My latest “it” incident was the rescue of Nanny Goose, a large Chinese goose that apparently escaped from a nearby farm and was now residing in the neighborhood pond. She was either adopted by a flock of Canadian geese, or she decided to become the “Nanny” of the brood of young goslings. Either way, the large white goose and the Canadian geese lived peacefully together during the spring and summer.
My wife passed the pond daily during her walks, paying close attention to Nanny. As leaves started turning, the Canadians started migrating. Sometimes Nanny Goose had a new flock to keep her company, and sometimes she would be by her lonesome. During the lonely lulls, she would honk, calling out to any nearby passing Canadians. You can see where this is headed.
My wife started worrying about Nanny being lonely. How would she survive the upcoming winter? After all, Nanny was obviously a domestic goose not used to fending for herself. Research on my wife’s part showed domestic geese don’t eat the same things as Canadian Geese, so now another worry surfaced. Naturally, my wife started feeding Nanny.
Help?
My wife summoned the advice of a rescue farm. The owner validated my wife’s concerns and even responded three times to help us rescue her. Dubbed operation Nanny Goose, we tried to corral her with a large blanket. Although domestic geese can’t fly, you’d be amazed at how fast they can run. The first three missions of Operation Nanny Goose were flops.
My daughter was on break from veterinarian school and got involved. Even with her fleet of foot, knowledge, and sheer determination, her numerous attempts were also for naught. We needed a better plan. Thinking about the project, my wife still fed Nanny daily with her Goose Chow from Tractor Supply. Nanny was practically eating from her hand now.
Hula Hoop?
One day it came to me. I needed a throw net of sorts. It needed to be big, as Nanny is a big girl, and fast. The larger size would give me some leeway, too. I figured a hoop 4 feet in diameter would be about perfect. So, 4 feet times 3.14 would be 12.56 feet of ½-inch PVC tubing. I bought 15 feet of tubing with a coupling to connect the ends. Some decorative netting from Amazon for $7 was used to complete my throw net. I laced the two top layers of netting through the PVC tubing and connected the ends.
Feeling confident, my wife and I headed to the pond, loaded for Goose! As she fed Nanny, I tried flanking her so I could throw the net. Nanny dodged the first toss, and the second throw bounced off her. Retreating to the pond, we decided to stop so we wouldn’t scar her too much.
A few days later, we tried again. We were seeing first-hand how the saying “Go on a wild goose chase” came about. This was harder than we thought.
Cast Bullets?
Thinking it over, I decided a heavier net would give me more control when throwing it. What could I use? Yup, the answer was obvious. I had thousands of cast bullets in my basement. I went with some 300 grain .44 Keith bullets. Using 100 slugs, it added over 4 pounds of weight to my net. It also gave a more positive throw.
Nanny, in back of the Tahoe, headed to the farm.
Nanny Goose making friends with Virgil.
Mission Accomplished
It was Sunday evening and conditions were perfect. It was cold, cloudy and Nanny Goose was by her lonesome. She ran to my wife for her daily feeding. After a few gulps of feed, I flanked her again and she didn’t suspect a thing. Doing my best Tom Cruise impersonation, I said,” Talk to me, Goose!”
The release was clean, and Nanny never knew what hit her. The only problem? She could still run. My wife and I gave chase, but Nanny already made it to the pond, her head sticking through the net. She was at risk of drowning now!
My wife, showing total disregard for her own safety, went in. She grabbed the hoop and handed it to me as I re-scooped Nanny fully in the net. I then pulled my wife out of the pond. We transferred Nanny to a crate and drove her to the rescue farm. Nanny is one happy goose. She’s part of a loving family consisting of several geese, ducks, sheep, goats, llamas, alpacas and a host of other critters.
More importantly, my wife is happy. She doesn’t have to worry anymore about Nanny Goose. And I don’t have to wake up at 4 a.m. anymore to my wife asking me if I think Nanny Goose is okay.
So, guys, when your wife ever confronts you with an “it” project, just bite the bullet and do it. It’ll save you a lot of time and worry. And you’ll get the bonus of being a hero until the next project comes down the pike.
Lastly, keep a lot of cast bullets on hand. You’ll never know when they’ll come in handy.
Behold a true World War 2 hero. Major Sepp Gangl gave his life fighting alongside American forces against the Waffen SS in the closing days of the war.
