“Let us therefore rely upon the goodness of the Cause, and the aid of the supreme Being, in whose hands Victory is, to animate and encourage us to great and noble Actions—The Eyes of all our Countrymen are now upon us.” General George Washington, General Orders, July 2, 1776

1. author at a souq c. 1969, likely in Kano, Nigeria
United States Marine Deana Martorella Orellana
(September 18, 1987 - March 4, 2016)
(image frequently identified as that of Special
Warfare Operator Petty Officer 1st Class
(SEAL) Aaron C. Vaughn, 30; 11 August 2011
DOD Release No: 705-11: "The Department of
Defense announced today the deaths of 30
service members who were supporting
Operation Enduring Freedom. They died Aug.
6 in Wardak province, Afghanistan, of wounds
suffered when their CH-47 Chinook helicopter
crashed.) “My son, SO1 Ryan F. Larkin (Class-
268), will be laid to rest at Arlington National
Cemetery on Friday, October
among 11 veterans participating in the 2015 Cherokee Warrior
Flight Sept. 28-30." (Photo Courtesy: Will Chavez/Cherokee
Phoenix)
"Cherokee citizen and World War II veteran Virgil Carter is
Image: United States Army Special
Operations Command
U.S. Army Master Sergeant Joshua L.
Wheeler, 1st SFOD-D (1975-2015)
U S Army Master Sergeant Joshua L
Excellent piece of writing. You have an excellent start for a book about Wheeler. I wish I
would have had some of your material for two of the Veteran’s Day speeches I gave the past
couple of days. I’ll use next year.” Rear Admiral, USN (Ret), personal email re Cherokee
DELTA Operator: Invisible. Not Unseeable.”(Nov. 2017)
“Stunningly accurate piece of writing that will hit a chord with anybody who has served in
any of the war torn areas of the world.” Senior Operations Officer/Flight Commander, RAF
(Ret), commenting on “Thank You For Your Service.”(Sept. 2017)
“I have read your article very carefully. It is a most thought-provoking piece of writing by
an expert in the true meaning of the word. . . .” Commodore, Royal Navy (Ret), personal
message re “Writing Is About Turning Blood Into Ink.” (June 2018)
Author’s previous work has been cited, among other places, in publications of the CATO
Institute (2009) and the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, Medicine (2006), as
well as inthe Mississippi Law Journal (2016), Small Wars Journal (2011), Georgetown Law
Journal (2008), George Mason Law Review (2007), William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal
(2006), University of Florida Journal of Law & Pub. Policy (2006), and Indiana Law Review
(2003); also cited in: James Seger, The Occupy Movement: Signs of Cultural Shifts in Group
Processes Shaped by Place, PhD. diss., Pacifica Graduate Institute (2017), Spencer Mawby,
Ordering Independence: The End of Empire in the Anglophone Caribbean, 1947-69. Palgrave
Macmillan UK (2012), and in Brandon Oliveira & Darby Avilas, Disrupting
EmergingNetworks: Analyzing and Evaluating Jamaat al-Muslimeen (JAM) and the
Development of an Extremist Threat in the Caribbean, M.S. thesis, U.S. Naval Postgraduate
School (2012).
“My research and writing agenda seeks to translate the experiences of combat-wounded
veterans into language designed to help civilians like me begin to understand what exactly
we are asking of those we send to fight, and their families. A research article telling the
stories of combat - wounded Allied airmen flying bombing missions over occupied Europe –
crafted around the successful escape and evasion of a B-17 bombardier from Memphis,
Tennessee – is in the works.”
More info re author and links to his publications at:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/charlesbloeser/
#PTSD #combatstress #combattrauma #shellshock #woundedwarrior #SOF #SOFREP
#WARTORN #charlesbloeser #explosiveblastTBI #KIA #MIA #WIA #USMC #Army
#AirForce #Navy #Coastguard #SEAL #USSOCOM #widowsandorphans #specialoperator
#RAF #SBS #SAS #RoyalMarines #specialrelationship #FVEY #quantitativemethodology
bedroom."
Medical examiners' reports have a line listing valuables found with a body. Deana was
wearing a fitness band and a plastic bracelet.
In her pocket was a sheaf of handwritten inspirational quotes. Words, as they say, to live
by.
She had been out of the Marines only a few months. . . .
Audio: https://www.npr.org/2018/05/29/614011243/battling-depression-and-suicide-
among-female-veterans
Transcript: https://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?storyId=614011243
The VA encourages those who need help to reach out:“Veterans, Service members,
and their loved ones can call 1-800-273-8255 and Press 1, send a text message to 838255, or
chat online to receive free, confidential support 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a
year, even if they are not registered with VA or enrolled in VA health care.”
https://www.mentalhealth.va.gov/suicide_prevention/
About the author:
Son and grandson of U.S. military
veterans. U. S. State Dept and
ARAMCO Brat. Tennessee-
licensed trial and appellate lawyer
with advanced training and
research activities in comparative
politics and international
relations, as well as research
design and quantitative methods.
Among his published research are works re foreign-funded Jihadi terrorism in the Western
Hemisphere, civilian-military law enforcement relations, federal criminal law, and Federal
court procedure.
Among praise for recent research products by this author:
“Excellent piece of writing You have an excellent start for a book about Wheeler I wish I
https://sfachapterix.blogspot.com/2018/06/va-reveals-its-veteran-suicide.html
A Word About the Women
Barely over a month ago, a North Carolina
Public Radio story explained that VA data
show that female veterans take their own
lives at a rate 250% that of women who’ve
never served. And the “VA has recently
received data showing that a startlingly high
number of suicides come in the first days,
weeks and months after veterans leave the
military. . . .”
The WUNC segment told the tragic story of
Deana Martorella Orellana, a United States
Marine who in 2010 deployed to a
“particularly combat-torn part of Helmand Province in Afghanistan, . . .” The Marine “was
assigned to a small female team that was attached to a male infantry unit. The team worked
with the Afghan women and children they encountered. . . . When Deana came back,
something had changed, said her family. . . . One of Deana's siblings, Robin Jewell, said the
problem had to do with something Deana saw or experienced involving Afghan children, but
Deana never opened up about the details.
"She said that she didn't see things the same, and she could handle everything except for the
kids," Jewell said. "And I don't know what that means. She just didn't talk."
The WUNC/NPR story explains that “[o]n March 4th, 2016, Deana went to the VA for help,
her mother said. VA officials later told the family that Deana agreed to counseling.
But just hours after the VA appointment, Deana asked a friend to drop her at the house
where she had lived with her boyfriend, who wasn't home. She went in the bedroom and
retrieved a .45-caliber handgun.
She sat on the floor and leaned against a wall. That's how her body was found.
She wrote a note," said her mother, sitting at Jewell's kitchen table in Maryland."
But not a real note," Jewell added. "Not a Dear John."
Her mother recalled what it said: "I'm sorry, call 911, take care of the dog, don't come in the
Thomas was a Sergeant in the U.S. Army in The Battle of the Bulge.
https://youtu.be/wDN4TzRtbvA
One of many additional resources:
“Tour of Duty: Ty Carter fought in Afghanistan and became a hero. Now he has one more
enemy to fight: PTSD.” Foreign Policy. Excerpted from Yochi Dreazen, The Invisible Front:
Love and Loss in an Era of Endless War. Deckle Edge 2014.
https://foreignpolicy.com/2014/10/06/suicide-mission/
A special note re suicide among active-duty service members and veterans
A Stars and Stripes article posted June 25, 2018 on the blog of Special Forces Association
Chapter IX suggests that the VA’s reporting of its suicide data has lacked precision:
For years, the Department of Veterans Affairs reported an average of 20 veterans died by
suicide every day – an often-cited statistic that raised alarm nationwide about the rate of
veteran suicide. However, the statistic has long been misunderstood, according to a report
released this week. The VA has now revealed the average daily number of veteran suicides
has always included deaths of active-duty service members and members of the National
Guard and Reserve, not just veterans.
