Category: Hard Nosed Folks Both Good & Bad

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All About Guns Hard Nosed Folks Both Good & Bad War

Break Glass in Case of War: Smadge and the M16 Rifle by WILL DABBS

The Sergeant Major was 100% pure unfiltered warrior.

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.

Many generations train incessantly for war but practice their art infrequently for real. By contrast, Smadge spent three full years in combat.

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 really didn’t talk a whole lot. When he did, however, people listened.

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.

Experience is everything for a soldier. The entire formalized military rank system orbits around recognizing and promoting its value.

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

When the Smadge was a young man his first tours through Vietnam were with the 101st Airborne.

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.

I honestly cannot imagine the chaos of trying to defend a remote firebase in the dark after the enemy had breached the wire.

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.

These wiry little guys were some simply superb soldiers.
The SKS carbine was a common weapon in the hands of the Viet Cong. This vet bringback example was captured in the A Shau Valley.

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.

The M16A1 was the standard Infantry rifle used by American forces during most of the Vietnam War.

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.

The widespread use of helicopters revolutionized warfare in Vietnam.

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.

Amidst the chaos and confusion of a live air assault a nearby bunker seemed the best refuge.

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.

The XM177E2 was typically called the CAR15 by those who carried it.

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.”

Smadge never elaborated much on his third tour in Vietnam. He said he had been on the Ho Chi Minh trail and frequently carried an AK.

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

Very early M16 rifles like this one struggled in fetid jungle climes.

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 earliest AR15 rifles had their charging apparatus located within the carrying handle. This Brownells BRN Proto is a remarkably accurate modern day reproduction.

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.

The ArmaLite AR10 was the gun that started the black rifle revolution. Chambered in 7.62x51mm, the AR10 was indeed a radical weapon for its day.

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.

This Dutch AR10 rifle was used by Portuguese Special Forces in Africa, demilled, and imported into the US as a parts kit. It was then built into a legal semiauto rifle on a newly manufactured lower receiver.

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.

Moving the charging handle from the top to the back was the most obvious change Colt made to the gun. Further alterations to the furniture, front sight base, and lower receiver made the gun more efficient and easier to mass-produce. This is the Brownells BRN-Proto rifle.

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.

Early M16 rifles used in Vietnam rocked a three-prong flash suppressor. They demanded meticulous maintenance for reliable operation.

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.

Today’s HK416 incorporates attributes taken from those early XM177E2 rifles.
The XM177E2 influenced much of today’s modern combat carbine.

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.

The XM177E2 was the Army’s effort to shrink the M16 down to something smaller and more maneuverable.

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.

The moderator on the muzzle of the XM177E2 was designed to mitigate the violence coming from that short stubby barrel. This is a modern reproduction.

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.

Particularly later in the war the AK47 became a common fixture in Vietnam.

Vietnam was dirty with captured AK47 rifles. They came in from a variety of sources and were not uncommonly bartered among American forces.

The AK47 is an exceptionally reliable and efficient combat weapon still used around the world today.

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

Later in his career the Smadge saw his primary mission as the mentoring of young soldiers like me.

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 was a professional soldier who had become very comfortable with killing.

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.

The Smadge easily justified killing if the subject of your wrath wished the same upon you.

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.

Smadge’s serendipitous discovery in the jungle resulted in some darkly macabre psyops.

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.

The Death Card was used to send a message to surviving enemy troops.

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.

We really shouldn’t send our young soldiers to hell and then second guess their decisions from the comfort of our living rooms. The exigencies of modern war can take a man to a strange moral place.

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

It doesn’t matter your branch, experience, or rank, everybody hates the MPs.

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.

The MPs showed up with reinforcements and took the Smadge into custody.

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.

Rough men like the Smadge are a necessary evil for a free society. Such men are needed if we hope to prevail in the face of the world’s manifest darkness.

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.

The Smadge kept me in shape, taught me discipline, showed me how to run a rifle, and started me down the path toward becoming a real soldier myself. A deeply flawed man, he was nonetheless undeniably hardcore.

