Category: War

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Real men Soldiering War

Abdul Hamid: The Subcontinent’s Audie Murphy by Will Dabbs

Abdul Hamid was an Indian soldier who fought and died in the 1965 Indo-Pakistani War. His battlefield exploits were legendary.

Human beings are tribal, and we live in a big old world. With so many people from so many backgrounds cluttering up the place, we naturally identify more readily with folks who look and sound like we do. Some might misinterpret that as racism. That’s just life. It is simply that it takes a little insight and logic to appreciate the nuances. This deep into the Information Age, both of these commodities can be in fairly short supply.

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As a result, I most easily identify with the Audie Murphy sort of hero. Murphy was a skinny little white kid who came up in the most deplorable circumstances. He went on to become the most decorated American soldier in history. I don’t think we have explored his story here before. I’ll have to remedy that. His tale is indeed compelling.

War on the Subcontinent

As an unwashed American redneck, Indian culture seems terribly foreign to me.

By contrast, India is on the other side of the world from where I currently sit comfortably ensconced in my favorite writing chair. The Indian people don’t look or sound much like me. Their customs are foreign as is their history. However, the Indians have a rich military legacy far older than our own.

Even in relatively recent history, the Indians have been engaged in some extraordinary examples of sweeping armed conflict, none of which are taught in the sorts of American schools I attended. When you have war, you will find warriors. Do that long enough and you will inevitably produce heroes.

Unfettered Terror

Take it from me, being downrange from one of these bad boys once it gets tooled up is pretty unsettling.

It is the threat of violent gory death that is humankind’s greatest motivator. Nobody wants to lose their homes, their families, or their wealth. However, what you really, really don’t want is to get ripped to pieces by sleeting clouds of red-hot steel. As a result, we curiously violent humans have invested literally incalculable time, treasure, and talent in contriving machines designed solely to do just that. On the modern battlefield, one of the most compelling is the tank.

I have myself been shot at by a tank before. Make no mistake, I’m no hero nor am I even a combat veteran. I was out of the military and in med school prior to 911. This whole sordid mess stemmed from a most unfortunate misunderstanding. I was someplace I wasn’t supposed to be, and my tanker buddies were blissfully unaware of my presence. In a nutshell, I cowered between the tracks of a derelict bulldozer alongside a friend while a platoon of M1 Abrams tanks shot the old earthmover up with their .50 calibers and coax guns. To paraphrase Winston Churchill, that made for a most exhilarating experience.

Trust me when I tell you, that is a freaking horrifying place to be. When you have 130,000 pounds’ worth of pure unfiltered pain unlimbered in your direction it can be tough to think straight. However, certain remarkable personalities can not only operate in that space, they can thrive. An extraordinary Indian soldier named Abdul Hamid was one of them.

The Guy: Abdul Hamid

Abdul Hamid was an Indian war hero.

Company Quartermaster Abdul Hamid Idrisi was born in the summer of 1933 in a village in the Ghazipur District of Uttar Pradesh in India to Sakina Begum and Mohammad Usman. His dad was a tailor. As a boy, Hamid worked in his father’s clothing business running a sewing machine. Hamid enlisted in the Indian Army’s Grenadiers Regiment in 1954 at the age of 21.

India has been fighting the Chinese and the Pakistanis off and on for decades. Sometimes these conflicts are piddly smoldering things that orbit around minor border disputes. Others are roiling combined arms fights spread out across sweeping battlefields. Abdul Hamid saw a great deal of that.

Hamid first saw the elephant in 1962 during the Sino-Indian War. He participated in the Battle of Namka Chu against the Chinese People’s Liberation Army. During this bloody fight, Hamid’s battalion was surrounded and cut off from support. In desperation, they broke out on foot through Butan and then onto Misamari. Three years later in 1965, Hamid was a seasoned combat veteran.

The Place

This looks like a ghastly place to fight.

I don’t begin to understand the geopolitics of the Indo-Pakistani War of 1965. At that time my people were busy getting ramped up in Southeast Asia. In a nutshell, Wikipedia claims that the Pakistanis were infiltrating the provinces of Jammu and Kashmir to foment a rebellion against Indian rule. The acrimony in this place went way back.

When the British finally called it a day, took their toys, and went home in 1947, they left a mighty vacuum. Nature hates such stuff, so the locals were scrapping in short order. The United Nations mediated a ceasefire in 1949 and established a de facto border, but nobody was happy with it. Despite countless cross-border smackdowns and several proper wars, the place remains a festering wound even today. Back in 1965, things were poised to get seriously kinetic.

