Thoughts and Notes on Foreign Military Camouflage

My previous post on the subject of camouflage started with the news that the US Army has admitted that its idea about what was supposed to be the Universal Camouflage Pattern (UCP) was a flop, and is attempting to develop a replacement.  It also discussed the development of camouflage in the US military in recent times.

US soldier in MultiCam pattern

That post received a lot of attention (there are many camouflage enthusiasts out there, for a variety of reasons) and I received some questions about foreign patterns.  I can’t begin to fully cover the subject – there exists a huge number of variations around the world now, though many patterns are shared, but the variety is increasing at an accelerated pace.  I will provide some limited information and anecdotes on the subject, based entirely on my own current knowledge, because that is a voluminous subject that can be, and is, pursued in whole web logs.

In terms of general history, the idea of camouflage began to be investigated by the French in World War I, but not really applied to uniforms.  The word 'camouflage' is French, rather obviously, and is derived from a slang term for playing a practical joke.  The Italians actually were the first to field early camouflage patterns but these were first limited to shelter halves and ponchos, starting in the late 1920s.  These items became more prevalent once World War II started in earnest, and some German units picked up on these ponchos quickly, particularly after the Italian official capitulation in 1943 (though a civil struggle continued within Italy until the end of the war) and Italian material became available to German units in Italy.  The same Italian design continued in use with the Italian military up into the 1990s, with small variations depending on units.

 Italian camouflage (1930s - 1990s)

I mentioned previously that I was assigned or seconded to various foreign units over my military career, but this mostly took place in the 1970s and 1980s, when camouflage was not so extensive as it is now.  (Practically everyone then still wore some variation of an olive green, brown, tan or grey field uniform, so camouflage was still rather exotic.)  The most significant of my foriegn assignments was with the Italians, primarily the San Marco Battalion (now a regiment) – their Marines – in the mid- to late-1980s.  I often became, for obvious reasons, the liaison with American units when they were involved in bi-lateral training with the Italians (most often with my original service of the US Marines) while the US military was by then clothed in standard woodland pattern camouflage. 

Italian San Marco pattern of the 1980s

San Marco retained a version of the Italian camouflage that had a sort of slate bluish-grey in place of green, and a darker tan, and some US Marines remarked that it seemed an odd coloration to them.  But I soon found myself one cold pre-dawn morning sitting atop a high terrain elevation at Capo Teulada on the southwest coast of Sardinia, an Italian military training area that was also used for amphibious landings.  I was with a few US Marines as part of the Advance Force Operations (as the name implies, we were some of the folks who came in advance of the main attack), as we gazed down at the awesome sight of a joint US/Italian Amphibious Task Force sailing into the anchorage and conducting an assault across the beach, as the skies slowly became lucent.  I pointed out to the Americans how the Italian Marines quickly blended in quite effectively to the flora in the area, but the Americans looked like little bits of the Black Forest moving through the brush.  As I mentioned before in my previous post, the idea of a universal pattern is unfeasible (barring some new technique or system), and this recollection is one that first comes to mind, among other examples, when I think on the subject.  (The Italian military at the time was divided – well, they are Italians after all – about whether they were strictly limited to potential operations only within Italy, such as in the case of an attack across Europe by the Soviets and the Warsaw Pact, or whether they might actually be used for operations outside Italy.  In the meantime, their camouflage system worked well for their purposes.)

In the early 1990s, the Italians shifted to a variation of a woodland pattern for a period of some ten years or so, before shifting to the present Vegetato pattern, which at first glance would appear to be similar to the idea of CADPAT or MARPAT pixilation, but it is instead digitized at the borders of the color splotches, rather than pixilated, and is thus a somewhat simpler idea.  This design is becoming popular in a number of countries, such as a Chinese woodland version, and I look at it as one of the main basic variations used around the world.

Italian Vegetato

With the typical Italian flair for fashion, the San Marco and the COMSUBIN (Italian Naval Commandos, who have dressed in a traditional green which always brought to my mind British Racing Green) have opted for a different pattern for the field:

San Marco and COMSUBIN pattern 

As for the Germans and their uniforms, they were quite taken with their World War II experience of using the Italian camouflage, as well as their limited use of their own Splittertarn pattern and some designs used by the Waffen SS, such as the Platanenmuster.  (The Germans had previously experimented and introduced a lozenge-type camouflage on their aircraft toward the end of World War I.)  The Germans ended up with a variety of some ten or so small-issue experiments with camouflage toward the end of the war.

Splittertarn

Platanenmuster (summer) 

After World War II, the new, reconstituted German army reverted to a variation on its historic feld-grau field uniforms, but their fondness for camouflage was slowly revived with trials held in the 1970s to select a new pattern for the Bundeswehr, which resulted in the popular Flecktarn pattern, another category of its own of basic camouflage design.  (They weren't able to actually introduce it for wide-spread use until the 1990s.)

German Flecktarn

The idea has been copied by several countries, including Japan and China (used in a Plateau or 'Tibet-tarn' design, for example).

Chinese 'Tibet-tarn' or Plateau pattern

A slight variation on the design, and a large variation in terms of color, is the Swiss Leibermuster introduced in the 1950s.  It struck me as somewhat startling for a camouflage pattern, with its stark red splotches, but it seemed to work well with the fallen leaves of the country.  The pattern was largely replaced in the 1990s by the same design using more woodland-type colors, though some Swiss units still retain it.

 Swiss Leibermuster

The British used a variation of woodland-colored camouflage with some units in World War II, particularly their parachute and commando troops, and the design continued with those units in their field smocks into the 1970s, but the British began to introduce the Disruptive Pattern Material (DPM) in the 1960s. 

British Disruptive Pattern Material (DPM)

This incorporates basic woodland colors but the design has a more slashing effect to it, as contrasted with the US woodland splotches, and has evolved through some small variations over the years.  Desert variations appeared in the 1980s with several desert-tone colors, but this was simplified to two colors by 1990 – just in time for Operation Desert Shield – because some Arab militaries, like Iraq, had picked up on the older version.  While I saw primarily the new simplified British version during the subsequent Operation Desert Storm, there were a few of the older examples on British troops in Saudi Arabia.  The DPM pattern has been widespread, particularly in Commonwealth countries.  Like the Americans, though, the British have picked up their own very similar version of MultiCam, called in their case the Multi-Terrain Pattern, for use in Afghanistan, as I discussed in my previous post.