Craig Bryan, a psychologist and leader of the National Center for Veterans Studies, said the
new information could now help advocates in the fight against military and veteran
suicide. “The key message is that suicides are elevated among those who have ever served,”
Bryan said. “The benefit of separating out subgroups is that it can help us identify higher
risk subgroups of the whole, which may be able to help us determine where and how to best
focus resources.”
The VA released its newest National Suicide Data Report on Monday, which includes data
from 2005 through 2015. Much in the report remained unchanged from two years ago,
when the VA reported suicide statistics through 2014. Veteran suicide rates are still higher
than the rest of the population, particularly among women. In both reports, the VA said an
average of 20 veterans succumbed to suicide every day. In its newest version, the VA was
more specific.
The report shows the total is 20.6 suicides every day. Of those, 16.8 were veterans and 3.8
were active-duty service members, guardsmen and reservists, the report states. That
amounts to 6,132 veterans and 1,387 service members who died by suicide in one year. The
VA's 2012 report stated 22 veterans succumbed to suicide every day – a number that’s still
often cited incorrectly. That number also included active-duty troops, Guard and Reserve,
VA Press Secretary Curt Cashour said Wednesday.
https://sfachapterix blogspot com/2018/06/va-reveals-its-veteran-suicide html
make up only about 8.5 percent of the adult population. . ..[T]his is not a new trend, she
writes. “While the Vietnam Memorial has the names of 58,315 Americans who died overseas,
the wall does not document any names of the estimated 50,000 – 150,000 Vietnam vets who
died from suicide in the years after returning home.”
[i] Founders Online, National Archives
(http://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/03-05-02-0117, accessed December
8, 2015); in The Papers of George Washington, 5:179–182 (all as accessed 2 July 2018 at
allthingsliberty.com).
"Must you carry the bloody horror of combat in your heart forever?" -- Homer
(ca. 8th century BC), "The Odyssey"
Two video clips from James Gandolfini/HBO documentary re shell shock aka combat
trauma aka PTSD
***This 5-minute clip features a former American special operator who trained SOF
medics and who explains what he learned only after he had to make 15 freedom-of-
information requests: that the last phone call he ever had with his son was after the soldier
had been accused of faking his combat trauma and before that soldier was taken back to his
quarters, handed his weapon and ammunition, and told to go clean his gun.
“I used to train medics for special forces. I have a recurring dream . . . I come back with my
aid bag . . . it’s my son . . . and every time he asks me why I can’t help him. That dream kicks
my ass.”
Video clip at minutes 34:41 – 39:53 excerpted from John Alpert, Ellen Goosenberg Kent, and
Matthew O’Neill with James Gandolfini, WARTORN: 1861-2010. HBO 2011; accessed at
The Documentary Dude as published on YouTube on May 16, 2016.
https://youtu.be/jOTXxNVoeyo?t=34m41s
***This ten-minute video clip features 5 World War II combat veterans who gathered to
tell documentarians how their combat trauma came about and how PTS and related
conditions continue to destroy their lives and those of their families. Excerpted from John
Alpert, Ellen Goosenberg Kent, and Matthew O’Neill with James Gandolfini, WARTORN:
1861-2010. HBO 2011. Accessed 3 July 2018 via YouTube as published by Carroll Ray
Thomas.
"Fifty years after World War II veterans began to be diagnosed with PTSD. These men are
telling their stories for the first time." Al Maher was a Lieutenant in the U.S. Army Air Corps,
a co-pilot on a B24. Rocco Moretto was a Staff Sergeant in the U.S. Army. Michael Shields
was a Private in the U.S. Army, 213 Anti-aircraft Battery in North Africa. Abner Greenberg
was a Corporal in the 4th U.S. Marines Corps Division in Iwo Jima, Tinian and Saipan. Bill
Veterans.]
Independence Day 2018: We Still Need
Warriors. And we still owe them.
A lot of people we will never hear about -
including warriors whose funerals must be
private affairs and whose records of valor must
remain secrets of the State - put it on the line all
the time to protect the rest of us from some
profoundly evil people who are trying very hard
to kill us and to destroy an American way of life
worth saving. A way of life that soldiers and
farmers and clergy and teachers and all manner
of professionals - all of them sons and fathers
and brothers and uncles from the American
colonies - fought and died to secure.
Cherokee Indian Josh Wheeler from rural
Oklahoma protected his family, his military
tribe, and this nation for nearly two decades. On
this Veterans Day weekend 2017 he and every
other warrior deserve more thanks and prayers
than any of us could ever give. Charles Bloeser.
“Independence Day 2018: We Still Need
Our Warriors.” Unpublished work Copyright 2017 (as amended and retitled 2018).
ENDNOTES
[1] Mona Chalabi. “What Percentage of Americans Have Served in the Military?”
Fivethirtyeight.com (March 19, 2015).
[2] See Charles Bloeser. “Owned Lock, Stock, and Barrel.” May 28, 2018. Accessible at
https://www.facebook.com/notes/charles-bloeser/owned-lock-stock-and-
barrel/10156213813571438/
[3] See also, Nicole Fisher. Suicide Rates Show Veterans’ Biggest War Can Happen in Their
Minds. Thefederalist.com. 28 May 2018. Accessed 11 June 2018. Ms. Fisher notes that
“veterans’ suicides account for 18 – 20 percent of suicide deaths in the country, while they
make up only about 8 5 percent of the adult population [T]his is not a new trend ” she
EXHIBIT C:
Mr. Zach Wheeler told the Ft. Smith ABC affiliate the day of his brother's memorial service
that “You got to be proud of somebody like that, Good Lord . . . that’s just how my brother
was. ‘taking care of people. He took care of me. He took care of my sisters.”
EXHIBIT D:
Ms. Rachel Quackenbush, younger sister, told the New York Times that her big brother “was
exactly what was right about this world . . . He came from nothing and he really made
something out of himself.”
EXHIBIT E:
More than 600 attended a Nov. 24, 2015 memorial service for Josh Wheeler in Muldrow, OK.
Just a little over two years ago, U. S. Army Master Sergeant Joshua L. Wheeler was a long
way from home. Assigned to 1st Special Forces Operational Detachment-Delta, he led a team
of special operators in support of less-skilled fighters trying to get their people back before
they were killed and dumped in a mass grave that was already waiting for them. And on that
day Josh Wheeler, from a pin dot in flyover country, told the world loud and clear that
Tennessee U.S. Rep. Davy Crockett was right: a nation’s people aren’t just assembly-line
units to be swapped out one for another. They’re not just another form of transferable
currency. That was true in 1836 when Crockett died in battle at the Alamo. It was true when
special operator Joshua Wheeler died in battle in Kirkuk, Iraq two years ago.
But there’s a second truth. And U.S. Army Master Sergeant Joshua Wheeler, his widow,
and his four sons aren’t asking us. They’re telling us in unison that yes, there is a second
deadly truth and we damned well need to pay attention to it. For their sake. For our nation’s
sake.
The lives of veterans and their families - MSGT Wheeler and family included - are frequently
harder than most civilians can imagine. And those of us who claim to care about veterans and
about policy choices that affect them visit an unforgivable evil on these valiant souls every
time our actions and our words repeat the lie that all our lives are essentially just as hard as
everyone else’s.
If that were true - if life’s “ups and downs” are essentially the same for those who’ve served
and for those of us who haven’t - then the VA would not have reported in September 2017
that in the years between 2001 and 2014, female U.S. veterans killed themselves at a rate
250% that of women who haven’t served. Suicide would not claim twenty current and past
service members in this country each new day.[3] [per June 2018 data clarification by the
VA, the 20/day number includes active-duty troops, Guard and Reserve, separated
Britain during German bombing campaigns in World War II. Gang-plagued nations such as
El Salvador and Honduras, where, as Voice of America reported in July of [2017], homicide
levels are comparable to those in war and aid agencies are forced to use conflict-zone tactics.
