Repost: Personalities and Actions pertaining to the Battle of San Jacinto (re-post)

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     As our formatting has evolved over the years, we have tried to make the presentation readily predictable and understandable.   Eclectic stylistics do little good for the original producer or the  ultimate user of the product under consideration.   The following submission is from the date indicated.   It is brushed up to be more in conformity with the present general format that we are using.

 

     Where we have amended or revised style, there will be little annotation.  Where we have had to change the material in order to adapt to new facts or where we have changed opinion, the OROG will note that the print colour will change to blue.  A explanation will be made concerning the why and wherefore of any such amendments.

 

     These, indeed, are interesting times.   With the Republic of Texas and the city of San Antonio and the County of Bexar joining hands with various foundations and private community service organisations to overhaul both the grounds and the remaining structures of the Mision del Alamo de San Antonio de Bexar, it is an excellent chance to remind oneself to always be open to a greater understanding of a Truth or a Lie or an Ignorance.

 

     Truth we shall defend, Ignorance we shall enlighten, and the Lie we shall destroy.

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Friday, 20 April 2012

(A Revisitation) San Jacinto Day was 21 April 1836. Remember the Alamo, Remember Goliad. May they all Rest in Peace.

General Vicente Filisola

The gentleman pictured above was many things.   He was a Spaniard with an Italian name.  He was a veteran of the Napoleanic Wars, and a distinguished Spanish soldier.   He came to New Spain late in the colonial period and served during the transition from Spanish to Mexican control of that area which now would include all of Mexico, Central America, western Canada, and most of what would become the western half of the United States of America.    For a brief period during the rule of Emperor Agustin de Iturbide I of the Mexican Empire 1821 - 1823, General Vicente Filisola served his Emperor as Governor of Central America.

      The good General served only briefly, however, due to the overthrow of the Empire and the establishment of the Republic of Mexico in 1824.   He did provide for an orderly transition from Mexican control to local governance and order, and withdrew his Imperial Army back into Mexico and joined the re-organised Army as a brigadier.

 

      It is said that Filisola was probably the one who inspired Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna to think of himself as...."The Napoleon of the West"....because of Lopez de Santa Anna's fascination with Napoleon Bonaparte and the legends associated with that Corsican.   Filisola was one of the few people in anyones army who had officer level dealings on a Napoleonic field of battle.

    Vicente Filisola is important to Texans because he was one of those Generals immediately under the command of the all important, self-consumed, pompous Generalissimo Presidente Lopez de Santa Anna.    Along with Filisola, and Perfecto de Cos, the Presidente's brother-in-law, and old Castrillon, and Ramirez y Sesma....all Spaniards  by birth and world view, there was also Brigadier Jose' Urrea, the Indian Fighter, a Davy Crockett figure, at once both rough-cut, and aristocratic, and oddly one of only two  Mexican general officers fighting in the Texas War of Independence who were born Mexicans.

 

    The commander-in-chief Lopez de Santa Anna (highest ranking), and the lowest ranking general officer were the only Mexican-born Mexicans in the officers' corps at general officer level.   Lopez de Santa Anna had moved three large elements from all parts of the country from January up to mid-February to do battle against a crafty bunch of scrappers in a place called "nowhere" by some and Texas by others.   Urrea moved a third of the Army along the Texas Coast leaving Matamoros near the mouth of the Rio Bravo (Grande) during the early days of January, 1936 aiming to unify with the main body of the Army around a place called San Jacinto.   Urrea also moved quickly, like an early form of blitzkrieg, although he had five major battles against Texian units numbering from 100 to 500 combatants in each case, and several significant skirmishes which tested his 2,400 effectives severely.   He is best remembered, however, as the Mexican general who left orders to deal fairly and well with the Texian Colonel Fannin and the 440 Texian prisoners, only to have his orders countermanded by the Generalissimo Presidente.   So while Urrea had moved up to near what is now Victoria, Texas near the Rio Guadalupe (historically lumped in and included  as the area known as Bahia del Espiritu Santo, and/or Refugio) a few miles from Goliad, his subordinate received orders underlining the existing orders from the High Command that all found holding arms against the government would be executed for treason.