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.

War takes young men to some dark places.   
Categories
Allies Hard Nosed Folks Both Good & Bad Soldiering War

The Unkillable Adrian Carton de Wiart: “Frankly, I Had Enjoyed the War” by WILL DABBS

Behold Adrian Carton de Wiart, quite possibly the toughest man who ever lived.

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.

Adrian Carton de Wiart came of age in 19th-century Cairo. Yes, for some unfathomable reason this idiot guy has a live snake in his mouth.

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.

If today’s American boys had to dress like this to go to school they’d likely beat each other to death with their canes.

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.

Like so many young men before him, Carton de Wiart craved adventure. He found it in the British Army.

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.

The Boer Wars were tidy little slaughters.

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

This otherworldly creature is an Indian boar. They are notoriously hard to kill.

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.

Pig sticking was a popular pastime among young British officers in India.

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 have a friend who looks a bit like this young woman. She kills wild pigs with a knife for fun.

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.

Teddy Roosevelt never technically rode a wild moose across a raging torrent. This was an early example of fake news via the 19th-century version of photoshop. However, that does not diminish the fact that old TR was a manly man of the highest order.

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.”

This is the sort of woman who marries the toughest man on the planet. You could conceal a live badger in that hat.

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…

This is the Mad Mullah. His Dervishes were legendary warriors.

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.

Behold the very image of a serious man.

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.

World War 1 represented the apex of human misery. Carton de Wiart used the opportunity to get shot a further seven times.

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.

Military hospitals in World War 1 weren’t the efficient high-tech life-saving enterprises we know today.

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.

I rather suspect this one-armed, one-eyed force of nature was a fairly intimidating commanding officer.

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.”

This dashing lad was literally unstoppable.

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.

This is Carton de Wiart’s actual Victoria Cross. The physical medals are crafted from bronze taken from cannon seized during the Crimean War. I find that to be incredibly cool. The British always had a refined gift for the dramatic.

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

Once he got tooled up this guy just couldn’t stop.

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.

A compulsive hunter, de Wiart apparently did not sit still well.

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.”

Carton de Wiart never forgave the Nazis for pilfering his personal firearms and fishing gear.

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.

The British evacuation from Norway was a desperate thing. Carton de Wiart is the guy on the left in the snazzy boots.

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.

Carton de Wiart’s exploits have made him a legend. He is immortalized in action figures and memes even today.

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.

Carton de Wiart had a lot of cool friends. He is on the far right.

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.”

De Wiart traveled the globe on the King’s business. He is shown here on the right alongside Lord Mountbatten and sundry Chinese emissaries.

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.

In his later years, Carton de Wiart married a woman 23 years younger than he. It likely took such a spritely lass just to keep up with the guy.

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.

Categories
Hard Nosed Folks Both Good & Bad Manly Stuff Soldiering War

Major Aleksander Tarnawski: The Unkillable Polish Commando by WILL DABBS

Even in his nineties this freaking dude still looks like he could just flat-out kill you.

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.

It just sucks to be stuck between Germany and the former USSR.

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.

Aleksander Tarnawski was cursed to have been born in Poland in 1921.

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.

This is the Polish GROM special forces unit sending Aleksander Tarnawski well wishes from Afghanistan. Uplaz was Tarnawski’s code name during the war.

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.”

The Germans launched WW2 with a classic false flag operation and rolled into Poland like a juggernaut.

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.

The German conquest of Western Europe created literally millions of refugees.

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.

The Germans took advantage of western weakness to invade. That seems to be a recurrent refrain.

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.

There was really nothing this man would not have done for his country. He’s still rocking that beret like he means it.

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 Polish special operators during World War 2.

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.

To survive under German occupation Tarnawski and his Cichociemni had to be smart, hard, audacious, and wily.

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.