And in dozens of countries that in 2016 alone saw 19,246 deaths and injuries from IEDs.
Nearly three out of every four victims were civilians. according to data reported 3 weeks ago
by London-based Action on Armed Violence. (NOTE: AOAV research activities funded by
governments of Norway, France, U.S., and other NATO sponsor countries.)
The Truth? We Can Do a Lot Better by our Warriors
On this sacred Veterans Day Weekend 2017, what little we are free to know of the life and
service and sacrifice of Delta operator Joshua L. Wheeler points us to two truths that, if
missed, carry the power to kill our warriors at home and abroad.
The first truth is this: Cherokee warrior Joshua Wheeler, who took care of his younger
brothers and sisters from a “tiny trailer near the eastern Oklahoma border," was the kind of
hardworking, honorable person few notice as they drive past places like his uncooperative
patch of the American Midwest. The sort of person whose life and whose family's life deserve
the serious attention and study that they get from Nancy Isenberg, Matthew Desmond, and
J.D. Vance. But he was an "unseeable." The sort of person we pay no attention to. The sort of
soul too many of us simply label and dismiss: "white trash!" "trailer trash!"
But here's the deal: if we pay attention, "Josh" Wheeler will teach us that we're dead wrong to
ever assume that “unseeables” of any stripe are all the same, will never make the world a
better place, and that no one will miss them when they’re gone. And if we won't learn that
lesson from this American hero, then we won't learn it from anyone.
May I offer into evidence the following?
EXHIBIT A:
United States Senator Jim Inhofe (R-OK) speaking to his Senate colleagues during a floor
speech on November 16, 2015: “I think we all understand what Delta Force is all about. It’s
a unit of the elite, the very best of the best. That was Josh. The best of the best. A true
American hero.”
EXHIBIT B:
A former officer who commanded Sgt. Wheeler told the New York Times that “[Wheeler] was
very focused, knew his job in and out . . . It is hard to describe these guys. They are taciturn,
very introspective, but extremely competent. They are Jason Bournes, they really are.”
EXHIBIT C
probably start asking for
something else.
Comments from the national security community here in the States seem to support the
argument that, by some measures, the world has become a hell of a lot more dangerous in the
years since the Tokyo attack. And with a list of military honors for valor that stretches the
distance from the Cherokee capitol of Tahlequah, OK to the warrior’s birth site in Roland,
OK, it would appear that over his 20 years of service, there have been enough threats to the
nation's security to keep Delta operator Joshua Wheeler and his teams quite busy.
“Today’s security environment is dramatically different than the one we've been engaged in
for the last 25 years,” said SECDEF Ashton Carter at the Economic Club of Washington, DC
in February of 2016. “. . . and it requires new ways of thinking and new ways of acting.”
Transnational terrorism is just one of many interrelated threats stacked one on top of
another, sort of like Delhi/New Delhi sits atop a thick stack of previous civilizations.
Since the last National Military Strategy was published in 2011, global disorder has
significantly increased while some of our comparative military advantage has begun to
erode. We now face multiple, simultaneous security challenges from traditional state actors
and transregional networks of sub-state groups—all taking advantage of rapid
technological change. Future conflicts will come more rapidly, last longer, and take place
on a much more technically challenging battlefield. They will have increasing implications
to the U.S. homeland....
Complexity and rapid change characterize today’s strategic environment, driven by
globalization, the diffusion of technology, and demographic shifts....
Source: June 2015 National Military Strategy released by DOD (quoted in Ronald O’Rourke,
A Shift in the International Security Environment: Potential Implications for Defense—Issues
for Congress, at 6 (Congressional Research Service, October 26, 2017).
So the international security environment presents new challenges and new opportunities.
And if an expert from Ft. Bragg who was quoted in 2002’s “Bulletproof Mind” article is right,
then “interspecies [sic]homicide” is really quite common.
A Caveat
Before I let Sgt. Wheeler’s life and story and sacrifice get a bit blunt with us, I offer a caveat.
It is true that most of us who are civilians in modern, industrialized states don’t have even a
single reference point from which we might begin to imagine with any accuracy what legions
of veterans and their families have suffered - both when they wore the nation’s uniform and
after they separated. But history, literature, archaeology, and other collected data are among
those sources that remind us that this statement is not true for all places and all times. Great
y g p y g y g
chemical weapons production facility, designed by cult engineers, with first-rate equipment
purchased over-the-counter.
Why the raid on the terrorist cult on March 17, 1995? The Aum Shinrikyo had attacked Japan
with Sarin before. On Monday, June 27, 1994, the group used the deadly nerve agent to
attack a neighborhood in Matsumoto, a city of 300,000 persons. The target? The residence of
all three judges who sat on a panel hearing a lawsuit over a real-estate dispute in which Aum
Shinrikyo was the defendant. The attack killed seven and sent more than 500 to area
hospitals.
As Kyle Olson’s bioterror article makes clear, this cult wasn’t a one-trick pony:
Chemical weapons were not, however, the only option available to the Aum. The first cult
laboratory for toxin production was actually in place by 1990 and was subsequently
replaced with two new laboratories, one at Kamakuishki and the other in Tokyo. Aum
dabbled in many different biological agents. They cultured and experimented with botulin
toxin, anthrax, cholera, and Q fever. In 1993, Ashahara led a group of 16 cult doctors and
nurses to Zaire, on a supposed medical mission. The actual purpose of the trip to Central
Africa was to learn as much as possible about and, ideally, to bring back samples of Ebola
virus. In early 1994, cult doctors were quoted on Russian radio as discussing the possibility
of using Ebola as a biological weapon.”
Source: Olson, K. B. (1999). Aum Shinrikyo: Once and Future Threat? Emerging Infectious
Diseases, 5(4), 413-416. (U.S. Centers for Disease Control, 1999).
The reason I offer these additional details about the Sarin attack that occurred the month
before the Oklahoma City bombing is because it’s a good illustration of how much hell can be
unleashed on the government and the citizens of a vast metropolitan area by those hell-bent
on killing folks. And how close they can get to killing any law enforcement response in the
womb. All of it at the whim of a leader who inspires useful people who have the right
resources.
The Aum Shinrikyo attack on the
Tokyo subway system was 22
years ago. And there’s a lot of
readily available open source
information – much of it
accessible by smartphone - that
suggests the world has not become
a kinder, gentler place since then.
If beauty pageant contestants still
ask for world peace, they should
b bl ki f
Three terrorist attacks that garnered worldwide media coverage occurred in the six months
before Delta operator Joshua L. Wheeler’s May, 1995 enlistment. Three jewels widely-spaced
along a global necklace of death: Algiers/Marseilles . . . Tokyo . . . Oklahoma City.
Here’s a bit more information about the second of those attacks, the March, 1995 release by
the Aum Shinrikyo of Sarin gas into the Tokyo subway system. Some of these details might
not have found their way into the world’s newscasts back then:
Aum Shinrikyo's next major act of violence would serve as a wake-up call to the world
regarding the prospects of weapons of mass destruction and terrorism. On the morning of
March 20, 1995, packages were placed on five different trains in the Tokyo subway system.
The packages consisted of plastic bags filled with a chemical mix and wrapped inside
newspapers.
Once placed on the floor of the subway car, each bag was punctured with a sharpened
umbrella tip, and the material was allowed to spill onto the floor of the subway car. As the
liquid spread out and evaporated, vaporous agent spread throughout the car.
Tokyo was experiencing a coordinated, simultaneous, multi-point assault. The attack was
carried out at virtually the same moment at five different locations in the world's largest
city: five trains, many kilometers apart, all converging on the center of Tokyo. The
resulting deaths and injuries were spread throughout central Tokyo.
First reports came from the inner suburbs and then, very quickly, cries for help began to
flow in from one station after another, forming a rapidly tightening ring around the station
at Kasumagaseki. This station serves the buildings that house most of the key agencies of
the Japanese government. Most of the major ministries, as well as the national police
agency, have their headquarters at Kasumagaseki.
