The Germans referred to their massive 1944 counteroffensive through the Ardennes as “Unternehmen Wacht am Rhein” or “Operation Watch on the Rhine.”

We called it the Battle of the Bulge. Regardless of the terminology, this sweeping attack represented the Germans’ final hope at staving off unmitigated disaster.

The stakes really could not have been higher. Success might mean a negotiated peace. Hitler hoped to turn the US and the UK against the Soviets for a united fight against the forces of Bolshevism. Failure would mean abject defeat and a ravaged homeland. Such pressures on young men can precipitate some fairly egregious behaviors.

Kampfgruppe Peiper led by SS Obersturmbannfuhrer Joachim Peiper represented the vanguard of the 6^th SS Panzer Army commanded by Sepp Dietrich. Racing against the clock and an ever-dwindling fuel supply, Peiper’s panzers crushed American resistance and punched deep into the Allied rear. The farther they pushed the more precarious their situation became and the more desperate they grew.

On December 17, 1944, German SS troops captured some 120 American troops from the 285^th Field Artillery Observation Battalion. Desperate to continue the advance and lacking the facilities to manage prisoners, SS troops opened fire on the unarmed Americans. 84 Allied soldiers were killed.

Sepp Dietrich, Joachim Peiper, and their immediate subordinates were all tried after the war for murder. There resulted 43 death sentences and another 22 defendants sentenced to life in prison. None of the executions were actually carried out. Peiper was eventually released from prison and settled in Traves in Eastern France. In the early morning of July 14, 1976, unknown assailants set Peiper’s house alight. The unrepentant Nazi died of smoke inhalation.

The Malmedy Massacre came to define the Battle of the Bulge. Once word of the shootings got out very few SS prisoners survived to see the inside of a prison camp. Through the shaded lens of history it is easy to look down our long Roman noses at the SS troops involved and rightly revile them. However, our own behavior in this regard was not without blemish.

The Setting

Operation Husky, the invasion of Sicily, kicked off on July 9, 1943. The command structure for this convoluted operation was complex, but LTG George Patton commanded the American ground element. In the lead-up to the invasion, Patton was in rare form.

Patton addressed his officers prior to the invasion so as to dispense last-minute command guidance and encourage his men. Many of the troops involved in Operation Husky had not seen combat before. Emotions were running high.

One of Patton’s regimental commanders, Colonel Forrest E. Cookson, later testified that General Patton had stated, “If the enemy continued to resist after US troops had come within 200 yards of their defensive position, surrender of those enemy soldiers need not be accepted.” Some of Patton’s troops apparently took that directive quite literally.

Event Number 1

Green troops from the 180^th Infantry Regiment were given the task of capturing Biscari Airfield and linking up with the US 1^st Infantry Division. The 180^th so struggled in the first two days of the invasion that the Division commander MG Troy Middleton considered sacking the Regimental commander. By July 14^th the men of the 180^th were tired, frightened, and frustrated.

SGT Horace West was tasked with securing a group of some 45 Italian and 3 German POWs. The prisoners were stripped of their shoes and shirts to discourage attempted escape. West and a few others marched the prisoners about a mile back from the lines before peeling off eight or nine for submission to the Regimental S2 (Intelligence Officer) for questioning. SGT West then borrowed a Thompson submachine gun from his company First Sergeant Haskell Brown. When the 1SG asked why he wanted the Thompson, West replied that he was going to, “Kill those sons of bitches.”

SGT West directed his men to turn away and raked the group of unarmed shirtless prisoners with automatic fire. Once he had the group knocked down he swapped out magazines, switched his Thompson to semiauto, and shot each of the fallen POWs through the chest. The following day the Regimental Chaplain discovered the 37 bodies and alerted his superiors.

Event Number 2

CPT John Compton, commander of C Company, 1^st Battalion, 180^th Infantry Regiment, was undeniably strung out. He had been without sleep for three days, and his company had taken an absolute pummeling. Persistent and relentless sniper and mortar fire exacted a horrible toll.

By the time Compton got to his objective at the Biscari Airfield, they had already taken heavy casualties. Of the 34 men in Compton’s 2d Platoon, fully a dozen were either dead or severely wounded. Italian snipers had fired upon wounded American troops as well as the medics dispatched to tend to them. The pressure of such grinding sniper activity weighed heavily on Compton and his men.

