Back when I was loading trucks I used to look for this shit in pallets.
I’d snatch a can out and wait until lunch, then I’d go back to the dock about halfway through my break. I’d grab that can and find a trailer that one of my buddies (usually Greg The Whiny Li’l Bitch) was loading, then I’d depress the stem and tape it down before tossing it into the trailer and shutting the trailer door.
All the loaders would come back from lunch and the victim would pop his trailer door and stagger backwards with his eyes watering and screaming “LANE, YOU SORRY MOTHERFUCKER!!!” before shutting the door and stalking off to the shipping office.
Next thing you know, the hostler would pull the trailer away from the dock door about 3 feet, fire up the reefer and open the trailer door to blow that shit out.
The bosses made me quit doing it – not because I was wasting product but because the stench would spread over 150 yards of loading dock, gagging the entire workforce.
The only loader that didn’t mind it was Brotherman Jerome who went to an all black high school in Stockton – said that it reminded him of his first high school dance.
Category: Hard Nosed Folks Both Good & Bad
The Sergeant Major was the hardest soldier I have ever met. We respectfully called him Smadge, and he was terrifying. He was comparable parts patriot and psychopath. To understand the Smadge you should appreciate what made him what he was.
For Smadge, killing was a profession. He invested his entire life preparing his mind and body for this mission. Unlike many professional soldiers, however, he found ample opportunity to put his remarkable skills to work.
Smadge was not a terribly imposing man physically, maybe five-nine in sock feet. However, his was a hard, sinewy form. He held a black belt and seldom spoke above a whisper. However, I never saw anybody, regardless of rank, who did not fall silent and listen when he had something to say.
If Smadge was feeling frisky he had a way of greeting young soldiers who encountered him in the hallway. I would nod and wish him a good day. In an instant, he would have me against the wall, his stubby rock-hard fingers around my larynx. He would then smile through tobacco-tainted breath and wish me a good day in return. He treated all of us young studs the same.
An Awkward Social Encounter
Smadge did three combat tours in Vietnam. His last was with some kind of spook mob. I never got the details, but he spoke fluent Vietnamese and once told me he looked good in black pajamas. His earlier trips were with the 101st Airborne.
Smadge’s firebase was once overrun during a night attack. The VC were inside the wire. As a young NCO Smadge ran from position to position distributing ammo and coordinating defenses.
Smadge vaulted over a small berm and came face to face with a VC soldier armed with an SKS. Illuminated by the flames from burning fougasse there was a pregnant pause.
Smadge then snapped his M16A1 rifle up and shot the man eighteen times in the chest. He told me never to load my magazines to their full capacity. Our mags are hugely better today. If I recall correctly, Smadge took home a Silver Star after that night’s work.
Another time a distant firebase was under concerted attack and in desperate need of reinforcement. Smadge and his unit assaulted into the outpost via Huey slicks.
Smadge said that upon touchdown he reflexively dove into the nearest bunker. The bunker’s sole living occupant was a North Vietnamese soldier with an AK.
In his own words, “Imagine my surprise. There was Chuck. This wasn’t Chuck’s bunker. I was embarrassed, Chuck was embarrassed. It was awkward, so I shot Chuck in the face with a burst from my CAR15 and didi mau’d.”
Of his time with the spooks, Smadge was much more circumspect. He once told me that only one other member of his small team remained alive and that he ran a gun shop someplace. Smadge said he usually carried an AK47 and once killed a man with his Kabar. He never volunteered details, and I never pushed.
The Guns
I once brought Smadge an M1 Garand just to show it off. He had the weapon detail stripped before I could find a chair. However, he still nonetheless respected the M16.
The product of a terribly small enterprise in 1956, that first black rifle was originally a proof of concept of sorts. Gene Stoner, Bob Fremont, Jim Sullivan, and a few others contrived the revolutionary Space Age weapon while in the employ of ArmaLite, a tiny subsidiary of Fairchild Aircraft Corporation.