By the end of that day, 15 subway stations in the world's busiest subway system had been
affected. Of these, stations along the Hbiya line were the most heavily affected, some with
as many as 300 to 400 persons involved. The number injured in the attacks was just under
3,800. Of those, nearly 1,000 actually required hospitalization—some for no more than a
few hours, some for many days. A very few are still hospitalized. And 12 people were dead.
Within 48 hours of the subway attack, police were carrying out raids against Aum
Shinrikyo facilities throughout Japan. Police entered cult facilities carrying sophisticated
detection systems and wearing military-issued chemical gear (which was issued to the
Tokyo police the week before the subway attack).
The real target of the raids that began [three days earlier] was the building known as
Satyan 7, a supposed shrine to the Hindu god Shiva, the most prominent figure in the Aum
Shinrikyo religious pantheon. In reality, the building housed a moderately large-scale
, f y p f p
capping hostages. If something was going to be done, it needed to be done ASAP.
Despite orders not to engage, Master Sergeant Joshua Wheeler left his position and ran
head-on into the battle.
Under heavy enemy AK-47 fire, Wheeler calmly set up a breaching charge, stacked up his
Delta troops, and blew the wall. He charged in, guns blazing, but sadly was hit by a burst of
enemy fire that was directed at the breach. He became the first American soldier killed in
the fight against ISIS in Iraq.
Behind him, the rest of the Peshmerga and Delta Force raced through the breaching hole,
firing and blasting with rifles and grenades in every direction. The assault operation was
quick, vicious, and decisive. In minutes, Allied troops had blitzed through the prison facility
and taken it over, killing over twenty of the enemy, taking five ISIS fighters prisoner, and
driving the enemy back with a hail of automatic weapons fire. The rescuers reached the
prison’s cell block under heavy fire, cut the gates open, and were shocked to find that
instead of 20 Peshmerga fighters, the prison held nearly 80 people – most of them innocent
Iraqi civilians. All of the prisoners had been slated to be executed at dawn.
The Black Hawks came under heavy ground fire as they evacuated the soldiers and
hostages, but the only casualty was MSGT Wheeler, a man who died a heroic death while
saving the lives of 80 people from a gruesome execution. He was brought back to the U.S.
for burial on Sunday.
As the Black Hawks pulled away, a flight of F-15 Strike Eagles blew the prison apart with
enough JDAM missiles to crater the earth.
Ben Thompson, #Badassoftheweek (10.26.2015) (excerpts)
In a passage partly excerpted here, Thompson takes a core sample from what appears to be –
and perhaps always has been – the soul of the special operator from Roland, OK:
This guy would go to school all day, work nights and weekends as a roofer (one of the most
utterly-brutal jobs on the face of this earth, especially when you’re doing that shit in the
plains of Oklahoma in the dead of summer), and then still manage to change his little bro’s
diapers and put food on the table for his sisters.
The ABC affiliate in Ft. Smith reported that more than 600 attended the Muldrow memorial
service for “Josh Wheeler.”
Gideon’s Warriors Are Needed Now More Than Ever
h k h d ld d d d h h
One of those, U.S Senator James Lankford, talked in some detail about ISIL and the nature of
the threat that MSGT Wheeler and his team of Delta operators, were fighting. Those remarks
tend to support Ben Thompson’s graphic description of acts by ISIL that appear to have
prompted the rescue mission in which MSGT Josh Wheeler was killed.
Here’s how Ben Thompson put it when he featured the Cherokee from Oklahoma four days
after he was KIA.
. . . For weeks, the ISIS fighters in the region had been rounding up all threats to their rule,
herding them to this camp, and systematically executing them. These maniacs were so over-
the-top in their quest to cleanse the countryside of their enemies that they were literally
arresting and murdering non-combatant civilians for no reason other than that they
happened to be related to Iraqi police officers. Eleven beheaded, burned bodies had been
hung from the bridge near the compound. Three mass graves were clearly visible on
satellite imagery. A fourth had been dug, but hadn’t been filled yet.
The Kurdish Peshmerga wanted their boys back. They were going in, tonight, with or
without U.S. assistance.
Special Operations Command ordered Delta Force to grab their shit and get ready for a
fight.
Among the Delta operators who slapping mags into their M4s, powering up their night
vision, and sprinting out to the waiting Black Hawk transport helicopters was Master
Sergeant Joshua L. Wheeler. A 20-year battle-hardened combat vet from Roland,
Oklahoma, Wheeler is basically what you’d get if you crossed Captain America with Snake
Eyes from G.I. Joe and then turned him loose on the Taliban with a heavy machine gun. A
quiet, even-tempered family man who always told his wife he was going out on “a training
mission” every time he deployed boots-first into a combat zone, this guy probably
volunteered for more over-the-top white-knuckle firefights than an Arnold Schwarzenegger
movie marathon over the course of two decades hand-delivering Democracy from the
barrel of an assault rifle.”
. . .The clock had just clicked over to October 22, 2015, when the Black Hawks began
unloading Delta Force and Peshmerga troops outside the ISIS prison. The mission was
clear – Peshmerga would go in, breach the walls with explosives, and break the prisoners
out. Delta was only there to provide a perimeter. They were not supposed to engage.
Of course, as tends to happen, shit got messed up.
Peshmerga demo guys got to the wall and detonated the charge, but it didn’t work. They
weren’t getting through the wall. Time was of the essence – the ISIS guards had now been
alerted, and it would be mere seconds before they’d set up a defensive perimeter and start
An investigative reporter who worked for the local NBC affiliate the day of the bombing was
among those who suspected there was more to the story. When her book detailing her
investigation into a Middle-Eastern connection came out, it drew praise from top-shelf
national security talent.
One of those was a public high school graduate from Tulsa who wasn’t quite satisfied with his
high school diploma: R. James Woolsey – Stanford undergrad, Rhodes Scholar, Yale-trained
lawyer, General Counsel to the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee, Undersecretary of the
Navy, veteran of 4 presidential administrations and Director of Central Intelligence from
1993 until January 1995, etc. He had this to say about the book:
This fascinating product of Jayna Davis's near-decade of brave, thorough, and dogged
investigative reporting effectively shifts the burden of proof to those who would still
contend that McVeigh and Nichols executed the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing without the
support of a group or groups from the Middle East.
The wreckage of the Murrah federal building and the lives that were blown apart that day
were quickly cordoned off with a high chain-link fence set many blocks away from the site of
the blast. But it was just two and a half hours west of Roland, Oklahoma on Interstate 40.
Joshua Wheeler enlisted in the U.S. Army the following month.
Joshua Wheeler: Bad Ass of the Week, case # 235490312434 (10.26.2015)
A note re source: Researcher, award-winning author, and power behind
badassoftheweek.com since 2004, Ben Thompson is, according to his Harper-Collins author
bio, “considered by many to be the world's foremost expert on badassitude.”
I’ve checked. Ben Thompson’s legit. Yes, he adopts a different tone than would, say, the
author of a RAND Corp. report or something from DOD. But then I don’t know if any of those
writers has been recognized – as Mr. Thompson has – for presenting war and warrior history
to kids in a way that makes them want to learn. Perhaps seeing the battle in Kirkuk Province
through lenses provided courtesy of badassoftheweek.com will help Delta operator Joshua
Wheeler stick with us for a while.
Joshua Wheeler: a Cherokee Bad Ass
This Bad Ass profile of MSGT Wheeler provides some details not covered in other open
sources that were reviewed. And its count of 80 persons being rescued differs from the
number of 70 that appears in other open sources and which was given in floor speeches from
both of Oklahoma’s U.S. senators on Nov. 16, 2015.
simultaneous, multi-point assault.”
Later that day, Nicholas Kristof described the scene for the New York Times: “Subway
entrances soon looked like battlefields, as injured commuters lay gasping on the ground,
some of them with blood gushing from the nose or mouth.”