When Compton’s company finally seized their objective they took some 35 Italian prisoners. These Italian troops were located in a dugout fighting position from which the sniper fire had been coming previously. Several of the Italians were in civilian clothing when they were captured.

Through an interpreter, an American squad leader named SGT Hair asked the Italians if they were the ones who had been shooting at the American wounded. The Italians refused to answer. SGT Hair reported all of this to his platoon leader, 1LT Blanks, who duly passed it on to CPT Compton. Compton said simply, “Get them shot.”

With CPT Compton in tow, his men formed an 11-man firing squad, lined up the unarmed Italian soldiers, and gunned them down. A few of the POWs attempted to run. When the dust cleared Compton’s men had killed them all.

The Guns

The Thompson submachine gun was designed to fight the First World War. The first operational prototypes became available within days of the 1918 armistice. With no massive government contracts to fill, General John Taliaferro Thompson marketed his handy little meat grinder to Law Enforcement and civilian users. Abuse by such sordid characters as John Dillinger and Pretty Boy Floyd bought us the onerous National Firearms Act of 1934.

Everything about the Thompson is wrong. It is too heavy, too unbalanced, and too complicated. However, when the US was dragged kicking and screaming into WW2 it was all we had available. In competent hands, the Thompson was nonetheless a reliable and effective close-combat tool.

The M1 Garand was called simply the M1 by those who wielded it. At 9.5 pounds and 44 inches long the M1 was a beast of a thing. However, the .30-06 round it fired was inimitably powerful. A friend who carried one in WW2 once told me that so long as you hit a German soldier center of mass with the M1 he was down and out immediately.

The M1 soldiered on from 1934 until 1957. I actually saw images taken from Haiti that showed security guards armed with M1 rifles in the news just last week. The M1 rifle was one of the most critical weapons in the American arsenal during WW2.

The Rest of the Story

News like this is all but impossible to suppress in a congested war zone. Eventually, word got back to General Omar Bradley who confronted Patton over it. This was Patton’s subsequent entry in his war diary that evening, “I told Bradley that it was probably an exaggeration, but in any case to tell the Officer to certify that the dead men were snipers or had attempted to escape or something, as it would make a stink in the press and also would make the civilians mad. Anyhow, they are dead, so nothing can be done about it.”

Patton was later informed that the 45th Division’s Inspector General found “No provocation on the part of the prisoners…They had been slaughtered.” Upon further introspection, Patton purportedly said, “Try the bastards.”

SGT Horace West admitted to the killings but claimed that a combination of fatigue and LTG Patton’s ambiguous orders were mitigating circumstances. He was convicted of premeditated murder by court-martial and sentenced to life in prison. Eisenhower, ever eager to avoid an unnecessary scandal, remitted his sentence on November 24, 1944. West was restored to active duty and served in combat until the end of the war. He received an honorable discharge and lived out his days in Oklahoma. He died in 1974.

CPT John Compton was court-martialed over the deaths of the 36 prisoners under his charge and used a similar defense, particularly relying upon LTG Patton’s directives regarding prisoners resisting within 200 yards of friendly forces. He was acquitted on October 23, 1944, and transferred to the 179^thInfantry Regiment. Two weeks later he was killed in action fighting in Italy.

The winners write the history, and war is bad. Normal men forced into such abnormal circumstances are frequently driven to do things that seem unnatural from the comfort of our living rooms. The very act of combat is the most repugnant of human pursuits.

The Axis was ultimately defeated and with them went their death camps and dark aspirations for world domination. However, it took hard men doing hard things to put the final nail in the Nazi coffin. Sometimes war takes those hard men to some particularly dark places.

 

 

A wealthy New Jersey businessman had his firearms seized after he used an AR-15 to chase car thieves away from his property last year, according to a new report from the New York Post.

Newly released footage shows Evan Wexler, naked, in front of his Fort Lee mansion firing several shots at another man who was trying to steal his Mercedes G-Wagon. According to the Post, it was the 18^th time thieves had attempted to steal one of Wexler’s exotic cars, and the police had done little to stop them.

“I keep calling the police and showing them videos to prove I’m not crying wolf,” Wexler said. “I’m begging them to deter these guys, but they’re not doing s–t. The cops show up too late or go on high-speed chases but they never catch anyone.”

