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COOL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Hard Nosed Folks Both Good & Bad I am so grateful!! If I was in Charge Interesting stuff Leadership of the highest kind Manly Stuff One Hell of a Good Fight Paint me surprised by this Real men Soldiering Stand & Deliver This great Nation & Its People War

Major James Capers Jr. USMC, holder of the M.O.H Ret.

He led a reconnaissance team during a mission near Phú Lộc, Vietnam, in 1967. During the engagement, Capers sustained multiple wounds while directing his men and coordinating their evacuation under intense enemy fire. His actions were instrumental in saving the lives of every member of his team.

____________________________________________________________

Pity it took so long to get it to him! (Almost 60 years!!) But that’s the problem with the Blue Max. In that sometimes you get it ASAP & other times it’s almost too late. I say that it’s just pure BS and a few officers need a blow torch pointed at them. Grumpy

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General Hal Moore and Sergeant Major Plumley

A couple of real STUDS in my book! Grumpy

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Fabrizio Quattrocchi: How an Italian Dies by Will Dabbs

Forced to dig his own grave in Iraq, Fabrizio Quattrocchi answered his killers with one final act of raw defiance. This is a hard look at death, faith, courage, and the Italian who refused to die quietly.

Fabrizio Quattrocchi, Italian security contractor killed in Iraq in 2004
This is Fabrizio Quattrocchi. When forced to face his own death at age 35, Quattrocchi showed us all how it’s done. Instagram photo.

Death, Faith, and the Question Fabrizio Quattrocchi Forces Us to Face

Today, we are going to talk about some pretty dark stuff. Death rightfully makes people uncomfortable. It is the innately unknowable nature of the thing that leaves folks so predictably discomfited. We all have theories. However, by definition, if somebody is talking about it, they’ve not yet actually given it a whirl themselves.

Any proper discussion of death touches upon issues of faith. As anyone who has read my work for more than a week will appreciate, I have strongly-held opinions on that subject. I am an unabashedly evangelical Christian. I wear Jesus on my sleeve. My faith informs everything about how I approach both my life and my inevitable demise.

My conclusions are drawn from some fairly extensive life experience. I have come face-to-face with my own mortality a couple of times and found peace waiting for me there. I have also attended a fair number of deaths professionally. Here are two representative examples.

Play Stupid Games, Win Stupid Prizes: Death in Trauma 1

Armed men in a conflict zone illustrating the violence surrounding the Fabrizio Quattrocchi story
This is a hard world. People die in this space all the time. Social media photo.

Patient 1 was a gladiator. He rolled into the inner city ER where I worked, having been shot in the right chest some fifteen minutes earlier by a fellow thug armed with a .380ACP handgun. He was fit, muscular, and covered in gang tats. He was also coming absolutely unglued.

This desperate young man shouted, screamed, and flailed. It took five of us to restrain him long enough to get him situated on the bed in Trauma 1. And then the most amazing thing happened.

Over the next few minutes, his entire demeanor changed. He went from fighting us to begging us. “Please don’t let me die!” was a common refrain. And then he gradually acted like we weren’t even there.

As the blood steadily filled his chest, this horrified kid began praying with every fiber of his being. He shouted, “Please, Jesus, don’t let me die!” over and over and over. Then he arched his back, blood poured out of his mouth and nose, and he died. We did everything we could, but it all just happened too fast.

A Peace That Passes All Understanding: A Veteran’s Final Hours

US Army photo illustrating the Korean War veteran's final hours in this essay on death and faith
My buddy at the VA cut his teeth in this forsaken place. He came back a hard, broken man. US Army photo.

I met Patient 2 in the VA. He was a Korean War veteran. In his prime, this man had been a hellraiser. He abused drugs, alcohol, and women at every opportunity. Then he found Jesus.

This gentleman was a Messianic Jew, and his Christian conversion changed absolutely everything about him. He walked away from alcohol, cigarettes, and drugs in an afternoon. Then he successfully resurrected his family. When I met him, he was dying of a squamous cell carcinoma of his sinuses that had metastasized to his lungs. The horrible treatments for his ghastly disease had stolen his sense of sight, smell, and taste, and rendered him nearly deaf. Now his lung mets were drowning him slowly, one drop at a time. Despite the horrors of this man’s sordid state, he was inexplicably happy. This guy was about to meet Jesus face to face, and he was like a kid on Christmas Eve.

I did the best I could to make him comfortable, but the poor man was both blind and dying. There were only so many options at my disposal. For a medicine man, these cases bring their own unique challenges.

Hospital setting illustrating a physician's experience with death before recounting Fabrizio Quattrocchi's final stand
This can be a pretty tough place to work sometimes. US government photo.

On our second day together, he spontaneously took my arm and pulled me close. I assumed he wanted to tell me something or other that he needed. He then inexplicably pulled his oxygen mask off and immediately began turning blue. With his dying breath, this unimaginably miserable guy actually prayed for me.

He prayed for my family and me and my ministry in the hospital. He prayed that I might find the same peace and joy in Christ that he had found. This amazing dude prayed until he literally could no longer speak. As you might imagine, this experience moved me. I replaced his oxygen mask, thanked him sincerely, and left for home with quite a lot to think about.