     That sub-ordinate officer, Col. Nicolas de la Portilla, during a fighting absence by his commander, General de Brigada Urrea, over-rode the orders of Urrea and followed the orders of the Supreme Commander, Lopez de Santa Anna.  Here, El Gringo Viejo enters a well-documented but rather neglected fact about the the issues of personality, strategy, tactics, honour, and the business of war that the Mexicans were undergoing even as they were winning, fairly easily against the insurrectionists.  To wit:

Gen. Jose' Urrea

"I was unable, therefore, to carry out the good intentions dictated by my feelings, overcome by the difficult circumstances that surrounded me. I authorized the execution, of thirty adventurers taken prisoners, and setting free those who were colonists or Mexicans      "These orders always seemed to me harsh, but they were the inevitable result of the barbarous and inhuman decree which declared outlaws those whom it wished to convert into citizens of the republic,  I wished to elude these orders as far as possible without compromising my personal responsibility.       "They doubtlessly surrendered confident that Mexican generosity would not make their surrender useless, for under any other circumstances they would have sold their lives dearly, fighting to the last. I had due regard for the motives that induced them to surrender, and for this reason I used my influence with the general-in-chief to save them, if possible, from being butchered." Diary of the Military Operations of the Division which under the Command of General José Urrea Campaigned in Texas February to March 1836 Translation from Carlos Casteñeda's The Mexican Side of the Texan Revolution (Some headings added by current editor, WLM) For Biographies, Search Handbook of Texas Online Extract from the Diary of Col. Nicolás de la Portilla   In a Letter Portilla to Urrea....."I feel much distressed at what has occurred here; a scene enacted in cold blood having passed before my eyes which has filled me with horror. All I can say is, that my duty as a soldier, and what I owe to my country, must be my guaranty...." March 26. At seven in the evening I received orders from General Santa Anna by special messenger, instructing me to execute at once all prisoners taken by force of arms agreeable to the general orders on the subject. (I have the original order in my possession.) I kept the matter secret and no one knew of it except Col. Garay, to whom I communicated the order. At eight o'clock, on the same night, I received a communication from Gen. Urrea by special messenger in which among other things he says, "Treat the prisoners well, especially Fannin. Keep them busy rebuilding the town and erecting a fort. Feed them with the cattle you will receive from Refugio." What a cruel contrast in these opposite instructions! I spent a restless night. sdct March 27. At daybreak, I decided to carry out the orders of the general-in-chief because I considered them superior. I assembled the whole garrison and ordered the prisoners, who were still sleeping, to be awaked. There were 445. (The eighty that had just been taken at Cópano and had, consequently, not borne arms against the government, were set aside.) The prisoners were divided into three groups and each was placed in charge of an adequate guard, the first under Agustin Alcerrica, the second under Capt. Luis Balderas, and the third under Capt. Antonio Ramírez. I gave instructions to these officers to carry out the orders of the supreme government and the general-in-chief. This was immediately done. There was a great contrast in the feelings of the officers and the men. Silence prevailed. Sad at heart I wrote to Gen. Urrea expressing my regret at having been concerned in so painful an affair. I also sent an official account of what I had done, to the general-in-chief. [Portilla to Urrea, Goliad, March 26 1836 and Portilla to Urrea, Goliad, March 27, 1836]     ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~      El Gringo Viejo and many old-timey Texans know these stories, but they are not well known any longer.   Newly arriving people with Mexican backgrounds assume they know all and newly arriving people from the United States and elsewhere have seen Davy Crockett on Disney or some variation, and are certain in their knowledge of the issues involved with the period from 1829 through 1846 and the Texas situation.  They do not know.      This is not said with any particular arrogance.   It is known that what El Gringo Viejo knows from his own research is now useless information.  Nothing matters in the course of human conduct that cannot be compressed into a six-word phrase to put on a bumper sticker.   What is past is no longer prologue, but rather simply useless white-noise on the left side of the time line. ____________________________________________               But as an enemy the man pictured below is known among the old, last remaining Texans who know what Texas really was, as an honorable enemy....a good and patriotic man involved in a grisly profession.    Something like Rommel, perhaps. Manuel Fernández Castrillón (1770?–1836) Fought Texians both at the Battle of the Alamo and at the Battle of San Jacinto.