One cannot address the topic of famous camouflage without including the classic French contribution of the 'Lizard' pattern.  Initially developed in 1947after the reconstitution of the French army, it was issued as a standard uniform pattern for elite troops in 1953, and made famous in America (at least to my mind) after the release of the classic movie Lost Command in 1966, dealing with a history of the French Paras in Indochina and Algeria, and based on the great novels The Centurions and the lesser-known The Praetorians by Jean Lartéguy.  (Both book and film were well respected among unconventional American military thinkers in the 1960s and 1970s, and has a resurgence now.  Unfortunately, both books have been out of print for years, though perhaps there is cause for hope.)  The design is based on shadow patterns in canopy jungle, a series of horizontal slashes of green and brown on a dungy khaki background.  (Yet even the French were slow to extend its use throughout other special units.  I worked with a variety of those units in the 1970s and 1980s, and they still used olive field uniforms.)  A variation is still in use by the French, after a good recent SOFREP article on the new Polish special forces unit AGAT (a Ranger-like complement to the better-known GROM) in jungle training in French Guyana shows their instructors clad in a lizard-pattern field uniform.

Original French Lizard pattern

The pattern became more well known later with the 'Tiger Stripe' pattern of the Vietnamese special units (particularly their Marines) and their US advisors.  Other countries to pick it up include the Portuguese starting with their colonial wars in Africa, Lebanon (though I wouldn’t call any of their units particularly special), Greece, Cuba (a grey version), and some Russian units (the Russians are seen sporting a variety of different camouflage types these days).

Vietnamese-style Tiger camouflage

Another distinctive design is from Australia, independently designed when the Australians dismissed the British DPM pattern as not adaptable to the area.  Their Disruptive Pattern Combat Uniform (DPCU) includes a nod to the US camouflage in use in the Pacific Theatre during World War II.  Aussie troops that I’ve worked with nicknamed it ‘frogskins’ or ‘jellybean’.  A later desert coloration (DPDU) in use in Afghanistan has been referred to as ‘hearts and bunnies’.  Due to complaints about this desert variant, the Australians have announced that they will also be using the MultiCam version by Crye Associates (as will the Polish units).

Australian Disruptive Pattern Combat Uniform (DPCU) pattern

Australian Disruptive Pattern Desert Uniform (DPDU)

As I said, this post is just my quick take on the groupings of different approaches to camouflage in the world militaries.  Take note, though, that the industry is becoming increasingly focused on new pixilated patterns that have been first introduced by Canada in its CADPAT (copied with their assistance by the US Marines in their MARPAT), but such corporations as Hyperstealth and Crye are producing a larger number of variants, concerned with concealment not just within the visual spectrum but infra-red as well, that can be fine-tuned and spot-produced to specific areas.

*****
Update:  Congress attempts to make sense of the kaleidoscope of US combat uniforms, and MultiCam expands to other countries.
 

Texas A&M 'Maroon Wall' Thwarts Westboro ‘Church’ at LTC Roy Tisdale Funeral (Update)

First, the important information.

Lieutenant Colonel Roy L Tisdale, US Army, was shot to death by one of his soldiers during a safety briefing at Fort Bragg, North Carolina on 28 June 2012.  The shooter, who had been implicated with two others in the theft of a $1700 toolbox, also slightly wounded SPC Michael Latham before fatally turning the gun on himself.
 

Lt Col Roy L Tisdale

LTC Tisdale was a native of Alvin, Texas (south of Houston) and a member of the class of ’92 of Texas A&M University, a member of its historic Corps of Cadets (Company D-2) which gives the university its strong military background.  He was commissioned into the Infantry and had served with such units as the 2/18th Infantry, 1/30th Infantry, 1/509th Infantry, and 1/38th Cavalry, and served twice in Iraq and once in Afghanistan.  He was Commanding Officer of the new 525th Brigade Special Troops Battalion of the 525th Battlefield Surveillance Brigade, XVIII Airborne Corps, since it activated in January 2012.  His awards and decorations include the Bronze Star Medal (V), Purple Heart (possibly three), Meritorious Service Medal, Army Commendation Medal, Army Achievement Medal, Senior Parachutist Badge, Air Assault Badge, Ranger Tab, Expert Infantryman Badge, and Combat Infantryman Badge, as well as apparently a Tunisian Parachutist Badge. 

Son Lane Tisdale, surrounded by family and supporters, at the funeral of his father.  Col Tisdale's mother Linda is behind Lane, with wife Kim at his side.

He is survived by his mother Linda (her husband previously deceased in 1991), wife Kim, brother SFC Charles Tisdale, daughter Megan, and son Lane.  An ardent Texas Aggie, Lt Col Tisdale was laid to rest at the Aggie Field of Honor, a cemetery in College Station, Texas, home of Texas A&M.  Remarks at his funeral at Central Baptist Church included those by State Senator Steve Ogden (R-Bryan/College Station), Major General Rodney Anderson, Colonel Jim Dunham of the Corps of Cadets, and friend and classmate Lieutenant Colonel Steven Ruth.

The honor guard, composed of members of Tisdale's command.  Daughter Megan is to the right, with mother Linda behind.

The above is what constitutes the information contained in an obituary, at once generally typical yet personally tragic.  I did not have the privilege of meeting Col Tisdale, but his death touches me as an older brother of the cohort of thousands who served in the Aggie Corps (class of ’72, Squadron 9, in my case).  LTC Ruth asked a woman, one of many people who lined the streets as Col Tisdale’s body was brought in from Austin, if she perhaps knew him, to which she replied, “He is a son of Aggieland – there are no strangers here on this road.”  God speed, Colonel Tisdale, and may He bless your family in this time of healing.