ArmaLite never meant to build guns in quantity. Theirs was a design enterprise. The original 7.62x51mm AR10 begat the 5.56x45mm AR15. The zippy little .223 cartridge that spawned the 5.56x45mm round was also a Gene Stoner invention. Production of the AR10 was farmed out to the Dutch Company Artillerie Inrichtingen.
Dutch AR10 rifles saw service across sundry African brushfire wars. A few made it as far as Cuba. The AR10 was briefly considered during the trials that ultimately led to the M14.
In 1959 ArmaLite sold Colt the rights to the AR15. Colt adapted the design for mass production and aggressively marketed the weapon to the military. The most obvious change involved moving the charging handle. The first commercial contract for the resulting M16 was for 300 rifles that went to Malaya in September of 1959.
Those earliest M16 rifles lacked a chrome-plated bore and sported some well-documented reliability problems. In 1967 the M16A1 variant was introduced with a chrome-plated tube and an enclosed birdcage flash suppressor. Smadge was an absolute Nazi for weapons maintenance. He said the M16 could be a reliable weapon, even in the jungle, but that it required a great deal of attention to remain so.
Smadge’s CAR15 was technically designated the XM177E2. Designed as part of the CAR Military Weapons System in 1966, the XM177E2 was an effort to turn the M16 rifle into a submachine gun. The collapsible stock and carbine-length gas system of that original XM177E2 can be found in today’s M4 Carbines.
These early guns had 10-inch (XM177E1) or 11.5-inch (XM177E2) barrels. The muzzle blast from these stubby tubes was absolutely breathtaking. Now that the revolutionary Pistol Stabilizing Brace allows us mere mortals to run rifle-caliber pistols we all have a chance to taste that sort of chaos.
Those early XM177 rifles included a flash moderator to help keep the blast in check. These moderators alter the gun’s report enough for the BATF to consider them registerable sound suppressors. Original moderators are rarer than honest politicians today.
Vietnam was dirty with captured AK47 rifles. They came in from a variety of sources and were not uncommonly bartered among American forces.
For covert operations, the benefits of the AK47 included ready availability of captured ammunition and a report that was indistinguishable from threat weapons. The AK47 is widely extolled as the world’s most reliable autoloading combat rifle.
A Fine Line
Smadge was a warrior who took his responsibility to mentor young soldiers seriously. Though undeniably intimidating, he remained nonetheless approachable. I once in innocence asked him what it was like the first time he killed somebody. It was a newbie pogue question, but I was a newbie pogue. He quietly responded with, “In the Army or before?”
Smadge grew up without a dad in a big city fraught with violence. His first kill was during a gang fight as a teenager. A bat was his weapon and a garbage can lid his shield. He said his biggest concern at the time was getting caught. When he realized he had literally gotten away with murder he said the experience wasn’t as morally burdensome as he had expected.
He told me that when the guy you kill is actively trying to kill you it takes a lot of the moral pressure off. He had twenty-seven confirmed that he knew of from Vietnam. In quiet moments, however, you could tell there was still something unsettled there.
Before reading further, keep in mind the circumstances. These guys lived every day in the shadow of violent death. Smadge was on a jungle patrol when he came across the body of a VC soldier leaning against a tree. The unexpected encounter nearly scared him out of his skin. The VC looked asleep. Upon further investigation, the unfortunate Charlie had caught a large-caliber round behind the ear that had taken the back of his head off.
Seeing inspiration in the moment Smadge produced his Kabar. He carved out the guy’s eye sockets, broke his arms, and stuck the dead man’s own fingers through his eye holes from behind. He carefully arranged a 101st Ace of Spades death card between the fingers and somebody snapped a photograph.
Smadge thought this hilarious and even sent a copy of the picture home to his wife. People living in comfort, peace, and security shouldn’t pass moral judgment on those who are in the suck. Theirs is a different universe. Sometimes the demarcation between patriot and psychopath can at times seem thin.