Japanese special operators from police districts were already in a battle with the cult, which
was estimated to have 40,000 members worldwide and a big pocketbook. But after the
subway attack, Japan began to sharpen its spear. A year after the attack on the subway, after
training with the German GSG9, French GIGN, and the British SAS, Japan’s Special Assault
Team (SAT) went active.
But it was a terrorist attack just one month later
and much closer to Sequoyah County that
would forever change the lives of many
Oklahomans. At 9:02 a.m. on April 19, 1995, a
rental truck packed with explosives detonated
in front of the nine-story Alfred P. Murrah
Federal Building in downtown Oklahoma City.
The explosion sheared off the building’s north
wall and damaged or destroyed more than 300
other buildings. Body count after a two-week,
multi-jurisdictional rescue effort? 168.
Nineteen of those were young children, most of
them just dropped off at a second-story daycare
that opened in the Murrah building three weeks
earlier.
Early media coverage in Oklahoma and beyond blamed the attack in mid-America on Middle
East terrorists. CBS co-anchor Connie Chung: “This is the deadliest terror attack on U.S. soil
ever. A U.S. government source has told CBS News that it has Middle East terrorism
written all over it.”
In following days, the official narrative switched to U.S. “homegrown” terrorism at the hand
of a decorated Iraq-war veteran and 2 others he knew from the Army.
But not everyone in Oklahoma was sure that was all there was to it. Among Oklahomans not
quite ready to buy the government’s story were a number of persons who called in tips to the
FBI following the release of a sketch of a person of interest with Middle-Eastern features.
Mainstream media were among those who aired stories that didn’t quite accept the official
narrative.
got a lot of press. Everywhere.
Of course, people die from violence all the time and some of it makes the news. But these
events seized control of conversations in Sequoyah County, OK and everywhere else.
Chairman of the U.S. House Committee on Homeland Security Rep. Michael McCaul (TX-10)
wrote about the 1993 World Trade Center bombing in a Feb. 26, 2013 opinion piece in the
New York Daily News: “. . . Radical terrorism once largely limited to the Middle East had
come to America.”
Fast forward to early October of 1993: In what’s been called the “Battle of Mogadishu,” U.S.
counter-terrorism forces faced their deadliest firefight since Vietnam. The 15-hour battle on
the African continent left 18 Americans dead, 73 injured. Two Black Hawk helicopters were
downed by enemy fire. And U.S. Army pilot Mike Durant was captured and held by Somali
militants for 11 days.
An undated article on militaryfactory.com described what the world saw on TV: “The public
forum mainly remembers the image of dead, half-naked, mutilated soldiers being dragged
through the streets of the city . . . .”
It seems that the pace of terrorist attacks that got worldwide media coverage quickened with
a Christmas Eve 1994 hijacking in Libya’s next-door neighbor. The 54-hour ordeal began
when four Algerians from the Armed Islamic Group (G.I.A.) hijacked an early morning Air
France flight in Algiers.
Hijackers shot dead 3 passengers. The third one, whose body the terrorists dropped onto the
tarmac, was unlucky number 1 following the terrorists’ threat to kill a passenger every 30
minutes that the plane wasn’t allowed to take off.
The terrorists’ destination of demand? Paris, where the GIA members planned to blow apart
the Airbus A300 over the Eiffel Tower.
French authorities decided that they could do a better job of addressing the crisis than could
their former colony. So during a “fuel stop” at the French port city of Marseille, three teams
of special operators from National Gendarmes Intervention Group (G.I.G.N.) “stormed the
Air France jetliner, killing the four hijackers in a [17 minute . . .] firefight and freeing the
plane's 173 passengers and crew. Miraculously, none of the rescuers or hostages perished
during the assault. . . .” The raid was broadcast on live TV.
Three months later and nearly half a world away, members of Aum Shinrikyo cult
simultaneously released Sarin, a deadly nerve agent, into five widely separated Tokyo subway
lines, all converging on the center of the world’s largest city. As Kyle B. Olson explained in an
August 1999 bioterrorism article for CDC, “Tokyo was experiencing a coordinated,
meaningful law enforcement. And the law officers they did have kept getting killed. The
National Park Service reports that from 1875 – 1896, 65 Deputy U.S. Marshals were killed in
the line of duty in “Indian Territory.”
The vacuum left Deputy U.S. Marshal and High Sheriff of the Cherokee Nation Sam Sixkiller,
a broad range of interesting work. His “main problems were the whiskey bootleggers, cattle
thieves, murders, rapists, timber thieves, land squatters, train robbers, card sharks, and
prostitutes servicing the railroad towns.”
The Death Penalty in the former Indian Country
By more than 66%, Oklahoma voters declared on Nov. 8, 2016 that they’re quite happy with
their death penalty, and they don’t want anyone messing with it. That’s nothing new. Pro-
execution Christianity and “Frontier Justice” have long been braided together in this part of
Oklahoma.
Residents come by their support honestly. Word gets around when 3 Deputy U.S. Marshals
get killed every year. And in 1875, when Judge Isaac Parker first took the bench at the federal
court that had jurisdiction over Indian Territory, death was the mandatory minimum
sentence for certain crimes.
But it wasn’t just federal law or jurors in the federal district court at Ft. Smith that showed an
affinity for capital punishment. The Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Creek and Seminole had
their own law enforcement and court systems with jurisdiction over their own citizens. They,
too, had capital punishment.
The only question among these tribes was whether to hang ‘em or shoot ‘em. After all, Indian
Territory was, according to a Ft. Smith newspaper, a “rendezvous of the vile and wicked from
everywhere.”
In the Crosshairs
The people who nurtured Joshua Wheeler from his birth in Roland, OK until his graduation
from high school six miles down the road were by time of the 1996 U.S. Senate campaign,
already feeling under threat from forces and events at home and abroad. All of it amplified by
a concurrent U.S. presidential contest and races for other state and federal elective offices.
It was an election season that was often cast as a contest between American morality and
American moral decline. Throughout these counties, 1996 was a year when campaigns and
evangelical churches often blurred whatever line still stood between them.
Beginning just 37 days after President Clinton’s 1993 Inauguration, bad things happened that
got a lot of press Everywhere
Muskogee and died at age 84, in 2002.
There’s something else about the people Josh Wheeler came from. Native-American or not,
they honored then and, I trust, honor now those who have served in uniform.
In small town Northeast Oklahoma, they applaud and wave the stars-n-stripes when veterans
march, or ride by in open-top cars in local parades. They may defer to them in line at the
Piggly Wiggly. And they elect those they trust to watch out for those who watched out for us.
There’s another thing. If, by chance, the planets are seriously out of alignment, the folks
around here “honor” veterans by charging them with the all-important task of judging the
best severed and deep fried calf testicles.
These people get this stuff better than most. They know that the choice about whether to call
an action a “war” or a “police action” or a “train and assist” or God knows what else – that
choice is most of all a marketing decision. Folks in this part of Oklahoma know that no
matter what you call it, warriors fight and too often die – right away or over hours or weeks
and months or until a suffering veteran is laid to rest decades later.
These counties also tend to do a pretty good job of supporting veterans organizations. In fact,
Tulsa’s American Legion Post 1 was established in 1919 and is considered the nation’s oldest
continuously operating post in the country.
The 1996 election season followed deadly violence against civilians and service members.
Some of it at home. Some of it abroad. All of it making world news. All of it delivered by the
media into the homes and workplaces and schools and churches of Northeastern Oklahoma.
So maybe, just maybe in the months leading up the 1996 election season, everyone
appreciated our veterans a little more than usual.
Lock ‘em Up
A brief word about Crime and Punishment in MSGT Wheeler’s corner of Oklahoma. Unless
someone’s personal experiences allow her to look at criminal justice issues differently from
everyone around her, it’s easy to forget that there's more than one side to a story. More than
one side to human beings.
