I was a 35-year-old medical student with a wife, three kids and zero resources. We were so poor we got reverse taxes. We actually looked forward to April 15th every year — not so much anymore.
Thanks to my amazing wife, some generous parents and God’s Divine Providence, we still had a warm, safe, nurturing home despite our rather remarkable dearth of material goods. Were I being completely honest, this was arguably the best time of my life. We got Domino’s pizza every 6 to 8 weeks, and it was indeed an epic event. Such relative rarity makes the sweet things taste all the sweeter. At one point, however, we found ourselves in need of a vacation. Our humble circumstances mandated something cheap.
My bride figured it out. We would catch the Amtrak in Jackson, Mississippi, and do a long weekend in New Orleans. The train ride down would be fun for the kids, and we found inexpensive accommodations. As Amtrak is federally subsidized, the fares were reasonable, even for all five of us. New Orleans has a great zoo, the National WWII Museum, and lots of good food. It was shaping up to be a memorable family adventure.
The train ride was indeed a blast. We pulled over onto a siding to make way for a passing freight and spotted an alligator. By the time we rolled into New Orleans, we were ready to explore.
America’s train stations were, in general, built many decades ago and sited in the most vibrant parts of town. Now, more than half a century later, what used to be thriving is often no longer. The train station in New Orleans looked like something out of Mogadishu.
We were all young, fit and naïve. I couldn’t afford a taxi, so we resolved to just walk all the way across the city to our modest hotel. With our luggage on my back and three kids in tow, the Dabbs family struck out on foot to experience the Big Easy in August.
New Orleans in summer is Africa hot. It is also covered in a thin patina of homeless people. However, I worked in an inner-city hospital and appreciated that most of these folks, though they might look a bit intimidating, were actually pretty harmless. Regardless, I am armed whenever I am not asleep or in the shower, so I wasn’t unduly concerned about our safety.
Homelessness is a ubiquitous problem in America’s metropolitan areas. A kid’s first
encounter with such squalor can be memorable, particularly if it involves a corpse.
Unsplash photos. Photographer’s names in titles.
My six-year-old son clung dutifully to my right hand as we made our way through the squatters’ camps and detritus of squalid urban living. Considering this was a fairly unfamiliar world to my kids, they just soaked it in. Then my son asked me innocently, “Dad, what’s wrong with that man?”
I followed his tiny index finger to the object of his curiosity. This guy sat motionless on the sidewalk, his back leaning against an abandoned store front. His clothes were tattered, and an empty wine bottle stood on the concrete beside him. Despite the blistering heat he reclined backwards in brilliant direct unfiltered sunlight. As I looked more closely I could see flies crawling in and out of his nose.
“Well, son,” I said. “That man is dead.”
My man-child was instantly mesmerized. He had never before seen a dead man and was now overcome with curiosity. I found myself in a bit of spot.
We couldn’t afford a cell phone. I had no idea what the protocol was if you encounter a dead wino on the streets of New Orleans. It seemed somehow uncharitable to just leave him there. As I began searching about for somebody who might have a phone or a business that might yet still have a landline, a squad car pulled leisurely up to the scene. A big cop stepped out, walked up to the dead guy and softly kicked him in the foot with his boot. Predictably, the corpse did not respond.
“Yep, call the meat wagon,” the cop shouted over his shoulder to his partner in the car. “This one’s done.”
My son took one long, last, fascinated look, and we headed on our way. Now some two decades later my children don’t remember the New Orleans zoo, the WWII Museum or the food. However, from now until the sun burns out they will never forget finding that dead guy. Kids are like that. His was the Big Chill in the Big Easy.
Talaiasi Labalaba was born on July 13, 1942, in Vatutu Village in Nawaka, Nadi, on the island of Fiji. Fiji is an island country in Melanesia in the South Pacific roughly 1,100 miles northeast of New Zealand. Fiji is actually an archipelago of more than 330 islands, 220 of which are currently uninhabited. Tourism and sugar-cane are the primary industries. As of 1970, Fiji became a fully independent sovereign state within the British Commonwealth of Nations. Beginning in WW2, Fiji’s relationship with the British Empire meant that native Fijians could serve in the British military.
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. Eventually, Labalaba volunteered for Selection for the 22d Special Air Service.
The Setting
In the summer of 1972 Oman was in chaos. Sharing borders with Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Yemen, the Omani Sultanate was allied with the British in a fight for its life against Marxist rebels. A small contingent of nine SAS operators was assigned to assist with Omani security as part of the British Army Training Team at Mirbat. Their year-long deployment was part of Operation Jaguar. This nine-man team was short and was soon to rotate home.
