Category Archives: Military

Try, Try Again – Texas Secession, Invasion, Evasion and Forgetfulness

Posted on August 12, 2012 by | 4 comments

Good morning readers.  Thanks for coming by  for a read this morning.  I promised a few days ago I wouldn’t tell you any Texas history anecdotes, but I’ve already got Old Sol’s sober promise to come up on schedule, the cats are fed, and I probably ought to write about something just to prove I can.

I mentioned Texas invaded New Mexico twice, once in 1841, then again during the early stages of the US War of Secession.  Both of those episodes were characterized by more human folly on both sides than anyone has a right to be part of, but one man, JS Sutton, was right up front for both of them.  First name on the monument. 

Captain in the 1841 Expedition, Lt. Colonel in the second.  Never got another shot at a third try because he was offed at Valverde.  But he must have been considered an expert on the second because the 1841 group surrendered without firing a shot and got frog-marched barefooted southward across the same route Sutton followed north to his death two decades later.

Sutton was a courageous, interesting man, lived a life I’d call worth living, but couldn’t seem to keep his eye on the dirt where he was standing, and it eventually got him killed.  As far as I’ve ever been able to establish, he was the only man involved in both expeditions.

However, there was a Lockridge [second name on the monument] involved in the 1841 debacle, shot himself while they were camped at Bird’s Battleground near Three Rivers.  Maybe this later Lockridge killed at Valverde was a brother, son, cousin.  Almost certainly kinfolk, in any case.

Some other similarities between the two expeditions involved both commanders spending a lot of their time drunk, generally being logistically ill prepared for the task, and plenty of poor command decisions to help it along.

That second expedition, however, came inches from being a success in the sense of achieving the main objective.  Driving the US Army out of Fort Union.  The secondary objective, Sherrod Hunter driving west, taking and holding Tucson, probably was doomed from the first.  Nobody could have anticipated the California Volunteers marching east with the equipment and numbers they managed.

Hunter’s force of 500 retreated from Tucson early in May, headed back to the Rio Grande with plenty of difficulties with Apache and desertion.  Only twelve of the force, including Hunter, arrived in Mesilla finally in August.

Which left them with one hell-of-a-long trek back to Texas and a long war to fight and lose when they got there.

Old Jules

4 Comments

Posted in 2000's, Adventure, History, Human Behavior, Military, New Mexico, NM, Reading, Texas

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Protecting the Aristocracy From Mutants, Muslims, Mormons and Malcontents

Posted on August 7, 2012 by | 10 comments

Good morning readers. Thanks for coming by for a read this morning.

During almost a decade when most of my salary was paid by FEMA I used to have to go to FEMA Regional Headquarters every quarter for meetings with people doing the same job I was doing in New Mexico, but from Oklahoma, Arkansas, Louisiana, Texas, and hmm if there’s another state in this FEMA Region I can’t recall it at the moment.  But you get the idea. 

Fairly dreadful meetings and nowhere near as interesting as the weeks spent in the training center at Emmitsburg, MD, or the various other meetings in places where there were Civil War battlegrounds to drift off and walk around on studying how those poor bastards delt with their differences of opinion.

But that’s another story for another time.

The Regional meetings for Emergency Management people and Flood Plain Management people were held on the top floor of an amazing bunker complex at FEMA Region 6 Headquarters outside Denton, Texas.  A venal, truly hidebound lot of bureaucrats we were, too.  Although the worst of us was nowhere near as anal, ugly, downright arrogant as the FEMA people.

And that was before 9/11 and FEMA becoming a part of Homeland Security.  I hate to think how it must be today.

But what I wanted to tell you about is that bunker complex.  Damnedest thing I’ve ever beheld this side of Carlsbad Caverns if it was set up for the US Congress, the 82nd Airborne Division and MD Anderson Hospital were all planned to be housed inside it.  For a long, long while.