The Pakistanis kicked off this party with 30,000 trained guerilla fighters they intended to infiltrate into the area. The Indian Army got wind of this, broke up the insurgent formations, and knocked the dog snot out of their staging bases. In response, the Pakistanis launched a massive conventional military offensive. The Indians naturally responded in kind. Tanks, tactical air, and artillery all did what they did.

Things Get Real For Abdul Hamid

Abdul Hamid used his jeep-mounted recoilless rifle to great effect against Pakistani armor.

Hamid’s Grenadiers arrived onsite around midnight on the evening of 7 September 1965 and began to dig in. The following morning they heard the telltale rumble of approaching Pakistani tanks. As I mentioned earlier, being a dismounted earth pig at the bottom of some shallow hole faced with a coordinated armored assault is a mighty lonely place. Any normal bloke would want to be almost any place but there. Amidst this terribly toxic milieu, Hamid found himself hunkered down behind a 105mm recoilless rifle mounted on a Jonga jeep.

The vanguard of the Pakistani armored assault reached Hamid’s position at 0730 hours. Hamid waited until the lead tank got within thirty feet and pithed it with his recoilless gun. The tank brewed up, and the crews in the following pair of tracks abandoned their vehicles and fled. However, in the aftermath, the Pakistanis pummeled the Indian positions with artillery.

Deftly wielded, the American M48 Patton was a formidable main battle tank in its day.

Early in the afternoon, the Pakistanis tried again. Hamid and his crew killed a second Pakistani tank and caused the supporting crews to beat their feet once more. An Indian engineering company then showed up and defiled the place with a wide variety of anti-tank and anti-personnel mines.

The following morning, Hamid’s position was ruthlessly strafed by Pakistani Sabre jets resulting in extensive casualties. Immediately afterward, the Pakistanis followed up with a series of coordinated assaults. By the end of the second day, Hamid had accounted for a further four Pakistani tanks. Keep in mind, this guy isn’t taking out these tanks from eight klicks distant in an air-conditioned attack helicopter. He’s killing these US-supplied Pakistani M48 Patton tanks with the tactical equivalent of a big honking bazooka.

The Armor Situation

The Centurion was Britain’s most effective WW2-vintage tank. It was widely exported and saw action for decades afterward.

The M48 Pattons used by the Pakistanis represented the state of the art at the time. Opposing them in Indian service were WW2-vintage Shermans and British-made Centurions. The Shermans were withdrawn as they were ineffective against the later-generation Pattons. The Centurions were repositioned to a different part of the battlefield.

Modern combined arms warfare is both fluid and unimaginably lethal. Pakistani commanders explored defenses and exploited weaknesses. In this case, the only thing standing between the Pakistanis and their coveted breakthrough was Hamid’s recoilless rifle and a handful of antitank mines.

The Weapon

A recoilless rifle creates an impressive backblast signature when fired.

A recoilless rifle is a curious thing. Though it looks a bit like a rocket launcher, this is not the case. The recoilless rifle is a fascinating study in physics.

In any dynamic system, mass times velocity in one direction will always equal mass times velocity in the other direction. That’s not just a good idea. That’s the law.

Recoilless rifle ammunition uses a perforated case that allows the exhaust gases to escape out the rear of the weapon.

In the case of a recoilless rifle, the weapon is a giant gun firing fixed ammunition. It is simply that the cartridge case is perforated and full of holes, and the back of the weapon is open to the atmosphere. When the gun is fired the projectile leaves the muzzle as the exhaust gases exit through a venturi in the rear.

The resulting system can throw a lot of ordnance downrange, but it consumes vast quantities of propellant and produces a simply breathtaking backblast. The American M3E1 Multi-Role Anti-Armor Anti-Personnel Weapon System version of the venerable Swedish 84mm Carl Gustav is a modern example currently in use with US troops.

It Gets Worse

Artillery has long been the biggest killer on the battlefield. Redlegs (artillery soldiers) rightfully refer to the field artillery as the King of Battle.

The following morning, another wave of Pakistani tanks assaulted Hamid’s position. By now, Hamid’s jeep was shot to pieces but still drivable though just barely. Hamid killed a tank at a range of 180 meters and then picked off yet another soon thereafter. By now, however, the artillery fire was becoming intolerable. Hamid ordered his gun team to move the raggedy jeep to another position to get clear of some of the shellfire.

