Category: History

Operation Cedar Falls Begins

On 7 January 1967, ten battalions of 25th Infantry Division and 196th Infantry Brigade truck borne infantry established blocking positions along the Saigon River, and the next day six battalions of the 1st Infantry Division and 173rd Airborne Brigade air assaulted into landing zones north and east; all to establish a large cordon around the Iron Triangle and prevent the escape of the nine Viet Cong main force battalions suspected of operating from there.

The Iron Triangle was just one of the Viet Cong’s 80 plus relatively inaccessible safe havens inside South Vietnam in January 1967. It was 40 square miles of thick double canopy jungle, and few open areas inside. For over twenty years it was the center of Vietnamese resistance around Saigon: first against the Japanese, then the French, and now the Americans. Like Iwo Jima in the previous generation, the entire area was honeycombed with decades’ worth of tunnels, 30,000 miles worth, some extending four and five levels underground. The Triangle contained hospitals, communications centers, rest and recreation areas, logistics depots, way stations for communist units coming from Cambodia, a processing and training center for new VC recruits, and until recently the Central Office for South Vietnam, the VC main headquarters. The entire 6500 strong civilian population was organized to support the VC infrastructure. The South Vietnamese Army assaulted the area twice, once in 1963 and again in 1964, but after heavy fighting all they could do was blow up some tunnel entrances, and return to Saigon. In early 1966, the 173rd Airborne, 1st ID, and the Royal Australian Regiment tried again in Operation Crimp, and though they did more damage than the ARVN assaults, they did little more than dent the extensive fortifications and tunnel system.

In the spring of 1966, an American officer who was an ARVN advisor had dinner with Gen Westmoreland at his request. During the after dinner cigar, Westmoreland asked him what needed to be done about the Iron Triangle, as the advisor had been on the last two operations into the area. The young captain replied without hesitating, “Burn it down”. In August, Westmoreland attempted just that. The Air Force dropped defoliants on the area which dried the vegetation. And then two weeks later, they napalmed it. 15 of the 40 square miles of the Iron Triangle went up in flames, but it burned so large and so hot that it created a weather phenomenon known as a “cloudburst”, which eventually put the fires out. In any case, it didn’t matter – the jungle just grew back within a month when the monsoon hit later that year. The Americans hadn’t been back since.

LTG Seaman assured Westmoreland and DePuy that this time would be different. Once the Iron Triangle was occupied, and the VC defeated, the entire population would be relocated by the South Vietnamese, and two brigades of engineers would level the entire area and collapse the tunnels. Operation Cedar Falls would have five times the manpower as Operation Crimp. Also, the 2nd Brigade 1st Infantry Division and the entire 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment would serve as the hammer. The VC would not escape this overwhelming force, and they would not reoccupy the barren wasteland that would remain.

On the morning of 8 January 1967, the first M113 armored personnel carriers and M48 tanks of the 11th ACR crossed the Tinh River in the east and crashed through the jungle driving the VC forward like hunting dogs. Coming in low out of the rising sun, the 500 men of the 1st Battalion, 26th Infantry Regiment led by LTC Alexander Haig descended upon the village of Ben Suc, the administrative epicenter of the Iron Triangle, and the home of most of the population.

The surprise was complete, or so it seemed.

LTC Haig’s battalion quickly surrounded the village of Ben Suc, and less than dozen of the villagers fought back. Those who resisted were quickly overwhelmed. Loudspeakers broadcast for the villagers to assemble outside of the school and about 1000 showed up. A second wave of helicopters brought in a field kitchen and medical personnel, as well as an ARVN battalion to screen them and conduct an extensive search to the village. The Americans spread out into the surrounding jungle, or secured the entrances to the numerous tunnels they found.

The Americans were under strict orders that “Vietnamese deal with Vietnamese”. The American troops were supposed to fight the VC, and the ARVN deal with the population. Unfortunately, LTG Seaman’s desire for secrecy meant that the South Vietnamese, and even the advisors and USAID personnel weren’t told of Operation Cedar Falls until the day before it started. The VC were surprised, but the South Vietnamese were even more surprised. They were completely unprepared to secure such a large village, and screen the entire population. And then they had to transport the villagers, their possessions and livestock to a resettlement camp at the province capital at Phu Cuong down the Saigon River.