It was distressing, then, to learn that the funeral of this ‘soldier and knightly gentleman’ had become a target of the contended and contentious ‘Westboro Baptist Church’ of Topeka, Kansas.  I have no idea, nor do I care, where ‘Westboro’ comes from, but that is the most accurate term in its title.  They call themselves a church (estimated at 40 people, though they claim 100), but it is composed almost entirely of family members of its leader and 'pastor', Fred Phelps (born 1929), who makes the term ‘fire and brimstone’ look benign.  As for his claim to be ‘Baptist’, that word is so diluted in American experience as to mean practically anything, but in this case the best version would be ‘non-denominational’, and worst (and more accurately) ‘Phelpsian’.  At any rate, standard Baptist conventions and associations, such as the Southern Baptist Convention and the World Baptist Alliance, reject and condemn them.  Phelps rages from the pulpit and any other venue against his multitudinous sins of America (particularly homosexuality, Judaism, Roman Catholicism, and the US military) and exults over the deaths of American service members, claiming that God hates them as punishment for the sins of the country.  Phelps claims to be a Calvinist, but considering the wide range of his targets, apparently the Elect include only his family.  A unaccustomedly mild quote from Shirley Phelps-Roper, one of his more stentorian daughters: “We are to supposed to blind their eyes, stop up their ears and harden their hearts so that they cannot see, hear or understand, and be converted and receive salvation.”  Hardly Calvinist, or rational for that matter.

Shirley Phelps-Roper in one of her quieter moments

Significantly, his large family is also incorporated into a law firm, eleven of his thirteen children being lawyers, dealing primarily with civil rights cases, though Phelps himself was permanently disbarred in 1977  for perjury in his vituperative and protracted attack in a lawsuit on a court clerk who did not respond to his demand for a transcript as quickly as he would have liked.  (Having lost his case, he declared upon his appeal that he had eight witnesses that would back up his accusation in court that the clerk was a "slut" -- his word, among others -- but affidavits were obtained from all eight stating that this was untrue and that Phelps had never contacted them.  In 1985, nine Federal judges filed a disciplinary complaint against him, and Phelps agreed to stop practicing law in Federal court.)  That hasn’t stopped Phelps, a lifelong Democrat, from running for a variety of state-wide offices, and his son was a delegate for Al Gore at the 1988 Democratic National Convention.  The family cum law firm cum ‘church’ is best known for travelling the country to loudly protest in outrageous fashion at funerals of service members, financed by lawsuits they then file when they claim that they are harassed by the bereaved family and friends.  It is an obscene assembly (no hyperbole intended) that exults in its narcissistic media circuses, made more so by the judgment in their favour in the Supreme Court case (where they were supported by the ACLU) of Snyder vs Phelps (2011), resulting in a ruling of 8-1.  Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the opinion, which included, “What Westboro said, in the whole context of how and where it chose to say it, is entitled to 'special protection' under the First Amendment and that protection cannot be overcome by a jury finding that the picketing was outrageous.”  Justice Samuel Alito, the lone dissenter, said that the Mr Snyder in this case only wanted to bury his son in peace, but the protestors “brutally attacked” his family in order to gain notoriety.  “Our profound national commitment to free and open debate is not a license for the vicious verbal assault that occurred in this case.”

Having now set the stage, imagine the reaction from the College Station community when this perverted ‘church’ issued a press release (reading it gives one a hideous flavour of their attitude) claiming that it would picket and demonstrate at the Tisdale funeral. There is hardly any place where the phrase “Don’t Mess With Texas” is more apt than the environs of Texas A&M, one of the more conservative and patriotic areas of the former republic and unique state.

One group that has sprung up in response to the Phelps family circus has been the Patriot Guard, a group of military veterans who are, shall we say, motorcycle enthusiasts.  They make it a point to attend funerals that are threatened by the Phelps family, to create a wide buffer, both in distance and sound, between the graveside and this insanely clownish posse.  The Guard was there in strength and provided an escort for the cortege.

The otherwise newsworthy note of the event, and typical of the Aggies, was the spontaneous move by several of them to create a ‘Maroon Wall’ (the color for A&M) to further protect the family and congregants at the service at the real Baptist church and at the graveside.  A small collection of students and former students (A&M has no ‘alumni’), such as Chris Ryan and Ryan Seliza, used social networking to put out the word:

It is proposed that we respond with True Aggie spirit.

In response to their yelling, we will be silent.  Like Silver Taps, like Bonfire Memorial.

In response to their signs of hate, we will wear maroon.

In response to their mob anger, we will form a line, arm in arm.

This is a silent vigil.  A manifestation of our solidarity. 

At last estimate, some 750 responded, linking arms in the 94^o heat and forming a human barricade, backs turned to where the Westboro circus would be (and the Patriot Guard standing nearby).  Fellow organizer Lily McAlister said:

We are standing here quietly.  We are here for the family.  We are positioned with our back to them.  Everyone has been singing, there’s no yelling back.

Texas Governor Rick Perry (class of ’72, Squadron 6) commended the human shield:

Texas A&M has a long history with our nation’s armed forces, so it’s no surprise Aggies would rally behind a fallen service member and his family.

In any event, Westboro ended up being a no-show.  A childish response from them, pertaining to news of the Maroon Wall, was “Ha! We didn’t even show up!”  John the (real) Baptist spoke of separating the wheat from the chaff (Matthew 3:12), and I must believe that God in His infinite wisdom will deal with them in their time, and perhaps pity may be mixed in His judgment.  That is for God, for I can muster little pity for them on my behalf, and I pray His forgiveness in that regard.  But in the meantime, I am comforted by the words of Matthew 7:21-23: “Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven.  Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name? . . .   And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity.” 

For the Aggies and other kindred spirits who preserve the dignity and peace that allow the family to grieve as they should, we have nothing but heart-felt thanks for a proper demonstration of what is best for times like these. 

“There are no strangers on this road.”

*****
Update: Another touching note, from after the funeral – the Stephenville Empire-Tribune, hometown of Ryan Slezia (’08), has more information about how the Maroon Wall came about, and adds:

Before the plans were finalized, the group called on Tisdale's widow to make sure their presence was welcome and learned they were "definitely wanted there."