Once in their new firing position, Hamid directed his men to seek cover against the sleeting artillery. Now alone behind his gun, Hamid spotted another Pakistani tank. The enemy tank commander identified him at the same time. Hamid exchanged fire with the Patton but was blown to pieces by a high explosive main gun round.

Ruminations On Abdul Hamid

The Indians captured vast quantities of war materiel during the 1965 Indo-Pakistani War.

The Battle of Asal Uttar was a decisive Indian victory. Hamid and his crew destroyed eight Pakistani Patton tanks and damaged a ninth before their gun was knocked out. Abdul Hamid was awarded the Param Vir Chakra, India’s highest combat decoration for valor. Hamid was 32 when he was killed.

Abdul Hamid is rightfully viewed as a hero in India today.

Hamid’s sacrifice was inspirational. His selfless efforts helped spur his battalion on to resist further Pakistani attacks and played a huge part in the ultimate Indian victory. He is venerated in Indian society today.

While the names and places seem terribly foreign to us over on this side of the pond, battlefield bravery is the same the world over. Abdul Hamid, like all real heroes, did not necessarily fight for his government, his country, or even his people. Abdul Hamid fought for his buddies. In the end, he sent his comrades to safety while he remained exposed and in action engaging the threat. He ultimately gave his life to support his friends, because that’s what true heroes do.

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Real men The Green Machine This great Nation & Its People War

Dr. Dabbs – Ralph Goranson: The Real Captain Miller BY Will Dabbs

Saving Private Ryan was a simply fantastic movie.

The Movie’s Captain Miller

In 1998 Stephen Ambrose, Stephen Spielberg, and Tom Hanks debuted what is arguably the finest war movie ever made. The storyline of Saving Private Ryan was fabricated from whole cloth. While there were several actual heartrending tales of multiple brothers from the same family having been lost in combat during World War 2, the operation to task Captain Miller and his Ranger detachment to retrieve a single young paratrooper amidst the chaos of the D-Day invasion never actually happened.

This is Harrison Richard Young. He logged more than 100 film and TV credits prior to his death in 2005. I found his brief role in Saving Private Ryan to be incredibly powerful.

I’ll level with you guys, when I saw that movie for the first time in the theater I struggled to keep my composure. I had only fairly recently left the military, and I missed the brotherhood and camaraderie terribly. When the old guy at the end asked his family if he had lived a good life that just touched a visceral chord. While this particular story was indeed the product of an imaginative screenwriter, reality was all the more compelling.

Closer to Home

I knew a guy who actually did this.

Mr. Roberson was a patient of mine who was assigned to the 5th Ranger Battalion during World War 2. He hit Omaha Beach in the first wave on the morning of June 6, 1944. He actually did what was depicted in the movie. Here’s his story.

It’s one thing to see extraordinary historical events depicted in movies. It is quite another to talk to someone who was actually there.

Getting to know Mr. Roberson put a human face on the film for me. He was like so many of those great old guys—quiet, humble, and awesome. The only reason I ever found out about his military service was that I inquired about some scars on his forearm. He didn’t write a book, try to monetize his time downrange, or seek attention of any sort. He just did what it took and then came home to raise a family and be a great American.

The guys who won World War 2 and freed the world from tyranny were just cut from stouter stuff than we are today.

Likewise, the real-life inspiration for the characters in the movie was even better than what we saw on the big screen. These men, all of them young and hard, were products of the Great Depression. They left the relative comfort and security of home to travel to foreign lands and, in many cases, suffer and die so that we could enjoy the freedoms we so often take for granted today.

Background

If you haven’t yet seen Saving Private Ryan, and both of you know who you are, you need to go fix that right now.

Spoiler Alert—If you haven’t seen it already, then I’m about to ruin the plot of the movie. However, if you frequent GunsAmerica and you haven’t seen Saving Private Ryan at least twice I’ll be holding onto your man-card for safekeeping until you remedy that. Stop whatever you’re doing, surf on over to Amazon, and knock it out. It’ll take you 2 hours and 49 minutes. You’ll thank me later.

Tom Hanks’ depiction of CPT John Miller captured the essence of a competent and professional combat leader.