    Castrillon was Santa Anna's ally through much of their working relationship, but Castrillón often took exception to Santa Anna's decisions during the Texas Revolution. He opposed the hurried assault on the Alamo. Yet when he received his orders to lead the battle's first column of troops, he did so with expert efficiency.

     A humane and honourable soldier, Castrillón also pleaded clemency on behalf of the seven Texian fighters who survived the Alamo siege. Castrillón's arguments for mercy were ignored, and the men were executed. Castrillón again stated his protest when Santa Anna ordered the execution of the Goliad prisoners.

     Castrillón's compassion was a sign of kindness, not weakness. When the Texians roused Mexican forces from their afternoon siesta on 21 April 1836 at the Battle of San Jacinto, he was one of the few Mexican officers to stand his ground.

      His bravery was recorded in the memoirs of Texian 2nd Lieutenant Walter Paye Lane:

 

"As we charged into them the General commanding the Tampico Battalion (their best troops) tried to rally his men, but could not. He drew himself up, faced us, and said in Spanish: 'I have been in forty battles and never showed my back; I am too old to do it now.'

He continues: "Gen. Rusk hallooed to his men: 'don't shoot him,' and knocked up some to their guns; but others ran around and riddled him with balls. I was sorry for him. He was an old Castilian gentleman, Gen. Castrillo (sic)."

Honoured on both sides of the Texas Revolution—except by Santa Anna, who blamed the loss at San Jacinto in part on Castrillón—he was even buried in the family graveyard of Lorenzo de Zavala, the vice-president of Texas.

     So, all these major footnotes are added into the blog in order to celebrate the victory tomorrow, the 21st day of April, 1836 of the Battle of San Jacinto.   Normally creditted to the efforts of Gen. Sam Houston, who truly was a bigger than life figure, the truth is that Houston was painfully wounded at the beginning of the battle, by a musket ball to the right foot.   It was Gen. Somervell, commanding, and the surprize rush of the limited cavalry of the Texian force of a bit fewer than 700 men.....attacking on a Sunday morning.   The head of the cavalry was Capt. Juan Seguin, an arch-enemy of Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna.   The resolve of the Texian force to gain Independence, avenge the atrocities of Goliad and the Alamo allowed the inferior force to pin into a peninsula surrounded by a snake infested bayou, and then essentially destroy the effective force of an Army of 2,500 with superior munitions, armament, artillery, cavalry, stores, and so forth.

 

     Going back to Gen. Vicente Filisola, it was he who took control of the Mexican Army as it withdrew from San Jacinto.   Lopez de Santa Anna remained under arrest and would later be tranferred to Washington D.C. as an oddity and war-trophy of sorts.   He had been a capable general in the field, but also the one most prone to err through arrogance and hubris.   Some say his membership in the Mason Scottish Rite order saved him from a rough and ready gallows at San Jacinto, since Houston and Somervell were both brother Masons.

     Filisola was met with his columns by Urrea, who forced control from Filisola, and took command of the withdrawal.   The two men would argue and write accusations against one another, and each would write interesting, if self-serving accounts of their experiences during the War.   It is the opinion of El Gringo Viejo that Urrea was the better soldier and perhaps the best of several capable general officers and colonels  and was truthful concerning his wishes for the good treatment of the Goliad prisoners of war.

      Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna blamed both of them for everything;  Urrea for arriving too late to San Jacinto, Filisola for not mucking through the mud with cannons and stores any faster (he actually moved 2,000 men, animals, and stores faster than Santa Anna had moved his Army away from San Antonio in pursuit of Houston's Army.)   Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna was a lot like Obama in his ability to blame everything on everybody but himself.

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Committed to the dull truth, which always seems to wind up being far more interesting than the false legends or any fiction.....El Gringo Viejo resigns the evening and promises to return to more tales that interest him, and he hopes, the OROGs everywhere.

El Gringo Viejo

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Looking Ahead to the Battle of San Jacinto - 21 April 1836

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  During the coming days we shall be making observations, some old and some new, about the pre-San Jacinto engagement,  the engagement itself, and that which followed.  In these days, one realises that the smoke never clears.   Not concerning the War Between the States....not concerning the War for Texian Independence....and not for many, many other matters of import.