The Cichociemni trained on a wide variety of small arms. The US-made M1928 Thompson on the left likely came from the British SOE. The man on the right sports a German Bergmann MP35. Both of these open-bolt subguns are charged and ready to rock.

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.

Female agents played a critical role in resistance operations.

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.

The Handley Page Halifax served alongside the Lancaster in RAF Bomber Command. These big four-engined heavies were also used to drop SOE teams behind German lines.

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 primary mission of the Polish Home Army was to cause mischief for the occupying Germans. The Home Army was a well-organized and effective unconventional fighting force. Note the indigenously-produced Błyskawica submachine gun

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.

Here we see three British PIAT antitank weapons as well as a French MAS-38 submachine gun in the hands of these Polish resistance fighters.

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.

This is the view into Warsaw as the Russians stood back and let the Germans slaughter the patriotic Poles.

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.

Scum like these SS Dirlewanger troops were responsible for rampant atrocities during the Warsaw siege.

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.

This is one of the Panther tanks captured by the Polish Home Army and used against the Germans during the Warsaw Uprising.
The Polish Home Army put this armored Sd.Kfz.251 Hanomag halftrack to good use fighting the Germans.

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.

The Poles fought bitterly for Warsaw but were eventually overwhelmed by the combination of air power and logistics.

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 Home Army improvised armored vehicles like these out of whatever was readily available.
Parts for the Błyskawica submachine gun (top) could be made in crude workshops and then assembled for issue to Polish fighters.

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.

Here we see a Błyskawica submachine gun in action.

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

Chicks dig a man in uniform.

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.

This retired Chemical Engineer was a holy terror to the Germans during World War 2.

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.

This is Aleksander Tarnawski coming in from his last parachute jump at age 94. What a stud.

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.”

Aleksander Tarnawski blazed a trail that these modern-day GROM operators now ably follow.

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.

The Cichociemni suffered horrific casualties during World War 2. Aleksander Tarnawski is the last survivor.

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.

Even at nearly a century old, Aleksander Tarnawski runs that HK MP5 like he owns it. Note the right elbow tucked low and the weapon set for a two-round burst.

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.

This shriveled-up old guy was a stone cold warrior back during WW2.
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Ronald Reagan Day (I miss that Old Man so much!)

Ronald Reagan - IMDb

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Impressive!

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”

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Another Stud!

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

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At least he warns you!

https://youtu.be/vmF5V3tqeq4

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The Hanging Judge Roy Bean

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What a stud!

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The Greatest Hero America Never Knew The true story of Waco’s Col. Robert Howard. By David Feherty

Image
photography courtesy of the Howard family

The name was always spoken with reverence, but I had no idea who he was. Then an Army Ranger I’ll call Leroy (because that’s his name) told me he couldn’t go on my T1F Taliban Pheasant Hunt in South Dakota last year because he had a chance to meet Bob Howard, who was on his deathbed in Waco. Leroy’s decision really piqued my interest. Nobody turns down the Taliban Pheasant Hunt—and, perhaps more telling, nobody goes to Waco without a really good reason. It was then that I decided I had to find out who Howard was.

A-googling I went. And it turned out that Robert Lewis Howard was a Green Beret and a TCU grad. He had appeared in two John Wayne movies, making a parachute jump in The Longest Day and playing an airborne instructor in The Green Berets—not exactly a stretch for him. Howard was the only soldier in the history of the United States to be nominated three times for the Medal of Honor, our country’s highest military decoration, which is awarded to members of the armed forces who distinguish themselves “conspicuously by gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty while engaged in an action against an enemy of the United States.” The men who fought with Howard all agreed that he should have received a Medal of Honor for each one of his three citations—which explains why he was awarded two Distinguished Service Crosses (the second-highest honor, given in the Army). No matter. He had plenty of other gongs and ribbons. He had a Silver Star, several Bronze Stars, and eight Purple Hearts (though he was wounded 14 times). Then there was all the stuff awarded to him by the armed forces of other grateful nations.