One of the central threads in the film orbits around Tom Hanks’ character, Captain John H. Miller. CPT Miller is universally respected by his men, even when they disagree with him. As a commander, he seems to strike the perfect balance between intimacy and aloofness, something that can be tough to do in the real world. There’s really nothing he wouldn’t do for his guys, but there is also no ambiguity regarding who is ultimately in charge. Throughout the first half of the film, there is a pool going to try to guess what CPT Miller’s profession was before the war.

Captain Miller’s mysterious backstory ends up becoming a pivotal part of the narrative.

We eventually find out that John Miller was a teacher. He is married but has no children. Just like all of them, what he really wants to do is get the war over with and go home. This revelation is one of the more poignant moments in a very poignant movie.

In the movie, CPT Miller goes out heroically for a righteous cause.

Captain Miller ultimately gives his life saving Private Ryan. He and most of his men are spent defending a critical bridge that is probably in the middle of some peaceful little French village nowadays. However, that is obviously the point. Were it not for countless Allied soldiers like Mr. Roberson who were willing to fight to the death over such stuff the death camps would still be running today.

Fact is Cooler Than Fiction

This was Ralph Goranson in his early years.
CPT Ralph Goranson exemplified the Ranger ethos.

While CPT Miller is indeed one of the most compelling characters in the film, the real guy who inspired him is all the more extraordinary. Tom Hanks’ character was based on 24-year-old CPT Ralph Goranson. Born, appropriately enough, on the 4th of July, 1919, CPT Goranson was the commander of C Company, 2d Ranger Battalion. Though my friend Mr. Roberson never mentioned him by name, he would have trained alongside CPT Goranson in the leadup to Operation Overlord.

The reality of the D-Day invasion was unimaginably gruesome.

Movie vs. Reality

In the movie, the Rangers landed on the Dog-Green section of Omaha Beach. In reality, this little piece of hell mostly fell to the grunts of the 116th Infantry Regiment, 29th Infantry Division. Charlie Company, 2d Rangers actually landed a few yards west of Dog-Green on a place called Charlie Section.

This is a British LCA. It was a bit more robust than an American Higgins boat but not by much.

C Company consisted of 68 Rangers, and they didn’t actually hit the beach in Higgins Boats. They rode to war aboard British Royal Navy LCA’s (Landing Craft, Attack). These British-designed boats sported a 4-man crew and carried 37 assault troops. Unlike their American counterparts, the LCA’s featured armored bulkheads and hulls along with a modest deck over their troop wells. Of the Royal Navy crews, CPT Goranson later said they, “Beached us on time in the best place, exactly per our instructions.”

It is easy to lose the power of the D-Day narrative by fixating on the big picture.

Overlord was the largest amphibious invasion in human history. However, for all its scope and power, the real story of D-Day resides in the smaller stuff. June 6, 1944, was Ranger Sergeant Walter Geldon’s third wedding anniversary. As they approached the beach, his buddies were singing in his honor to celebrate. An hour later SGT Geldon lay dead on the sand.

LTC James Rudder led the Rangers’ assault on Pointe du Hoc.

The commander of the 2d Ranger Battalion was LTC James Rudder. His guys called themselves “Rudder’s Rangers” as a result. A month before the invasion Rudder told Goranson, “You have the toughest goddamn job on the whole beach.” He wasn’t kidding.

CPT Goranson Goes to War

Like all good combat leaders, CPT Goranson led from the front.

CPT Goranson was naturally in the first British LCA. At around 0645 the defending Germans opened up on Goranson’s boat with artillery, mortars, and small arms. Four high explosive rounds struck the LCA as it landed, killing twelve Rangers outright. Many of the rest were wounded.

The first wave of the D-Day invasion was all chaos and death.

The second LCA was led by Ranger Platoon Leader LT Sidney Salomon. LT Salomon made it off the boat safely amidst a hail of machine gun fire, but the man behind him, SGT Oliver Reed, was riddled. Salomon dragged Reed through waist-deep surf onto the shingle only to be bowled over by a nearby mortar round.

It takes some rare stuff indeed to move forward in a place like this.

Advancing into hostile fire is arguably the most unnatural of all human endeavors. Seeing his Rangers becoming bogged down at the water’s edge, 1SG Steve Golas stood up and shouted, “Get your ass off this beach!” 1SG Golas was gunned down moments later.

These guys were such studs.

Rare Men

A BAR man named T/5 Jesse Runyan was shot through the groin and paralyzed from the waist down trying to cross the 300 yards of killing ground between the water’s edge and the first available cover. Despite his injuries, Runyan dragged himself forward, firing his BAR as he went. This young stud earned the Silver Star for his actions that horrible morning.