The Rest of the Story
The most dangerous thing in the world is a Private with a gun and a badge. Smadge once had a bit too much to drink at the NCO club and was confronted by three MPs while walking home. One of the cops made the mistake of poking him in the chest with a nightstick.
A friend who was there told me that Smadge put down all three MPs before heading home. The post SWAT team arrived later and took him into custody without a struggle. Smadge was allowed to retire without further incident. Six months later he died of a brain tumor.
The country needs hard men like Smadge. What they do in their world does not translate well into ours. That’s one of the reasons I think imbedded reporters are a bad idea. Americans in their living rooms don’t need to see what happens downrange. They can never hope to understand.
Smadge was the hardest man I’ve ever known. I wouldn’t trust him around the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders, but he’s the guy you’d want alongside you in a fight. An eclectic combination of Chuck Norris, John Wayne, and SSG Barnes from the Oliver Stone movie Platoon, Smadge was every bit the warrior.
The oldest son of Léon Constant Ghislain Carton de Wiart and his wife Ernestine Wenzig, Adrian Carton de Wiart was born on May 5, 1880, in Brussels, Belgium. Carton de Wiart was raised in a world of privilege, but he was never soft. Rumors swirled during his childhood that the young man was actually the illegitimate son of Belgian King Leopold II. As the child matured his time was split between Belgium and England.
When Adrian was six his parents divorced. His mother married Demosthenes Gregory Cuppa later that same year. This fact has no bearing on the story. I simply thought Demosthenes was one of the coolest names I had ever heard. After the divorce, Adrian’s father moved with him to Cairo. There he learned to speak Arabic.
Adrian’s father remarried, and the boy was dispatched to an English boarding school. This was considered de rigueur for young men of means during this time. He ultimately found himself at Balliol College in Oxford. However, in 1899 Carton de Wiart dropped out of school to go to war.
In a familiar refrain, Adrian lied about his age to get into uniform. In short order, he found himself in South Africa during the Second Boer War. In all the excitement of enlisting, training, and deploying to an active war zone, Adrian neglected to notify his father that he had joined the military. Soon after his arrival in Africa, he was wounded in the groin and belly and evacuated back to England. When his father found out that Adrian had left Oxford to fight in Africa he was livid. Adrian returned to Oxford after he recovered, but this didn’t last, either.
Soldiering was in his blood, and Carton de Wiart sought out chaos. He was granted a commission in the Second Imperial Light Horse and in 1901 made his way back to South Africa. The following year he was posted to India. While there he became enamored with the fine art of pig-sticking.
A Curiously Horrible Hobby
Pig sticking was popular among young British Army officers with more balls than brains. The Indian boar was known as the Andamanese pig and stood roughly three feet at the shoulder. Heavily tusked, these rangy animals topped out at around 300 pounds. Pig stickers took these ghastly beasts with long boar spears. These spears included a rigid cross guard to keep the enraged porker from sliding up the spear once he was pithed to rip the hunter’s heart out with his dying breath.
Of pig-sticking and young soldiers, an unknown military official of the era had this to say, “A startled or angry wild boar is…a desperate fighter [and therefore] the pig-sticker must possess a good eye, a steady hand, a firm seat, a cool head, and a courageous heart.”
I actually know a petite young lady in my modest little Southern town who likes to hunt wild pigs with dogs and a big honking knife. In a crowd, you would take her for a cheerleader. However, she is obviously insane.
Much like his American doppelganger, Theodore Roosevelt, Carton de Wiart viewed physical setbacks as fuel for personal improvement. In the wake of his battlefield injuries, he embraced physical fitness as a remedy for lurking weakness. Though an inveterate gentleman around the ladies, he was also known for his coarse diction when it was just guys. He was later described as, “A delightful character who must hold the world record for bad language.”