The ARVN troops found dozens of tunnel entrances and hundreds of hiding villagers. And they weren’t easy on them. Accompanying Haig’s battalion was a reporter, Jonathan Schell from the New Yorker, who chronicled everything he saw. And he saw a lot. One incident stood out. Schell walked into a hut and witnessed an ARVN soldier beating a suspected VC for information, in front of an American advisor. The bored looking advisor calmly explained to Schell that it was part of their culture, that they had “methods and practices” that Americans weren’t accustomed to, and he wasn’t here to impose American values on the South Vietnamese. (aka the wrong answer in “The COIN Culture Conundrum” i.e Pick one: A. Step in, stop the abuse, upset the supposedly “friendly natives”, and get yelled at later by the smug ones who think all cultures are equal and by stopping human rights abuses, whether it be abusing women, screwing little boys, or in this case beating prisoners, you are “interfering with their culture” or “imposing American Values”. Or B, Letting it happen thereby being more “Culturally sensitive” and then getting crushed for violating someone’s human rights. The right answer is always A, but you would be floored how many well-meaning people overlook gross violations of human rights in the name “cultural equivalence”.) Schell was rightfully appalled. His observations on the evacuation of the village, especially the beating, would be published in the New Yorker in July, and it would set the Summer of Love on fire.

By noon, the system was breaking down. 3500 villagers were gathered at the school. 106 were detained and helicoptered out for further interrogation, but the rest waited, and waited. They couldn’t return to their homes, and the South Vietnamese couldn’t get transportation coordinated to move them. Chaos began. And order was only maintained by force. The bad day turned into a worse night as the entire population, which would grow to 6000, were forced to stay by the school.

Shocked at the scene in the morning, Haig stepped in and took charge. He informed DePuy that he needed assistance, or a humanitarian disaster was going to ensue, if it hadn’t already. The furious DePuy organized an ad hoc truck convoy to transport the villagers. It would take them two days to transport everyone in convoys which the VC left unmolested for the most part. The original plan was to use a South Vietnamese Navy flotilla but DePuy had them transport the villagers possessions and livestock (which went as well as it sounded), because most of the villagers were gone by the time the boats were assembled.

The camp at Phu Cuong was not prepared either. As reports from the convoys came in, DePuy went down to see for himself and was shocked at what he found: it lacked adequate food, shelter, sanitation, medical facilities, even water. The enraged DePuy called the USAID director in Saigon, the equally livid John Paul Vann, a former advisor, ranger, LTC, and probably the most culturally competent American in Vietnam, and told him he was taking over the resettlement as well as the evacuation. (In Vann’s defense he only found out about Cedar Falls with the South Vietnamese, but with 6000 dejected, cold, hungry, and thirsty refugees in a field with nothing but the clothes they wore when the loudspeakers told them to go to the school, that hardly mattered)

The conventional American Army just got its first lesson in counterinsurgency in Vietnam: If not you, then who? Understaffed and underfunded civilian agencies? 12 man Special Forces teams? Random poorly trained, inexperienced indigenous troops crawling with infiltrators that you aren’t partnered with? The enemy?

Ben Suc sent shock waves through Saigon, Washington, and America

Operation Cedar Falls, Prelude

After Operation Attleboro, two nearly identical questions were being asked in both Hanoi and Saigon: should the military forces engage main force units, or should they conduct guerilla warfare (for the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong), or Counterinsurgency (for the US and South Vietnam)? This sparked vicious debates in both capitals.

In Hanoi, Giap, the NVA Commander, wanted to revert back to guerilla warfare after the horrible losses in 1966 suffered by the NVA and VC. Giap wanted to avoid the Americans, attack the South Vietnamese regime indirectly through the population (Classic Mao). Gen Nguyen Chi Than, the Central Office for South Vietnam or COSVN commander, wanted to continue engaging American units directly. Although Attleboro nearly destroyed the elite 9th VC Division, it did not. And furthermore its remnants could easily be reinforced from Cambodia. Thanh remarked that the 9th VC took the best that the Americans could deliver (an entire corps assault) and they still survived. The “soft” Americans by contrast were exhausted, and their casualties directly inflamed the burgeoning antiwar movement in the US. Also, the American casualties went a long way in proving the superiority of the Communist soldier vs the American/ARVN soldier to the population, and eventually gaining their support for an uprising in the South. Furthermore, the American main force units in conventional operations were practically VC recruiting tools with their disregard of the population. Thanh argued that Giap’s course would force the Americans to treat the people better, and avert a general uprising (He was right). Thanh won the argument.