Josef Gangl was born September 12, 1910, in Obertraubling, Bavaria. The son of a Royal Bavarian State Railways official, young Josef aspired to a career as a professional soldier. However, post-WW1 Germany was not the ideal place to pursue such aspirations. The Reichswehr was limited to a roster of 100,000 troops by the Treaty of Versailles. However, Gangl made the cut and was assigned to Artillery Regiment 7 in Nuremberg.
Josef Gangl enjoyed a distinguished career in the Wehrmacht as an artillery officer.
In 1935 Josef Gangl was reassigned to the 25th Artillery Regiment in Ludwigsburg. That same year he also married a local woman named Walburga Renz. Gangl began WW2 as an Oberfeldwebel. The American equivalent would be a Sergeant First Class. He was wounded in the opening salvoes of the war and spent six months recuperating in hospitals. In May of 1940, he returned to service as commander of a reconnaissance unit in the Wehrmacht’s 25th Infantry Division. By 1941 he commanded a battery of 105mm tube artillery assigned to Army Group South on the Eastern Front. By the spring of 1942, Gangl had earned the Iron Cross First and Second class and taken command of a Nebelwerfer unit.
The Nebelwerfer was a simple and relatively low-cost rocket artillery weapon.
The Nebelwerfer was a fearsome bit of rocket artillery that Allied troops called the Screaming Mimi. A relatively low-cost, saturation weapon, the Nebelwerfer could be launched from Sdkfz 251 halftracks or from standalone launchers. The word “Nebelwerfer” means “fog thrower.” This was part of a German disinformation campaign to keep the Allies from categorizing the weapon as an artillery piece.
Gangl’s rocket artillery unit was slaughtered alongside the 12th SS Hilterjugend Division during the bitter fighting in Normandy.
By March of 1944, Gangl was serving with a Werfer-Brigade in France. Assigned to the 12th SS Hitlerjugend Division, Gangl’s Nebelwerfer unit was cut to pieces during its escape from the Falaise Pocket after D-Day. Following a reorganization and resupply with fresh equipment and troops Gangl’s unit participated in the ill-fated Ardennes Offensive in December of 1944. This gory mess earned Josef Gangl the German Cross in Gold.
Don’t let the adorable mini-fraulein prop fool you, Heinrich Himmler was a full-bore psychopath.
By April of 1945, the fate of the Third Reich was irretrievably sealed. Gangl and what remained of his men were posted to Worgl in the Austrian state of Tyrol to defend Heinrich Himmler’s Alpine Redoubt. This far-fetched scheme imagined a protracted guerilla war fought in the mountains after the fall of the Nazi government in Berlin. At this late stage, however, only the most ardent fanatics held out any hope of success. The pragmatists, Sepp Gangl among them, just wanted to get his troops home safely.
Major Gangl’s orders were to defend the town of Worgl to the death.
Gangl’s immediate superior was a Wehrmacht Lieutenant Colonel named Johann Giehl. Giehl’s orders were to defend the town of Worgl against the approaching Americans to the last man. Josef Gangl, however, had other ideas. He contacted Alois Mayer, the leader of the local Austrian resistance, and provided him with weapons and tactical information. Gangl was ready to be done.
When the Americans got tooled up we rolled over Western Europe like a tidal wave.
Meanwhile, the American juggernaut rolled inexorably on, backed up by apparently limitless supplies of tanks, trucks, and men. As the US forces got closer, locals began posting Austrian flags or white bedsheets outside their homes to signify their willingness to capitulate. The SS under orders from Himmler dragged the male residents from these homes and executed them. Violating fresh orders to withdraw, Gangl and ten of his remaining troops stayed behind in Worgl to defend the residents against rampaging SS fanatics.
Itter Castle
Before the Waffen SS blew it to hell, Itter Castle was quite the picturesque place.
Nearby Itter Castle was used by the Germans as a prison for high-ranking French captives. Command of this fortress dungeon fell to the Dachau administration. Incarcerated therein were such dignitaries as former French Prime Ministers Edouard Daladier and Paul Reynaud as well as several French Generals and the acclaimed French tennis star Jean Borotra. Sundry trade union and resistance leaders were also held there along with Marie-Agnes de Gaulle, Charles de Gaulle’s older sister.
