No blog today

 

I'm trying to get all my ducks in a row, and the little buggers are busting out all over.  I'll be back as soon as I've wrangled them.

Peter

Does the Devil beat Johnny after all?

 

In one of his most recent articles on Substack, Glenn Reynolds linked to an article by Andy Weir on Facebook a few years ago, commenting on the Charlie Daniels song "The Devil Went Down To Georgia" (which I'm sure almost all my readers know - if you don't, it's on YouTube).  I thought you might enjoy Mr. Weir's thoughts too.

You know what always bothered me?

The song "The Devil Went Down to Georgia" by the Charlie Daniels Band features the Devil and a Georgia boy named Johnny having a fiddlin' contest. If Johnny wins he gets a fiddle made of gold but if the Devil wins he gets Johnny's soul.

In the song, we hear both the Devil and Johnny play. The Devil concedes that Johnny's fiddlin' was superior. 

Am I the only one who thought the Devil's solo was WAY better than Johnny's? I mean, it's not even close. 

So, as a big supporter of fanfiction, I decided to write some fan lyrics. Consider these to be appended to the end of the song:

Well the Devil headed back to Hell and grinned an evil grin
Cause he knew right from the outset that the fiddle boy would win
The Devil’s song was better, it was clear as night and day
But he gave that golden fiddle to ol’ Johnny anyway

Cause he didn’t just give that Georgia boy a fiddle made of gold
He fed young Jonny’s sin of pride, which he’ll carry ‘till he’s old
And one fine day, when Johnny dies, he’ll pay for all his sins
And only then will Johnny see that the Devil always wins

See, the Devil plays the long game, and he plays the long game well
He knows just what to do to make a fella land in hell
He’ll make you think you beat him, then he’ll watch you fall to sin
But he had to admit: that little shit was the best that’s ever been.

If you're on Facebook, click over there and read the comments following Mr. Weir's article.  They're fun, too.

Peter

One of the last Special Forces veterans of World War II has left us

 

Jack Mann was probably the last surviving member of the Long Range Desert Group in World War II.  If you haven't heard of the LRDG, they were one of the first so-called "Special Forces" units in any Allied nation during that war, and helped to establish successor units such as the Special Air Service and numerous others.

The LRDG never numbered more than 350 men, all of whom were volunteers.

The LRDG was formed specifically to carry out deep penetration, covert reconnaissance patrols and intelligence missions from behind Italian lines, although they sometimes engaged in combat operations. Because the LRDG were experts in desert navigation, they were sometimes assigned to guide other units, including the Special Air Service and secret agents across the desert. During the Desert Campaign between December 1940 and April 1943, the vehicles of the LRDG operated constantly behind the Axis lines, missing a total of only 15 days during the entire period. Possibly their most notable offensive action was during Operation Caravan, an attack on the town of Barce and its associated airfield, on the night of 13 September 1942. However, their most vital role was the 'Road Watch', during which they clandestinely monitored traffic on the main road from Tripoli to Benghazi, transmitting the intelligence to British Army Headquarters.

With the surrender of the Axis forces in Tunisia in May 1943, the LRDG changed roles and moved operations to the eastern Mediterranean, carrying out missions in the Greek islands, Italy and the Balkans. After the end of the war in Europe, the leaders of the LRDG made a request to the War Office for the unit to be transferred to the Far East to conduct operations against the Japanese Empire. The request was declined and the LRDG was disbanded in August 1945.

There's more at the link.

Jack Mann had a fascinating and varied career.  Here are some excerpts from his obituary.

Jack Mann, who has died aged 100, served with the SAS and the Special Boat Service (SBS) and was believed to be the last surviving member of the Long Range Desert Group (LRDG).

Mann volunteered to join the LRDG as a radio operator in January 1943 ... Mann was responsible for receiving and deciphering the double-coded messages that directed operations over great distances.

Using modified No 11 sets, housed in cabinets on Chevrolet and Ford trucks, he had to contend with high desert temperatures and sandstorms which degraded equipment and disrupted incoming signals. As the enemy's range-finding equipment became more sophisticated, transmissions became increasingly hazardous.

The LRDG made the desert their accomplice. Their patrols believed that they could always outwit the Axis forces on the ground. Mann, however, hated the desert. "Don't talk to me about sand," he used to say. "I've had it in my eyes, my mouth, up my nose, in my food, everywhere."

. . .