 

     The winning of that particular battle did not end the book about the establishment of Texas as a truly strange, almost mythical, and different political entity upon the face of the Planet.   Texas both suffered and prospered as an independent nation, and to this day, most long-time Texians hold that we would have been and would still be better off as a friendly neighbouring independent nation to the United States and to Mexico.

William Henry Huddle's depiction of the
Surrender of Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna
shortly after the end of the Battle of San Jacinto

    We shall write about such things, and perhaps bring up some previous articles to refresh both my own thinking and for review by the OROG community.   The mix should be about 50 - 50 and does include new, continuing research and readings by El Gringo Viejo.

More Later.

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Why the Big Pundits cannot see and the Little Pundits might see more clearly....

      Krauthammer is genius by any definition.   Cousin Rush, Hannity, Levine, Laura Ingraham, Beck....and the panoply of "real live" Dana Perrino level "Reasonable to not-so Reasonable Republican and/or Conservative" commentators leave a bit to a tad to a lot to be desired.

 

     Many OROGs have never heard of A.S. Haley who is perhaps the pre-eminent authority concerning reconciliation of Anglican and secular civil law in the English-speaking world, a profoundly authoritative voice concerning matters interior to the  Anglican Communion, the Episcopal Church in America, the Anglican-influenced movement of people seeking Orthodoxy as they leave the Episcopal Church in America....along with a score of other accomplishments....intellectual and personal.  He is a double degree holder from Harvard, and is still a conservative political thinker in the modern context.   He has a degree in music and a degree in the Law.  And....he has no television in the house of the family that he heads.

     I use this poor man as a whipping post to the tie this fact.   Most have never heard of him or read his works.   Yet, he has successfully turned back (he would require that it be said that he had a very small role to play in turning back), by legal process, the attempt by the Protestant Episcopal Church of America to destroy every vestige of grand tradition, ownership of parish and/or diocese by Traditionalists and Orthodox Anglican, or any form conventional Christian vestige.
     Before he arrived with armour glinting forth in the morning's sun, we the sullen traditionalists simply limped into the shadows, attending funerals, mainly.   But A.S. Haley, along with his mates, have almost finished the drilling of a wooden stake into the place where the heart would have been had the movement to destroy Anglicism had such an organ.
      Even the "Conservative" Prime Minister of the United Kingdom addressed the Empire very recently, with the recognition that "...This is a Christian Kingdom".


    I move on to a "retired sergeant" of the United States Air Force with various medals (I have none, and am jealous) pinned upon the breast of his service uniforms.   He cometh forth from a family of privilege and trial....all of whom were/are people of advanced intelligence.   He went to war and stared it in the face.  He accomplished the "university degree" as did El Gringo Viejo to prove that the Republic of Texas had deigned that he and I were "educated and refined" persons....El Zorro and El Gringo Viejo.
   In those days, it was normal....my father....a psychologist...said many times to me,  "Do not study for your sustenance."   He admonished me to learn by working by serving, by working with my hands, and by being of use.  The degree, he said, ''...places you in the gentleman class."    He further stated that a "gentleman" without talent, willingness to work, and willingness to invest and risk his funds and talents was not truly a member of the upper elements of the food chain."   (Food chain was my Father's terms for the sociological totem-pole).

    And so here we are.  El Zorro....El Gringo Viejo...and to an extent the Vicar of the Blog "Anglican Curmudgeon" who is the chaplain of this pleasant madness.  This includes the brother Finch and the brother Munguia, whose proclivity to expletive causes us concerns for the ladies about us, but there are many.  There are many who know the following:

     Barack Hussein Obama has done everything that Sorosistas have told him to do, through the ''vocera'' Valerie Jerrett and her owners, the Annenberg Foundation, and other "progressive" foundations where trust-fund babies learned how to take their great-grandparents' profits and turn them into seduction-units for bimbos-at-the-bar. Valerie Jarrett could not win the bimbo-at-the-bar prize because she had a face that could sink a thousand ships.       So she self-converted into a Nurse Ratchet  for the progressive elements searching for a convenient Mexican-immigrant victim to help forward their cause of pointing out the oppression against those criminally involved who did not look like Margaret Thatchers' nephews. (Believe me.  This is how the Soros people think.)
     Nurse Ratchet was/is a Persian with family background in communist activities against the Shah of Iran, that granted them a quick exile from Teheran back in the 1970s.  That does not take away from her suffering at the hands of the brutality of the not-totally-socialist English who allowed her a fancy college degree, which was promptly used for going to America and latching onto the most easily controllable drip in the bucket....the perfect Manchurian Candidate.   Valerie's parents must have been  proud.