And their presence obviously brought peace to the fallen lieutenant colonel's loved ones....

"The next day, they went back and made a [correction] to his obituary," Slezia said. "They added the 'Maroon Wall' as a survivor."

To wit:

As of the afternoon of July 5, 2012, it can be added that Lt. Col. Roy Lin Tisdale, Texas Aggie Class of ’92, is survived by the Maroon Wall, a tribute symbolic of the love, respect and honor of former students for their fellow Aggie. No better example can be found of just what it means to be part of the Texas Aggie family. The most powerful statement of all against hate was made, in complete, reverent silence.

*****
Update: As to the no-show status of the Phelps circus, it is rumored that a police patrol, perhaps members of the Texas Department of Public Safety, became concerned about a tail-light on one of the trailers or vans of the caravan while the family was having a meal enroute.  The resultant investigation and repair was a likely factor in the delay, along with the news that their scheme had been placed in check.

RIP: Count Robert de La Rochefoucauld, an Extraordinary Soldier

I heard of his story many years ago, and now I am reminded of him by his various obituaries.  Comte (Count) Robert Jean-Marie de La Rochefoucauld, aged 88, died last month at his home near Ouzouer-sur-Trézée in north central France, where he had been the mayor for some three decades in the late twentieth century.

He is to be remembered for his exploits as a member of the British Special Operations Executive (SOE) during World War II, and several extraordinary stories attach to his French aristocratic name.  

Comte Robert Jean-Marie de La Rochefoucauld (1923-2012). 

Few pictures seem to exist of him as a younger man, for good reason

Born into the famous French family, descended from the writer François de La Rochefoucauld (even bearing a slight resemblance) and with his mother the daughter of a duke, Robert was raised in the tony seventh arrondissement of Paris, in a house that stepped out to a view of the Eiffel Tower.  He was delicately treated as a member of the gilded youth of the time and educated in Switzerland and Austria, where as a youth of 15 he had the ironic distinction of encountering Adolf Hitler in 1938, during a bicycle outing of his classmates when they came across Hitler’s stopped motorcade near Berchtesgaden.  Hitler talked to all the youth and affectionately patted the cheek of La Rochefoucauld, an exhilarating experience to him, considering that Hitler was at the peak of his popularity throughout Europe as the statesman who had resurrected Germany and who was forging the ‘third way’ of the future.

La Rochefoucauld felt betrayed and enraged at the invasion and defeat of France by the Germans in the spring of 1940, and made little effort to conceal it.  His father had been made prisoner, and the family had to flee to an estate in the countryside east of Paris.  He was tipped off that a fellow countryman had denounced him to the Nazis (not at all unusual at the time, despite what popular history may portray) and by 1942, having made contact with trusted sources, he fled south, crossing the Pyrenees into Spain with two British airmen, where he was immediately interned.  He somehow convinced the Guardia Civil that he was English, and the British embassy in Madrid was able to spring him and transfer him to London.  His two airman friends convinced him to skip the Free French and work instead with the SOE, who were in need of agents whose French accents weren’t quite as “appalling” as the British operatives.  He was enthusiastic, but sought permission from Charles de Gaulle, who replied in typical Gaullist fashion, “Even allied with the Devil, it’s for La France.  Go ahead.”  He worked under Major Eric Piquet-Wicks in RF section (not in F section of Colonel Maurice Buckmaster, as has been written in some sources) and started training in the SOE pipeline of Arisaig, RAF Ringway, and Beaulieu, which included the various forms of tradecraft taught by experts, including convicted criminals sprung for that purpose.  Interestingly, this included parachute jumps from as low as 400 feet (current limits with modern parachute systems are no lower than 500 feet).  An additional interesting note: if an advanced student washed out of the course, they were transferred to Inverlair in Scotland, where they were housed quite nicely under gentle conditions of imprisonment for the purported remainder of the war, to safeguard secrets of the SOE.  (This later became the basis for the fictional late-1960s television series The Prisoner.  Inverlair was also known as Number 6 Special Workshop, for those who wish to make the connection.)

La Rochefoucauld did quite well in training, and was soon parachuted as part of a three-man team into France for his first missions, at the age of 19.  The team completed them successfully, but as he was waiting for an extract by the RAF, he was again denounced and arrested by the Gestapo.  He was quickly tried and sentenced to death, and transferred in the back of a truck to Auxerre for his execution, sitting on his coffin.  Once in the city, he seized an opportunity and leapt from the vehicle, dashing through a crowd with the German guards firing after him and in hot pursuit.  He soon rounded a corner and found himself in front of the local Wehrmacht HQ, and a German staff car, with Nazi flag attached, parked in front with a waiting driver strolling nearby.  He saw that the keys were in the ignition, so he jumped into the driver’s seat, started the car, and sped off through the town, driving past the prison where he was to be sent, and blowing through a roadblock in a hail of submachine gun fire.  He abandoned the vehicle down the road and went to ground, eventually working through the Resistance and returning to England by way of submarine.  Upon boarding, he was told that the sub was still on combat patrol, and he had to endure several more days at sea, including being depth-charged.  La Rochefoucauld later said of this naval experience that he was never so scared in his life.

He spent a scant three months enjoying life in England before being parachuted back into France in May 1944, with the mission of blowing up a huge German munitions factory near Bordeaux.  He hired on as a worker with the assistance of the maquis, and was able to smuggle explosives under his coveralls, in hollowed-out loaves of bread, and in his shoes over a period of several days.  On 20 May he linked and set the charges, climbed over a wall, and pedaled away.  The resulting explosion was catastrophic, and was heard over 20 miles away.

Several days later, while travelling on his extended exfiltration to return to England, he was again captured at a roadblock and transferred to the sixteenth-century Fort du Hâ, where the authorities weren’t buying his story of a missed romantic assignation.  Locked in his cell, he contemplated suicide with a cyanide tablet hidden in his shoe, but decided instead to go out (if that was to be) with a bang.  He faked an epileptic seizure, and when the guard entered his cell to check, he stunned him by hitting him in the head with a table leg, then he broke his neck as he had been trained: “Thank God for that pitilessly efficient training.”