In 1908 he married the Countess Friederike Maria Karoline Henriette Rosa Sabina Franziska Fugger von Babenhausen. Once again, there’s no real point to including her here beyond the obvious observation that hers was an absolutely epic name. Together they had two daughters. Imagine having to ask this guy permission to date his little girl…
At the outset of the First World War, Carton de Wiart was posted to British Somaliland to face the Dervish leader Mohammad bin Abdullah. History has come to refer to this character as the “Mad Mullah.” While serving in the Somaliland Camel Corps, Adrian was shot twice in the face. These injuries cost him his left eye and part of his ear. If you’re counting, that should be four major wounds thus far. In 1915 he was awarded the Distinguished Service Order.
After having been shot in the gut, the groin, and the ear and earning a handsome eye patch in lieu of an actual left eye, most combat veterans married to a wealthy Countess would rightfully retire to the family estate to draft their memoirs. By contrast, as soon as he could travel, Carton de Wiart caught a handy steamer for France and the largest war the world had ever seen.
Carton de Wiart commanded three separate infantry battalions and later a brigade. He caught bullets in his ankle and skull during the Battle of Cambrai. At the Battle of Passchendaele, he was shot in the hip and then later in the leg. At Arras, he took yet another round to the ear. He was wounded on seven separate occasions after he got to France.
In 1915 Adrian was shot in the left hand and duly reported to the unit surgeon. His hand was in quite a state, so de Wiart demanded the physician amputate his fingers so he could get back to the war. When the doctor refused the exasperated officer simply tore them off himself.
Carton de Wiart got his brigade a mere three days before the end of the war. Upon his arrival at his new command, the war-weary unit fell in for inspection. A man who was there said this of their new commander’s general demeanor, “Shivers went down the back of everyone in the brigade, for he had an unsurpassed record as a fire eater, missing no chance of throwing the men under his command into whatever fighting happened to be going…He arrived on a lively cob with his cap tilted at a rakish angle and a shade over the place where one of his eyes had been.”
The observer reported that the newly-minted brigadier was also missing a limb and had eleven wound stripes on his uniform. The first man in line for inspection noted that Carton de Wiart, despite having only one eye, ordered him to get his bootlace changed.
While a Lieutenant Colonel commanding the 8th Battalion of the Gloucestershire Regiment in 1916, Carton de Wiart earned the Victoria Cross, his nation’s highest award for bravery in combat. His citation reads, “For most conspicuous bravery, coolness and determination during severe operations of a prolonged nature. It was owing in a great measure to his dauntless courage and inspiring example that a serious reverse was averted. He displayed the utmost energy and courage in forcing our attack home. After three other battalion Commanders had become casualties, he controlled their commands, and ensured that the ground won was maintained at all costs. He frequently exposed himself in the organization of positions and of supplies, passing unflinchingly through fire barrage of the most intense nature. His gallantry was inspiring to all.”
We’re Just Getting Warmed Up
After the war, Carton de Wiart was posted to Poland as part of the British-Poland Military Mission. Poland was at that time in conflict with the Russians, the Lithuanians, the Ukrainians, and the Czechs. Throughout his time in Poland, de Wiart faced peril aplenty. In 1920 while out on an observation train his party was attacked by Red Army cavalry. De Wiart posted himself on the footplate of the train and repelled the mounted troopers with his revolver. At one point he fell off of the moving train only to quickly reboard. You recall that throughout it all the man only had the one hand and a single eye.
Carton de Wiart retired in December of 1923 to the estate of a Polish friend in the Pripet Marshes. Of the next period of his life, he later said, “In my fifteen years in the marshes I did not waste one day without hunting.”
In the summer of 1939 with the Nazis preparing to invade, de Wiart was recalled to active duty. When the Germans overran his estate they stole his fishing tackle, gun collection, furniture, and clothing. De Wiart narrowly escaped through Romania after an attack by the Luftwaffe that killed the wife of one of his aides. By now the old soldier was angry.