     All of this prologue leads to the point:   Those of us who are not in the major leagues as commentators, analysts, and pundits perhaps see more clearly.   Obama, for instance, does not do things that seem stupid simply because he is stupid.  He does them because, like a child-abused toddler, he has been trained to do what the people who give him any comfort he might have, tell him to do.   He does not know or understand much beyond the fact that he generally hates white people and America.  Valerie sees at least into the mid-point of the field of battle...shrouded as it is in cannonade fogs.   Hillary and Michelle simply sit in front of the Magic Window of Water Buffaloes and wait to be called to the Burlesque Stage that presents nightly shows that offer water buffaloes ballerinas  who are not even good enough for soup bones.
   Obama has done or has been ordered to do every stupid looking thing that has been done, intentionally.    The losses in the Middle East, the incredibly stupid "health care" programme, the Stalinist "takeover" of General Motors and Chrysler, the billion-dollar Solyndra (etc.) serial corporate/political welfare payoff, the lies about the programme of Fast and Furious, and hundreds of other really destructive to the American Culture things he has put into motion.   Amnesty Anyone?

     Obama and his controllers have done absolutely everything they intended to do....and they have done it intentionally.   There are about fifty or so other "brother contributors" to this blog alone, all of whom have more to state, and more to lose, than the "approved" pundits.  This blog contributes to about ten others.  We are the sergeants-major and colonels of this war.  We are the ones who will ultimately win it.
El Gringo Viejo

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A few notes about diverse matters

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Mexican police convoy is attacked, leaving 15 dead and 5 wounded:

     Folks can say that El Gringo Viejo wanders around with his head in the clouds, foolishly disregarding obvious overwhelming danger in a country that has obviously failed as existing national entity.   It is obvious to any observer that everyone is being killed all the time and they kill Americans all the time first.  The violence increases daily and the people are oppressed by the rich and by the free trade policies that make slaves of everybody all the time.

      We appreciate the observations made by the not-fully-informed for what they  are, and usually advise such folks to remain off-base at the Fort Hood area so long as Obama remains lord regent.  Work-place violence and all that, don't you know.

     The fact is, however, that the events around Soyutla and Mascota, Jalisco not too far from Puerto Vallarta was a jolt, although not terribly surprising, except for the number of casualties.   The police group was, or allowed themselves to be, taken by surprise.   Shame on them.  Their loss is lamented in any regard for they were better men than those who assailed against them.

     Because of bad reporting by the Mexican press, and worse by the international press, it was first thought that all the casualties had been among the relatively new Federal Civil Police.   But, no.  It was a mixed bag, so to speak, of good guys and  bad.  And, it was not one incident but a grouping over three calendar days.   The offenders are part of a group of what is called "New Generation" and their particular targets during that first week of this April, 2015 were higher-trained elements of the relatively new Rural Militia units.

     The good news is that several of the "New Generation" people were dispatched to the underworld.  In the past few days prisoners were taken by the regular Mexican Army and Jalisco State Attorney General's Police.  It's a start.

     A final tie-in about this?   Just a bit ago the OROGs will remember about the "students" who were carried off and who never returned.   There were approximately 43 of them, and they are now presumed dead, having been victims of a mass execution resulting from a dispute among extreme left-wing clusters of interest around Iguala, Guerrero.   Said community lies not too far to the south of Mascota, Jalisco.   Interestingly, the perpetrators of that "disappearance" were associated with the "Nueva Generacion", that was serving as the palace guard for the pro-communist mayor of Iguala and his wife who was in the process of declaring her candidacy for the governorship of the State of Guerrero.  (Acapulco is on the coast of Guerrero).