In Saigon, the 1st ID Commander, MG DePuy, also wanted to continue engage main force units. He knew the 9th VC Div was not destroyed. But he could finish the job in the relatively underpopulated Tay Ninh province, an area that the NVA and VC must traverse to get to Saigon and the South from the Fishhook in Cambodia. His staff was already planning this follow up operation named Junction City, after Ft Riley’s ville. However, LTG Seaman, the II Corps commander, wanted first to clear the Iron Triangle, a VC stronghold south of Tay Ninh and just north of Saigon in a heavily fortified, nearly impenetrable forested area bordered by the Saigon river in the south and the Tinh River in the west. It was from there that devastating attacks were launched on targets in the city. Seaman wanted to isolate the Iron Triangle, destroy the VC infrastructure, capture the COSVN headquarters which intelligence placed there, and then focus on the population. However, since there weren’t troops available to hold the 160 square km area, his plan was to relocate the population to more easily defendable areas in conjunction with the CORDS “New Life Villages”. The area could then be turned into a free fire zone, defoliated, and rendered unusable by the VC.

They took the dispute to Gen Westmoreland, the MACV Commander. DePuy was one of Westmoreland’s golden children, so he thought Junction City was guaranteed. But surprisingly, Westmoreland deferred to Seaman. So Seaman postponed DePuy’s operation, and ordered his alternative to clear the Iron Triangle, an operation named after the hometown of a recent 1st ID Medal of Honor winner,

Cedar Falls.

Islam 101

I’m going to break this down Barney-style because frankly I’ve seen some pretty ignorant things written on both sides of the aisle recently. First off, I am not a Muslim, I am a Catholic, but if you think I can’t explain the basics of Islam because of that, you should look up the word, “fallacy”. Furthermore, I cannot explain Islam in a single post. But I’m going to give you the basics and some of what Islam means to Muslims and you.

I’ve given this class a dozen or so times to keep my soldiers informed and every Muslim who sat in had no issues with it. Nonetheless, when you talk about religion someone will inevitably be uncomfortable. My Muslim friends who are going to read this will no doubt correct me on some of these things, and may even get offended, but they’ll be ok. Someone needs to explain this stuff, if only to stop some people from embarrassing themselves. Anyway, if we can’t talk about this then the bad guys have already won.

Now the basic basics. Islam does not mean “Peace” (“Religion of Peace” is just great branding). Islam is the Arabic word for, “Submission to the Will of Allah”. Allah is the Muslim name for the God of Abraham in the Bible. Abraham had two sons, Isaac and Ishmael. Jews and Christians see themselves as heirs of Isaac, Muslims see themselves as heirs of Ishmael. Mohammad, the first great prophet of Islam, was a descendant of Ishmael. So the takeaway here is three of the biggest religions on the planet share the same deity.

Within Islam, there are two major denominations: Sunni and Shia. The difference between the two goes back to a dispute over who succeeded Mohammad when he died in 632 CE. Sunnis believe Mohammad’s father in law, Abu Bakr, and the other three caliphs (successors) are the successors to Mohammad. The caliphate is the Islamic state ruled by the caliphs. Shia believe that Ali, Mohammad’s cousin and one of the aforementioned first four caliphs, is the sole successor. Shia believe that caliphs can only descend from Ali and that the Sunni caliphs are usurpers. In essence, Shia are more centralized and hierarchical from the few ayatollahs down to their imams and mullahs. And Sunnis are more decentralized from many caliphs down to Sunni imams and mullahs. (In Catholic terms, Ayatollahs are a combination of cardinals and archbishops, caliphs are like mini popes with secular and spiritual power, imams are like bishops and priests, and mullahs are more like deacons and ministers. These are generalizations but close enough for our purposes.)

Both Sunnis and Shia follow the same five tenets called the Five Pillars of Islam: 1: Shahadah, or the declaration that there is no God but Allah and Mohammad is God’s Messenger. 2. Salat, or prayer five times a day. 3. Zakat, alms for the needy. 4. Sawm, fasting during the holy month of Ramadan which happens at a different time each year because it is based on the lunar cycle. And 5. Hajj, or the pilgrimage to Mecca, which every Muslim is supposed to do once in their lifetime. Jihad is NOT a Pillar of Islam. It’s a sacred duty, but not a pillar. Jihad means “struggle”. Now to make this amazingly complicated and misunderstood word digestible to us, think of it as synonymous with “spreading the faith” (its not quite correct, but good enough for us). Jihad is a religious duty of Muslims and whether that is done through violence or peace is a matter of choosing which passages they follow in the Koran.

Please note that I did not say “a matter of an interpretation of the Koran”. There is no interpreting the Koran. In Islam, the Angel Gabriel (you know, the one with the trumpet) revealed God’s Will to Mohammad and Mohammad wrote it down VERBATIM over 23 years. So to Muslims, the Koran is literally the Word of God. Mohammad didn’t add anything or interpret anything, he just wrote down what Gabriel said. This is different from the Bible which is the Word of God interpreted and written by human beings. So to make this clear:

Islam:
—–Title: Koran, Author: God, Publisher: Mohammad.
Catholicism and other non-literalist Christians:
—–Title: Bible, Author: multiple authors, e.g. Isaiah, Samuel, Ezekiel, Matthew, Mark etc., Editor: God.