For the life of me, I couldn’t understand why neither I nor anyone else outside of the Army had heard of this extraordinary American. I had theories. First, many of Howard’s actions in theater were still classified. We know he was in Laos and Cambodia before we knew we were in Laos and Cambodia, but we just don’t know what he was up to, apart from getting nominated for the Medal of Honor every few months or so. This was back in the days when a clandestine operation could be run without having to broadcast it on C-SPAN first.

Then there was the rest of the Vietnam war, the part we knew about. Howard received his Medal of Honor from Nixon in 1971, with his sweet little first-grade daughter Missy looking on from the front row. None of the TV networks covered the event. Though Audie Murphy and Alvin York both received a Medal of Honor for their actions in World War II and the Great War respectively, and got the ticker-tape parades, fame, and fortune they both deserved, Howard got nothing, because he fought in the war that the Flower Power generation, led by Jane Fonda and her ilk, who exercised the very rights that the men and women who served in Vietnam fought to protect, demonstrated against by (among other things) spitting in the faces of returning soldiers. You can probably guess how I feel about this issue.

So after reading up on Howard, I decided to follow my friend Leroy’s lead and head down to Waco to meet the man myself. But before I could get down there, on Wednesday, December 23, 2009, Col. Robert Howard died at the age of 70. The next day, the Associated Press ran a 10-sentence obituary. The New York Times and Washington Post followed with slightly longer obits. I couldn’t believe the man’s passing had generated so little notice.

I went to Waco anyway.

Driving down I-35 toward Waco to visit Missy, the second daughter of Col. Robert Howard, I noticed for the first time that this stretch of the interstate is known as The Purple Heart Trail. I was still thinking about the coincidence when I sat down in Missy’s living room to watch a video that few people have ever seen. The video was given to Howard by the Medal of Honor Foundation.

It is Missy’s daddy at 64 years old, with a short, pale blue ribbon and small gold medal covering the knot in his tie, his jaw square and strong, his face still scarred, angular, and violently handsome. He is talking about the day he received his Medal of Honor from President Nixon, of whom he says, “He had nice hands. They were, you know, decent.”

Missy tells me that when her daddy came home to San Antonio, which wasn’t that often, he was a gardener, a gentle man with massive hands and a velvet voice who worked on his roses and never once spoke of what he did in the war. “He could make anything grow,” Missy says.

Now the Colonel’s ocean-blue eyes are focused on some far-away hellhole jungle clearing. Howard says the Hueys took ground fire on the way down to the landing zone, and his platoon suffered casualties even before it landed. But there was no peeling off for this group. Silver wings upon their chests, these are men, America’s best. (No longer do these words remind me of Bill Murray in a greenskeeper’s shed.)

“We finally got in on the ground, and I got with [the] lieutenant,” Howard says. “He says, ‘Bob, we need to secure this LZ [landing zone], and I want you to get a couple of men and secure the exterior of the LZ.’ And I got three men behind me, and I can remember being fired at. I fell backward and they killed three men behind me, and I’m firing and killing the North Vietnamese that’s trying to kill us. So I made my way back to the lieutenant and told him that the LZ was completely surrounded. By that time, one of the helicopters had been shot down.”

This is the only personal account on record of the events for which he received the Medal of Honor. To begin with, Howard seems uncomfortable talking about it. But this is not the most difficult thing he has done. He pauses and draws a breath, then begins to explain dispassionately what happened when the men resumed their operation and a grenade explosion knocked him unconscious.

“When I come to, I was blown up in a crump on the ground, and my weapon was blown out of my hand. I can remember seeing red and saying a prayer, hoping I wasn’t blind. I couldn’t see. And I knew I was in a lot of pain and my hands were hurting. I couldn’t get up, and I really didn’t want to get up anyway because I couldn’t see. And then I finally starting getting the vision back and it was like blood was in my eyes, and I started feeling, but my hands were all blown up.