Opposing this small contingent was the PFLOAG. This mouthful of word salad stands for the Popular Front for the Liberation of the Occupied Arabian Gulf. Locals just called them the Adoo.
The SAS BATT House stood overlooking the approaches to Jebel Ali, itself a strategically critical piece of dirt leading to the major port of Mirbat. The PFLOAG rebels knew that to take Mirbat they would first have to take Jebel Ali. Before they could get to Jebel Ali they had to neutralize the nine Brits at the SAS BATT House.
The BATT House was itself a fairly impressive fortification. Manning the fort as well as the surrounding encampment were another 25 Omani policemen and some 30 Balochi Askari along with one local firquat irregular. The Balochi Askari were members of the Pakistani diaspora serving in an administrative military capacity. The firqua were members of the Omani loyalist militia.
Arrayed against this Neapolitan band was some 300-400 heavily-armed and dedicated PFLOAG Marxist fighters. At the BATT House, the SAS troops were armed primarily with L1A1 SLR rifles and a single M2 .50-caliber machinegun along with a 60mm mortar. The Adoo packed AK47 rifles, RPG7’s, and mortars along with ample ammunition courtesy of their Soviet and Chinese benefactors.
July 19, 1972, was the day the Brits were to rotate home. At 0600 that morning, CPT Mike Kealy, the 23-year-old commander of the SAS contingent, observed what he thought to be a deployed patrol of loyal Omanis now returning to base. These Omanis had been picketed to warn of approaching Adoo forces. Once he realized how substantial this force was, however, he appreciated that his patrol had surely been killed. He then ordered his men to open fire. The SAS troops did just that but found that the Adoo forces were infiltrating via gullies beyond the effective range and penetration of their SLRs. At that point, the BATT House began receiving accurate and effective mortar and RPG fire. CPT Kealy contacted his higher headquarters in Um al Quarif and requested reinforcements.
The Fight
It soon became obvious that the small SAS force was in grave danger of being overwhelmed. However, located some 800 meters distant at a smaller fortification was a single British 25-pounder artillery piece along with an ample supply of ammunition. SGT Talaiasi Labalaba struck out alone across 800 meters of flat open desert to reach the howitzer. The accumulated Adoo insurgents opened up on him with their AK rifles.
The typical crew for a 25-pounder is six. This multipurpose Quick-Firing gun fired separate ammunition consisting of a projectile loaded first followed by a cartridge case containing between one and three bags of propellant. Running the gun accurately, efficiently, and well is an art that requires extensive cultivated teamwork and training. On this fateful day, SGT Labalaba was managing the big 3,600-pound gun alone.
During the course of several hours, SGT Labalaba poured high explosive rounds into the attacking communist guerrillas, frequently averaging one round per minute. However, the sheer force of numbers was overwhelming him. Eventually, the attacking Adoo troops got an AK round past the splinter shield on the gun and struck SGT Labalaba in the face. Now badly wounded, he radioed back to the BATT House with an update. Despite the horrific nature of his injury SGT Labalaba continued firing the howitzer, sighting directly through the bore at the approaching guerillas. However, he was badly hurt and losing blood. SGT Labalaba was now struggling to operate the heavy gun alone.
CPT Kealy requested a volunteer to assist SGT Labalaba and Trooper Sekonaia Takavesi, a fellow Fijian, answered the call. Under covering fire from the BATT House Takavesi made the long 800-meter run to the artillery emplacement unscathed. Once there he engaged approaching Adoo fighters with his SLR and attempted to address SGT Labalaba’s injury as best he could. Together the two men continued to work the 25-pounder, pouring HE rounds onto the maniacal communist attackers.
The Gun
Developed in 1940, the 25-pounder was an 87.6mm multipurpose artillery piece combining both high-angle and direct-fire capabilities. Ultimately produced in six Marks, the 25-pounder was highly mobile for its day despite its nearly two-ton all-up weight. The gun was used throughout the Commonwealth, and ammunition remains in production at the Pakistani Ordnance Factories today.
The 25-pounder used separate bagged charges that could be cut as necessary to produce an accurate fall of shot at various ranges. A subsequent “Super” charge was also developed that required the addition of a muzzle brake to the gun for safe operation. Most British charges for the gun were cordite-based.
In addition to high explosive, smoke, and chemical shells, the 25-pounder could also fire a curious shaped-charge warhead as well as a 20-pound APBC (Armor Piercing Ballistic Cap) round also designed for antitank use. Antitank rounds were employed in the direct-fire mode using Super charge loads. In addition to these conventional applications, the 25-pounder could also fire foil “window” that mimicked the return of an aircraft on radar as well as shells containing propaganda leaflets. These leaflet shells were employed toward the end of WW2 to convince the Germans to surrender.