That’s why Muslims get upset when someone burns the Koran. In Christian terms, it’s like someone taking the Holy Communion and setting fire to it.
So don’t f*****g do it.
So since the Koran is literally, yes literally, the Word of God to Muslims, it is legally binding to Muslims since no human law could be above God’s literal Will. (In contrast, the Bible is composed of human’s interpretations of God’s Will. The Bible is “figuratively” God’s Will since humans have been disregarding and reinterpreting what other humans say since we were living in caves). In the words of a man smarter than I am, “This. Is. Key”.

So let me say this again – the Koran is the literal Word of God to Muslims and NOT subject to interpretation. The Bible is only the Word of God as taught by the prophets and is therefore subject to interpretation.

Furthermore, in Christianity, Jesus said “Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and unto God the things that are God’s”, which is usually interpreted as God allowing a separate secular state. The Koran has no such phrase. The Word of God is The Law. Therefore, to a Muslim the Koran is legally binding. It is the law to a Muslim as much as the Constitution is the law in the United States. This is the MAJOR difference between Christianity and Islam: Christianity (and Judaism) is just a religion, Islam is not only a religion but it is also a system of religious jurisprudence based on Islamic law, called Sharia.
Sharia law is a combination of the Koran and the Hadiths (and a few other sources, see the book “Reliance of the Traveler”, it is the generally accepted English language translation of Sharia law). The Hadiths are the chronicles of Mohammad’s life used by Islamic scholars to enforce Sharia i.e. what did Mohammad do in a similar situation. To act like Mohammad is good, to not act like Mohammad is bad. Remember there is no interpretation OF the Koran or the Hadiths, the interpretation comes from translating modern day situations into Mohammad’s actions and God’s word as written down over a 20 year period 1300 years ago.

Now, only those who accept that the Koran is God’s Will are subject to Sharia law, that’s why it’s important for Muslims to jihad. The flip side of that is Sharia law only applies to Muslims. This is important because Sharia law has its own version of the Ten Commandments. And they only apply to Muslims. That means it is technically not a sin for a Muslim to lie to an infidel (especially to save face) or even kill an infidel. Therefore how a Muslim treats an infidel is based not on their version of the Ten Commandments but on how Mohammad treated infidels, because that’s how Sharia law works (i.e. what did God say or Mohammad do in a similar situation, in this case treat infidels, because the Muslim version of the Ten Commandments does NOT apply to infidels, only fellow Muslims).

Now because Sharia law was written over a twenty year period of Mohammad’s life, there are some inconsistencies. Most importantly for our purposes is the treatment of unbelievers, or infidels. In the earlier parts of the Koran, Mohammad advocated the peaceful coexistence and peaceful proselytizing of infidels. In later parts he most definitely does not. In fact, the very last passage of the Koran is called the “Verse of the Sword” which explicitly calls for violent death by the sword to all infidels. How a Muslim chooses between the two is whether they believe in Abrogation.

Abrogation is the Muslim belief that in the case of inconsistencies in Sharia (the Koran and Hadiths), whatever God said last in the Koran, or Mohammad did last in the Hadiths, is correct. Whatever came before is annulled, or abrogated, based on the belief Mohammad became wiser as more of the Koran was revealed to him. Which is actually kind of reasonable. But it also causes the world quite a few problems because like I said before the Verse of the Sword is the last passage of the Koran. Ergo, if a Muslim believes in Abrogation, he has the solemn duty to kill infidels by the sword, because he or she believes that that is God’s last word on the subject.

Now the vast vast majority of Muslims do NOT believe in abrogation, or if they officially do, do not act upon it. This is because if you accept abrogation, you are basically accepting that the world hasn’t changed since the 7th Century. Most of the Shia and Sunnis, particularly Sufists – followers of Sufism, a mystical and peaceful version of Islam, do not believe in abrogation, and choose the more peaceful parts of the Koran, i.e. the earlier parts. Only Salafists and Wahhabis, followers of Wahabbism, the official version of Islam in Saudi Arabia, and extremists such as ISIS, Al’Maghreb, Boko Haram, and Al Qaeda believe in Abrogation. For example, MAJ Nidal Hassan, the guy who killed 13 soldiers in Ft Hood, gave a class on the virtues of abrogation to his peers a week or so before he went on his shooting spree. That should have raised some red flags.
Anyway, that is why you will NEVER win a theological argument about Islam with a Muslim who believes in abrogation. Abrogation is logical, and the Koran is pretty specific about what Muslims should do to infidels in the Verse of the Sword. So it is VERY easy to argue this position, especially with literalists. (Thankfully most people are not literalist or logical to the point of suicide.) So it’s not even worth it to try and argue against it. This is the basis of all extremist religious propaganda. Luckily most Muslims do not take this position when it comes to violence, contrary to what you read or see in the news. Most Muslims see extremists and abrogationists as “takfiri” or “impure” Muslims. So the next time you hear someone referring to extremists as “jihadis” or “hajji’s” you slap that ignorant person. Jihad and the Hajj are good things to Muslims and they’re denigrating a good word by using it in that context. Also, using those words is essentially recruiting for the bad guys. If you need to refer to extremists by something else use “takfiri” or “daesh” (DAESH is the Arabic acronym for ISIS and sounds like “dahes”, the Arabic word for “sower of discord”)