“And then it was like there was a big flame and there was smoke and there were people screaming and hollering. It in fact was an enemy soldier that was burning the people that would have been ambushed with a flamethrower. And the guy walked up to me and was getting ready to burn me, and he looked at me and he didn’t burn the lieutenant. The lieutenant was about 5 feet away from me, and he’s laying face forward, and he was hollering and he was screaming. I knew he was hurt. And the guy looked at me with the flamethrower, and then I looked at him. I guess I looked so bad and pitiful, he decided not to burn me up. He just turned and walked off.”

Now Howard was unarmed, and his hands had been blown apart. He was peppered with shrapnel. He couldn’t walk. So he grabbed the lieutenant’s shirt and starting dragging him—a big man, maybe 6-foot-4 and 200 pounds—toward safety as an estimated two enemy companies fired on them.
The great man’s face changes as he talks. His jaw stiffens, and his eyes, though narrowing, seem to take on an even more penetrating blueness. I am mesmerized as he relives these moments.

“So I’m pulling him back down the hill, and there was a sergeant that was laying down behind a log with a weapon that hadn’t been wounded that had seen this. But he was crying and not using his weapon. Here I am, begging him to help me because I can’t walk and drag the lieutenant back down.
“I said, ‘Well, give me your weapon,’ and he wouldn’t give me his weapon, but he did give me a .45. Just as he gave me the .45, and I’m trying to tell him to give me a couple more magazines of rounds for it, a bunch of enemy soldiers come running toward us. So here I am trying to fire the handgun, and I can remember shooting this enemy soldier that was fixing to stick me with a bayonet. He was running toward me. In fact, he fell across the lieutenant that I was dragging, and so just as he fell across there was another one behind him. They were trying to get us alive is what they were trying to do.”

The sergeant finally began to fire his weapon, and Howard got hit again. A bullet smashed into a magazine in his ammo belt for his rifle, setting off the rounds he was carrying. Howard estimates he was hit with 15 or 20 rounds of exploding ammunition.

“Here I am thinking, I’m blowing up again,” he says. “And there were other soldiers back behind him that hadn’t been hurt at all that had been watching us being almost executed by the enemy and not doing anything, not even firing their weapons.”

Howard eventually got the lieutenant to a medic. His platoon was trapped under heavy fire and had now suffered too many casualties to fight the enemy on their terms. The medic propped Howard up, and he told his brothers, “We are going to establish a perimeter right here, and you’re going to fight or die.” Then Howard did the unthinkable. He got a radio and called in an air strike on his own position. He ordered the men to make a triangle with three strobe lights around their position to keep from getting hit.

“They brought the fire into our position,” Howard says. “In fact, I remember fire landing right between my feet and, you know, ricochet hitting me in the face. You know, that’s how intense it was.”

Eventually, helicopters were able to extract the men. Out of 37 soldiers who were ambushed that day, six survived, largely due to Howard’s heroics and quick thinking. He acted in a similarly heroic manner and endured similar injuries, saving the lives of many others on two other separate occasions for which he was nominated for the Medal of Honor.

Ten lines. That’s what the Associated Press gave Col. Robert Howard.

Back among the living in Waco, I notice that Missy has inherited her father’s looks. She is slender and beautiful. Her husband Frank Gentsch is athletic and carries his badge and handgun in the comfortable, easy manner one might expect of Waco’s chief of detectives. Frank says that before his first date with Missy, the colonel showed him how he’d kill a man with his bare hands. That must have been a little unsettling, but Frank still has a bullet in his back, so you know the old man was proud of him. On Missy’s lap sits their adopted 3-year-old daughter, Isabella, with a snubby little nose and the cutest fuzzy fro held back with a pink headband. Howard adored her­—as he did his other children and grandchildren.

The life of a soldier, especially a Special Forces one, is complicated. There are top-secret stories that can’t be told and endless questions. “When is Daddy coming home?” Or worse: “Will Daddy come home?” Howard was married three times and remained close only to those who “got him.” Like so many of our fighting men and women, he felt tremendous guilt over the many times he was forced to choose between his country and his family.