He quickly changed into the German uniform and nonchalantly walked down the corridor to the German guard house.  He timed his entry so that he had time to walk through the room and pick up a pistol before the two guards began to suspect that he wasn’t one of them and react.  He shot the two guards, then walked out of the prison, through the abandoned town, and later linked up with an underground contact. 

The area was locked down by German patrols looking for him, but he slipped through dressed in the habit of a nun, provided by the sister of one of the maquis.  Stuck in the area because by then D-Day was occupying the attention of higher authorities, he joined a local band of fighters but was yet again captured.  Secured in a guardpost, he somehow managed, through sheer luck, to survive the place being shot to smithereens by his rescue party.

A telling comment from him was his observation of Bordeaux in early August 1944, after the allied landing.  Suddenly everybody was claiming to be part of the Resistance, dressed in old uniforms and some wearing holsters.  “It seemed the heroes were two a penny, now that the danger had passed.  The ostentation made me sick.”

His last action of the war was to paddle up the Gironde River at night near the Biscay coast, and beach near a German bunker.  He then walked up to the guard in the same manner as his earlier escape from the fortress.  Once he was close enough, he killed the guard and tossed a satchel charge into the bunker.  The loss of the bunker compromised the entire German line of defense, and they had to fall back to secondary positions.

Released from duty by the British after the war with the rank of Captain, he joined the French secret services and fought in French Indochina against the Viet Minh.  His methods were considered too unconventional, so he returned to France to dabble in business, taking him to Cameroon, Senegal and Venezuela.  He returned to duty in time for the Suez Crisis of 1956, training up a team and parachuting into the Sinai, but too late to see action.

La Rochefoucauld was later involved during the controversial trial in 1997 of Maurice Papon, a former member of the Vichy government in France during the war, who was involved in the deportation of some 1600 Jews from Bordeaux.  Papon testified that, in addition to being a cog in that process, he was also a member of the Resistance, supplying information and being a news courier.  La Rochefoucauld confirmed the claim of Papon, but Papon was nevertheless convicted and sentenced to ten years.  During his appeal, Papon fled the country to Switzerland, but was later found there, in possession of the item that allowed him to escape: La Rochefoucauld’s passport, given him by his unrepentant friend and former collaborator in the Resistance.  When police arrived to question him, his wife told them, “Don’t try to lock him up.  He escapes, you know.”

Count Robert de La Rochefoucauld was awarded the French Légion d’honneur (Chevalier), the Croix de Guerre, the Médaille de la Résistance, and the British Distinguished Service Order (DSO), second only to the Victoria Cross.  He wrote his memoirs in La Liberté, c’est mon plaisir.

Desperate times such as those of World War II, when fighting in a country occupied by a ruthless enemy, are unknown but to a few Americans today.  I have heard many supposedly worldly pontificators hold forth on what constitutes justifiable decisions and moral actions when in combat, but so many speak out of turn.  We are moral animals, to be sure, and as Mark Twain says, “Man is the only animal that can blush … or needs to.”  But our real understanding of the right comes not just from books or sermons, but from the examples of those who fight through the malignancy of evil times, against the odds of a powerful enemy and the people who succumb to a numbed complacency that believes nothing is worth fighting for.  Those pathetic creatures who so willingly surrender their liberty for a servile security will never really know, or care to know, the audacious lengths and risks undertaken by people such the Count, who often must fight on the terms of the enemy and beat them at their own game.  It is well to have right on our side, as a wise man has said, but it is useless unless we have might as well, together with the will to follow through to the necessary end. 

Robert de La Rochefoucauld led a full life and he is laid to his eternal rest, and we are all in debt to men such as he.

"It is better by noble boldness to run the risk of being subject to half the evils we anticipate than to remain in cowardly listlessness for fear of what might happen." --Herodotus

Perhaps a 'Boston ObamaCare Party'?

Donald Sensing at 'Sense of Events' gives a concise and cogent explanation of the particulars of the unmentioned Stamp Act of 1765 (recently mentioned en passant in the dissent to NFIB vs Sebelius, the Supreme Court ruling on ObamaCare), the tea trade within the British Empire during the early 1770s, the unfettered power of Parliament at that time to levy a tax, and how it led to the Boston Tea Party in 1773. 

He then makes a comparison between the situation of those days and now, including such observations as:

In contrast, the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) passed exclusively by the Democrats of Congress and signed into law by a Democrat president -- and upheld by a thoroughly confused Supreme Court -- reaches far beyond what those colonists, later revolutionists, found completely intolerable.  They rebelled against a certain tax imposed on existing and future transactions, while Obamacare taxes transactions that do not now exist and will not exist.

In 1773 and 1775, Americans rebelled and then revolted against imperial overreach.  But so far, we're just going to sit here these days and take it.

It seems to me that a likelihood of the Supreme Court decision is to provide an opportunity to rally the people for a more widespread idea of what it means to “fundamentally transform” America.

National conservative gatherings these last couple of years typically include passing video coverage of some folks dressed as colonial patriots, symbolizing a return to the values of the Founding Fathers.  I agree with the sentiment in that I am an originalist.

But perhaps it is time for these people to be changing costumes, from colonialists to Mohawk Indians.

Remarks of Lt Gen John Kelly, USMC on the Loss of His Son and Others in Combat

I must pass on the remarks of Lieutenant General John Kelly, USMC, Commander, US Southern Command, in his address from February 2012 to a gathering of Gold Star families, those who have lost a loved one in the service of our country, at the Marines’ Memorial Club in San Francisco.  Gen Kelly came not to just deliver a speech to those assembled, a group bonded together to seek solace and help in their grief, but he came as one of them.  He and his wife Karen had a son, First Lieutenant Robert M Kelly, USMC, who was killed in action on 9 November 2010 in the Sangin Valley, Afghanistan, while serving as a platoon commander with 3rd Battalion, 5th Marines, 1st Marine Division.

I cannot begin to understand the anguish of their bereavement – any of them – but I feel it a duty to pass along the comments of Gen Kelly, who so poignantly and steadfastly explains the meaning of so costly a sacrifice.