The 17th SS Panzer was out for blood.
On May 4, 1945, Sebastien Wimmer, the prison commander, fled the castle along with his contingent of SS Totenkopfverbande guards. The liberated prisoners seized the few abandoned German weapons that remained and prepared for the coming assault by troops of the fanatical 17th SS Panzer Grenadier Division “Gotz von Berlichingen.” A Czech cook named Andreas Krobot bicycled into Worgl with the news that the Waffen SS was staging an attack against the castle. Everyone expected a bloodbath.
American CPT Jack Lee seized the initiative and joined forces with Gangl and his men against the SS.
In desperation, Gangl affixed a white flag to his Kubelwagen and drove 8 km to nearby Kufstein. There he encountered the lead elements of the American 23d Tank Battalion of the US XXI Corps under the command of CPT John C. “Jack” Lee. Gangl explained the situation and requested assistance. In what was one of the most bizarre episodes of the war, CPT Lee joined Major Gangl in his Kubelwagen for a quick recce of the castle and its surrounding area. Lee then fell in alongside Gangl and his 10 remaining Wehrmacht artillerymen to defend the castle against the approaching SS troops. Included among this motley band was also an SS Hauptsturmfuhrer who had grown a conscience named Kurt Siegfried Schrader.
CPT Lee made it to the castle with but a single Sherman tank.
CPT Lee had four Sherman tanks under his command. After the recon, he returned, stationed two Shermans in defensive positions, and requisitioned five more along with support troops from the 142d Infantry Regiment. After fighting through SS roadblocks and attempting to traverse rickety bridges CPT Lee’s relief force had been whittled down to a single Sherman and fourteen US troops. CPT Lee’s tank was christened “Besotten Jenny.”
The Fight
The German high velocity 88mm Flak 36 was one of the most effective weapons of the war. The 17th SS kampfgruppe arrived with three of these monsters.
On the morning of May 5th, CPT Lee positioned his Sherman on the approaches to the castle and organized the defenses. The kampfgruppe from the 17th SS then attacked with a force of between 100 and 150 troops backed up with automatic weapons and three heavy flak guns. Their first move was to take out the Sherman with one of the 88’s.
The German 88 made short work of CPT Lee’s Sherman.
Fortunately, the tank crew was outside the vehicle at the time. The only occupant was a radio repairman attempting to get the tank’s communications systems operational. He escaped the burning tank with minimal injuries.
This frisky rascal actually sprinted out of the castle under fire to try to get help during the assault by SS troops.
The subsequent assault went on for hours. Locals described heavy machine gun fire ongoing throughout much of the day. As German weapons chewed into the 19th-century structure the French tennis star Jean Borotra volunteered to vault the wall and run for help under fire. As the incoming fire became overwhelming, former French Prime Minister Paul Reynaud found himself exposed. Sepp Gangl tackled the French politician, moving him to safety. In the process, Gangl caught a bullet from an SS sniper.
The Weapon
The scoped K43 rifle was the most advanced Designated Marksman Rifle in the German inventory at the end of WW2.
The specific weapon used to kill Sepp Gangl has been lost to history. However, the 17th SS would have been equipped with the most advanced equipment available to the Reich in 1945. The state of the art in optic-equipped battlefield rifles at the time was the scoped K43.
The K43 was the German answer to the American M1 Garand. The krauts never had enough of the guns.
The Gewehr 43 was also known as the G43, the Gewehr 43, the Karabiner 43, the Kar 43, or the K43 rifle. A gas-operated semiautomatic design, the K43 drew inspiration from both the previous German G41(W) as well as the Russian Tokarev SVT-40. The primary strength of the K43 was that it was designed from the outset to take advantage of modern mass production techniques.
4X Zf4 scopes were serialized in the field to their host K43 rifles. One of these retention screws is a replacement.
The 7.92x57mm K43 weighed 9.7 pounds and was fed from a detachable ten-round box magazine. The original intent was to equip each grenadier company with nineteen K43 rifles and ten detachable 4x Zielfernrohr 43 (Zf4) scopes. Unit armorers would then identify the most accurate examples and fit them with optics. Mounts and rifles were therefore locally serialized with an electro pencil to keep track of what accessories went with which rifle. In this configuration, the scoped K43 served in the role occupied by the Designated Marksman Rifle today. Roughly 400,000 copies rolled off the lines during its two-year production run, but supplies of K43 rifles never kept up with the insatiable demand.