The majority of the Rangers fell prior to reaching the top of the ridge overlooking Omaha Beach.

Another nineteen Rangers were hit near the Vierville Draw. With only thirty or so Rangers left unhurt, Captain Goranson directed his men west to a modest cliff face. His guys moved three hundred yards further west to reach the roughly 100-foot cliff face. Using their bayonets as climbing aids, the Rangers scaled the cliff and emplaced a toggle rope.

Once atop the cliff the first few Rangers immediately assaulted the German defensive works. Those first three Rangers, LT Bill Moody, SGT Julius Belcher, and PFC Otto Stephens, were likely the first three Allied troops to reach the high ground overlooking Omaha Beach. LT Moody fell to a sniper soon thereafter, but LT Salomon recovered his wits enough to rejoin the attack.

CPT Goranson led the attack on the defensive positions overlooking his landing beach.

Chaos

What followed was a chaotic back-and-forth engagement ultimately decided by small arms and hand grenades. CPT Goranson led his men along with a handful of 29th ID grunts as they assaulted the defensive works, machinegun nests, and mortar emplacements that had exacted such a horrible toll on his Rangers. For the next several hours the Rangers fought their way through the maze of trenches and prepared emplacements that the Germans had constructed over the previous months.

CPT Ralph Goranson was the archetypal citizen soldier. When his nation was in need, this man answered the call.

By 1400 in the afternoon, CPT Goranson’s Rangers had killed 69 Germans in their defensive works and were ready to move inland. Goranson formed a combat patrol and pressed forward to Pointe-de-la-Percee. Later that afternoon they transitioned to Pointe du Hoc to link up with the surviving Rangers there.

General George Patton was unique in American military history. He’d never make it past Captain today.

According to Mr. Roberson, after pushing through the Bocage country in Normandy his unit subsequently went to work as a reconnaissance element for General Patton’s 3d Army. He met Patton twice himself and told me that the General’s voice had a peculiar high-pitched tone that seemed incongruous. He subsequently fought in both the Hurtgen Forest and the Battle of the Bulge.

One of the first things Ralph Goranson did after returning from World War 2 was get married. He and his wife Ruth remained together until her death in 2002.
This is the face of a true American hero.

Unlike CPT Miller in the movie, CPT Goranson actually survived the war. He later told some of his fellow Rangers, “Here’s one for Ripley. I found nine slugs and bullet holes in my gear and clothing. I didn’t get a scratch, yet so many around us have died.” He came home to Illinois to marry his sweetheart Ruth and enjoy a long, rich life, ultimately dying peacefully on November 14, 2012, at 93 years old. CPT Ralph Goranson was one of the finest Americans ever to salute the flag.

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AUDIE MURPHY MANS THE GUN … BY WILL DABBS, MD

 HUNGER PANGS YIELD UNEXPECTED TREASURE

After the war, Audie Murphy went on to star in 44 different movies.

 

My wife and I were driving through Greenville, Texas, and found ourselves peckish. As we poked around for a fast food joint, we came across a fairly non-descript building situated in a wide grassy space. What caught my eye was the enormous statue out front wielding a German MG42 belt-fed machinegun like he meant it.

American presidents get sprawling libraries erected in their honor. Vapid media personalities who contribute little more than chaos find themselves ensconced in palatial digs suitable for the sultans of old. CEOs who risk nothing more than their reputations are paid enough to support a small West African nation state. And then — there was Audie Murphy.

Audie Murphy was the most highly decorated American soldier who ever drew breath. He contributed more to the cause of freedom than every movie star, social media influencer, captain of industry, General, Admiral and politician combined. This was his museum.

The facility is of modest size but is beautifully executed. Half of the place is dedicated to local history, while the other half orbits around Greenville’s favorite son. If ever you are in the neighborhood you’ll regret not checking it out.

I arrived about an hour before closing and, aside from a single museum staff member, had the place to myself. My bride broke out her oils and set up outside for a quick plein air landscape. I soon lost myself in the story of a truly great American.

The Audie Murphy Museum in Greenville, Texas, is full of cool-guy
stuff like this WWI-vintage MG08 Maxim machinegun.

It is a timeless drive for young warriors to take mementos of their military service.
Audie Murphy brought this German helmet home from the war in Europe.