My years prosecuting and defending criminal defendants, as well as spending a lot of time
visiting with clients in various county jails and in state and federal prisons here and there
give me some ideas about where Joshua Wheeler might come down on criminal justice
issues. But I can’t say for sure.
For the ancestors of the area’s current residents – family whose stories get passed down from
one generation to the next – living in Indian Territory meant living with little, if any,
businesses or go to work as
private contractors for the myriad
of governments, corporations, and
individuals who need and can pay well for such specialized services.
“Josh” Wheeler was not only a proud American. He was proud of his Cherokee heritage. And
all of his service, from his first days in Army Infantry to a Special Forces warrior in “Delta
Force,” is part of a proud tradition among Native Americans.
Writing in Huff Post in May 2015, the director of the Smithsonian National Museum of the
American Indian, summarized that tradition. “American Indians serve in their country’s
armed forces in greater numbers per capita than any other ethnic group, and they have
served with distinction in every major conflict for over 200 years.”
According to a November 2015 post on the tribe’s website, the “Cherokee Nation estimates
there are more than 4,000 Cherokee veterans.” Two of those warriors were from towns not
far from Roland and Muldrow, OK. And they had done the kind of deeds that we should
always tell people about. The kinds of deeds that earn the term “hero,” no matter how
unwelcome that label may be to those who wear it.
Billy Bob Walkabout was from up the road in Tahlequah, capital of the Cherokee Nation. Like
Wheeler, Walkabout was an Airborne Ranger. He’d served in Company F, 58th Infantry
Regiment, 101st Airborne Division. His valor in combat in Vietnam earned him “five Silver
Stars (incl. one upgrade to Distinguished Service Cross), ten Bronze Star Medals, five with
Valor device, one Army Commendation Medal (including one valor device and two oak leaf
clusters), and six Purple Hearts.”
Seventeen minutes to the west of Muldrow is Sallisaw, the hometown of another Cherokee
warrior, Jack Cleveland Montgomery. Lt. Montgomery is among 29 Native Americans to be
awarded the Medal of Honor since the award was first established during the American Civil
War. It’s the “highest and most prestigious personal military decoration that may be
awarded to recognize U.S. military service members who distinguished themselves by acts
of valor.”
It was Lt. Montgomery’s service in Italy during World War II that earned him the accolade.
The lengthy official citation that was given with the medal explains in great detail exactly how
Lt. Montgomery single-handedly did all of this:
“His fearless, aggressive, and intrepid actions that morning, accounted for a total of 11
enemy dead, 32 prisoners, and an unknown number of wounded.”
Lt. Montgomery returned to “Indian Territory” after the war. He worked for the VA out of
Muskogee and died at age 84 in 2002
there for us.
It’s true that county courthouse dockets in the Northeastern 20 feature many of the same
criminal charges you see in the bigger cities: domestic violence, drunk driving, shoplifting,
child endangerment, theft, sexual assault, the occasional murder, and so on. Families
sometimes mix it up, too.
There’s no question that agricultural communities like those in the Northeast 20 have also
suffered the outsized destruction from methamphetamine and the scourge of opioids. In
June, Oklahoma became the fourth state in the nation to sue opioid manufacturers.
Treatment resources for drug and alcohol addiction can be hard to find anywhere. But it’s
even harder when you come from a part of the state with smaller, widely dispersed
communities, limited ability to invest in community services, and few ways to get from here
to there if you don’t have a vehicle, can’t keep the one you have running, or lost your license
along the path to addiction.
My work that 1996 campaign season was about politics, not about practicing law. But if what
I’ve encountered in courthouses in similar rural communities in Oklahoma and Tennessee is
a guide, then family will likely be there for you if you get in trouble. At least eventually.
And unlike Tulsa or Oklahoma City, let alone New York and Chicago and L.A., sometimes the
prosecutor and the defense lawyer can huddle for a minute after church or during half-time
at Friday night’s game, or in a hall at the courthouse and haggle for justice.
At first blush, the process can look a lot like the negotiating that’s been done through millenia
in any one of the numberless local souqs that dot the ancient lands where Delta operator
Josh Wheeler made an exchange with multi-generational impact: offering his life for the lives
of scores of parents and children and siblings who, it turns out, might not be that different
from his own.
It’s an Honor to Serve
Master Sergeant Wheeler enlisted
in the U.S. Army in May of 1995.
And he stayed for nearly 20 years,
even as an increasingly
threatening international security
environment created more jobs
with higher pay for special
operators who start successful
By 1996, the vast part of Northeastern Oklahoma that was rural offered a number of locally
sufficient but isolated, limiting employment opportunities. A large plastics manufacturing
facility here. And there, hidden off the main road, a medical-grade sterile plant that makes
replacement parts for warplanes. A glass factory not far from Tulsa.
County governments and state social service agencies and public utilities employed people.
Hospitals. Retailers. The VA medical center in Muskogee. Bacone College and Northeastern
State University are among the educational institutions that hired folks. So did law
enforcement. And tribal governments. Tribal-run casinos would improve the lives of many
Native Americans, but at that time the tribes and the State of Oklahoma were still mud-
wrestling over what kinds of gaming would be allowed.
Interstate highways vivisect the northeastern 20. I – 44 cuts a diagonal through Tulsa
northeasterly to the far corner where Oklahoma, Kansas, Missouri, and Arkansas meet up.
Interstate 40 slices horizontally out of Oklahoma City, ultimately cutting through three of the
1996 - assigned counties before entering MSGT Wheeler’s Sequoyah County, then exiting at
Ft. Smith, Arkansas. Of course, Oklahoma has long thrown in a turnpike here and there for
good measure.
Like in much of the rest of the country, interstate highways proved good for multi-state and
international commerce. But the sacrifice to be made for that benefit were the collective souls
of smaller communities that once prospered from networks of state and county roads. The
same freeways that made it harder for the children of these counties to find work at home
made for a much quicker, easier trip away from their families and the communities they had
known as they went in search of work in cities thousands of miles away. Often on the coasts.
You’ve Always Got Your Kin
Flyover Country like the old “Indian Territory” never has and likely never will match the
myriad of things to do and see and learn and earn in global cities like New York and London,
Tokyo and Sydney. In places like Roland and Muldrow, Oklahoma, going to “the city” can
easily mean Little Rock or Oklahoma City or Tulsa. Or, for the more adventurous and
aggressive drivers, the Dallas/Ft.Worth metroplex.
But close to home, events such as Vinita’s “World’s Biggest Calf Fry Festival,” Fourth of July
events in Sallisaw, or a Friday night high school football game almost anywhere, take on a
worth greater than the sum of their parts.
The people in this part of Oklahoma, the people special operator Wheeler came from, usually
don’t get it when those of us who are third-culture kids tell them they have it so great. You
see, people like Josh Wheeler already have what we’ve always wanted: a sense of rootedness,
a sense of place, the confidence that we belong to family and community who will always be
there for us
God picks leaders, both good and bad (“Everyone must submit to governing authorities. For
all authority comes from God, and those in positions of authority have been placed there by
God.” Romans 13:1, NLT)
God’s been busy. Oklahoma voters picked the GOP nominee in all but one of the last 16 or 17
times at bat. And in the last 4 elections, including 2016, the GOP presidential nominee won
all 20 counties in this corner of Oklahoma, as well as all the other 57 counties in the state.
Work Hard. Be Tough
Everything I know about the people from these 20 counties, including MSGT Wheeler’s
Sequoyah County, is that hard work was and is considered proof of good character. Resilience
has no alternative. And shame has long accompanied those – especially men - who accept
public assistance.
During the years that Joshua Wheeler took care of his brothers and sisters, took roofing jobs,
played football, and graduated from Muldrow High School, it was Tulsa County that proved a
significant magnet for diversified economic growth in the Northeastern 20. But it was the
petroleum business that paid for some of Tulsa’s elegant mansions and prospered the town of
Bartlesville to the north.