The Rest of the Story
Castle Itter took a pounding during the assault.
Reinforcements eventually arrived from the American 142d Infantry Regiment and routed the attacking SS troops. Around 100 SS soldiers were subsequently taken prisoner. Castle Itter was successfully liberated, and the French prisoners returned to their official positions. Sepp Gangl was the only friendly casualty of the operation.
The French dignitaries liberated from Castle Itter went on to play critical roles in the complex recovery operation in France after the armistice.
In retrospect, the troops from the 17th SS were almost assuredly moving on the castle to exterminate the high-value French prisoners housed there. However, these political and cultural leaders ultimately played an outsized role in the post-war recovery in France. Had the SS been successful and killed this nucleus of leadership it could have taken the historical arc of post-war Europe in an entirely different direction.
Sepp Gangl is viewed as a hero today in Austria where he died fighting alongside the Americans.
Josef Gangl was 34 when he died. He left behind a widow and two young children. However, through his bravery and sacrifice, he helped build a foundation of freedom in Europe that is enjoyed to the present day. One of the main streets in Worgl is named in his honor. Tyrolians in Austria revere him as a hero of the Austrian resistance today. The Battle for Itter Castle was the only time during the war that Wehrmacht and US troops fought side by side against a common enemy.
Young ideologically naive men always make the best soldiers. WW2 stole life on an unprecedented scale. Major Gangl’s heroic sacrifice was swallowed up in the carnage.
Kathleen Boelyn, the mother of Johnny Hurley, who was killed a year ago during a shooting in Arvada, holds a photo of her son while standing in her Colorado Springs garden on Tuesday, June 14, 2022.
The active shooter was wearing black shorts, a floppy hat and tactical gear, and he had already killed an Arvada police officer. He was shooting out windows in police cars in a busy shopping and restaurant district in Olde Town Arvada during lunch hour one year ago.
Three fellow officers in a nearby substation — in shorts and polo shirts — were worried they weren’t wearing the right gear to safely face him. They instead watched the man with an AR-15 from the window as he walked toward the main square of Olde Town, according to investigative documents.
Johnny Hurley, 40, was shopping at an Army surplus store a block over and peered out the window, spotting the shooter. He ran out of the store and removed his concealed gun at his waist, beneath his shirt.
SPONSOR MESSAGE
Hurley had trained for active shooter situations — not because it was part of his work, but because he wanted to help people and save lives.
Crouching down, he ran across a vacant, shady plaza with umbrellas and tables, gripping his gun as it pointed toward the ground. Hurley knelt down behind a brick wall and carefully watched the shooter. Hurley took aim and fired six rounds from his handgun, five struck the gunman, according to his lawyers.
The entire scene was captured on surveillance camera footage.
“I have to admit it’s kind of exciting to see the way he handled himself,” said his mother, Kathleen Boleyn. “The way he took all the training and practice that he’s had and did the right thing.”
Hurley continued to try to do the right thing — he moved to disarm the gunman, who was still alive and lying on the ground with his AR-15 nearby, according to Boleyn’s attorneys.
Hart Van Denburg/CPR NewsA memorial to Johnny Hurley in the driveway of Hurley’s mother, Kathleen Boelyn, in Colorado Springs on Tuesday, June 14, 2022. Hurley was killed in a shooting last year in Arvada.
Officers saw Hurley from the safety of the substation.
They stayed inside because they worried even the door itself wouldn’t stop a round from an AR-15, according to investigative documents.
Even though Hurley didn’t look anything like the suspect description, they told investigators in an interview later that they couldn’t tell if he was a possibly a second shooter. They had no idea one of their own, Officer Gordon Beesley, had been killed just two minutes earlier.
“That’s the information that Arvada did not want the public to know,” said Siddhartha Rathod, the attorney representing Hurley’s family. “The officers hid while Johnny did what they were trained to do, that the officers refused to go outside. These are three officers with bulletproof vests on, and they refused to open the door and go and engage the shooter.”
For 11 seconds, the officers watched Hurley from behind as he was trying to remove ammunition from the automatic rifle, according to court filings. Without announcing “police” or asking him to drop the weapon, Arvada Officer Kraig Brownlow opened the substation door and took aim at Hurley from behind, hitting him in his back pelvis and killing him.