So, the wealthy butcher-turned-high-end hamburger and steak supermarket wholesaler decided to take matters into his own hands.

In the video, the would-be thief can be seen opening the door of Wexler’s Mercedes, which he admits he sometimes left unlocked. According to the Post, car thieves often looked in Wexler’s daily drivers to find keys to his more exotic cars.

In one incident last August, they stole Wexler’s $500,000 Lamborghini Aventador SVJ Coupe. It was found a week later with $80,000 worth of damage.

Moments after the thief starts the Mercedes, Wexler can be seen on his home security camera running onto his porch. He isn’t wearing any clothes, and he’s holding what appears to be an AR-style rifle. He keeps the gun trained on the thief as the man runs away and fires what the Post describes as “warning shots” from his porch.

The move succeeded in deterring that particular thief, but police were none too thrilled. They slapped Wexler with aggravated assault and possession of weapons for unlawful purposes, which the meat mogul pled down to possession of a deadly weapon.

“An incident happens where a guy gets my car started, I came out of the house with a rifle, the guy puts the car into drive, drives forward, and my gun discharges,” Wexler described the incident to the Post. “At that point, Fort Lee police show up, there’s no victim of a shooting, but they come and turn the tables on me.”

Wexler was forced to sell his guns and was sentenced to two years of probation.

“Assault firearms” are illegal in New Jersey, and Wexler’s rifle appears to meet the state’s definition of that term. But the Post reports that the charge Wexler pleaded guilty to was leveled when police found another weapon on his property that violated the state’s standard-capacity magazine ban.

 

Vietnam has a hidden history of weapon development not known to many. Throughout the conflict, the United States military invested heavily in a wide variety of projects that aimed to better equip conventional forces for an unconventional war. This effort led to a great many projects being developed, but few that proved effective enough to move forward. One of the few is the subject of today’s article: the Quiet Special Purpose Revolver, aka the Tunnel Weapon.

The war in Vietnam was a brutal example of asymmetric warfare. One of the biggest challenges for American troops was the broad and effective use of tunnels by Vietnamese communist forces. These holes allowed enemy forces to hide themselves, their weapons, and more from American forces on the ground and in the air, creating a strategic advantage for the North Vietnamese. From a tactical perspective, the use of tunnels was genius. American forces weren’t ready for it, and it was a simple, inexpensive solution to a massive problem that was America’s superior military might.

American forces didn’t have any other option but to take to the tunnels, where the defenders had the advantage and the fighting became ultra-close and generally quite brutal. To become more efficient at storming these tunnels, American troops lneeded specialized weapons, and one such weapon was the Quiet Special Purpose Revolver.

Related: S&W Model 15: America’s last revolver is finally leaving service

The terrifying challenges facing Tunnel Rats

The sidearm of choice for American troops at the time was the M1911A1, and by all accounts, the general issue 1911 served well but wasn’t great for the tunnels. Tunnels did require a handgun, there was no doubt about that. Most of the time, the soldier storming the tunnel crawled on their hands and knees, which made the use of a long gun impossible. Accuracy was also an issue. Get on your hands and knees in a dark, tight tunnel and see how accurate you can be with a handgun in a firefight… it was probably even harder for the incredible men who climbed into these tunnels than we can even really appreciate now.

To make matters worse, handguns are tough to shoot well in general, and in a tunnel, any gunfire is extremely loud. In a dark tunnel, the flash is also quite bright. In these types of situations, a shotgun might be best… but good luck handling a shotgun in such tight quarters. So the Pentagon set about built a handgun-sized weapon that fired multiple projectiles at a time, with additional requirements to reduce both its sound and muzzle flash.

These special requests led to the development of the Quiet Special Purpose Revolver.

Related: The men with the green faces: The birth of the Navy SEALs in Vietnam

The basis for the Tunnel Weapon

AAI, or Advanced Armament Industries, worked with the Army to develop the QSPR in 1969. The requirements were simple. The weapon would fire multiple projectiles at a reduced sound level and be effective out to 50 feet. The weapon needed to be a repeater, be reloadable, and weigh less than 40 ounces.