I never met any of your loved ones … your sons and daughters, brothers and sisters, and spouses.  I also don’t know how you came to know they were lost in the wars waged today and over the last ten years in Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, Yemen and dozens of other locations around the world.  I don’t know the details, but the stories are ultimately all the same.  Most often it started with a knock on the door, or a ring of the doorbell in the early morning hours by a casualty officer who’d been sitting outside your house waiting anxiously for hours for the first lights to come on.  He dreaded the mission he’d been assigned that day.  He was not glad to be there, but he was privileged to be there as the duty is a sacred one.  It is an honor to be called to do it.  Most often the casualty officer is a complete stranger.  Sometimes he’s your best friend.  The minute you saw him standing there framed in the doorway you knew…you knew without being told…before he uttered his first words…you knew.

After that it varies.  Some then steeled themselves to walk up stairs to wake a mother, your wife, and break her heart as yours was broken only moments before.  Some drove to a daughter’s place of work to tell her about a big brother now gone, and tear another heart in two.  When you could you started making the calls… to your other children, your siblings, to uncles and aunts, grandparents…and friends.  It’s hard to get through it but you do…somehow…you had no choice.  Every experience is different, but in the end it’s all the same.  A family is brought to its knees in a grief that is unexpectedly physical in its impact on the body, unbearable to the mind, and agonizing to the heart.  A grief that never goes away.  Not even with the passage of time.

Then begins the waiting and the heartache seems to turn minutes to hours, and hours to days.  You wait because there is little left to do as the military with precision, and reverence, brings your cherished loved one home to the country they served…to rest in the good earth of the America they loved.  Some of us went to Dover, others elected to wait at home not wanting to double the hurt.  It doesn’t matter.  In the end, it’s all the same.

Since the birth of our nation, 45 million have served in uniform.  A million have died in its defense.  All of them, but particularly the fallen, are part of a legend that, God willing, will never end – our America.  The irony is that your loved ones who we remember this weekend came out of an America that no longer seems to value commitment, self-reliance, and selfless dedication to a cause…but they did.  Rather, it seems most of our countrymen today are more interested in objects of status or what America can do for them, than serving the nation and protecting its people, and the principles for which it stands…but yours did.  Most of the fallen we remember tonight were only nine or ten years old on 9/11.  If they remembered anything about that day it might be the images of the burning towers, or the looks of concern and confusion in your eyes as you held them close that day as much to get comfort, as give it.  A decade later, and much to your surprise I bet, they astonished you when after screwing up enough courage they marched into the room one day, or at dinner one evening, and informed you they’d decided to join…to serve.  You likely, and immediately, asked yourself: “Where the hell did that come from? I never raised him to go in the service…never thought of it… never wanted him to go to war…no parent would ever want that…oh my God, what if she has to go overseas?”  It’s my bet you never looked at him or her again in exactly the same way, particularly if he followed it up with: and I want to be a soldier…or a Navy Doc…or a Marine.

Even as a private citizen worlds away from the Pentagon, Baghdad, or Kabul, you know our enemy – the one your loved ones voluntarily stepped forward to fight – is slave to an ideology based on an irrational hatred of who we are.  9/11 and the scenes of devastation in New York and Washington was evidence enough of that.  You also know through the media or perhaps from letters from Iraq or Afghanistan of his conduct on the battlefield with the murderous beheadings, suicide attacks, and complete disregard for the innocents of his own country and religion.  All of this stands as further proof of his disdain for decency and human life.  This enemy has repeatedly proven himself to be brutal and homicidal, offering no quarter and with a single focus… to kill every one of us here at home, or enslave us with a sick form of extremism that serves no God or purpose that decent men and women, regardless of the God they worship, could ever grasp.  In past wars since the birth of our Republic, the burden of stopping such evil fell on the shoulders of an entire generation.  Today the task is taken up by only 1% of America.  The 1% all of us here tonight represent, whose children fill the ranks of our Army, Navy, Air Force, Coast Guard, and Marine Corps in barely enough numbers to defend us all.  They are men and women of character who believed in this country enough to put life and limb on the line without qualification, and without thought of personal gain. 

Aside from everything else you have endured the weeks, months or years since your loss, you should be proud of their decision…of their commitment… of their actions on the battlefield.  Proud they stepped forward when so many others never even considered it.  Proud that by this one very personal decision – to serve a cause higher than themselves regardless of the outcome to them personally – they gave meaning to two questions that have, over the centuries, defined the dedication of free and righteous men and women in the fight against wickedness: “If not me, Dad, who?  If not now, Mom, when?”

If we did not have citizens willing to not only ask, but also to act on these questions, we would have lost in our struggle against the oppression of the British Empire.  Slavery might never have been eradicated from our shores, and the rights of all Americans under the law might still be just a dream.  The Nazis would have triumphed, the death camps never liberated and eliminated, and untold millions never saved from the gas chambers and furnaces.  Communism, a cancer that killed over 100 million and sucked the human spirit from billions more during its 70 year life span, would never have been thrown onto the dust bin of history.  And today, the high tide of Islamic intolerance and extremism – an empire of hate that Osama bin Laden himself proclaimed would last forever – was counted in only days after 9/11 once our country woke up and took the fight to them on their home turf.  That is the kind of men and women we remember here this weekend.  That is the kind of young person you raised… you shared a room with as a brother or sister…you married.  Be at least as proud of their having stepped forward, as you are sad at their loss.

The comforting news to our countrymen who have decided to sit it out and watch in amazement from the sidelines at what ours did every day for them in this war against extremism, is that they were as good as any who came before them in our history.  As good as what their fathers and uncles were in Vietnam, and their grandfathers were in Korea and World War II.  But, like those who came before them, they were not born killers.  They were good and decent young men and women who, every day, performed remarkable and most often unsung acts of bravery and selflessness to a cause they decided was bigger and more important than themselves.  And you know that any one of them could have done something more self-serving with their lives as the vast majority of their age group elected to do after high school and college, but no, they chose to serve knowing full well a brutal war was in their future.  They did not avoid the most basic and cherished responsibility of a citizen – the defense of country – they welcomed it.  Our kids were the best of the best of their generation, and in their unselfishness put every American ahead of themselves.  All are heroes for simply stepping forward, and our people owe a debt they can never fully pay.  Their reward for service is the legacy they left behind: selfless valor, the Country we live in, and the freedoms so many take for granted.