     We hope that the OROG is sufficiently informed about this matter so as to be able to scoff at the "pilgrimage" being made by a delegation of Mexican leftists, and "parents" of the "missing students" who in their incredibly mendacious and convoluted manner blame the Mexican central government, America, and free enterprise/capitalism for the "kidnapping" of their "students". 

      They are sponsored in large part by Roman Catholic lackeys and pseudo-nuns and tertiaries who are actually liberation theology activists.   They survive by fomenting perpetual contention, threatening, extortion,  and outright violence by civil insurrection.

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THE PRICE OF ADVANCING:

     A brief report, braced upon our driving around in Mexico, is that the general advance in the quality of the highways continues, as it normally has, during the past 60 years.  Sometimes the advance is slow, steady, spotty, and under-done.  Sometimes the advance is quick, stunning, brilliant, auto-bahn level.

     Maintenance has been better as the years have gone by as well.  But due to the massive rains over the past 120 days in our area of concern, some of the well-built highways have begun to show the stress of a 200% increase in heavy tractor-trailer activity as well as regular civilian auto and bus traffic.

     There is still quick response (for government work) in addressing problem areas before the damage really begins, and that is a refreshing re-assurance.

     As a side-note, as we drove up here last Tuesday, there were three medium-sized American motorcycle groups (10 - 15 cycles) that I encountered going south, while I was going north.   The OROG will remember that, coincidentally, there were three RV and motorhome "convoys" heading for places to the south. 

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JORGE RAMOS and HARRY REID:
     This is not for the OROG so much as it is a note to Jorge Ramos, lead reporter for UNIVISION News.  I say, Jorge, it was well that you demonstrated that Harry Reid is as worthless piece of lying human debris as could be created by the hand of Lucifer.
     It would have been appreciated if you had exposed that out-and-out lie foisted upon your interview-cum-campaign-rally interview during the past presidential campaign.  Your failure to call down Barry Soetoro for declaring that he had "closed down the previous administration's Fast and Furious Programme" as soon as he learned of it was a stunning dereliction of duty even for a marxist reporter such as yourself.
    We appreciate your efforts with Reid, although the damage you helped cause about Fast and Furious will forever mark the low point in an already bad journalistic landscape.

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We retire for a bit, probably later this afternoon.
El Gringo Viejo

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Six Iraqi Cops said it all....Two Marines gave their all....and Obama flushed it all

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The Last Six Seconds

One can hardly conceive of the enormous grief held quietly within General Kelly as he spoke.

  

On Nov 13, 2010, Lt. General John Kelly, USMC, gave a speech to the Semper Fi Society of St. Louis, MO. This was four days after his son, Lt Robert Kelly, USMC, was killed by an IED while on his 3rd Combat tour. During his speech, General Kelly spoke about the dedication and valour of our young men and women who step forward each and every day to protect us.

  

During the speech, he never mentioned the loss of his own son. He closed the speech with the moving account of the last six seconds in the lives of two young Marines who died with rifles blazing to protect their brother Marines.

  

"I will leave you with a story about the kind of people they are, about the quality of the steel in their backs, about the kind of dedication they bring to our country while they serve in uniform and forever after as veterans. Two years ago when I was the Commander of all U.S. and Iraqi forces, in fact, the 22 ND of April 2008, two Marine infantry battalions, 1/9 "The  Walking Dead," and 2/8 were switching out in Ramadi. One battalion in the closing days of their deployment going home very soon, the other just starting its seven-month combat tour. Two Marines, Corporal Jonathan Yale and Lance Corporal Jordan Haerter, 22 and 20 years old respectively, one from each battalion, were assuming the watch together at the entrance gate of an outpost that contained a makeshift barracks housing 50 Marines. The same broken down ramshackle building was also home to 100 Iraqi police, also my men and our allies in the fight against the terrorists in Ramadi, a city until recently the most dangerous city on earth and owned by Al Qaeda.

Yale was a dirt poor mixed-race kid from Virginia with a wife and daughter, and a mother and sister who lived with him and whom he supported as well. He did this on a yearly salary of less than $23,000.  Haerter, on the other hand, was a middle class white kid from Long Island. They were from two completely different worlds. Had they not joined the Marines they would never have met each other, or understood that multiple America's exist simultaneously depending on one's race, education level, economic status, and where you might have been born. But they were Marines, combat Marines, forged in the same crucible of Marine training, and because of this bond they were brothers as close, or closer, than if they were born of the same woman.