Origin Story

 

The seventh of 12 children born to a sharecropper family, Audie Leon Murphy was a small man with a big heart. Abandoned by his father as a child, Audie’s mother died when he was 16. Murphy dropped out of school in fifth grade to pick cotton and keep his family from starving. Along the way he ran a rifle to help keep meat on the table.

Incensed by the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Audie tried to enlist only to be rejected by the Army, Navy and Marines. The boy’s older sister falsified his birthdate so he could try again. On his enlistment physical, Murphy stood 5’5″ tall and weighed 112 lbs.

During infantry training, Audie passed out in the heat and his commander tried to have him reclassified as a cook. Private Murphy was having none of it. Through sheer force of will the young man survived his training and found himself deployed to North Africa for Operation Torch.

Audie Murphy was ultimately recognized as the most highly decorated American soldier in history.

This big guy with a big gun is what caught Doc Dabb’s eye as
he was passing through Greenville, Texas, enroute to Dallas.

War Ages A Man

 

Murphy helped take Sicily as part of Patton’s Seventh Army. It was here Audie Murphy took his first life. He later observed, “I have seen war as it actually is, and I do not like it. But I will go on fighting.”

Once on the Italian mainland, Murphy’s unit was moving along the Volturno River. Murphy along with two comrades unexpectedly came under fire from a German machinegun. One of his buddies died on the spot. Enraged, Murphy charged the enemy machinegun nest armed with a Thompson submachine gun and killed all five Germans manning the gun.

By September of 1944, Murphy was one of only three survivors of his original Infantry company not killed or removed due to wounds. Along the way, Murphy was shot in the hip and caught a piece of shrapnel in his heel. He was also wracked with malaria throughout.

By late January 1945, Murphy had been awarded a battlefield commission. While recovering from fresh wounds to both legs, his decimated unit was attacked by half a dozen German panzers and hundreds of dismounted troops. The young officer sent his soldiers to safety and advanced alone to a burning American tank destroyer.

Lt. Murphy mounted the flaming vehicle and fired his carbine until he ran out of ammunition. He then got behind the 50-caliber machinegun. Between running the Big Fifty and adjusting artillery, he singlehandedly kept the enemy tanks and infantry at bay for more than an hour. When finally he left the field, he did so at a slow walk. He later claimed he was so exhausted he didn’t care if they killed him or not. For this action, Lt. Murphy earned the Medal of Honor. He was 19 years old.

Audie Murphy received every award for valor the U.S. Army offered along with decorations from both France and Belgium. After he came home, Murphy slept with a loaded handgun under his pillow. Like so many of those old heroes, he struggled to leave the horrors of war behind. However, his fame did translate into a 21-year career as an actor, poet and a song writer. Toward the end, he fell upon hard times but steadfastly refused to appear in cigarette or alcohol commercials so as not to set a poor example for young people.

In May of 1971, Murphy was a passenger in a twin-engine Aero Commander 680 when it slammed into the side of a mountain Near Roanoke, Va., in foul weather. He was 46 at the time of his death. Murphy’s grave is the second-most visited at Arlington National Cemetery after JFK.

Where most Medal of Honor gravestones are embellished with gold leaf, Murphy insisted his be left unadorned like that of a common soldier. It still lists his birth year as 1924 in keeping with the prevarication originally attested to by his sister. What a stud.

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The US Navy’s One Man Army – Lt. Hugh Miller

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Mike Sadler: The Man Who Saved The SAS | The Rogue Heroes

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War

Daniel Morgan’s Guerrilla Fighters vs British Redcoats: The Battle of Cowpens

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The German MG08 & MG08/15: Revolutionary Soldiers of the Trenches

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The Baralong Incident: Decidedly Ungentlemanly Warfare by Will Dabbs MD

We drape our wars in a thin layer of respectability, but we are still just bloodthirsty animals at heart.

Estimated reading time: 11 minutes

War is the most uncivilized of human pursuits. If you think about it, it is mind-boggling we’re still doing it. One nation-state gets cross with another, and the next thing you know we are slaughtering each other’s young folks wholesale. It seems there’s not such a grand gulf between us and the beasts of the fields after all.

Table of contents

We couch the practice underneath a veneer of respectability. Our finest strategists earn advanced degrees in the prosecution of modern war, and our military-industrial complex drives technical innovation on an unrivaled scale. And yet at its heart, the true mission of the military is to simply rip the very life out of other human beings who would, in general, really sooner not be there.

Martial Philosophy

Don’t expect these maniacs to show a great deal of restraint.