The following morning, with my arm around his wife’s shoulders, I watched this extraordinary man die. I had known him all of three days. He met his end with dignity, peace, and hope. Attending his death was one of the most powerful experiences of my life. Draw your own conclusions.

The Incredibly Intrepid Italian: Who Was Fabrizio Quattrocchi?

Fabrizio Quattrocchi was born on 9 MAY 1968 in Catania, Italy. He trained as a baker before eventually finding work as a security contractor in Iraq. In 2004, Iraq was an absolute hellhole. However, in chaos, there is profit. There was money to be made in this space. Quattrocchi was an old-school mercenary.

Iraq combat scene from the era when Fabrizio Quattrocchi worked as a security contractor
Iraq, back when Fabrizio Quattrocchi worked there, was a pretty horrible place. US government photo.

Iraq, Captivity, and a Hole in the Earth

Operating in a war zone is the most dangerous of human pursuits. That’s why the money is so good. With so many heavily armed folks running about with deeply held political and theological agendas, people invariably get hurt. Quattrocchi, along with three fellow Italian soldiers-for-hire named Umberto Cupertino, Maurizio Agliana, and Salvatore Stefio were captured by a lunatic mob called the Green Brigade of the Prophet.

Quattrocchi and his buddies were working for DTS Security LLC. DTS was incorporated in Nevada and run by a former Italian Marine/French Foreign Legionnaire named Paolo Simeone and Italian lawyer Valeria Castellini. They tried to get their guys back, but DTS was a company, not a nation-state. It takes some serious resources to recruit, train, equip, and employ SEAL Team 6. For a time, at least, these four poor guys were on their own.

The Green Brigade of the Prophet felt they needed to make an example to ensure they were being taken seriously. As a result, they forced Fabrizio Quattrocchi to dig his own grave. These homicidal losers then placed a hood over his head and made him kneel in the soft earth next to his hole. Like all professional nut job psychopaths, they had also set up video recording equipment to preserve the moment in all its gory glory. It really is tough for me to visualize raw, unfettered hate on this scale.

US service members in Iraq illustrating the deadly conflict surrounding Fabrizio Quattrocchi's captivity
There was ample death to be found in Iraq after the 2003 invasion. Medal of Honor recipient Special Warfare Officer Second Class (SEAL) Michael A. Monsoor is shown here on the far left. US government photo.

I’ll Show You How an Italian Dies: Quattrocchi’s Final Defiance

Quattrocchi knew exactly what was about to happen. He had, after all, just dug the hole. He was in a place that would rightly terrify all sensible people everywhere. Quattrocchi was about to face his own mortality, and there was absolutely nothing he could do to stop it.

Tragically, lots of folks have been there before. Some beg for their lives, imploring their captors for mercy. Others spit venom from the precipice of the abyss. Quattrocchi, for his part, clawed at his hood so he could see the men who were about to take his life and shouted, “Vi faccio vedere come muore un Italiano!” This translates to, “I’ll show you how an Italian dies!” One of the terrorists then stepped forward and shot him through the back of the neck. At least it was quick. Quattrocchi was 35 years old at the time of his death.

The Rest of the Story: Rescue, Honor, and Controversy

American forces in Iraq, where three surviving Italian security contractors were rescued after Fabrizio Quattrocchi's death
American forces eventually liberated the three remaining Italian security contractors. US Army photo by SPC Kieran Cuddihy.

American forces later raided the safehouse where they were being held and rescued the three remaining Italian security contractors along with a Pole named Jerzy Kos. Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi personally approved the mission in advance.

Italian President Carlo Azeglio Ciampi awarded Fabrizio Quattrocchi a posthumous Gold Medal for Civil Valour. This award demands a specific documented act of bravery to be eligible. Quattrocchi’s defiance towards the men who murdered him seemed more than adequate.

Curiously, not everyone in Italy felt this way. Almost all Italians rightfully reviled Saddam Hussein and Muslim fundamentalist terrorists in general. However, most Italians also disapproved of their country’s involvement in the Iraq War. Then, as now, much of the civilized world would sooner ignore such problems in hopes that they would just go away.

Quite a few Italians had lost their lives amidst the tumultuous fighting in the Middle East. Folks from across the Italian political spectrum griped that their particular people had not been afforded comparable accolades. Whatever. Fabrizio Quattrocchi was a freaking animal, no matter the metric.

Ruminations: What Fabrizio Quattrocchi Left Behind

German invasion of France combat scene illustrating the essay's reflections on European courage and national defense
There was a great deal of hard fighting to be found during the German invasion of France in the early parts of World War 2. It was simply that the Krauts had much more effective tactics and leadership.

There are some cruel jokes levied at our brothers in France and Italy.

Fabrizio Quattrocchi: How an Italian Dies

in Will Dabbs

What is the world’s shortest list? A compilation of contemporary Italian war heroes. Such stuff stems from a deplorable tendency by much of modern Europe to eschew the manly arts.

Nowadays, good old-fashioned patriotism is denigrated as nationalism, something to be avoided no matter the cost. Europe looks at the monsters in the gates (I’m talking to you, Vladimir Putin and the Iranian theocrats) and fails to take action because they have convinced themselves over decades that what they have is no longer worth defending.

The Union Jack is arguably the most compelling national standard on Planet Earth, yet many modern Britons hate it because they have been conditioned to view their own flag as a symbol of oppression. Such national self-flagellation will not take them to a good place in a world so liberally populated with hate-fueled psychos like the Green Brigade of the Prophet.