Just the parts I was allowed to visit and mull over were several stories underground and probably several acres diameter.  Above ground under all the festooning of antenna, cable and concrete was a pillbox so the people underground could go up and peek out to shoot the occasional mutant, malcontent, or just enjoy the sight of all the devastation.

The first level entryway was a hallway with sprinklers to wash off the radioactivity lingering on anyone going inside, along with slots to allow shooting anyone who didn’t use soap or wash long enough.  And just beyond that was a huge freezer for dragging the carcasses into of people who either got shot or didn’t get clear of the radiation quickly enough to avoid the blind staggers.

Nearby was a huge, amazing, pristine, empty hospital complex with supplies, stacked along the walls, equipment, tables, clean shining stainless steel waiting for some doctors to show up to treat any patients that might show up.

Next floor down was the ‘Continuity of Government’ facility.  A place designated for the Governors of all the Region 6 States, their staffs, their families to wait out whatever difficulties led to them being there.  Hallways with State Flags for each of the member States hung in front of entranceways to avoid Louisiana confusing itself with New Mexico.

An entire floor was devoted to warehousing food, water, all manner of supplies the people living down there would be consuming.  Another floor devoted to Security and Military personnel, along with their equipment and ammunition.  That floor also contained the communications equipment so’s they could talk to anyone who still was alive outside and able to speak English.  Or to whomever else was left out there with radio equipment still working.

And those were just the floors I was allowed to visit.  The FEMA folk hinted there was a lot more, winked knowingly, but wouldn’t discuss what was there.

Soothing thought, I found it, knowing the government had arranged for a place for all those folks I considered more important than regular people to get in out of the rain and keep doing whatever needed doing for the people outside with their eyeballs running down their faces and their flesh sloughing off.

I surely hope they’re still maintaining those bunkers.  I’d hate to think the politicos aren’t being looked after if something happens.

Old Jules

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Posted in 1990's, 2012, America, Current Issues, Emergency Preparedness, Government, Human Behavior, Military, Politics, Survival, Texas

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Limericks Honoring Undeclared Presidential Wars

Posted on July 13, 2012 by | 8 comments

The New Military Empireum
Just doesn’t exactly inspireum!
The wars presidential
Globular, non-essential
Don’t excite all that much to admireum.

Hairy-assed Truman began it
But maybe Joe Stalin helped plan it,
The Kennedy brothers
LBJ and the others
Threw darts at a map of the planet.

Kohreaah Bay of Pigs Vietnam,
Salvadore, Grenada and Iran
Let’s you and him fight
And do it up right
With rifles we sell you and bombs.

M16s for the Christians [our guys]
AK 47s you buys
From Rooskies and China
Moscow, Carolina
Both working three shifts get the prize.

Whoopteedo! I’m a Vet’ran you see,
Patriotic flag waver, that’s me.
Say, “Thank you!” I helped
Keep it going! But yelped
Nobody’s acknowledging me.

Say “Thank you!” Admire what I did.
The rest of my life I just slid
Along on past glories
Dreaming up good war stories
Of Commies and Muslims I rid.

I din’t get none of the riches
From selling the arms to the bitches
But I got me some poozle
And plenty of boozle
But now I’m just one of the snitches.

Contracted a dose of the clap
Saved your freedoms while you took a nap.
This bumper sign’s all that is left
Of those freedoms not taken by theft
But by always believing their crap.

Old Jules

8 Comments

Posted in 2012, America, Government, History, Military, Politics, US Army

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Beggars in Uniform – US Military 2012

Posted on July 13, 2012 by | 14 comments

Good morning readers.  Thanks for coming by for a read this morning.

I was walking around in the Dollar Tree Store [Everything’s a dollar or less] when the manager came on the intercom:

“Dollar Tree shoppers!  Don’t forget to pick up an item of school supplies for military dependents starting school in the fall.  Pencils, pens, tablets, erasers, any item related to school.  Dollar Tree will make sure it reaches the dependents of active military personnel.”