The mission orders they received from the sergeant squad leader I am sure went something like, "Okay you two clowns, stand this post and let no unauthorized personnel or vehicles pass. You clear?"

I am also sure Yale and Haerter then rolled their eyes and said in unison something like, "Yes Sergeant," with just enough attitude that made the point without saying the words, "No kidding ‘sweetheart’, we know what we're doing." They then relieved two other Marines on watch and took up their post at the entry control point of Joint Security Station Nasser, in the Sophia section of Ramadi, Al Anbar, Iraq.

  

A few minutes later a large blue truck turned down the alley way - perhaps 60-70 yards in length, and sped its way through the serpentine of concrete jersey walls. The truck stopped just short of where the two were posted and detonated, killing them both catastrophically. Twenty-four brick masonry houses were damaged or destroyed. A mosque 100 yards away collapsed. The truck's engine came to rest two hundred yards away knocking most of a house down before it stopped. Our explosive experts reckoned the blast was made of 2,000 pounds of explosives.  Two died, and because these two young infantrymen didn't have it in their DNA to run from danger, they saved 150 of their Iraqi and American brothers-in-arms.

  

When I read the situation report about the incident a few hours after it happened I called the regimental commander for details as something about this struck me as different.

  

Marines dying or being seriously wounded is commonplace in combat. We expect Marines regardless of rank or MOS to stand their ground and do their duty, and even die in the process, if that is what the mission takes. But this just seemed different. The regimental commander had just returned from the site and he agreed, but reported that there were no American witnesses to the event - just Iraqi police. I figured if there was any chance of finding out what actually happened and then to decorate the two Marines to acknowledge their bravery, I'd have to do it as a combat award that requires two eye-witnesses and we figured the bureaucrats back in Washington would never buy Iraqi statements. If it had any chance at all, it had to come under the signature of a general officer.

  

I travelled to Ramadi the next day and spoke individually to a half-dozen Iraqi police all of whom told the same story.  The blue truck turned down into the alley and immediately sped up as it made its way through the serpentine. They all said, "We knew immediately what was going on as soon as the two Marines began firing." The Iraqi police then related that some of them also fired, and then to a man,  ran for safety just prior to the explosion. All survived.  Many were injured, some seriously. One of the Iraqis elaborated and with tears welling up said, "They'd run like any normal man would to save his life." "What he didn't know until then," he said, "And what he learned that very instant, was that Marines are not normal."

  

Choking past the emotion he said, "Sir, in the name of God no sane man would have stood there and done what they did." "No sane man." "They saved us all."

  

What we didn't know at the time, and only learned a couple of days later after I wrote a summary and submitted both Yale and Haerter for posthumous Navy Crosses, was that one of our security cameras, damaged initially in the blast, recorded some of the suicide attack. It happened exactly as the Iraqis had described it. It took exactly six seconds from when the truck entered the alley until it detonated.

  

You can watch the last six seconds of their young lives. Putting myself in their heads I supposed it took about a second for the two Marines to separately come to the same conclusion about what was going on once the truck came into their view at the far end of the alley. Exactly no time to talk it over, or call the sergeant to ask what they should do. Only enough time to take half an instant and think about what the sergeant told them to do only a few minutes before, "Let no unauthorized personnel or vehicles pass." The two Marines had about five seconds left to live.

  

It took maybe another two seconds for them to present their weapons, take aim, and open up. By this time the truck was half-way through the barriers and gaining speed the whole time.  Here, the recording shows a number of Iraqi police, some of whom had fired their AKs, now scattering like the normal and rational men they were - some running right past the Marines. They had three seconds left to live.

  

For about two seconds more, the recording shows the Marines' weapons firing non-stop the truck's windshield exploding into shards of glass as their rounds take it apart and tore in to the body of the (I deleted) who is trying to get past them to kill their brothers - American and Iraqi-bedded down in the barracks totally unaware of the fact that their lives at that moment depended entirely on two Marines standing their ground.