Fabrizio Quattrocchi was a proper man to the end. He faced his death and those who were killing him with poise, power, and defiance. The scumbags who murdered him are rightfully gone and forgotten. The world is objectively way better off without them. As we corn-fed Americans wax introspective regarding how to comport ourselves when faced with uncertainty and violence both at home and abroad, might I recommend we actually take hints from a certain brass-balled Italian baker? Fabrizio Quattrocchi showed us all how to die well.

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George Cairns: One Arm, One Sword, One Last Stand by Will Dabbs

A Japanese sword took LT George Cairns’ arm on a Burmese hilltop. He seized that same blade, kept fighting, and earned a place among Britain’s most savage Victoria Cross legends.

LT George Cairns Victoria Cross recipient in a period military photograph before combat in Burma
George Cairns might not look like much in this moldy old period photograph, but he was a wild man in a fight.

Mankind has been consumed with war since our very beginnings. Ever since Cain knocked his brother Abel’s brains out with a rock, we have been a species of scrappers. We venerate warriors and celebrate their wars. Along the way, we have somehow lost touch with just how ghastly real war actually is.

Everybody dies. That’s obviously a given. However, that war takes young people in their prime is what makes it so utterly repugnant. Were that not so, I’m sure we would be doing even more of it.

War Never Changes: How George Cairns Reached Burma

Microwave oven illustrating civilian technologies developed from military research during wartime
Who doesn’t like using a microwave to make popcorn or whip up a quick hot dog? We have the military-industrial complex to thank for that.

The development of weapons brought us such stuff as GPS, microwave ovens, and the Internet. Jet engines, digital cameras, synthetic materials, and EpiPens all had their origins in military technologies as well. However, at the end of the day, whether it is a HIMARS rocket, a ship-mounted laser, or a 16th-century Scottish Claymore broadsword, the ultimate objective is still simply to tear the very life out of our enemies. No matter how much seems to change, the unfortunate end goal nonetheless remains the same.

Modern battlefields are truly horrible things. JDAM smart bombs, shaped charges, thermobaric weapons, and depleted uranium projectiles all conspire to make a proper mess of human flesh. However, war in eras past was hardly all unicorns and butterflies. Hacking some poor schmuck limb from limb was also fairly untidy. It turns out that this propensity toward vivisection extends up into the last century as well.

George Cairns Before the Victoria Cross: Banker, Husband, Soldier

George Cairns and his wife Ena Cairns before his Victoria Cross action in Burma
By all accounts, George and Ena Cairns were crazy about each other.

George Albert Cairns was born in December 1913 in London. He attended the Sir Henry Compton School in Fulham from 1923 through 1930. He subsequently took a job in a bank in Kent, where he met his future wife, Ena. The two were married in 1940. The following year, George answered his nation’s call and went off to war.

Cairns was a dedicated natural leader. He earned a commission and was appointed to the Somerset Light Infantry (Prince Albert’s). He was subsequently attached to the South Staffordshire Regiment and deployed to Burma. The South Staffordshire was a Chindit battalion subordinate to the 77th Indian Infantry Brigade commanded by the legendary Brigadier Michael Calvert.

LT George Cairns of the South Staffordshire Regiment smoking a pipe before the Burma campaign
Just sitting here smoking a pipe, George Cairns seems like a pretty placid-looking bloke. However, looks can be deceiving.

By March of 1944, Cairns was 30 years old. That seems pretty young to me. However, in soldier years, he was veritably ancient.

Soldiering is a young man’s game. I look back with fondness on my time in uniform. However, I do recall being tired and sore a lot. Deprivation, hunger, and misery are integral parts of the life of any proper combat soldier in the field. Cairns and his mates found that in abundance in the fetid jungles of Burma.

Pagoda Hill Explodes: The Chindits Meet the Japanese

Pagoda Hill battlefield where LT George Cairns fought Japanese troops during the Burma campaign
The British and the Japanese quite literally fought to the death over a tiny craptastic spit of dirt.

On 16 March 1944, Cairns and the South Staffords dug in near a place called the White City. The Japanese were rabid to stop the British advance. The Brits, for their part, were disinclined to comply. The end result was a most ferocious fight.

Near the South Staffords’ fighting positions was a pagoda on a prominent hilltop. As near as anyone could tell, neither force had bothered to take that place just yet. Both sides had actually dug formidable fighting positions within earshot of the other, apparently without either unit being the wiser. That all changed when an unsuspecting Japanese patrol wandered across the abandoned pagoda in search of something or other. At around 11 am, everything came unglued.

Brigadier Mad Mike Calvert leading Chindit forces during the Burma campaign
“Mad Mike” Calvert (left) was a soldier’s general who led from the front.

Brigadier Calvert led the attack himself. He later wrote, “On the top of Pagoda Hill, not much bigger than two tennis courts, an amazing scene developed. The small white Pagoda was in the centre of the hill. Between that and the slopes which came up was a mêlée of South Staffords and Japanese bayonetting, fighting with each other, with some Japanese just throwing grenades from the flanks…There, at the top of the hill, about fifty yards square, an extraordinary mêlée took place, everyone shooting, bayoneting, kicking at everyone else, rather like an officers’ guest night.”