In 1996, the petroleum business was in the midst of global changes that Oklahoma couldn’t
control. Direct flights to Houston were becoming less frequent.
Perhaps the Cherokee Nation wanted to help Josh Wheeler’s family more than it did. Maybe
the tribes in this part of Oklahoma wanted to offer more in the way of social services or
supplement local healthcare services or create funds to encourage and support tribal
members who wanted to go to trade school or college. Maybe Native families could have
struggled just a little bit less.
In June of 1996, a class action lawsuit was filed that ripped an ugly scab off a long- concealed,
festering wound. Estimates said that 50,000 Native Americans in Oklahoma, including many
Cherokee, had been injured.
The lawsuit, filed in federal district court in D.C., alleged that for more than a century federal
officials systematically stole or squandered billions in royalties owed to American Indians for
oil and gas extraction and other activities on lands the Dept. of the Interior held in trust for
them.
It would be three presidents and four Interior secretaries before the case would settle. In
approving the $3.4 billion settlement, U.S. District Judge Thomas Hogan said that the
legitimacy of the Natives’ claims could not be questioned.
But politics has always had its own version of the fickle football fan. Writing in National
Review in March 2016, Kevin Williamson said,
The truth about these dysfunctional, downscale communities is that they deserve to die.
Economically, they are negative assets. Morally, they are indefensible. . . The white
American underclass is in thrall to a vicious, selfish culture whose main products are
misery and used heroin needles. . .
It’s not hard to argue that the corner of Oklahoma that gave birth to Delta Force warrior
Joshua Wheeler is a land of perceived moral clarity. A land in which the answers to difficult
spiritual and theological questions are certain. Certain because they’re rooted in the
widespread belief and practice of an evangelical, Protestant brand of Christianity that
considers “Old” and New Testaments to be the specifically chosen words of a Trinitarian God.
To many, the Protestant Bible contains words directly from the Divine that allow it to serve
as an instruction manual for anything humanity might encounter. Ready guidance for a
largely white population whose exposure to those who look and believe differently was in
1996 more limited than it is now. For those who take pride in claiming that this part of the
Country is the “buckle of the Bible belt,” there have been and always will be “absolutes.”
Some of these are subject to change.
Despite larger portions of rigidity and legalism than is probably necessary, these remnants of
an aspirational Indian Territory are home to a good and generous people who do what they
can for the untethered soul who finds herself in desperate straits. More often than not, even
those who believe it’s a sin for folks who are not married to each other to have sex with each
other, can find compassion for a single, teenage mother with few resources and who can sure
use some help.
But no place, no people can avoid suffering. And the widespread and deeply entrenched
belief in an omnipotent, anthropomorphic God has too often had to serve as a deep well from
which solace is drawn.
Adversity and hardship and loss can come in a lot of shapes and sizes. So whether the tragedy
is the combat death of a child or parent or sibling or a visit from a malevolent tornado that
scrapes from the face of the planet all evidence that an entire town ever existed, Oklahomans
in this corner of the state and elsewhere have for generations viewed – or at least explained –
tragedy as being “Gods will.”
The predominant faith tradition in this part of Oklahoma extends the belief in Divine
determinism to the political realm. And it uses Christian scripture to support the belief that
G d i k l d b th d d b d (“E t b it t i th iti F
It would be five decades after the Civil War before MSGT Wheeler’s part of Indian Territory
was reconnected with lands to the west. With that merger came the current-day State of
Oklahoma and the death of aspirational Indian Territory.
It would be a little more than 110 years after the Civil War that Cherokee Joshua L. Wheeler
would be born in Roland, a pin dot on a map near Ft. Smith and the Arkansas line. An
overlooked spot in the middle of flyover country.
The People Who Nurtured a Warrior
Oklahoma is a pretty conservative place to begin with. It was the last state in the Union to
allow tattooing (again), when it ended its prohibition in 2006. Oklahoma voters have picked
the GOP nominee in all but one of the last 16 or 17 trips to the wrestling mat. And in the last 4
presidential contests, the Republican ran the table.
I wrote in the Oklahoma Bar Journal in 2003 that more of those who jeopardize U.S. national
security should face the death penalty (the law makes that easier now), but I still had to ask
what it was about Oklahoma that led to the state in 2003 having ten times more people on
death row than any other state in the U.S. Tenth Circuit.
It’s Either Right or it’s Wrong
The term “flyover country” is not just a geographic descriptor for that part of the continental
U.S. that is bookended by the coasts. It’s shorthand for the people who call the place home.
Writer Matthew Wolfson equated “flyover country” with the American Midwest in a March,
2014 article in the New Republic:
Unlike many parts of the coasts, as well as the South and West where lax labor laws have
attracted multinational corporations, the Midwest enjoys a degree of insulation from
drastic changes. There’s still relatively little ethnic or religious diversity, there’s plenty of
space to own land, prices aren’t too high, there’s not too much traffic congestion and, in an
environment this familiar, people can afford to be friendly.
In a Molotov cocktail lobbed through cyberspace, The Hill contributor Mr. Duane Townsend
described some of these regional attributes and the changes they brought in November 2016
derisively. In one of the less incendiary passages – I’m not kidding – he describes the region
and its people this way:
A flyover state is the huge region between the coasts. As opposed to the eastern seaboard,
northern post-industrial states and Pacific Ocean states, they’re overwhelmingly
Republican, stanchly conservative, regressive right wing, evangelical Christian and
working class, well, the loudest, most ill-informed of them are.
g
the Ozark Forest. The area, part of
modern day Oklahoma, is nearly
halfway between the coasts and
still not the easiest of places to travel to.
On May 28, 1830, President Andrew Jackson signed into law the Indian Removal Act. And in
the years that followed, these lands became the unwanted home of, among others, five tribes
that had been “removed” from the Southeastern part of the United States: Cherokee,
Choctaw, Chickasaw, Creek and Seminole.
Perhaps it’s historical irony that the traditional Seminole lands are now home to MacDill
AFB, FL, home to U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) and U.S. Special Operations
Command (USSOCOM). Both unified commands with roles in operations such as the one in
which Delta operator Wheeler lost his life.
“Indian Territory” became one of the names used to refer to this part of modern-day
Oklahoma. But it was not an “organized,” or “incorporated” United States territory. And as
far as Congress was concerned, the U.S. did not have a territory relationship with the land.
Much like a sausage, over the years “Indian Territory” shrunk as slices were cut in order to
make formal territories. (For convenience, “Indian Territory” will be a term used here to
designate this part of current-day Oklahoma.)
In the absence of a formal territory arrangement, treaties provided the relationships that
Congress had with the Cherokee and the other tribes in Indian Territory. But during the
American Civil War, Congress gave the President the authority to abrogate by proclamation
all treaties with a tribe that was "in a state of actual hostility to the government of the United
States.”
That was pretty much the case for those tribes that had been removed from the South and
which now largely fought for the Confederacy. Perhaps by a four-pack of historical curiosity,
it was Brigadier General Stand Watie – like Master Sergeant Wheeler, also Cherokee – who
(1) joined the minority in signing the 1835 treaty that surrendered Cherokee lands in Georgia
and forced the Cherokees’ move to Indian Territory; (2) in 1861 raised and then commanded
the Cherokee Mounted Rifles, the first Cherokee volunteer regiment in the Confederate
Army; (3) led his troops in the only combat action to happen in the Sequoyah District during
the Civil War when they ambushed a Union steamboat on the Arkansas River in June, 1864;
and (4) on June 23, 1865, earned his place as the last Confederate general to surrender to the
Union.
Indian Territory would soon be sliced again on the west to punish the tribes for siding with
the Confederacy. Settlers and land speculators began to salivate.
I ld b fi d d f h Ci il W b f MSGT Wh l ’ f I di T i
He explained that the kind of structural damage discussed in The Lancet article can only be
found post-mortem.
“Ryan’s brain damage was never picked up on X-ray, MRI, CAT or PET scans, let alone
blood markers.”