“If they would’ve simply said, ‘Police,’ Johnny would be here today,” Rathod said.
In an interview in Rathod’s office earlier this month, Hurley’s mother looked at the floor.
“Absolutely,” she said. “That was very much a part of his training. Any announcement, any suggestion to put down your weapon, if they would have said, ‘Police, put down your weapon,’ … he would have dropped it.”
This week is the one-year anniversary of the incident, and Hurley’s family filed a civil rights lawsuit against Brownlow and the Arvada Police Chief Link Strate alleging their actions and the police department’s own policies deprived Hurley of his constitutionally protected rights.
Arvada Mayor Marc Williams said June 21, 2021, was the hardest day of his life as mayor.
“We still mourn the loss of Officer Gordon Beesley and are so thankful for the service of the Arvada Police Department,” he said. “And at the same time we still think about Johnny Hurley. It’s tragic because of the actions of a crazed gunman, we lost two very good men that day.”
Williams said he feels badly for the Hurley family.
“I wish I knew the man,” he said. “He was someone who was willing to step into a very dangerous situation … The tragedy of him picking up the gunman’s rifle will always haunt everyone.”
But Rathod, the family lawyer, said the juxtaposition of Hurley’s actions compared to the officers is stark.
“When Johnny heard the shots, he opened the door and faced the danger,” Rathod said.
The gunman, Ronald Troyke, had a troubled history with the Arvada Police.
After a series of personal problems, he grew increasingly isolated and agitated. And he grew extremely angry at the police, constantly binging on anti-police videos, according to court documents.
Just a couple of weeks before this shooting, he confronted Officer Kraig Brownlow, Sterling Boom and Michael Hall, the three officers who watched him from the substation just days later storm the shopping district with an assault rifle. Troyke called them “terrible people” and “sovereign citizens,” court documents said.
The day of the shooting, Troyke told his sister the police weren’t taking him seriously. His sister called APD and asked for a welfare check. She noted he had a lot of weapons at his disposal. The officer who tried to do that check was Beesley, the officer whom Troyke killed shortly later. Beesley knocked on his door, but Troyke had already taken off for Olde Town.
Mark Wise was the one witness who saw the entire episode as he and a colleague were leaving a restaurant in the town square. When the gunman shot and killed Beesley right in front of Wise, he dove for cover behind parked cars and called 911. He then watched Hurley run toward the gunman, stop, and kill him.
“In that moment when Johnny was running towards me, I didn’t know if he was friend or foe,” Wise said, in a tribute video made by Hurley’s lawyers. “I stayed because something about his presence told me this was going to be OK.”
Hart Van Denburg/CPR NewsKathleen Boelyn, the mother of Johnny Hurley, lights a candle for a photographer to show a small shrine to Hurley in her Colorado Springs home on Tuesday, June 14, 2022.
Boleyn spent a Sunday with Hurley the day before he was killed.
She has weathered a year as a mother living through all of the firsts without her son — the hole at Christmas, a birthday he wasn’t there to celebrate, Mother’s Day.
“When you were having fun with Johnny, there wasn’t anybody else you wanted to be with,” she said. “He just made fun things more fun.”
On what would have been his 41st birthday last August, she went to a horse farm to honor him. Hurley’s sister, Erin, took a group of his friends up camping, an activity the two loved to do together. They brought Hurley’s camping chair and set it up with a photo of him, his floppy camouflage hat and a beer in the cupholder.
“Johnny was a very protective big brother. He always looked out for me, always made sure I was safe, always made sure I felt safe,” she said, in the tribute video. “If I could say one thing to him right now it would be that I love you.”
Hurley was a dilettante who had passions ranging from individual gun rights to cooking to skateboarding to rap music to film. He was a trained chef and picked up catering jobs during the pandemic. He gave away clothes and underwear to homeless people and was known for his gigs drumming in local music establishments. He loved camping. He set up a “hug machine” on the 16th Street Mall in downtown Denver once and doled out “free” hugs to strangers.
Hurley’s mother said if he wanted to learn something about a subject, he dove in. He went to cooking school and learned how to develop his own recipes when he wanted to learn how to cook. When he became interested in mass shootings and how to help people, he took active shooting training classes.