Amidst all of that mayhem, LT Cairns strived mightily to hold the defensive line intact. While coordinating this vigorous defense, Cairns looked up just in time to spot a Japanese officer charging toward him at a dead run, waving a sword. There was no time to react properly. In the face of imminent death, Albert Cairns did what any normal person might do–he reflexively raised his left arm. The maniacal Japanese officer slashed with his weapon and all but took LT Cairns’ left arm off.

One Arm Gone, Sword in Hand: Cairns Refuses to Die Quietly

At this point, LT Cairns had a decision to make. If some screaming nutjob hacked my arm off with a big honking sword, I’m fairly certain I would just take my toys and go home. Not so, LT Cairns. Cairns shot and killed the Japanese officer who had taken his arm before snatching up the dead soldier’s blade and going to town on the rest of his maniacal buddies.

Japanese military swords like the captured blade used by LT George Cairns at Pagoda Hill
The Japanese made widespread use of swords during World War 2. Sometimes that didn’t turn out terribly well.

LT Norman Durant was a machine gun platoon leader assigned to the same unit. His vantage with his support weapons afforded him a fairly decent view of the battlefield. This is what he had to say about LT Cairns: “The first thing I saw on reaching the path was a horrible hand-to-hand struggle going on further up the hill. George Cairns and a Jap were struggling and choking on the ground, and as I picked up a Jap rifle and climbed up towards them, I saw George break free and, picking up a rifle bayonet, stab the Jap again and again like a madman. It was only when I got near that I saw he himself had already been bayoneted twice through the side and that his left arm was hanging on by a few strips of muscle. How he had found the strength to fight was a miracle, but the effort had been too much and he died the next morning.”

So, this brass-balled young British infantry officer had been ventilated twice with bayonets before having his left arm quite literally chopped off. Despite these extraordinary wounds, Cairns unleashed his inner monster on the attacking Japanese.

Using the dead Japanese officer’s sword, this one-armed lunatic launched himself into the remaining Japanese troops like a Dervish. When the dust settled, survivors counted 42 Japanese dead in and around the hilltop that housed the pagoda. Nobody knew who got whom. However, Cairns did most of his serious killing with the same sword that had been used to, moments before, lop off his own left arm.

The Victoria Cross Fight That Nearly Vanished With Wingate

General Orde Wingate commander of the Chindits during George Cairns' Burma campaign
Orde Wingate had no shortage of personality. He once attempted suicide by stabbing himself in the neck with a knife.

Once the dust settled, LT Cairns understandably ran out of gas. His words were, “’Have we won sir? Was it all right? Did we do our stuff? Don’t worry about me.” The following day, this remarkable young man died.

Stripping a sword from an adversary and then using it to obliterate an attacking unit after having your own arm chopped off seemed like Victoria Cross material, no matter how you sliced it. The VC is Great Britain’s highest award for gallantry in action. It is the Limey equivalent of our Medal of Honor.

General Orde Wingate pioneering special operations with the Chindits in Burma
General Orde Wingate was an unconventional leader, to say the least. However, he was a pioneer in the nascent field of special operations.

One of Cairns’ officers duly put in the work, and the award recommendation made its way up to General Orde Wingate, the commanding general of the Chindits. Wingate was a weird duck. A committed Christian Zionist, Wingate cut his teeth fighting the Arabs in British-occupied Palestine. He once attempted suicide by stabbing himself in the neck while under the depressing effects of atabrine for his malaria.

By the time he commanded the Chindits, Wingate was habitually munching on raw onions to help ward off disease and made a habit of greeting visitors in the nude. On 24 March 1944, Wingate climbed aboard an American B25 Mitchell bomber along with two British war correspondents. The pilot objected that the airplane was grossly overloaded, but Wingate insisted. The plane subsequently crashed into the jungle in India, killing all aboard. LT Cairns’ VC recommendation was on Wingate’s person at the time.

Victoria Cross medal awarded to LT George Cairns for valor in combat during World War 2
The Victoria Cross is Great Britain’s highest award for valor in combat. The medal itself is struck from material harvested from enemy cannon captured in battle.

George Cairns’ Victoria Cross Citation: Valor Beyond Belief

A 1949 article in The Times revived the process. By then, two of the three required witnesses had been killed in action. Eventually, thanks to the tireless efforts of his widow Ena Cairns, George’s Victoria Cross was approved. This is the citation:

“On 12 March 1944, columns from the South Staffordshire Regiment and 3/6 Gurkha Rifles established a road and rail block across the Japanese lines of communication at Henu Block.

The Japanese counter-attacked this position heavily in the early morning of 13 March 1944, and the South Staffordshire Regiment was ordered to attack a hill-top which formed the basis of the Japanese attack.

During this action, in which Lieutenant CAIRNS took a foremost part, he was attacked by a Japanese officer, who, with his sword, hacked off Lieutenant CAIRNS’s left arm. Lieutenant CAIRNS killed this Officer; picked up the sword and continued to lead his men in the attack, and, slashing left and right with the captured sword, killed and wounded several Japanese before he himself fell to the ground.

Lieutenant CAIRNS subsequently died from his wounds. His action so inspired all his comrades that, later, the Japanese were completely routed, a very rare occurrence at that time.”

LT George Cairns Victoria Cross hero remembered for his last stand at Pagoda Hill
LT George Cairns went down fighting. His actions at the bitter end made him a legend.

