama played out on the front porch of a plantation house during a hot summer afternoon outside Vicksburg, Mississippi.