Carton de Wiart commanded Commonwealth forces during a running fight across Norway culminating in a desperate seaborne evacuation led by Lord Louis Mountbatten. Afterward, he briefly commanded a division in Northern Ireland before being dispatched to Yugoslavia as head of the British-Yugoslavian Military Mission. While en route in a Vickers Wellington bomber, the plane crashed into the sea about a mile short of Italian-controlled Libya. The 60-year-old, one-armed British Major General was knocked unconscious in the crash, but came to once doused in the cold water of the Mediterranean. He swam to shore but was captured by Italian forces on the beach.
During his subsequent incarceration as a POW, Major General de Wiart attempted to escape five times. One attempt to tunnel out of his camp occupied him for seven months. He once successfully remained loose for eight days disguised as an Italian peasant. This was all the more impressive considering he had only one arm, one eye, sundry obvious scars, and didn’t speak Italian.
Once the Italians decided they would abandon the Nazis they requested de Wiart serve as their emissary to the British Army. In this capacity, he needed fresh clothes and was sent to Rome at government expense for a fitting. Though he distrusted the Italian tailors, he said that he, “Had no objection provided he did not resemble a gigolo.”
We lack the space to do this man justice. After the Italian surrender, de Wiart was posted through China, India, and Egypt in a variety of official roles. Along the way, he was appointed Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire.
When passing through Rangoon, de Wiart tripped on a coconut mat and tumbled down stairs, fracturing several vertebrae in his back and rendering himself yet again unconscious. With a little time in a Burmese hospital he recovered. His first wife died in 1949. Two years later he married a woman 23 years his junior. Carton de Wiart finally retired for real to Aghinagh House in Killinardish, Ireland. He died in the summer of 1963 at the age of 83, a British hero of the sort about whom ballads are crafted.
On January 8, 2022, Aleksander Tarnawski turned 101 years old. 101 years prior he had entered the world kicking and screaming in Słocin in the Rzeszów poviat in Poland. At age seventeen, Tarnawski graduated from the gymnasium in Chorzów. He then enrolled in the University of Lviv studying Chemistry. The following year the entire world conflagrated.
Poland suffers from some of the most lamentable geography. Poland is on the way to any number of juicy geopolitical targets and has suffered from some of the most deplorably unneighborly neighbors. Like most of the young males of his generation, Aleksander Tarnawski soon found himself swept up in the war.
Tarnawski was not drafted in time to serve during the German invasion, but he was eventually arrested by the Soviet NKVD. At this time in this place, the NKVD didn’t need much of an excuse to arrest or even kill you. After presenting his documents from the University of Lviv he was ultimately released.
Tarnawski’s was the first generation of modern Poles to come of age in a free nation. When commenting on his mindset and that of his comrades he said this, “During my childhood and youth, after so many years of captivity, patriotism and the need to sacrifice oneself for the motherland were the main slogans. And if a young man like me grew up in such an atmosphere, it was as it is.”
Poland fell to Germany in 35 days. Their dedicated professional army was outnumbered by more than two to one. The overwhelming combat power of the Wehrmacht secured the nation on October 6, 1939. 874,700 Poles were hors de combat. 66,000 gave their lives in defense of their country…in 35 days. By comparison, we lost 58,000 troops in ten years’ worth of intense combat in Vietnam.
Traveling with a large number of refugees fleeing the Nazis, Aleksander Tarnawski made his way across the border to Hungary. After a stint in a Hungarian refugee camp, he crossed into France, where he reported to the WKU recruiting point. From there he was assigned to the 1st Infantry Regiment of the 1st Grenadier Division.
By now the Nazi blitzkrieg seemed irresistible. With the collapse of the Allied armies on the continent, Tarnawski was one of the lucky few to escape across the English Channel to Britain. Upon his arrival, the young man immediately began training to take the fight back to the Germans.