“He had great compassion for people, and this came out in stories that I heard,” Boleyn said, noting one other time he saved someone’s life who was having trouble swimming in a creek.
His friend Douglas Evans said Hurley was “someone you could take to the revolution or take to your mom’s house.”
When Hurley took active-shooting courses, Boleyn said his instructor cautioned him to use his training wisely.
The instructor told Hurley that he had kids, and he wasn’t sure what decision he would make in a critical moment, fearing for his own family.
“And Johnny said, “Well, I’m not married. I don’t have children,’” Boleyn recalled the instructor telling her.
Boleyn was asleep when federal agents knocked on her door late that Monday night a year ago to tell her that Hurley had been killed. They didn’t give her any details, but they assured her he had done nothing wrong, that he had not broken any laws.
Her daughter, Erin Hurley, had already gotten the knock on the door. She said she crumpled to the ground when representatives from the Jefferson County coroner’s office told her about her brother. She immediately got in the car to drive to Colorado Springs, where Boleyn lives, to be with her mother.
That week was a bit of a blur for Boleyn. She remembers victims’ advocates warning her not to talk to the media and not to watch the news. She didn’t know anything about how Hurley had died. She went to Olde Town Arvada where there was a growing memorial to honor both Hurley and Beesley, the officer who was first gunned down by the shooter.
“People were laying flowers and it kept growing and growing, and I wanted people to know I was his mother,” Boleyn said. “I would just tell people that I was his mother and people were so loving and so beautiful.”
Boleyn and Hurley’s sister had a meeting with officers that Friday, four days after he was killed.
Hart Van Denburg/CPR NewsMemorial cards to Johnny Hurley, left, and Arvada Police Officer Gordon Beesley, in the Colorado Springs home of Hurley’s mother, Kathleen Boelyn, on Tuesday, June 14, 2022.
It wasn’t until then she learned police officers killed her son.
“When we learned that it was an officer who shot Johnny, that was confusing and shocking and unbelievable,” Boleyn said. “I was grateful that (Arvada Police) Chief Strate in his public address referred to Johnny as a hero.”
There were discussions between Hurley’s family, their lawyers and the city of Arvada for a year. Ultimately, Rathod said they had to file this suit to get justice for Hurley.
“When you compare the action of the Arvada police to the heroism of Johnny, it is a stark contrast,” he said. “And then when you magnify it with their conscious decision to not announce themselves and to shoot Johnny in the back, when he was unloading the weapon, when he did not match the description of the shooter that they had seen, when he did not pose a threat to anyone, it is just unbelievable. Their conduct is unbelievable.”
Late last year, after reading and analyzing more than 1,000 pages of investigative reports and interviews, Jefferson County District Attorney Alexis King made a decision not to press charges against Officer Brownlow, the officer who killed Hurley.
She determined the shooting was justified and that the officer was acting in self-defense or defense of others.
“Though the acts of John Hurley were nothing short of heroic, the facts must be viewed as they appeared to Officer Brownlow at the time,” wrote King in her decision letter on the case. “Officer Brownlow did not know, and could not have known from his vantage point, of the murder of Officer Beesley or of Hurley’s role in eliminating the threat posed by the man in black.”
Arvada Police told reporters after King’s decision they were going to undergo evaluations about what happened. They did that evaluation, a spokesman, Detective Dave Snelling said.
“Our review of all the facts in this tragic incident reveals no policy or procedural violations were made by any Arvada Police Department member in this unprecedented set of circumstances,” Snelling said.
Brownlow resigned from the agency after the incident. He did not return messages seeking comment.
In her residential Colorado Springs neighborhood, Boleyn had a shrine up in her driveway honoring her son all last summer.
She planted fresh flowers and neighbors stopped to pay tribute. She’s going to plant a garden for him in the front this year. She always has a wreath on the door adorned with a black ribbon.
“There is pride that is mixed with the grief,” she said, her voice weakening. “If you have to lose your child … isn’t this the way? I think when I look at his life in how he was and who he was, this really was him. I was the lucky one who got to be his mom.”
She also recently decided to get a vanity plate on her car. It reads: “HROS MOM.”
Hart Van Denburg/CPR NewsIn the driveway of her Colorado Springs home, Kathleen Boelyn, the mother of Johnny Hurley, touches part of a memorial to her son on Tuesday, June 14, 2022.