Summary. In Islam:
-Koran = Islamic Word of God transcribed over 23 years, and Hadiths are a chronicle of what Mohammad did.
-Koran + Hadiths = Sharia
-Sharia only applies to Muslims therefore Muslims must Jihad to spread their faith so more are subject to Sharia
-Koran advocates both peaceful and violent Jihad
-Peaceful = early Koran, Violent = later Koran
-Abrogation: later is better. This is bad when it comes to infidels.
-Extremists: Abrogation in jihad
-Most Muslims: no abrogation in jihad
-Don’t get into a theological debate with an extremist Muslim, it’s not worth it.
-The vast vast vast majority of Muslims are not trying to kill you, though some most definitely are. But like anything else, don’t judge the many by the actions of the few.
-Calling an extremist a “jihadi” and “hajji” is ignorant. Use “takfiri” or “daesh”.
Anyway, Islam is obviously quite a bit more complicated than what I can explain in a single post but I hope it was informative.
Keep your comments civil. Thanks!

Addendum.
Also, I did skip over the two big elephants in the room. I did so purposely because you have to understand what I said above first before we can discuss the problems. The first is violence in the name of religion. Notwithstanding what I said above, Islam has a violence problem. Abrogation can be situational, and therefore very seductive. Even though I said the vast majority do not support violence, there are one billion Muslims on the planet, and the minority who do support violence is still a significant number. Globalization compounds their reach and influence. Right now, Islam is going through a civil war between those who support violence in the name of religion and moderates who do not. And make no mistake: the moderates are losing. Christianity went through the same thing in the 17th century, and it took the Thirty Years War for Christians to figure out that violence in the name of religion was a bad thing. The second is women’s rights. Islam has some issues here and makes Catholicism look like a bulwark of forward thinking. Islam is centuries behind Christianity with women’s rights even in moderate Islamic areas. In Islamic extremist held territory, it would be an insult to barbarians to call their treatment of women barbaric. Islam could use some help on the feminism front. So yes, all is not rosy with Islam. And yes, political correctness makes the problems worse. But people still need to understand the basics before they understand the problems.
Thanks!

Paranoid

Like every other rock band during the British Invasion era, the band “Earth” started as a blues tribute garage rock band. But after being double booked with another band of the same name, Tony Iommi, Geezer Butler, and Ozzy Ozbourne decided to change their name to “Black Sabbath” after the Boris Karlov flick that was playing across the street from one of their rehearsals.
Black Sabbath released their eponymous debut album in early 1970. It was a commercial success but critics hated it. BS found their niche in the darker themes reminiscent of Karlov’s movies and “stupid melodies” that were quite different than the flower power and hippie music that dominated the charts. In the fall of 1970, Black Sabbath went back to the studio to record the songs that they didn’t get a chance to for their first album.

They had just two days to record and one to mix. At the end of the second day, their album “War Pigs” was finished. However, their producer said they needed another three minutes of music. Iommi quickly came up with a riff, Ozbourne some angsty and depressing lyrics, and Butler called it “Paranoid”, which Ozbourne replied, “What the f**k does that even mean?” “Paranoid” took 25 minutes to record from request to final cut.

With the “counter culture” mainstream, Black Sabbath didn’t want the anti Vietnam song War Pigs to headline the album lest it get lost in all of the other aforementioned flower power music on the charts. They decided to name it after the shortest song on the album and the one most likely to get radio time: the afterthought, Paranoid.

Paranoid released in Oct 1970 in the UK, but it’s the release in the US on 7 January 1971 that changed the world. Like before, critics hated it, and it received near zero radio time. But the generation of resentful kids who were just then coming of age and beginning to realize they missed the crazy days of the swinging late sixties that their big brothers and sisters experienced, absolutely loved it. Most of the combat troops left Vietnam, the draft was winding down, and the economy began to stagnate, so what did it all mean? The world of Paranoid provided a glimpse of the answer. (And it helped that the songs were simple to enough to inspire a new generation of band members to pick up instruments and emulate them.)