LT George Cairns Went Down Fighting and Became a Legend

We have explored a great many remarkable tales of daring and elan in this space in the past. I can’t recall ever writing about some lunatic guy who kept on fighting with the sword his attacker had only recently used to relieve him of his arm. LT George Cairns was indeed a hero of the highest order.

Will is still trying to figure out what he really wants to be when he grows up. However, shooting guns and claiming it was work seemed like a pretty sweet hustle. As a result, Will serendipitously transformed an avocation into a vocation.

Raised in the Mississippi Delta, Will flew UH1H, OH58A/C, CH47D and AH1S helicopters operationally as an Army Aviator. He is SCUBA-qualified and has parachuted out of perfectly good airplanes at 3 o’clock in the morning. Will has summited Mount McKinley, Alaska, six times…always at the controls of an Army helicopter, which is the only way sensible folk climb mountains.

Will has delivered sixty babies and occasionally wrung human blood out of his socks. He is married to his high school sweetheart and has three awesome adult children. Turn-ons include vintage German machineguns, flying his sexy-cool RV6A airplane, Count Chocula cereal and the movie “Aliens.”

www.word-monkey.com

Experience:

-Professional Writer-thousands of publishing credits for dozens of titles

-Mechanical Engineer/Practicing Physician

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A Fighting Spirit

Let’s examine the life of Mickey Marcus, a proud Jewish U.S. hero who became a leader of Israel’s armed forces during the 1948 War of Independence. Marcus made such a huge impact during his brief tenure in Israel that streets in several cities, the Tel Aviv neighborhood of Neve David and Kibbutz Mishmar David were named for him.

David – nicknamed Mickey – Marcus was born in 1901. Growing up in New York City, Mickey learned to box at a young age to protect himself from the neighborhood thugs. That moxie became Marcus’ hallmark and fueled him throughout his remarkable life.  
Mickey attended West Point Military Academy and was a strong student athlete, where he won the Intercollegiate Welterweight title. After completing active service, Marcus studied law and, as a government lawyer, crusaded against the mafia and put famous underworld leaders behind bars. Marcus quickly moved up the ladder and became New York City’s Commissioner of Corrections.
During and after World War II, Marcus held numerous prominent positions in the U.S. Armed Forces.  After an illustrious thirteen-year army career in which he rose to the rank of colonel, Mickey pledged to his wife that he would finally settle down.
That promise was quickly broken. Shortly after the November 29, 1947 United Nations vote to partition Palestine, the Israeli provisional government beseeched Marcus to help them identify and hire senior military officers. He contacted many high-ranking retired officers, but everyone refused to assist, fearing that, without government permission, they may lose their army status and U.S. citizenship.
Mickey, however, had no such qualms: as the chief of the War Crimes Division, he witnessed firsthand the piles of Jewish corpses in Dachau and other death camps, and understood how urgently a Jewish homeland was needed.
The U.S. War Department granted Marcus permission to accept the assignment, provided he not use his own name or rank. Arriving in Tel Aviv in January 1948 under the pseudonym Michael Stone, Mickey embraced the herculean task of molding a tiny, poorly-armed military into a powerful force capable of withstanding an all-out onslaught from six well-equipped invading Arab armies.
Mickey loved the Israeli solders’ intelligence, ability to improvise, and self-sacrificing spirit – as he probably saw a lot of himself in these young fighters. Notwithstanding his limited Hebrew vocabulary, Marcus immediately gained the soldiers’ confidence and loyalty.
Marcus helped create organizational structure with a streamlined chain of command, emphasizing teamwork between the groups that had, until now, been separate combat organizations. His biggest contribution, though, was to persuade the army to attack the enemy rather than adopt a defensive strategy.
On May 14, 1948, the day he declared the establishment of the State of Israel, Ben Gurion wrote in his diary, “…the whole world was sure that within ten days …. not a soul would be alive in Israel.” However, when the Arab armies attacked, Israel was ready, thanks in great part to Marcus’ planning.
In the Negev, his hit-and-run tactics, together with equal doses of guile and guts, kept the Egyptian army and air force off balance and paved the way for a miraculous victory.
On May 28th, Ben Gurion honored Marcus with the rank of Aluf, equivalent to Lieutenant General. He was the first general in Jewish history since Judah Maccabee two thousand years earlier.
The next order of business was rescuing Jerusalem. When the Jewish section of Jerusalem was about to fall and the only supply route to Jerusalem became impassable, Marcus devised an ingenious plan to build a bypass road on a mountain trail.
The Burma Road transported additional men, equipment and food, which broke the Arab siege just days before the United Nations negotiated a cease fire. 
Tragically, Mickey was killed in the early hours of June 11th, just six hours before the cease-fire went into effect. Restless and unable to sleep, Mickey, wrapped in his bed sheet, walked beyond the guarded perimeter. Mistaking the white-robed figure as the enemy, a Jewish soldier fatally shot Marcus.
Prime Minister Ben Gurion summed up Marcus’ influence in a telegram informing Israel’s NY delegation of his demise: “… AS A MAN AND A COMMANDER HE ENDEARED HIMSELF TO ALL THOSE WHO CAME INTO PERSONAL CONTACT WITH HIM AND HIS FAME SPREAD THROUGH ALL THE RANKS OF OUR ARMED FORCES STOP THEY ALL ADMIRED HIS SUPERB COURAGE HIS REMARKABLE MILITARY INTUITION … HIS UNLIMITED DEVOTION AND HIS NATURAL SPONTANEOUS HUMAN FELLOWSHIP STOP… HIS NAME WILL LIVE FOREVER IN THE ANNALS OF THE JEWISH PEOPLE … “
Gedaliah Borvick is the founder of My Israel Home (www.myisraelhome.com), a real estate agency focused on helping people from abroad buy and sell homes in Israel.
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When a good man stands up to evil