I said earlier when I started my comments that I’d never had the pleasure of meeting your loved ones, but I can say without hesitation that I knew every one of them very well.  I certainly was not there in the hospital when they were born.  I did not share with you the joy of their birth.  I also was not at the church when they were Baptized or years later when they received First Holy Communion, Confirmation, or were married.  I didn’t share the anxiety the day you took off their training wheels and let them leave the driveway for their first solo ride on their two wheeler.  I also wasn’t at the sports field to see them play Little League baseball or mob ball that was supposed to be soccer…or when they went on their first overnight as a Cub Scout or Brownie.  I wasn’t there for their first day of school, or their first job, or their first date or prom, or their graduation from high school or college.

I knew them all well, however, because after nearly four decades of service in uniform I’ve been privileged to know thousands and thousands exactly like them.  Privileged to have known them, and honored to have taken responsibility for them from you and continue your tremendous work.  To help them through the homesickness they felt at boot camp and their first duty stations far from home, to stand in for you and make sure they picked up their rooms, did their laundry, advised them to continue to stay away from drugs, drink in moderation and lead good lives, to go to church, and hang out with the right crowd.  I counseled them about relationships and marriage, and helped young couples through the rocks-and-shoals of every marriage’s first year.  I taught them how to balance their checkbooks, and use a credit card responsibly, and trained them so they’d be less likely to kill themselves on the motorcycle they never should have bought.  All of which built on the work you did, along with their sisters and brothers, aunts and uncles, neighborhoods, communities, churches, helping them achieve the greatness they already had in their hearts.  I loved them all.

In some respects I knew them better than you did.  I met them as grownups, never having had the opportunity of knowing them as children or adolescents.  In ten thousand conversations over the years in peacetime and war, I was touched when they talked to me about their parents, and the families they loved and missed so much.  About their favorite uncle who kicked them in the butt when they needed it, or a respected grandparent who lived with them.  The older brother that took care of them and showed them how to use a pocket knife, or kid sister they worshiped and looked out for every day on the way home from school.  About the home towns they could not wait to get back to someday.  About the girl they wanted to marry – or had already – and how they wanted a family of their own, and kids that would look up to them as they did their folks.

The biggest difference in the way I knew them?  I was with them in combat.  I have seen them literally turn the intangibles of commitment, bravery, and selfless devotion, into real and meaningful action.  In my three tours in this war as an infantry officer and commander, I never saw one hesitate, or do anything other than lean into the fire and with no apparent fear of death or injury take the fight to our merciless enemies.  Day after day, the kids we came here to remember this weekend unhesitatingly climbed into trucks or helicopters, or departed the wire on patrol, and did it as if they were born to it…were indestructible…were without fear.  They learned early as anyone who has truly experienced combat does, however, that fear is always with you.  They also knew how random combat is, and how you have absolutely no control over whether you live or die.  They also knew what can happen to you – or just as importantly to your best friend or one of your men – in an instant.  They’d seen it…it’s frightening…horrible…but still they went out.  The fear is at times an all-consuming constant but that is what courage is, isn’t it, pushing through the dread and completing the mission assigned regardless of how dangerous.  You may or may not have ever seen that in them when they were growing up, or when you said “I do” holding their hands and gazing into their eyes… but I saw it every day.  You may or may not have known him or her as one of the bravest, most courageous and committed young people our society produces…but I can attest to it.

As terrifying as combat is when it starts, when the explosions and tracers are everywhere and there is no rational reason on this earth for a man or a woman to do anything but run away in horror or find a hole to hide in and pray to God for it to stop – they didn’t.  When no one would call them coward for cowering behind a wall or shivering in panic in a bunker, slave to the most basic of all instincts – survival – none of them did.  When the calls for the Corpsman or medic were shouted from the mouths of young kids who know they will soon be with their God – when seconds seem like hours and it all becomes slow motion and fast forward at the same time – and the only sensible act is stop, get down, save yourself – they never did.  It doesn’t matter if it’s an IED, a suicide bomber, mortar attack, fighting in an upstairs room of a house, or all of it at once…they were magnificent.  And please take comfort in the fact that when they fell they were not alone.  When they went they were surrounded by the finest men and women on this earth – their buddies – who desperately tried to save their lives while holding their hands and comforted them, prayed with them, listened to all the little stories about their families and their homes…until they were gone.  They were not alone and when the spirit left them and God in his infinite wisdom took them to his bosom, their military family lovingly wrapped them in whatever passed for a shroud and sent them home.  In this, their last journey, they were never alone.  At every stop along the way, they were treated with the greatest reverence and deepest respect due a fallen hero until members of the service they proudly joined brought them to you.

Over 6,000 have died since 9/11, and we their families are sentenced to a life of dealing with their loss for the rest of our lives.  Thousands more have suffered wounds since it all started, but like anyone who loses life or limb while serving others, they are not victims, as they knew what they were about, and were doing what they wanted to do.  The “chattering class” wants to make them and us, their families, out to be victims, but they miss the point.  Those who chose to serve willingly, and the families who supported them, will have none of that.  Those with less of a sense of service to the nation will never understand it when men and women of character step forward and look danger and adversity straight in the eye, and refuse to blink or give ground even to their own deaths.  The protected can’t begin to understand the price paid so they and their families can sleep safe and free at night.  What they are missing, what they will also never understand, is the sense of commitment, joy, and honor of serving one’s country in uniform.  Every service member does, as do we their families who support them, and fear for them, and, yes, will mourn for them the rest of our lives.