My hand stopped midway to a jar of Kosher dills.  “Eh?  My hearing’s really going to hell.  For a minute I thought she said something about donating school supplies to military kids.  Sheeze!”

But when she finished ringing up my purchases the cashier smiled and met my eye.  “Would you like to buy some pencils or a tablet for military dependents starting school?”

I went snake-eyes.  “You think I’m stupid for shopping here, don’t you?”  I slid my hat back exposing my forehead.  “Do I have a sign saying STUPUD tattooed up there?”

She tried to say something but I butted in.  “Got a program so’s I can buy schools supplies for kids of crack whores?  Kids of people in prison?  Likely they really need it.”

The lady blushed.  “They make us ask.  I didn’t do it.”

“Here!”  I pulled a dollar bag of flour out of one of the sacks.  “Give them that if you can find one who knows how to cook something.  Otherwise give them shopping carts and point them to your dumpster.”

“I’m sorry.”

“No problem.  I give food to beggars.  Not something they can sell or trade for drugs and whiskey.”

Soooo.  Evidently the military folks aren’t even giving their families money for school supplies these days.  Shouldn’t be long before their kids are darting out of alleyways surrounding people waiting at bus stops or traffic lights.  “You wanta buy watch?  Ring?  Skivvy pictures?

Learned it from mom and dad who learned it overseas.  Nice scam.

Back when they had the draft, conscripting people for $100 per month, wives and kids moving in with relatives, nobody thought of that one.  Now they’re all volunteers for undeclared presidential wars, helping bankrupt the federal budget with their salaries and benefits, they’re panhandling.  Trying to mooch off hamburger flippers and other minimum-wage-earners scrimping by shopping at Dollar Tree. 

Old Jules

14 Comments

Posted in 2012, America, Current Issues, Government, Military, US Army

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Keeping the Sacrifices Hidden – Straw Men, Trojan Horses and Pick-Pockets

Posted on June 20, 2012 by | 19 comments

Good morning readers.  Thanks for coming by for a read this morning.

I’ve been pondering this strange dearth of political bumper-stickers, which seems to me to be unprecedented for a year of national elections.  Particularly contests over who’s to be king.  Maybe it’s just the fact it doesn’t matter anymore.  The scrapings of US production so far gone what’s left isn’t worth stealing. 

But maybe there’s another factor at work.

One of the big let-downs of the post WWII era for kings, king-makers, wannabe kings and king-makers, war profiteers, and economic shell-game artists, was the citizenry.  They were stupid, but not as stupid as they needed to be to satisfy the hopes and expectations of those who needed their [preferably active, but at leat tacit] consent to be gang raped.

By the end of the Vietnam War it became obvious that, aside from a few mindless flag-wavers and a re-definition of the word ‘patriot’, most of the citizenry wouldn’t support long-duration undeclared wars, for instance.  Even when the body-bags only contained volunteers.  Even when the sacrifices were disguised in exponential growth of national debt.

Frustrating, tricky business.  Constantly having to dream up Wars on Poverty, Wars on Drugs, Wars on Terrorism to keep them from  noticing their pocketbooks and jobs were going away.  Convincing them  the reason was undocumented workers, non-Christian religious fanatics, and the folks who couldn’t find jobs.

Maybe there’s just a growing realization within the population that it’s already been robbed of everything of value, that it allowed itself to be surrounded with cops, mercenaries, a huge prison system, sophisticated weaponry, and personal debt it can never repay.

And not a single name they could put on a bumper sticker who isn’t a part of what did it, will continue doing it.

Maybe they’re finally just saying, “To hell with it.  They can kill me, but they can’t eat me.”  At least not until someone discovers a way for politicians, bankers, multi-national chief executives, and dynastic wealthy to live longer by ‘donated’ body parts of the citizenry as a means of collecting personal debts or paying off national ones.