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George S. Patton: American Achilles | Historical Documentary | Lucasfilm

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The poor folks down in Oz !!!!! From the Blog 357 Magnum

Australia Is a Defenseless Victim Zone

The government likes it that way. Coroner reveals new details after 20-year-old intruder shot dead in Melbourne home invasion

A man is at home with his heavily, pregnant partner. Three men, armed with axes break in. They assault the pregnant woman. At least one of the three has a firearm. The homeowner wrestles the firearm away from the bad guy, and in the course of the fight said bad guy is shot in the chest, and dies of his wounds.

The cops arrest the homeowner, because you are not allowed to defend yourself in Australia. The law actually says that you are allowed, but you must use proportional response, and somehow, shooting a bad guy, with his own gun, after he and his buddies have attacked your pregnant girlfriend, is not proportional enough for the powers that be, Down Under.

And the pregnant woman was struck in the leg with an ax.

The homeowner was initially charged with murder in relation to the incident “however the prosecution did not progress due to the opinion of prosecutors that there were no reasonable prospects of a conviction,” according to Spanos’ findings.

Justice? Why would they worry about Justice?

Since law and order seem to be deteriorating in Australia, some of the states are trying to return some measure of self-defense. I don’t expect it to come to much. (They’re too “civilized” for that kind of thing.)

There is a push, however, to introduce laws to increase the rights of homeowners. The push is, in part, due to an increase in the number of home invasions in Victoria, driven in large part by young, recidivist offenders.

 

The demand for an overhaul of self-defence laws in Victoria is being led by Libertarian MP David Limbrick.

The law abiding are more than disarmed. They are forbidden, in any practical sense, from defending themselves.

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The Pussification Of The Western Male by the Great Kim Du toit!!

We have become a nation of women.

It wasn’t always this way, of course. There was a time when men put their signatures to a document, knowing full well that this single act would result in their execution if captured, and in the forfeiture of their property to the State. Their wives and children would be turned out by the soldiers, and their farms and businesses most probably given to someone who didn’t sign the document.

There was a time when men went to their certain death, with expressions like “You all can go to hell. I’m going to Texas.” (Davy Crockett, to the House of Representatives, before going to the Alamo.)

There was a time when men went to war, sometimes against their own families, so that other men could be free. And there was a time when men went to war because we recognized evil when we saw it, and knew that it had to be stamped out.

There was even a time when a President of the United States threatened to punch a man in the face and kick him in the balls, because the man had the temerity to say bad things about the President’s daughter’s singing.**

We’re not like that anymore.

Now, little boys in grade school are suspended for playing cowboys and Indians, cops and crooks, and all the other familiar variations of “good guy vs. bad guy” that helped them learn, at an early age, what it was like to have decent men hunt you down, because you were a lawbreaker.

Now, men are taught that violence is bad — that when a thief breaks into your house, or threatens you in the street, that the proper way to deal with this is to “give him what he wants”, instead of taking a horsewhip to the rascal or shooting him dead where he stands.

Now, men’s fashion includes not a man dressed in a double-breasted suit, but a tight sweater worn by a man with breasts.

Now, warning labels are indelibly etched into gun barrels, as though men have somehow forgotten that guns are dangerous things.

Now, men are given Ritalin as little boys, so that their natural aggressiveness, curiosity and restlessness can be controlled, instead of nurtured and directed.

And finally, our President, who happens to have been a qualified fighter pilot, lands on an aircraft carrier wearing a flight suit, and is immediately dismissed with words like “swaggering”, “macho” and the favorite epithet of Euro girly-men, “cowboy”. Of course he was bound to get that reaction — and most especially from the Press in Europe, because the process of male pussification Over There is almost complete.

How did we get to this?

In the first instance, what we have to understand is that America is first and foremost, a culture dominated by one figure: Mother. It wasn’t always so: there was a time when it was Father who ruled the home, worked at his job, and voted.

But in the twentieth century, women became more and more involved in the body politic, and in industry, and in the media — and mostly, this has not been a good thing.

When women got the vote, it was inevitable that government was going to become more powerful, more intrusive, and more “protective” (i.e. more coddling), because women are hard-wired to treasure security more than uncertainty and danger. It was therefore inevitable that their feminine influence on politics was going to emphasize (lowercase “s”) social security.

I am aware of the fury that this statement is going to arouse, and I don’t care a fig.

What I care about is the fact that since the beginning of the twentieth century, there has been a concerted campaign to denigrate men, to reduce them to figures of fun, and to render them impotent, figuratively speaking.

I’m going to illustrate this by talking about TV, because TV is a reliable barometer of our culture.