When we say repeater, we don’t necessarily mean semi-automatic. We mean a weapon capable of firing more than a round before it needs to be reloaded. A revolver qualifies as a repeater, so it seems logical that a very big and (later on) very famous revolver became the basis for the Quiet Special Purpose Revolver.

With these requirements in mind, the engineers took an S&W Model 29 revolver and went to work. If you’re familiar with Dirty Harry, the movie detective with a bad attitude who famously wielded the big 44 Magnum pistol, then you’re already familiar with what would become the Quiet Special Purpose Revolver. The S&W Model 29 was a modern design for the time and featured a swing-out cylinder for quick reloading and a double-action design for easy follow-up shots. The S&W 29 held six rounds, and so would the QSPR.

Related: The 5 worst service weapons the US ever issued its troops

Building the QSPR

First, they cut the barrel down to nearly nothing and eliminated its unnecessary rifling entirely. In fact, the pistol was purposefully turned into a smoothbore weapon.

The nature of the ammunition ensured that a standard automatic cartridge could not be used. But no one could get away with calling the 44 Magnum round small. You can actually credit the case length of a 44 Magnum for ensuring the length of the cylinder was enough to handle a multi-projectile round.

The new round, called 10mm QSRP, dramatically reduced both flash and noise. Each shell contained ten pellets contained within a sabot. AAI hermetically sealed each round, and each case acted as its own disposable suppressor. A primer ignited gun powder which pushed a piston which then propelled the sabot full of shot through the outer seal.

The piston then resealed the cartridge, which contained most of the noise and reduced sound and almost entirely eliminated flash. The Quiet Special Purpose Revolver ended up weighing 38 ounces while being fairly short in overall length.

Related: The strangest Spec-Ops firearms in SOCOM’s armory

In-Service

According to numerous Army reports, a few weapons were built and sent to Vietnam for testing. Apparently, one ended up with MACVSOG, according to heavily redacted documents. It’s tough to find much in the way of field reports, but the Army Progress reported that it worked seemingly more or less just the way it was designed—good up close, but not great from a distance.

Digging through archives, I found a report from when Ranger team Oregon engaged seven to ten Vietnamese fighters. A Ranger armed with the QSRP engaged one enemy at 15 feet and immediately dropped him to the ground. That same Ranger fired twice at another enemy at 40 feet, but the enemy escaped.

The report called the weapon the .44 Mag tunnel weapon, and outlined a number of pressing issues that still needed to be worked out, including malfunctions and misfires caused by the new ammunition.

Another July 1972 report suggests that these issues were resolved by adding a “helper spring” and making changes to the ammunition’s design.

“A secondary or helper spring was added to the weapons mainspring that provided a 50 increase in firing pin energy and eliminated mainspring degradation. The ammunition was redesigned with fewer parts and the primer was repositioned and exposed at the base of the round for direct contact by the firing pin as in conventional ammunition. These design improvements resulted in not a single misfire throughout the development, assurance, and acceptance tests associated with this program.”

The result was so successful that this report seemingly granted the new gun its Quiet, Special-Purpose Revolver (QSPR) title along the way:

“The results of this evaluation indicated that the weapon system was well received primarily because the low firing noise permitted use of the weapon without giving away the users position,” the report reads.

“In addition to its tunnel exploration role, the weapon was used in ambush situations and in search and destroy operations. Because of this, the weapon is now designated the Quiet, Special-Purpose Revolver QSPR. “

Around this time, the war was ending, and as such, the QSPR project got sent to the back burner. When the war finally ended, so did any interest in a special-purpose revolver designed for the sort of fighting no one ever hoped to have to do again. Three samples exist to this day, two in Army Museums and one in the ATF reference collection. Despite how valuable such a weapon could be to the few who would need to wield it, the Tunnel WEapons was one of the many projects that started and stopped within the confines of the Vietnam war.

While the Tunnel Weapons might not have been successful, several more of those Vietnam efforts ultimately were. The list includes the beginnings of the M203, the Mk 19, and suppressors for special operations use. The QSPR revolver and its what-if history fascinates me.

DETROIT – About 2 in 10 U.S. adults say they or someone close to them has had a personal experience with gun violence, according to a recent poll that shows Black and Hispanic adults are especially likely to have had their lives touched by it.