Most of Black Sabbath’s signature songs appeared on the album. These included Paranoid, War Pigs, and one fantastical story of a future traveller who saw the end of the world but was turned to metal by a magnetic field on his return. The Iron Man then brought about the very apocalypse he warned against when his people wouldn’t believe him.

And Heavy Metal was born. \m/

Operation Bolo

By the summer of 1966, Operation Rolling Thunder, the American air campaign against North Vietnam, was in full swing, and American bombers and fighter bombers were engaging the most sophisticated air defense network produced by the Communist Bloc. Radar controlled SA-2 and AAA guns took a heavy toll on the B-52 bomber and the F-105 fighter/bombers (the F-105 could carry more bomb tonnage than a WWII era B-17). In the fall of 1966, the US Air Force introduced new radar jamming pods that were so effective that they reduced the SAM threat to zero. But there weren’t enough of them to go around, so the pod less F-4 Phantoms of the fighter escort were kept out of SAM range to protect them.

The North Vietnamese air force pounced. Guided by ground stations, the F-4’s nemesis, the delta winged MiG-21 Fishbed, made short work of the heavily laden F-105s. They effectively “waged guerrilla war” on the American formations: “one pass and haul ass” before the F-105s could dump their bombs and engage. They always engaged within the SAM ring so no F-4s were ever around. American losses spiked, and the fighter pilots of F-4’s were catching hell for not protecting the bombers, even though they were kept out of the fight by a well-meaning risk assessment.

Enter Col Robin Olds, a natural leader and an old fashioned “fighting commander” who wasn’t afraid to fly missions with his men. He was a former P-51 pilot with a plethora of Luftwaffe kills, and he scorned his superiors and peers who just came to Vietnam to “check that career box”, and sit behind a desk in Thailand. He wasn’t going to let his charges get shot down just because someone said it wasn’t safe. His magnificent mustache would not allow it.
Around New Year’s, Col Olds and his staff planned Operation Bolo. Air Force intelligence placed about 25 of the modern MiG-21s in Vietnam (there were only 18), if he could get them up and engage them, he could change the entire air war in South East Asia. He planned for his fighters to be “Wolves in sheep’s clothing” (hence the name of the 8th Tactical Fighter Wing, the Wolfpack). He would electronically disguise his air to air armed F-4s as bomb fitted F-105s. Furthermore, they operated on known F-105 frequencies, and used bomber call signs to deceive the North Vietnamese ground controllers. (The Black Sheep squadron is WWII did the same thing in the Solomon’s in 1943.) The MiGs took the bait.

On 7 January 1967, 12 MiG-21s screamed in to engage the “bombers”, only to meet a wall of Sidewinder missiles. Seven were shot down. 1/3 of the total MiG-21 force in Vietnam was destroyed in one afternoon. Olds tried again a few days later, not expecting much. But the North Vietnamese blamed the ground controllers. Then, like all good Communists, they thought if they just did the same thing and other people tried harder it would work out. Olds’ men shot down another four. The MiG-21s wouldn’t be back in the air for another ten weeks.

The Battle of Princeton

On 2 January 1777, Lord Cornwallis counterattacked after the loss of Trenton and his vanguard was repulsed by the Continental Army at Assunpink Creek. Washington, knowing he couldn’t hold against the main British force in the morning, faked camping for the night, and escaped just as he had done several times before. He marched around Cornwallis’ army. The next day, the Continental Army approached Princeton, hoping to destroy the British army from behind and seize Cornwallis’ war chest of 70,000 pounds sterling at New Brunswick.

But the British and Americans stumbled upon each other just south of the city and American Brigadier General Hugh Mercer immediately attacked. Both sides attempted to seize a small hill topped by an orchard, a position each thought they could hold until reinforcements arrived. The Americans occupied it first but after a single volley the British closed with bayonets. Most of Mercer’s men were woodsmen from central and western Pennsylvania, and their rifles, while accurate, lacked bayonets and were slow loading. In an attempt to inspire his men in the ensuing melee, Mercer took on nine redcoats with his saber before being stabbed to death. His remaining men broke. 

Washington, who was just bit farther up the column, arrived with the main body of the Continental army, and rallied Mercer’s men 30 meters from the advancing British. Volleys were exchanged but miraculously Washington was not hit. A tough battle ensued, but the Americans went straight from the march into the attack and overwhelmed the British. The British attempted to make a stand in Nassau Hall inside the town but several round shot from Henry Knox’s guns dissuaded them (including one which legend says decapitated a painting of King George II. Supposedly it was gleefully fired by the battery commanded by a young Captain Alexander Hamilton, whose application was rejected by Princeton). For the rest of the battle, the British couldn’t establish a defensive position, and were eventually routed off the field.