In the 1950s, the TV Dad was seen as the lovable goofball — perhaps the beginning of the trend — BUT he was still the one who brought home the bacon, and was the main source of discipline (think of the line: “Wait until your father gets home!”).

From that, we went to this: the Cheerios TV ad.

Now, for those who haven’t seen this piece of shit, I’m going to go over it, from memory, because it epitomizes everything I hate about the campaign to pussify men. The scene opens at the morning breakfast table, where the two kids are sitting with Dad at the table, while Mom prepares stuff on the kitchen counter. The dialogue goes something like this:

Little girl (note, not little boy): Daddy, why do we eat Cheerios?
Dad: Because they contain fiber, and all sorts of stuff that’s good for the heart. I eat it now, because of that.
LG: Did you always eat stuff that was bad for your heart, Daddy?
Dad (humorously): I did, until I met your mother.
Mother (not humorously): Daddy did a lot of stupid things before he met your mother.

Now, every time I see that TV ad, I have to be restrained from shooting the TV with a .45 Colt. If you want a microcosm of how men have become less than men, this is the perfect example.

What Dad should have replied to Mommy’s little dig: “Yes, Sally, that’s true: I did do a lot of stupid things before I met your mother. I even slept with your Aunt Ruth a few times, before I met your mother.”

That’s what I would have said, anyway, if my wife had ever attempted to castrate me in front of the kids like that.

But that’s not what men do, of course. What this guy is going to do is smile ruefully, finish his cereal, and then go and fuck his secretary, who doesn’t try to cut his balls off on a daily basis. Then, when the affair is discovered, people are going to rally around the castrating bitch called his wife, and call him all sorts of names. He’ll lose custody of his kids, and they will be brought up by our ultimate modern-day figure of sympathy: The Single Mom.

You know what? Some women deserve to be single moms.

When I first started this website, I think my primary aim was to blow off steam at the stupidity of our society.

Because I have fairly set views on what constitutes right and wrong, I have no difficulty in calling Bill Clinton, for example, a fucking liar and hypocrite.

But most of all, I do this website because I love being a man. Amongst other things, I talk about guns, self-defense, politics, beautiful women, sports, warfare, hunting, and power tools — all the things that being a man entails. All this stuff gives me pleasure.

And it doesn’t take much to see when all the things I love are being threatened: for instance, when Tim Allen’s excellent comedy routine on being a man is reduced to a fucking sitcom called Home Improvement.

The show should have been called Man Improvement, because that’s what every single plotline entailed: turning a man into a “better” person, instead of just leaving him alone to work on restoring the vintage sports car in his garage. I stopped watching the show after about four episodes.

(The Man Show was better, at least for the first season — men leering at chicks, men fucking around with ridiculous games like “pin the bra on the boobies”, men having beer-drinking competitions, and women bouncing on trampolines. Excellent stuff, only not strong enough. I don’t watch it anymore, either, because it’s plain that the idea has been subverted by girly-men, and turned into a parody of itself.)

Finally, we come to the TV show which to my mind epitomizes everything bad about what we have become: Queer Eye For The Straight Guy. Playing on the homo Bravo Channel, this piece of excrement has taken over the popular culture by storm (and so far, the only counter has been the wonderful South Park episode which took it apart for the bullshit it is).

I’m sorry, but the premise of the show nauseates me. A bunch of homosexuals trying to “improve” ordinary men into something “better” (i.e. more acceptable to women): changing the guy’s clothes, his home decor, his music — for fuck’s sake, what kind of girly-man would allow these simpering butt-bandits to change his life around?

Yes, the men are, by and large, slobs. Big fucking deal. Last time I looked, that’s normal. Men are slobs, and that only changes when women try to civilize them by marriage. That’s the natural order of things.

You know the definition of homosexual men we used in Chicago? “Men with small dogs who own very tidy apartments.”

Real men, on the other hand, have big fucking mean-ass dogs: Rhodesian ridgebacks, bull terriers and Rottweilers, or else working dogs like pointers or retrievers which go hunting with them and slobber all over the furniture.

Women own lapdogs.

Which is why women are trying to get dog-fighting and cock-fighting banned — they’d ban boxing too, if they could — because it’s “mean and cruel”. No shit, Shirley. Hell, I hate the idea of fighting dogs too, but I don’t have a problem with men who do. Dogs and cocks fight. So do men. No wonder we have an affinity for it.

My website has become fairly popular with men, and in the beginning, this really surprised me, because I didn’t think I was doing anything special.

That’s not what I think now. I must have had well over five thousand men write to me to say stuff like “Yes! I agree! I was so angry when I read about [insert atrocity of choice], but I thought I was the only one.”

No, you’re not alone, my friends, and nor am I.

Out there, there is a huge number of men who are sick of it. We’re sick of being made figures of fun and ridicule; we’re sick of having girly-men like journalists, advertising agency execs and movie stars decide on “what is a man”; we’re sick of women treating us like children, and we’re really fucking sick of girly-men politicians who pander to women by passing an ever-increasing raft of Nanny laws and regulations (the legal equivalent of public-school Ritalin), which prevent us from hunting, racing our cars and motorcycles, smoking, flirting with women at the office, getting into fistfights over women, shooting criminals and doing all the fine things which being a man entails.

When Annika Sorenstam was allowed to play in that tournament on the men’s PGA tour, all the men should have refused to play — Vijay Singh was the only one with balls to stand up for a principle, and he was absolutely excoriated for being a “chauvinist”.