If I’m coming across as a pacifist, I’m not. The world is a dangerous place, and our adversaries are frankly insane. Whether it is ISIS, Hamas, Boko Haram, al Qaeda, or the Russians you happen to see over your rifle sights, you’d best be metaphorically ready to pull that trigger. Rest assured were the roles reversed those guys would not be particularly morally encumbered.

It is, however, essentially impossible to excise emotion from that equation. No matter how civilized we claim to be, the very act of war is an innately barbaric unrestrained thing. It is for this reason I am philosophically opposed to embedded reporters in war zones.

War is ugly, horrifying, and bad. Our young studs have enough on their minds without having to fret about their actions being broadcast into living rooms across America. If it is important enough to go to war I think we should just get out of the way and let our warriors take care of business. Turns out I’m not the first guy to feel that way.

Setting the Stage For Baralong

World War 1 was a transformational event in human history. This vast conflict was the planet’s rude introduction to combat on a truly industrial scale. The learning curve was steep.

This is a group of Washington DC society folks who came out for a spirited afternoon watching the First Battle of Bull Run in 1861.

Previously it was a fairly straightforward thing to fractionate war into combatants and everyone else. On 21 July 1861, droves of civilians showed up with food to spectate during the First Battle of Bull Run. They arrived expecting a gay holiday, initially referring to the ominously pending event as the “Picnic Battle.”

The end result was more than 4,000 killed and wounded and an irretrievable loss of innocence for all involved. Come World War 1, all pretense of civility was gone. Technology had rendered chivalry and restraint obsolete.

The U-boat Scourge

In no place was this lamentable reality more starkly manifest than in the burgeoning art of submarine warfare. The concept of the combat submarine was brand spanking new, and the Kaiser’s Navy led the technological charge. Now a warship could approach a target submerged and strike from a position of stealthy advantage.

It also became increasingly difficult to differentiate between men of war and transport ships fat with civilians. Sometimes those transport vessels had their staterooms packed with civilians and their holds full of war materiel. The end result was the perfect recipe for tragedy.

The sinking of the Lusitania was World War 1’s Pearl Harbor moment.

That tragedy struck in May of 1915 with the sinking of the RMS Lusitania by U-20, a German U-boat. The Lusitania was a passenger liner on its 202d transit across the Atlantic carrying some 1,962 passengers and crew. U-20 centerpunched the fast liner with a single torpedo just beneath the wheelhouse.

The massive ship sank eighteen minutes later, carrying 1,199 souls to the bottom with her. That number included a great many British women and children as well as 123 Americans. Once word of this attack made the rounds, the sailors of the Royal Navy were disinclined to show much mercy to German U-boat men.

The Rules Change

Propagandists rightly weaponized the Germans’ lack of moral restraint to stir up patriotic fervor and righteous anger.

This bloodlust was fairly institutionalized. In the aftermath of the Lusitania sinking, two officers of the Admiralty’s Secret Service branch approached Lieutenant Commander Godfrey Herbert, skipper of the British Q-ship HMS Baralong, saying, “This Lusitania business is shocking. Unofficially, we are telling you…take no prisoners from U-boats.” Herbert took his new directive quite literally.

At this point in the war, the Q-ship was England’s best weapon against U-boat attacks. These heavily armed merchant vessels masqueraded as helpless transports to lure U-boats in close before exposing hidden guns and sending many a submarine to the bottom. Torpedo technology was still in its infancy, so much of a U-boat’s firepower came from its deck guns. U-boats would often approach a target ship via stealth and then surface to prosecute the attack. Q-boats were designed to feed that right back to the Kaiserliche Marine.

Personalities In the Baralong Incident

Godfrey Herbert would have made a splendid old-school corsair commander.

LCDR Herbert was not your typical Royal Navy ship’s Captain. He purportedly encouraged his men to terrorize the countryside in drunken binges while on shore leave.

In one sordid incident in Dartmouth, several of his sailors destroyed a local pub and were arrested. Herbert paid their bail personally and then returned to sea as soon as everyone was accounted for. He also inexplicably insisted on his crew calling him “Captain William McBride” to his face.

In August of 1915, a German U-boat sank the liner SS Arabic while within 20 miles of the Baralong’s patrol area. The Baralong made haste to the site but failed to recover any survivors. This left Herbert’s crew in a proper state. Meanwhile, about seventy miles away, the German U-boat U-27 had intercepted the British steamer Nicosian.