As Cornwallis approached from Trenton, Washington dismantled the bridge into the city over the fast moving and freezing Stony Brook. The exasperated Lord Cornwallis, who had been out maneuvered by Washington and out fought by the Continentals three times in the last ten days, returned to New York and abandoned New Jersey. The exhausted but intact Continental Army entered winter quarters at Morristown. Washington ended the otherwise disastrous 1776 campaign in the Middle Colonies on a high note, and now with all of southern New Jersey and eastern Pennsylvania open to his victorious recruiters. Money, supplies, and promises of credit poured into the Continental Congress. 

Gen Washington considered the Battle of Princeton one of his proudest moments.

Revolutionary

After the Partitions of Poland in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century, Warsaw was occupied by Imperial Russia. In 1829, the new Russian Czar, Nicolas I, outlawed the Polish Constitution, and arrested the members of the Polish Sejm (parliament) leaving no pretenses of any self-rule in Congress Poland (established after Napoleon’s defeat at the Congress of Vienna in 1815). Later that year, Nicolas outlawed Polish culture and the Polish language. When Polish culture was forbidden, gifted Polish pianist Frederick Chopin left Warsaw for Paris. Enroute he visited his friend Franz Liszt in Stuttgart.

Both Liszt and Chopin taught piano to the petty aristocracies of the German States. They did so through the use of “etudes” or short compositions meant to teach technique. Until then, etudes were rote and painful pieces meant strictly as lessons. But the early industrial revolution updated the piano in the form of precision casting, high quality piano wire, and a metal frame to sustain a more powerful and broader sound. Chopin started writing etudes for this new modern piano. Like Beethoven and Mozart before him, Chopin was incapable of composing something uninteresting, and the etudes of his unfinished Opus 10 were celebrated as masterpieces in their own right.

In November 1831 Nicolas began forced conversions of the Roman Catholic Polish population to Eastern Orthodoxy. Warsaw revolted. The revolution was only put down after a massed and sustained bombardment that flattened the city, followed by an assault by several large Russian armies.

Shortly thereafter, Chopin learned of the uprising and subsequent massacre, and he was furious and distraught. As his father was a prominent revolutionary, he couldn’t return. So he got drunk with Liszt and continued on as before. He still had one more etude to compose for his Opus 10, and it involved a lesson on the sweeping use of the left hand while playing notes in rapid succession.
On 17 December 1831, Frederic Chopin published what would become one the most popular piano pieces in history, Etude no 12, Opus 10 in C minor, “On the Bombardment of Warsaw”, or more simply, “Revolutionary”.

Operation Drumbeat

On 18 December 1941, Adm Karl Doenitz dispatched five of his long range Type IX U-Boats from Lorient, France on Operation Paukenschlag or Operation Drumbeat. British Intelligence picked up on the departure and warned the Canadians and Americans that they were most likely heading to the Western Atlantic. They indeed were: each U-boat was stuffed with to capacity with food, fuel and torpedoes for an extended patrol off the US coast. Each had tour guides of the coasts of their respective patrol zones, many of which included harbor maps, and in many cases, military installations.

President Roosevelt established the Pan American Security Zone after Germany declared war on 11 December, and the Eastern Sea Frontier included the Atlantic coast. But the unfortunate rear admiral who pulled that duty had only seven coast guard cutters, four yachts, and a smattering of civilian sailing ships. In any case it didn’t matter: cargos ships traveled with their running lights on, there was no blackout along the coast, and no convoy system between American ports was adopted for months.

The first ship sunk off the American coast was on 14 January when U-123 put a torpedo into the Norwegian tanker Norness, within sight of Long Island. (There were 13 American destroyers sitting idle in New York harbor.) Those five Uboats would submerge during the day, and attack on the surface at night against targets brightly silhouetted by the coastal lights, many with civilians watching along the coast. The Germans sank 160,000 tons of shipping in two weeks, more than the last six months combined.

U boat crews called the next six months, “Die Glueckliche Zeit” or “The Happy Time”.

The End of 1941

Late December 1941 was a time of unexpected changes in the Second World War. War Plan Orange, the interwar campaign plan for the Pacific was permanently discarded on the 31st – its centerpiece, the battleship squadrons, were all sunk or severely damaged. The old guard of battleship admirals in the Navy Department were thrown into chaos, but the carrier admirals led by Nimitz and Halsey were already planning to strike back at Japanese possessions in the central Pacific with their surviving ships.