  

If they had been aware, they would have known they were safe because two Marines stood between them and a crazed suicide bomber. The recording shows the truck careening to a stop immediately in front of the two  Marines. In all of the instantaneous violence Yale and Haerter never hesitated. By all reports and by the recording, they never stepped back. They never even started to step aside. They never even shifted their weight. With their feet spread shoulder width apart, they leaned into the danger, firing as fast as they could work their weapons. They had only one second left to live.

  

The truck explodes. The camera goes blank. Two young men go to their God. Six seconds. Not enough time to think about their families, their country, their flag, or about their lives or their deaths, but more than enough time for two very brave young men to do their duty into eternity. That is the kind of people who are on watch all over the world tonight - for you.

  

We Marines believe that God gave America the greatest gift he could bestow to man while he lived on this earth - freedom. We also believe he gave us another gift nearly as precious - our soldiers, sailors, airmen, U S Customs and Border Patrol, Coast Guardsmen, and Marines - to safeguard that gift and guarantee no force on this earth can ever steal it away.

  

It has been my distinct honor to have been with you here today. Rest assured our America, this experiment in democracy started over two centuries ago, will forever remain the "land of the free and home of the  brave" so long as we never run out of tough young Americans who are willing to look beyond their own self-interest and comfortable lives, and go into the darkest and most dangerous places on earth to hunt down, and kill, those who would do us harm.

  

God Bless America, and SEMPER FIDELIS !" 

Tribute paid to victims of Father Obamaham and (Sir Edmund) Hillary's Indifference

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  This is being passed around, probably fairly widely by now, but it bears repeating and remembering as the days pass by.  It was sent by a doctor friend of the family, who was/is a client from the recent past, a humourist, a patriot, and a really decent fellow.   The message goes like this:

"A bump in the road" ....(?)                      

President referred to the Benghazi incident as "a bump in the road."   An ex-Navy Seal being interviewed on Fox News regarding a book he has written about how to handle crisis situations in our lives.  At the end of the interview he asked if he could make a comment on Benghazi , and of course the anchor said "yes."  He then thanked Fox News for keeping the Benghazi story in the news, since other news organizations are not.  He said the Seals who died deserve the public knowing the truth about the whole affair.   

>                      (The poem was written by an anonymous Marine Corps officer)
                
                 
> THE BATTLING BOYS OF
> BENGHAZI 

________________________
>                   
We're the battling boys of Benghazi ,

                 

No fame, no glory, no paparazzi.
Just a fiery death in a blazing hell,
Defending our country we loved so well.
>                  
It wasn't our job, but we answered the call,
fought to the Consulate and scaled the wall.

>  

We pulled twenty countrymen from the jaws of fate

Led them to safety and stood at the gate.
> 
Just the two of us and foes by the score,
But we stood fast to bar the door.
> 
Three calls for reinforcement, but all were denied, 
So we fought and we fought and we fought 'til we died.
> 
We gave our all for our Uncle Sam,
But Barack and Hillary did not give a damn. 
>                 
Just two dead Seals who carried the load
No thanks to us...we were just "Bumps In The Road".

_____________________

>  

So, will this reach every American with a computer?  Or do we act like the press and give a pass to the incompetent people who literally sat there in the White House and watched the Seals' execution on live streaming video and did absolutely nothing?

>
The Obama Administration obviously won't be held accountable because they apparently accept Hilary Clinton's assessment, "What difference, at this point,  does it make?

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     El Gringo Viejo does point out that (Sir Edmund) Hillary did have the goodness to tell a grief-deranged mother (while standing in front of  her son's flag-draped casket) the "good news" about how the Marxist Ghouls of the White House were going to "catch that person who made that horrible video about Mohammed."   It was shortly after American taxpayers paid for a lengthy radiocast in Pakistan narrated by both Father Obamaham and (Sir Edmund) Hillary....to the effect that the United States Government had nothing to do with "...that horrid video".  United States Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice announced shortly afterwards that the "Great Victory of the Battle of Benghazi" could only have been won by Obama and (Sir Edmund).

     It was one of those singular moments in American History.   Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, Syria, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, The Emirates, Yemen, the Kurds, the Copts, Bahrain, along with Israel, Jordan, and Lebanon all either lost from or fleeing American influence.   It was a hell of a line in the sand.  At least we taught Putin a lesson or two.

El Gringo Viejo

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