Battle is Joined

German Kapitanleutnant Bernd Wegener presided over the destruction of both his ship and his crew.

The skipper of U-27, Kapitanleutnant Bernd Wegener, led a six-man boarding party to search the Nicosian. They discovered war materiel and 250 American mules making the transit over to assist with the war effort. As a result, Wegener ordered the crew off the Nicosian and prepared to sink her with his deck guns.

HMS Baralong arrived at the site of this little nautical dustup intentionally flying an American flag. Under the false guise of neutrality, the Baralong maneuvered within 600 yards of the U-boat, claiming their mission was to rescue survivors. U-27 held fire and assumed a course parallel to the stricken Nicosian.

LCDR Herbert was an unscrupulous brigand who managed his warship beautifully. He approached the scene of the battle under a flag of truce.

Meanwhile, the Baralong adopted an identical course on the opposite side of the doomed British ship. Once the Nicosian effectively masked the Baralong, Herbert exposed his guns and prepared for surface action. As soon as she cleared the Nicosian, the Baralong opened up with everything she had.

Raw Firepower Trumps Absolutely Everything

These big fast-firing 3-inch guns were devastating against lightly-armored targets.

Baralong was equipped with three big 12-pounder guns. These quick-firing 76mm cannon could fire a blistering 15 rounds per minute. Their withering fusillade overwhelmed the wallowing U-boat in short order.

Once the engagement was decided, Herbert called for a cease-fire. However, his crew ignored the order, incensed as they were over the recent loss of civilian life to the cowardly U-boats. The Baralong got off 34 rounds for the U-boat’s one. Now thoroughly ventilated, U-27 rolled over and began to sink.

Up until this point, things were sort-of unfolding according to accepted convention, the confusion over the spurious American ensign notwithstanding. However, the Nicosian crew was goading the British sailors from their lifeboats, shouting, “If any of those bastard Huns come up, lads, hit ’em with an oar!”

A Dark Turn

Only those German sailors near the surface made it out of the U-boat before she sank.

Twelve German sailors escaped the stricken U-boat before it slipped under. These were the deck gun crews and those men on duty in the conning tower. They dove into the water and swam for the Nicosian, now occupied solely by the German boarding party.

Herbert later claimed at an inquiry that he feared the Germans would scuttle the defenseless civilian vessel. As a result, he ordered his men to gun down the U-boat survivors with small arms. They did so willingly, killing every last one of them as they floundered in the sea.

Herbert then dispatched his 12-man contingent of Royal Marines in a small boat under a Corporal Collins to the Nicosian to root out the surviving Germans. As they departed the Baralong, Herbert publicly ordered them to, “Take no prisoners.”

It Gets Worse For The Germans

The Germans had taken refuge in the freighter’s engine room. Collins and his Marines cut them down to a man. Some reports had Kapitan Wegener having hidden in a bathroom. The Royal Marines supposedly broke down the door with their rifle butts, and the German officer dove into the water. Collins then purportedly took careful aim with his revolver and shot the German U-boat skipper through the head.

The Germans used the Baralong incident for their own propaganda purposes.

In the aftermath of the massacre, the British Admiralty ordered the report suppressed. However, there had been Americans among the Nicosian’s survivors in the lifeboats, and they spoke with newspaper reporters upon their return home. The sordid details of the exchange soon circled the globe.

Not unexpectedly, the Germans had a veritable conniption, threatening a variety of unspecified reprisals. However, the two nations were already at war. This seminal event did, however, drive the German Navy to abandon the accepted Prize Rules wherein some modicum of restraint was shown toward target crews and embrace unrestricted submarine warfare. Countless more subsequently perished as a result.

Damage Control On the Baralong

The HMS Baralong was a fairly nondescript-looking tub at a glance.

To help protect the Baralong and her crew from the Germans should she ever be captured, the ship was renamed HMS Wyandra. The name Baralong was deleted from the Lloyd’s Register, and the vessel was assigned new duties in the Mediterranean. Regardless of their having committed unfettered murder, the crew of the Baralong along with her Captain were awarded a 185-pound bounty for having sunk the German U-Boat U-27.

It has been said that, in war, the victors write the history. This is undoubtedly true. LCDR Herbert and his crew certainly committed a war crime in machinegunning the helpless survivors of U-27 after crippling their vessel. However, the Germans were sinking ocean liners filled with civilians at the time. As a result, nobody really much cared.