Mann subsequently moved to Nahariya, the base camp of the Special Raiding Forces, and transferred to the newly formed Special Boat Service as a radio operator – one of its original members ... Mann was seconded to the Greek Sacred Squadron, which had trained with the SAS and seen action in North Africa. The Squadron used small boats and took part in hit-and-run amphibious operations against German garrisons in the Eastern Mediterranean, the Aegean Sea and the Dodecanese islands ... Mann was involved in reconnaissance missions using kayaks and a camouflaged hide-out near Bodrum on the Turkish coast. On other raids, Royal Navy motor torpedo boats and launches took members of the squadron to Turkey, where they were transferred to fishing caiques. Their rations were sometimes supplemented by wild boar, and fish dynamited in the sea.

. . .

One night, Mann was asleep in his hide-out on the island of Chios when he and a comrade were awakened by a German "E" Boat, a fast motor torpedo boat, approaching the shore. The two men, armed with rifles but in their underwear, greeted the German crew in Greek. The crew surrendered but they tried to be friendly, claiming that they were all Anglo-Saxons. Mann retorted that he was a Jew, ordered them to cut off their swastika badges and had them placed in the local prison. There they were made to clean a local building of faeces left by the occupying German forces.

. . .

As a Jew, he had been determined to fight the Nazis, and then to help the Jewish diaspora and displaced Jews of Europe when the war ended. In November 1947, the UN passed a resolution to divide British-ruled Palestine into separate Jewish and Arab states.

Israel declared independence in May 1948. Arab armies invaded in what became known as the Arab-Israeli War and Mann joined the conflict to help establish a state of Israel. He was given the rank of major and put in charge of the Southern Front.

During a crisis in which he had to get to HQ urgently, he commandeered Moshe Dayan's jeep. Ignoring the fact that the commander of the important Jerusalem Front was sitting in it, he ordered the driver to take him straight to HQ.

. . .

He remained closely involved with the veteran associations of the Special Forces in which he had served, and at his funeral his coffin was escorted by standard-bearers from the SAS Regimental Association, the SBS Association and the Association of Jewish Ex-Servicemen and Women.

Again, more at the link.

I heard many stories of the LRDG, the original SAS in the Western Desert, and the SBS in the Dodecanese campaign and subsequent events, from my father, who served with the Royal Air Force during those same campaigns.  He met several members of all those groups on various occasions while arranging support missions, both resupply and attack operations.  He said that they almost all smelled vile (due to lack of water in the desert for personal hygiene), were extremely rude about official bureaucratic requirements, and "fought like the Devil himself at the drop of a hat, and would drop it themselves if nobody else would"!  Their consumption of beer was likewise legendary, because they could seldom get any in the field, so made up for it when in a town or city by drinking more than one bar dry every night.

Such men were the "Founding Fathers", as it were, of almost all US and European Special Forces units during and after World War II.  I daresay our own members of the SEALs, Delta Force, the Ranger units, the Green Berets, and other related outfits would be happy to raise a glass to the memory of Jack Mann and his comrades in arms.  One hopes they were reunited on the other side of the river - preferably near a well-supplied pub!

Peter

Surviving the active shooter: a situation more and more urban dwellers are facing

 

Just following news headlines will make it clear that more and more people living in cities are confronted by so-called "active shooters":  criminals and/or lunatics who start shooting for whatever reason, and often don't stop until they are neutralized.  Consider these few headlines (out of many more I could have used) from the weekend just past:

• Mass shootings rock 2 US cities, leave 3 dead, 18 injured
• Judge signs murder arrest warrant for suspect in Forest Hill homicide
• Armed man captured after shootout with Oakland police
• Tulsa Teen, 19, Shot Outside Event Center as Suspect Remains at Large

If we find ourselves in the middle of such a situation, what can we do about it?  What should we do?

Ed Monk has many years of experience in planning for such situations, and has trained not just individuals, but also police departments and major institutions, in how to handle them.  He's written a short but very informative book titled "First 30 Seconds: The Active Shooter Problem".

Part of the blurb reads:

The author served as an active-duty US Army officer for over 20 years. Throughout this career, planning to give and receive deadly violence was a common, required task. Ten days after his Army retirement, he began teaching public high school, where violence was never allowed, discussed, or planned for. He was STUNNED when school leaders told him the school’s planned response during an Active Shooter attack was to gather in groups and wait to see if the killer or cops got to you first.

This experience started his study of the Active Shooter problem. This book is about what he found.

Massad Ayoob, well-known to readers of this blog, is one of the most authoritative and experienced firearms, self-defense and law enforcement instructors in the United States.  He's released this nine-minute assessment of Ed Monk's book, and recommends it highly.

I've already bought my copy of Ed Monk's book.  I recommend that any reader living in a major urban area should do likewise, and if you live in a more peaceful area, buy one anyway - because you never know who may end up in your area.  It might be a very useful tool to initiate discussions with law enforcement, schools, libraries, etc in your part of the world.

Peter

Memes that made me laugh 326

 

Gathered from around the Internet over the past week.  Click any image for a larger view.

More next week.

Peter