Once in Great Britain Tarnawski trained as an armor soldier. One day in mid-1943 he was approached by a Polish Colonel who asked if he would like to return to Poland. He explained, “I was 22 at the time, and secondly, there was a war all over the world, and I was sitting here idly, I agreed to go to Poland without hesitation.” Aleksander Tarnawski had just assessed into the Cichociemni.
The Cichociemni were the commandos of the Polish underground. The word roughly translates to, “The Silent Unseen.” Their mission was to infiltrate occupied Poland, coordinate and execute resistance operations, and kill Germans.
Drawn from all units of the Polish Armed Forces not under German subjugation, they knew they were volunteering for the most dangerous work of the war. Tarnawski trained in the art of close combat, silent killing, demolitions, covert communication, and spycraft under the tutelage of the British Special Operations Executive.
Tarnawski’s training included extensive physical fitness and the expert use of a wide variety of German, Russian, Polish, Italian, and British weapons. They trained to covertly emplace mines while learning cryptography, land navigation, and advanced marksmanship techniques. They learned about life in German-occupied Poland covering everything from curfews and military laws to contemporary fashion trends. Their hand-to-hand training was based on jujitsu.
Of 2,413 candidates, only 605 passed the training course. Among them were fifteen women. Of those, some 579 qualified for operational assignments. 344 of those trained operators were eventually deployed to Poland. 113 of these were ultimately killed in action.
On the night of April 16, 1944, Aleksander Tarnawski climbed aboard a four-engined Halifax bomber from the 300th Bomber Squadron at the Allied airbase in Brindisi, Italy, as part of Operation Weller 12 under Captain Edward Bohdanowicz. After an uneventful night combat insertion near the Polish village of Baniocha at Gora Kalwaria outside Warsaw, Tarnawski went to work. He was ultimately assigned to the Nowogródek District of the Home Army.
The Polish Home Army was designated the Armia Krajowa or AK for short. Their general mandate was to make life as miserable as possible for the German occupation forces. As the Soviet Red Army got closer to the Polish border the AK got more audacious in their combat operations.
This mandate was both incredibly complex and unimaginably dangerous. With support from the Cichociemni and Allied logistics, AK operatives conducted sabotage and direct action raids, emplaced mines, and established supply caches to support their sweeping insurgency efforts. The largest coordinated resistance operation of WW2 was the Warsaw Uprising that kicked off on August 1, 1944, under the direction of the AK. The Warsaw Uprising was part of the overarching Operation Tempest.
For sixty-three days Polish unconventional troops engaged in raging combat with German forces with little to no outside support. The Red Army had drawn up alongside the eastern suburbs of the city on Stalin’s orders and refused to assist the initiative. Stalin knew that the subjugation of Poland would be a necessary part of his post-war plans for conquest. Allowing the Germans to crush the Polish Home Army dovetailed perfectly into his dark schemes.
The Poles began the operation with nearly 49,000 men under arms. However, these were generally highly motivated but poorly trained irregulars armed with little more than a scrounged weapon and a handful of ammunition or a grenade. Arrayed against them were as many as 25,000 battle-hardened Wehrmacht and SS troops amply supplied and equipped with state of the art weapons.
During the course of the fight, the Poles employed two captured German Panther tanks, a Hetzer assault gun, and a pair of armored half-tracks. The Germans for their part had dozens of armored vehicles at their disposal along with Ju 87 Stuka dive bombers. The end result was a massacre.
More than 15,000 Polish resistance fighters died in the fight, while another 15,000 were captured. 5,660 Polish First Army soldiers became casualties. Balanced against that the Germans suffered as many as 17,000 killed or missing. There was as many as 200,000 civilian dead. Once the fighting abated the Germans came in and systematically leveled the city. The breadth of destruction precluded reliable numbers.