In my hundreds of trips to military hospitals around the country since 2003 and the start of the war, I’ve visited with thousands of grievously wounded American kids and their families.  No matter how battered they were, no matter how many arms or legs they’d lost, their families thanked God they’d come home to them alive…but they also always very quietly asked me if it was worth it.  I never tried to answer that question – I couldn’t – it wasn’t one of my boys lying in the hospital bed.  I could never fathom the innermost thoughts of a parent who stood watch through the night at the bedside of someone they loved so much, who was so terribly wounded.  Who was I to offer an opinion?  And in my dozens of conversations with families of the fallen at Dover, or at gravesides at Arlington, or at gatherings like this, I’ve been similarly asked if it was worth the life of someone they brought into the world, raised and nurtured so lovingly, and so much looked forward to seeing grow and find wonderful husbands and wives, and give them grandchildren to spoil.  Again, I had no right to reply because as hard as I tried to understand what the immensity of their loss might be, and the depth of the sorrow in their heart, I knew it was impossible.  My sense then was it is inconceivable for anyone to understand that has not had his own heart pierced with such sadness.  I learned I was right.

I’ve asked this same question of myself a million times these last months, usually when I unexpectedly caught a glimpse of him in a picture at the house, or when a thought of an earlier time came to mind, or in a quiet and unguarded moment when his loss washes over me in emotions I still can’t control.  Since the day I had my turn standing in the door looking into the glistening eyes of a casualty officer, and the day I woke my wonderful wife and crush her heart with the news, and had to nearly pick my daughter up off the floor where she worked, I have desperately tried to convince myself that it was worth it.  I have worked hard at believing his life was worth the sacrifice on the altar of America’s freedom.  But it all came to me the day we buried him in the sacred ground that is Arlington, at Section 60, Gravesite #9480, that it doesn’t matter at all what I think.  The only thing that matters is what he thought.  That he had decided it was more important to be where he was that morning in the Sangin River Valley, Afghanistan, to be doing what he was doing with the Marines and Doc he loved so much and led so well in what was at that time the most dangerous place on earth.  In his mind – and in his heart – he had decided somewhere between the day he was born and 07:19, 9 November 2010, that it was worth it to him to risk everything – even his life – in the service of his country.  So in spite of the terrible emptiness that is in a corner of my heart, and the corners of the hearts of everyone who ever knew him, we are proud…so very proud.  Was it worth his life?  It’s not for me to say.  He answered the question for me.

It has been my distinct honor to have had the opportunity to be with you here this weekend.  In spite of our loss I am confident that our America, this experiment in democracy started just 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 like ours 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, ladies and gentlemen, may they rest in peace, may we who loved them find peace and understanding in their sacrifice, and that the America that they so loved and protected, and gave their lives for, is forever worthy of their sacrifice.  Of this I pray.

Semper Fidelis.

*****
Update:  The General expands on his comments at the American Legion convention.
 

DHS to Border Patrol: If Attacked, Run Away and Hide

Border Patrol agents have received directives in the case of an ‘active shooter’ incident, in that they are first to “run away” and, if unable, to “hide”.  Only as a last resort, while calling on local law enforcement to respond forcefully where armed Border Patrol agents are now directed not to, are they to “become aggressive” and “throw things” at the terrorists trying to shoot them. 

Not so fast . . .

At first, it would appear that the instructions, contained in a 45-minute computer tutorial and a pamphlet, would logically be given to office personnel and civilian employees but would not apply to armed agents, required to be so at all times, even off duty.  But no – in response to enquiries by Fox News, Michael Friel, spokesman for US Customs and Border Protection (CBP), stated:

CBP workforce training is designed to prepare all employees, including leaders, managers, supervisors, law enforcement personnel and non-law enforcement personnel, to understand their own roles and the roles of their fellow employees in responding to threats.  In an active shooter scenario, employees are taught to take actions that keep them alive. [emphasis mine]

An attack such as this is characterized by the training as an example of “workplace violence”, echoing the official description of the massacre of 13 dead (including a pregnant woman) and 37 wounded at Fort Hood by Nidal Hasan in November 2009.  (Hasans’s trial is finally due to begin next August, so the term ‘speedy trial’ is now defined as something less than three years.)  This tamps down the language that would be upsetting to the Professional Indignants, and lumps terrorist attacks in the same category as disgruntled postal workers.

The instruction is another case of the blithering sense of ‘cover your ass’ mentality promulgated by the present nomenklatura of the administration.  Agents such as these have received field and firearms training that includes the standard definition of the use of deadly force, meaning that one is permitted to use force that can result in serious bodily harm or death, if that person reasonably believes that an attacker poses an immediate or imminent threat to the life of that person or those around him.  It boggles the mind to consider why this principle would be so parsed.  The DHS spokesman speaks of keeping employees alive, yet this policy ignores the responsibility, even if only moral, to protect others.

Other examples which come to mind include one by Katie Pavlich, an authority on the Fast and Furious investigation and author of a bestseller on the subject, who also brings to our attention that when Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry was killed, the DHS policy that his team used was to first fire bean bags at the illegal Mexican bandits on Arizona soil.  This is the same mentality that had the US government post signs some 80-100 miles from the Mexican border in Arizona, warning US citizens to avoid the area due to “armed criminals and [drug and human] smuggling vehicles”, and to advise them to detour to “public lands north of Interstate 8”, within about 30 miles of Phoenix.  I saw similar signs in and around Big Bend National Park in Texas.  There is also the advice to call 911, but in much of this area, at least where I have been, there is no cell phone coverage.  Once this became a political issue, the signs were quickly toned down with more neutral language, but it still conveys the distinct meaning of surrendering our territory because we simply don't have the gumption to defend it.

Brandon Judd of the National Border Patrol Council, the union for the agents, sums up the new instructions:

We are now taught in an ‘Active Shooter’ course that if we encounter a shooter in a public place we are to ‘run away’ and ‘hide’.  If we are cornered by such a shooter we are to (only as a last resort) become ‘aggressive’ and ‘throw things’ at him or her.  We are then advised to ‘call law enforcement’ and wait for their arrival (presumably, while more innocent victims are slaughtered).

Mr Judd is concerned that agents will be “disciplined or fired” if they violate this policy by stopping an assault with a firearm.  Can you blame him?