The Rest of the Story
Now under dire threat of being overrun, SGT Labalaba retrieved a small Infantry mortar kept at the artillery firing point. This stubby high-angle weapon would be more effective now that the attacking troops were in so close. As he moved to set the mortar up for firing he caught a second round to the neck and bled out.
By now Takavesi had also taken a round through the shoulder and was grazed by another across the back of his head. Despite his injuries, he duly reported the situation back by radio and continued to engage the approaching guerillas with his SLR.
In response, CPT Kealy and another SAS trooper named Thomas Tobin also ran the gauntlet to the artillery firing point. When they arrived they found that Trooper Takavesi had been hit a third time, this time by an AK round through his abdomen. Now having closed to within-hand grenade range, the PFLOAG troops showered the emplacement with grenades, only one of which detonated.
During the fight, Trooper Tobin reached across the body of SGT Labalaba and caught an AK round to the face that blew away much of his jaw, leaving him mortally wounded. Just when the situation seemed darkest, a flight of BAC Strikemaster attack jets from the Omani Air Force arrived on station and opened up on the communist rebels. One of the jets suffered battle damage from ground fire and had to return to base, but rocket and cannon fire from the remaining element ultimately broke the back of the assault.
When Trooper Toobin was hit he reflexively aspirated a chunk of his own splintered tooth. This fragment subsequently set up a lung infection that later killed him in hospital. Sekonaia Takavesi was medically evacuated and recovered. SGT Talaiasi Labalaba received a posthumous Mention in Dispatches. SGT Labalaba is buried at St Martin’s Church at Hereford in England. He was 30 years old when he was killed.
The 25-pounder gun SGT Labalaba used in Oman is currently on display at the Firepower Museum of the Royal Artillery at the former Royal Arsenal at Woolwich in England. The engagement outside Mirbat was intentionally underreported by the Omani and British governments at the time. SAS involvement in Oman was a sensitive issue, and no one wanted undue official attention. SGT Labalaba’s comrades have lobbied ever since that he should posthumously receive the Victoria Cross for his selfless actions in Oman that day.
In October of 2018 Prince Harry formally dedicated a bronze likeness of SGT Labalaba at the Nadi International Airport in Fiji commemorating his exceptional bravery. Another statue occupies a place of honor at SAS HQ as well. Tom Petch, a British filmmaker and himself a former SAS operator is currently producing a feature movie about SGT Labalaba and the Battle of Mirbat.
Ben Shapiro made a post that highlighted some of that cluelessness from Joe Biden. It’s just astonishing how Biden sits in such a position of power and is always spouting off about guns yet knows next to nothing. He attacked “semi-automatic weapons,” saying they had no socially redeeming value — without realizing that most everyday handguns are semi-automatic. The people who protect him every day carry them, but that’s allowed because Joe is special. You ordinary Americans would not allowed to protect yourselves with those same weapons if Joe Biden had his way.
But what added to the overall ignorance was “journalist” Gretchen Carlson’s response to Shapiro’s post about the AR-15. Carlson has worked for CBS and Fox, yet that doesn’t mean that she knows anything. This may be one of the dumbest posts about the AR-15 that you’re likely to see.
“Ordinary people didn’t have AR-15s before 2004,” Carlson claimed.
“They’re not some time-honored American tradition, they’re a recent mistake that we could fix and save thousands of lives in the process.”
Oh my, how wrong can you be?
Carlson got whacked with a Community Note pointing out how wrong she was about people not having such guns before 2004: “For more than a half-century, the AR-15 has been popular among gun owners, widely available in gun stores and, for many years, even appeared in the Sears catalog.”
Indeed, it’s been available to civilians since it was made in 1959.
Yes, Gretchen, the right to bear arms is a “time-honored American tradition” (in addition to being a protected Constitutional right). You don’t get to decide what guns people can and cannot have, particularly when you, like Joe Biden, don’t have any idea what you are talking about.
The perception of the AR-15 is manipulated by the liberal obsession with it and their fixation on mass shootings. But as a percentage of those who are killed with guns, rifles are a very small percentage, and AR-15s are a percentage of that percentage. So this fixation is not based in reality, it’s based on the belief that somehow the AR-15 is some evil weapon/machine gun that can kill more people faster, without understanding it’s a rifle that fires one bullet per trigger pull. The AR-15 is also one of the most popular rifles in the country, with millions in circulation. But let not reality interfere with leftist propaganda, it’s about “Alinsky-izing” the rifle.
Carlson’s post went viral because it was so incredibly bad. The internet let her have it with a huge ratio.