However, the state of American land forces in combat was deceptive. Wake Island had fallen after an epic 13 day defense, and other American possessions in the Pacific such as Samoa, Johnston, Howland, Baker and Midway Islands, and even Hawaii and the American West Coast thought they were next. In the Philippines, MacArthur pulled most of his Far East Command back to the strong defensive lines on the Bataan peninsula, while other American and Filipino units spread throughout the archipelago were holding their own against the Japanese. But without relief from Hawaii, their fate was sealed. The Japanese knew this, and accelerated their timetables to seize the true prizes of the South Pacific: the oil fields, tin mines, and rubber plantations of Borneo and Dutch East Indies.

At the hastily planned Arcadia Conference in Washington, British and Americans created the much needed ABDA Command (American, British, Dutch, and Australian) to coordinate the fight against the Japanese. Unfortunately, the forces at its disposal were meager. In any case, larger problems loomed: The inexperienced Americans struggled against a very prepared British delegation in hammering out a common strategy for war. The British (and FDR) wanted to focus on the fight against Germany, while Adm King and Gen Marshall wanted to focus on the Japanese and avenge Pearl Harbor.

With the destruction of the Royal Air Force on the ground in Malaya, the Japanese acquired a near mythical perceived ability to appear anywhere. The air attacks and sea borne landings down the Malaya peninsula perfectly complimented the light Japanese infantry’s ability to out flank the road bound British and Commonwealth defenders through the jungle. Churchill still believed in the “fortress” of Singapore, but it was a hollow shell due to interwar spending cuts. Moreover, its defenses briefed well by staff officers in London, but were totally inadequate for coming Japanese onslaught. Entire Commonwealth brigades, desperately needed in Burma for the defense of India, would continue to arrive in Singapore: a naval base with no navy after the sinking of the Prince of Wales and Repulse.

The Royal Navy’s fortunes were the gloomiest yet in the war. The U boats heading to the American east coast were a looming train wreck and the British could do nothing but watch, and continue to pester the obstinate Americans. In the Mediterranean, Italian frogmen sank or damaged four capital ships in Alexandria harbor in late December, and almost single handedly returned naval parity. This was confirmed when in an attempt to sink a convoy of desperately needed tanks for Rommel, Force J and K from Malta were devastated at the First “Battle” of Sirte. The opposing sides barely saw each other, but British ships wandered into an Italian minefield near Tripoli, which sunk or severely damaged six ships. It would have been a great Italian victory had they too not wandered into the same minefields. In any case, Rommel’s tanks got through.

In defiance of Hitler’s No Retreat order, Rommel fell back all the way to his supply dumps and fuel farms at El Alghelia, where he had started the spring before. But the pursuing British were strung out. Although Operation Crusader was everything Auchlinek wanted, they were now 180 miles from their own depots. Rommel just received a new shipment of tanks, which he recently used to maul the pursuing British armor. He now had the initiative and planned to use it to reestablish a line before Hitler noticed and took action on his violation.
Hitler had already fired his top commanders, and had taken direct control of operations in the East. His no retreat order saved precious equipment from being abandoned, but only the professionalism and desperation of the Wehrmacht prevented a disaster in front of Moscow. Germany would pay for Hitler’s decision for years to come. Nonetheless, the Soviets were attacking everywhere, but the Germans were containing the hastily trained and poorly led troops, if barely. Although the Germans didn’t conquer the Soviet Union in 1941, they were confident they would in 1942. Everywhere the Axis reigned supreme.

On the 26th Winston Churchill addressed the US Congress. He felt that with America in the war, it was now winnable, but it would take 18 long months for the tide to change. Congress was not prepared when Churchill told them that “many disappointments and unpleasant surprises await us” in the New Year.

The Bill of Rights

On 15 December 1791, the Virginia General Assembly became the 11th state legislature to ratify the first ten amendments to the Constitution. With that vote, the Bill of Rights had the necessary 75% of states (11 of 14) to immediately go into effect across the nation. The original Bill of Rights had twelve articles, the first two were not ratified. Articles 3-12 became the first ten Amendments to the US Constitution. Article two was ratified in 1992 as the 27th Amendment. Article one still has not been ratified (it needs to be ratified by 27 more states)

The articles that were ratified, aka The Important Parts:

Amendment I
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Amendment II
A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

Amendment III
No Soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the Owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law.

Amendment IV
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Amendment V
No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.

Amendment VI
In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defence.

Amendment VII
In suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved, and no fact tried by a jury, shall be otherwise reexamined in any Court of the United States, than according to the rules of the common law.

Amendment VIII
Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.

Amendment IX
The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

Amendment X
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.