After his discharge when he was 53 years old, Howard spent 13 years processing claims for the Department of Veterans Affairs and spent most of the last three years of his life in Iraq and Afghanistan, visiting troops, giving talks, and boosting morale. For a soldier, meeting Bob Howard was like a religious experience. Shaking his hand was an honor never to be forgotten. You see, they knew who he was. They got him.

We American civilians can say what we like about the morality of any war, but we should support the American soldiers and their allies whom we have sent to wage it. I’ve visited military hospitals, psych wards, and VAs in Dallas and around this country, and I’ve seen them. Mostly from Korea and Vietnam. Old, unkempt men, the military bearing and pride they once had now gone. Sometimes the only evidence it ever existed is on a battered regimental or naval ball cap. They rock back and forth, mumbling into full jungle beards, with rheumy, blast-zone-empty eyes. Or they sit in pairs, often holding hands, together and alone with horror-story memories that play over and over in their heads. Some sit with their imaginary long-dead friends, whose body parts still lie in the killing fields upon which they once so bravely fought. To America’s eternal shame, for many of them home is a sterile corner of the Cuckoo’s Nest, freezing and drunk under a highway bridge, or, if they are lucky, a spare room in the house of a worn-out son or daughter.

At least Bob Howard was spared that fate. Pancreatic cancer finally stopped him. As the disease spread to his lungs and lymph nodes, his expiry date drew closer, and he was visited by more and more soldiers, most of them old friends. But there were a few lucky youngsters, too, of whom Leroy was one of the last.

And there was always Missy, there with him every day with Isabella. Sometimes his granddaughter Holley, the starting catcher for the Texas Tech softball team, would visit. Or Tori, whom the colonel always called “Victoria.” Tori was always heartbroken when she had to leave her grandpa’s bedside and was a constant comfort to both the colonel and Missy at the end. Howard’s eldest son, Robert, is at Fort Bragg, going through Special Forces school.

As a soldier, Robert had already seen how his father acted around other military men. But for Missy and the other children, their father’s illness, and the parade of visitors it occasioned, showed them something new about their father. When Missy and the grandchildren were around, Howard was the gentle old gardener, the same man they had always known. But when a soldier entered his hospice room, he would stiffen. His voice changed to gravel, and any sign of vulnerability evaporated. He would laugh and bellow orders until the soldier was gone, and then there he’d be again: the gardener with the sparkling blue eyes, smothered in children whom he’d caress with rough, scarred hands.

By all accounts, Howard was a spectacularly bad patient. He was a nightmare for his nurses, refusing to take the painkillers, often swilling them around, then spitting them out after the nurse had left. He was going to be clearheaded until the end.

After yet another astonishing fight, during which the family was told on several occasions that Howard had only hours left, the head of the world’s most dangerous gardener finally fell sideways onto his beloved Missy’s shoulder, and America lost what was arguably her greatest warrior ever.

The name Robert Lewis Howard belongs beside George Washington, John Paul Jones, Chesty Puller, Alvin York, and Audie Murphy, to name a few of the greatest. By the time anyone reads this, Howard will have been lain to rest at Arlington the day before I became an American citizen. I would have given anything to have been with Missy, Frank, and the rest of the family on that day, but I know the colonel would have barked at me to get my worthless foreign ass to my swearing-in ceremony.

Col. Robert Howard’s funeral cortege should have started at the foot of the Jefferson Memorial. His flag-draped casket should have passed through streets lined with thousands of grateful, flag-waving Americans to Arlington, where, in preparation for his final resting place, some politician had been dug up and tossed into the Potomac. But that didn’t happen.

Ten lines. A couple of longer obits here and there. That’s all he got.

On the drive back to Dallas from Waco, I got to thinking. We should rename that stretch of I-35 after him. The Col. Robert Howard Highway. People would shorten it, of course: the Howard.

His life deserves more. But it’s a start.

David Feherty is a golf analyst for CBS Sports.