Bullshit. He wasn’t a chauvinist, he was being a man. All the rest of the players — Woods, Mickelson, the lot — are girls by comparison. And, needless to say, Vijay isn’t an American, nor a European, which is probably why he still has a pair hanging between his legs, and they’re not hanging on the wall as his wife’s trophy.

Fuck this, I’m sick of it.

I don’t see why I should put up with this bullshit any longer — hell, I don’t see why any man should put up with this bullshit any longer.

I don’t see why men should have become feminized, except that we allowed it to happen — and you know why we let it happen? Because it’s damned easier to do so. Unfortunately, we’ve allowed it to go too far, and our maleness has become too pussified for words.

At this point, I could have gone two ways: the first would be to say, “…and I don’t know if we’ll get it back. The process has become too entrenched, the cultural zeitgeist of men as girls has become part of the social fabric, and there’s not much we can do about it.”

But I’m not going to do that. To quote John Belushi (who was, incidentally, a real man and not a fucking woman): “Did we quit when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor?”

Well, I’m not going to quit. Fuck that. One of the characteristics of the non-pussified man (and this should strike fear into the hearts of women and girly-men everywhere) is that he never quits just because the odds seem overwhelming. Omaha Beach, guys.

I want a real man as President — not Al Gore, who had to hire a consultant to show him how to be an Alpha male, and french-kiss his wife on live TV to “prove” to the world that he was a man, when we all knew that real men don’t have to do that pathetic crap.

And I want the Real Man President to surround himself with other Real Men, like Rumsfeld, and Ashcroft, and yes, Condi Rice (who is more of a Real Man than those asswipes Colin Powell and Norman Mineta).

I want our government to be more like Dad — kind, helpful, but not afraid to punish us when we fuck up, instead of helping us excuse our actions.

I want our government of real men to start rolling back the Nanny State, in all its horrible manifestations of over-protectiveness, intrusiveness and “Mommy Knows Best What’s Good For You” regulations.

I want our culture to become more male — and not the satirical kind of male, like The Man Show, or the cartoonish figures of Stallone, Van Damme or Schwarzenegger.

 

(Note to the Hollywood execs: We absolutely fucking loathe chick movies about feelings and relationships and all that feminine jive. We want more John Waynes, Robert Mitchums, Bruce Willises, and Clint Eastwoods. Never mind that it’s simplistic — we like simple, we are simple, we are men — our lives are uncomplicated, and we like it that way. We Were Soldiers was a great movie, and you know why? Because you could have cut out all the female parts and it still would have been a great movie, because it was about Real Men. Try cutting out all the female parts in a Woody Allen movie; you’d end up with the opening and closing credits.)

I want our literature to become more male, less female. Men shouldn’t buy “self-help” books unless the subject matter is car maintenance, golf swing improvement or how to disassemble a fucking Browning BAR. We don’t improve ourselves, we improve our stuff.

And finally, I want men everywhere to going back to being Real Men. To open doors for women, to drive fast cars, to smoke cigars after a meal, to get drunk occasionally and, in the words of the late Col. Jeff Cooper, one of the last of the Real Men: “To ride, shoot straight, and speak the truth.”

In every sense of the word. We know what the word “is” means.

Because that’s all that being a Real Man involves. You don’t have to become a fucking cartoon male, either: I’m not going back to stoning women for adultery like those Muslim assholes do, nor am I suggesting we support that perversion of being a Real Man, gangsta rap artists (those fucking pussies — they wouldn’t last thirty seconds against a couple of genuine tough guys that I know).

Speaking of rap music, do you want to know why more White boys buy that crap than Black boys do? You know why date rape is supposedly such a problem on college campuses*? Why binge drinking is a problem among college freshmen?

It’s a reaction: a reaction against being pussified. And I understand it, completely. Young males are aggressive, they do fight amongst themselves, they are destructive, and all this does happen for a purpose.

Because only the strong men propagate.

And women know it. You want to know why I know this to be true? Because powerful men still attract women. Women, even liberal women, swooned over George Bush in a naval aviator’s uniform. Donald Trump still gets access to some of the most beautiful pussy available, despite looking like a medieval gargoyle. Donald Rumsfeld, if he wanted to, could fuck 90% of all women over 50 if he wanted to, and a goodly portion of younger ones too.

And he won’t. Because Rummy’s been married to the same woman for fifty years, and he wouldn’t toss that away for a quickie. He’s a Real Man. No wonder the Euros hate and fear him.

We?d better get more like him, we’d better become more like him, because if we don’t, men will become a footnote to history.

– 0 –

*since debunked as bullshit, based on crap statistics

**“I’ve just read your lousy review of Margaret’s concert. I’ve come to the conclusion that you are an ‘eight ulcer man on four ulcer pay.’ It seems to me that you are a frustrated old man who wishes he could have been successful. When you write such poppy-cock as was in the back section of the paper you work for it shows conclusively that you’re off the beam and at least four of your ulcers are at work. Some day I hope to meet you. When that happens you’ll need a new nose, a lot of beefsteak for black eyes, and perhaps a supporter below! Pegler, a gutter snipe, is a gentleman alongside you. I hope you’ll accept that statement as a worse insult than a reflection on your ancestry.”

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