The poll by the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy and The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research found that 54% of Black Americans and 27% of Hispanic Americans reported that they or a close friend or family member experienced gun violence in the last five years, compared with of 13% of white Americans. Overall, 21% of U.S. adults reported a personal tie to gun violence, such as being threatened by a gun or being a victim of a shooting.

“He was at the right place at the wrong time,” said Brown, who is Black.

An acquaintance of a friend pulled a gun during an attempted robbery at a home and shot several people, including Brown’s brother, who she said died instantly. Another person also was slain.

Brown said she doesn’t consider herself a gun lover, but she’s worried enough about becoming a victim of gun violence herself that she’s considering getting a handgun.

“I’m really getting ready to get one. I’ve been to the range,” Brown said. “My dad is a police officer and he wants me to have it.”

The survey was conducted after a stretch of mass shootings across the U.S., from a grocery store in New York, an elementary school in Texas, and a Fourth of July parade in Illinois — along with a smattering of incidents of gun violence in cities across the U.S. that don’t always make national news but leave local communities on edge.

Professor Jens Ludwig, who is director of the University of Chicago’s Crime Lab, said that 1 in 5 people with a friend or family member who was a victim of violence was a “strikingly high number.”

It shows that those who experience gun violence “aren’t the only victims,” he said.

Ludwig compared the way gun violence affects entire communities to the COVID-19 pandemic, noting that the people who died or became very ill from COVID-19 weren’t the only ones affected; kids were kept home from school, businesses closed, and people couldn’t see loved ones.

The same is true with gun violence, Ludwig said. “People are changing the way they live,” he said.

For example, he said, when people who can afford to leave cities where gun violence is a big problem move out in droves, it hurts everyone still there.

He cited Detroit as one example. Gun-related homicides increased from 2016 to 2020, from a rate of 37.6 per 100,000 people to 45.4 per 100,000 people, according to FBI data collected by the pro-gun control group Everytown for Gun Safety. Black people were 2.1 times more likely to die by gun homicides than white people, according to the data.

Following a particularly violent summer weekend in Detroit that saw two dozen nonfatal shootings and seven homicides, Police Chief James White denounced the rising gun violence in the city and across the nation.

“We understand these numbers make media headlines, but to us they represent people,” White told reporters. “These represent families. This represents children. This represents husbands, wives, brothers and sisters. Our Detroit families are in pain. Neighbors near the gunfire are shaken and lives have been forever changed.”

While most Americans say they feel gun violence has increased nationwide and in their states, 59% of Black Americans and 45% of Hispanics said that gun violence is on the rise in their communities, compared with 34% of white Americans. Similarly, people living in urban areas are more likely to say gun violence is rising in their communities than those in suburban or rural areas, 51% to 39% to 27%.

That is in line with recent data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The data has shown a spike in gun violence since the pandemic, with gun-related homicides increasing across the country in large and small metro areas and in rural areas. The data found Black people are disproportionately impacted by gun violence and are more likely to be the victims of gun crimes or homicides.

Brittany Samuels, a 31-year-old in Detroit, says she still carries physical scars from being shot at age 14 by her uncle, who she said was bipolar and schizophrenic, and fatally shot her grandmother, one of his coworkers and himself.

She said it has also shaped the way she thinks about gun violence and gun ownership, and she feels it is too easy for guns to get into the wrong hands.

Samuels, who is Black, said gun violence in her community has made her rethink where and when to go places, like skipping Detroit’s downtown entertainment district or certain gas stations as certain times.

“You don’t know if someone is going to rob you at gunpoint or if they are going to have a shootout in the middle of the gas station,” she said. “I don’t go when it’s dark — even if it’s in the morning. And you really won’t catch me at a gas station that’s not lit up.”

Diego Saldana, 30, of Baldwin Park, California, in the Los Angeles metro area, said he found himself facing a 9mm handgun during an attempted robbery six months ago. He feels gun violence is on the rise and believes it’s likely he will be a victim of gun violence again in the next five years.

“I think it’s due to the (poor) economy — people are desperate for easy money,” said Saldana, who is Mexican. “People … are stressing about stuff and expressing it with violence. Everybody is on edge.”

Price reported from New York. AP Polling Reporter Hannah Fingerhut in Washington and AP writer Sara Burnett in Chicago contributed to this report.