Old Jules

19 Comments

Posted in 2012, Government, Human Behavior, Liars, Military, Police, Politics

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A Military Man

Posted on May 27, 2012 by | 13 comments

Previously posted August 21, 2005:

The man in this picture is my old friend Richard Sturm.

[Note:  I’m going to edit this a bit before I post it to the So Far From Heaven blog, add and subtract a few hindsights and afterthoughts.  Jules]

Richard died in December, 2004, in Port Lavaca, Texas.

Richard was a 100% disabled veteran of the United States Army. From 1964, until his death he spent his entire adult life in and out of Veterans hospitals. When he wasn’t in a hospital he was usually in a café somewhere drinking coffee and being friendly with anyone who’d give him the time of day.

Or he was with me, camping, fishing, seeing the sights, singing, passing the time. That happened less than he’d have liked, probably more than I’d have preferred in a lot of instances. Richard wasn’t an easy man to be around.   

A while back [2011] his brother and I were discussing Richard, and Vic remarked, “You never really saw Richard when he was at his worst.”  I didn’t say so at the time, but I think I spent a lot more time with Richard over the years than Vic did, or than Vic was ever aware I did. 

Aside from Richard, all those Sturms were super-achievers, and although I spent a lot of years from 1965 onward considering Vic among my best friends, he was a busy man.  People sought him out.  If I wanted to talk to him, I called him.  Over all those decades I could count on one hand the times he initiated a contact between the two of us.  “People call me.  I don’t call them,” he explained to me once when I mentioned it to him.   I’d guess that applied to Richard, same as it did to me.

But that’s digression, edited in this May, 2012, with a lot of hindsight.

Before Richard volunteered for the Army he was a patriotic youth, intelligent, dynamic, from a family of super-achievers. He graduated from high school with honors, well liked and respected by his teachers and classmates. A young man with a future. Then he joined the US Army.

In 1964, he was stationed in Massachusetts with the Army Security Agency. Without his knowledge or consent, he was selected for an experiment by the career military men who were his superiors. He was given a massive dose of LSD. He sustained permanent brain damage as a result.

Richard spent several months in a mental ward of an Army hospital, presumably under observation by the powers-that-be, to see what they’d wrought. Then they gave him is medical discharge, released him from service and from the hospital, and sent him home without confiding to anyone what the problem was and why it happened.

Several years later after he’d been examined, had his thyroid removed, given electric shock treatments, everything the puzzled medicos could think of to try and improve this mysterious condition, his brother, an attorney, came to suspect something of what had happened. The stories of events of this sort had begun to creep out of hiding and into the press.

A formal demand was made for release of his records, and finally the story came out.

Richard wasn’t injured defending his country. He didn’t get his skull fractured on some battlefield by enemies. He was betrayed by the career military men of his own country, officers and enlisted men, whom he’d given an oath to obey and defend. He served in good faith, and he was betrayed by his country.

Some have noted on the threads that I don’t have an automatic high regard for career military men. They’re correct. Richard’s just an extreme example of thousands of men who’ve been killed, injured, disabled by irresponsible, insane, and idiotic decisions by men who make a career of blindly following orders without thinking, weighing consequences, not feeling any remorse so long as they were ordered to do it.

Like good little NAZIs, Japanese, Soviets, Israelies, Americans, Cambodians, British, Africans, Chinese, Cubans, Argentinans and military men everywhere.  Just following orders. 

Support our troops.

Old Jules

2012 note:  During a conversation with Vic in 2011, I mentioned the LSD experiment and Vic replied, “It’s a shame I could never prove it.  Richards records were all destroyed in a fire at the Army Records Holding Center in the late 1960s.”  Live and learn.  Somewhere back there, I must have heard it from Richard, I came to think the records had been uncovered and it was established, official fact.

13 Comments

Posted in 1960's, Adventure, Government, Human Behavior, Liars, Military, New Mexico, NM, Politics, Texas, US Army

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