The Polish AK fought with whatever they could scrounge. They improvised armored vehicles out of civilian trucks and widely employed the Błyskawica submachine gun. A crude Sten-like weapon, the Błyskawica was the only standardized, mass-produced weapon to be built in occupied Europe during the war. The gun fired 9mm Para at around 600 rpm from a 32-round box magazine. Roughly 700 copies were built in underground workshops in Poland.
Throughout his time in occupied Poland, Aleksander Tarnawski undertook difficult and hazardous covert missions and also trained AK soldiers in the combat skills they needed to face the Germans. In slightly more than a year in combat Tarnawski earned the Polish Cross of Valor four times. He left the military as a Major.
The Rest of the Story
After the war, Tarnawski got a job with Polish Radio in Warsaw. Despite the chaos of active special operations service against the Nazis, he still retained his passion for Chemistry. He subsequently landed employment as a lab assistant in the Walenty Wawel coal mine in Ruda Slaska. From there, Tarnawski earned a Masters Degree in Chemical Engineering from the Silesian University of Technology.
Tarnawski eventually served as an assistant professor at the Institute of Non-Ferrous Metals in the 1960’s. He then earned a position as Senior Laboratory Engineer at the Institute of Plastics and Paints in Gliwice where he worked until he retired in 1994. Along the way he was married, widowed, and remarried, this time to a fellow Chemistry professor. Together they had a daughter who eventually earned her own PhD in Economics.
In September 2014, at age 94 at Książenice near Grodzisk Mazowiecki, fully seventy years after being dropped into Poland at night from a British Halifax bomber, Aleksander Tarnawski made one last parachute jump. This time he hit the silk with former and current GROM operators. GROM is short for Grupa Reagowania Operacyjno-Manewrowego which loosely translates to “Group for Operational Maneuvering Response.” I’m told this also means, “Thunder.”
Formally activated in 1990, GROM is one of five special operations units of the Polish Armed Forces and is respected around the world within the specops community. GROM is named in honor of the Silent Unseen of the WW2-era Polish Home Army. GROM operators are colloquially referred to as “The Surgeons” for their recognized capabilities at precision direct action operations.
As of January 2022, Major Tarnawski was the last survivor of those original 344 Cichociemni sent into combat during World War 2. After fighting the Germans undercover for more than a year and facing the likely prospect of torture and horrible gory death at any moment, Tarnawski went back to school and spent his entire professional life making the world a better place. He also saw to it that his daughter was educated and productive as well.
As amazing as his story was, Aleksander Tarnawski was typical of his generation. Those crusty old guys grew up with absolutely nothing and then faced literally unimaginable challenges. They not only prevailed in the face of such profound adversity but also thrived. Today’s crop of perennially-offended, easily-breakable social justice snowflakes would do well to learn from their example.
Staff Sgt. Joyce B. Malone: Malone was originally a Fayetteville civic leader who enlisted in the Marines in 1958, where she served four years. Following her service in the Marine Corps in 1962, Malone got married and finished college at Fayetteville State University.
A few years went by and while working at Fort Bragg, she decided to join the Army Reserve – Fort Bragg’s 82nd Airborne Division in 1971. In 1974, Malone became the first and the oldest black woman to earn Airborne wings in the United States Army Reserve.
By age 38, Malone completed 15 parachute jumps during her time in the Army Reserve “#WMA #womenmarines #womenmarinesassociation”
British fighter ace Robert Roland Stanford Tuck, shot down and captured on 28 Jan 1942, escaped from his prisoner of war camp, subsequently making his way through the Russian lines to the British Embassy in Moscow and then home.
On January 28th, 1942, while on a low-level mission over northern France, his Spitfire was hit by enemy flak near Boulogne and he was forced to crash land.
He was captured by German troops and spent the next three years in several POW (prisoner of war) camps until he made a successful escape on February 1st 1945. After spending some time fighting alongside the advancing Russian troops as an infantry officer he found his way to the British Embassy in Moscow. He eventually boarded a ship from Russia to Southampton, England
Robert Stanford Tuck died on May 5th 1987 at the age of 70