Blast-induced structural damage to the brain has been around a long time. As the Fourtieth
Sergeant-at-Arms for the United States Senate put it, “. . . we have been effectively blowing
ourselves up since World War I.
”An "Unseeable" From Flyover Country
During the summer and fall of 1996, I coordinated and implemented selected activities in
support of an Army veteran’s reelection to the United States Senate. My zone of
responsibility included the entirety of Oklahoma’s 1st Congressional District, a big chunk of
OK-02 and a sliver of OK–03. Twenty counties in northeastern Oklahoma, almost all of
which had entrenched majorities of conservative aka “Blue Dog” Democrats. Master Sergeant
Joshua L Wheeler was born and raised in one of those.
Shoved up against the Oklahoma / Arkansas line at Ft. Smith is Sequoyah County, named for
the Cherokee credited with the birth of the tribe’s written language. And it was there, on the
12th anniversary of President Kennedy’s assassination that Joshua Lloyd Wheeler was born
to a mother with far more troubles than she had resources. She would be single much of the
time that her children were growing up, and the family often needed help from grandparents
and government assistance to get by. Her kids are heirs of what media reports describe as
their late mother’s two marriages with “troubled and abusive men.”
As Dan Lamothe wrote in the Washington Post for Memorial Day 2016, it was there, “[i]n a
tiny trailer near the eastern Oklahoma border, [that] Joshua L. Wheeler played a central
role in raising his five younger siblings. He’d cook them breakfast, work odd jobs to bring in
extra money, and even fasten his little’s sister’s hair in ponytails before school.”
The Lands that Sired Joshua
Wheeler
Besides metropolitan Tulsa and,
to a lesser extent, Bartlesville and
Muskogee, this part of Oklahoma
was in 1996 largely rural. Terrain
ranges from the tallgrass prairie of
the Osage to the dense woods of
For many who do the kind of work that Delta operator Joshua Wheeler did for much of his
military career, there’s yet another job hazard. As one former SEAL explains in writing about
the 2017 suicide of his son, Ryan (also a SEAL), new scientific evidence reveals that the
psychically shitty situation that “Sig” said typical operators face with stoicism, can be due, at
least in part, to violent structural damage to the brain.
U.S. Dep’t of Defense - Funded Research: High Price Paid by Special Operators and Their
Families
A little over three weeks ago, Navy SEAL Ryan Larkin was laid to rest at Arlington National
Cemetery. He ended his life after tremendous suffering and repeated inability to get relief
from blast-induced TBI as well as PTS.
In a letter titled “Traumatic Brain Injuries are a Physical Problem, Not an Emotional One”
his father, Mr. Frank J. Larkin, a former U.S. Navy SEAL and the [recently retired] Sergeant-
at-Arms of the United States Senate, wrote,
Like many special operators suffering from PTS and TBI, it was a struggle for Ryan to
move through daily tasks; sleep was elusive and nightmares were abundant. He was
always on guard for something to happen, often dealing with unannounced attacks of
anxiety and depression. Ryan often expressed he was haunted by things he experienced in
combat; where at times he questioned his own survival.
Ryan’s father expressed a frustration voiced by many veterans – special ops or not - and their
families:
“Throughout Ryan’s painful journey, the “system” defaulted toward treating him as a
behavioral problem or a mental health patient. The “system” hung all types of labels on him
to justify their assessments and actions.”
Mr. Larkin referred his readers to a June 2016 article in The Lancet Neurology, which
revealed findings from a U.S. Department of Defense – funded study to determine what
impact blast exposure has on the structure of the human brain.
https://files.acrobat.com/a/preview/5bde91bb-dda5-43f6-8257-e8add28afd04
As Mr. Larkin explained,
The new injury pattern of concern for NSW and our larger special operations community is
different, in that the blast wave from an explosive detonation travels through all the brain
tissue at high speed, causing micro-tears, scarring and a unique pattern of injury very
different from CTE.
pilot, and shut out emotions that might keep us from carrying on.
“Sig” doesn’t claim that the special operator can’t suffer psychic trauma in the months and
years following one mission or many missions. But he seems to tell us how the “typical”
special operator deals with that trauma:
Stoicism. Finally, we learn in SEAL training to “suffer in silence,” and it is a trait we try to
carry with us throughout our lives. Operators just learn to deal with shitty situations, and
we revel in them over time, often to the point of finding humor in horrible circumstances. . .
.Efforts to Train a Bulletproof Mind
Shortly after 9/11, Peter Maass wrote in the New York Times Magazine that “. . .Today, the
military believes, the United States is fighting an intimate war in the right way, because
soldiers have been prepared and equipped in a manner that increases the prospect of their
victory and decreases the prospect of their injury – whether physical or psychological.” The
result, writes Maass, is what a former Ranger, professor, and author of On Killing: The
Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society, refers to as “the bulletproof mind.”
How to get there? Maass quotes from Lt. Col. Dave Grossman’s first book: “What makes it
work is the single most powerful and reliable behavior modification process yet discovered
by the field of psychology, and now applied to the field of warfare: operant conditioning.”
When combined with stress inoculation training at the John F. Kennedy Special Warfare
Center and School at Ft. Bragg, the result, as Maass puts it, is that “Special Forces soldiers
may develop cold-blooded reflexes, but they are also trained to know when not to kill.”
But reflex-quick killing carries a risk for the special operator. Quoting a then-recent article by
a philosophy instructor at West Point, Maass writes that such efficient killing “can be a
psychological time bomb”:
“Training soldiers to kill efficiently is good for them because it helps them survive on the
battlefield,'' wrote Maj. Peter Kilner, ''However, training soldiers to kill without explaining
to them why it is morally permissible to kill in combat is harmful. . . . When soldiers kill
reflexively -- when military training has effectively undermined their moral autonomy --
they morally deliberate their actions only after the fact. If they are unable to justify what
they have done, they often suffer guilt and psychological trauma.''
In 2014 RAND Project Air Force issued the study, “Enhancing Performance under Stress
Inoculation Training for Battlefield Airmen.” The report also examined how Special
Operators from other branches receive SIT. But it cautioned that “[t]his report is not
intended to inform issues related to stress and mental health (e.g., post-traumatic stress
disorder [PTSD], depression, or anxiety). Consequently, we do not review research
evaluating the effects of SIT to either treat or prevent psychopathology (e.g., PTSD).”
complications related to Agent Orange exposure, USA Today quoted the Ranger as saying
that war is worse than hell.
Per USA Today:
He said he struggled with failed marriages, thoughts of suicide and years of self- isolation
when he would spend six months at a time alone.
Everyone I went to high school with thought I was dead for years. They're amazed when
they see me and they say, 'You're not dead."' Walkabout said.
He often refused to sleep near his wife, afraid he would strangle her in his sleep or try to
push her under the bed to protect her from the bombs he imagined were going off.
Tragic responses to combat are nothing new. But we keep rebranding them.
[Brief video interviews and/or other sourced information re combat trauma and suicides
among current and former military personnel appear at the end of this article. So too are
VA-reported 24/7 suicide prevention contacts for veterans, service members, and their
loved ones, even those who are not registered with VA or enrolled in VA health care.]
Over the years, militaries in the U.S. and in other NATO countries have doubled down on the
selection process for special operators as well as the training they receive. And national
experts in participating NATO countries appear to agree on what psychological, cognitive,
and physical qualities SOF “ideal candidates” have.
These traits are discussed in an unclassified October 2012 NATO technical report entitled,
“Psychological and Physiological Selection of Military Special Operations Forces Personnel.”
Among other qualities, the ideal operator “must be stable and stress-resistant, able to
overcome fears, and endure and maintain cognitive abilities (e.g., attentiveness, reaction
speed and accuracy) in persistent, physically and psychologically demanding
environments.”
How these psych traits converge to protect the mind of the special operator doing his job is
explained in the first of five SO “personality traits” posted by “Sig” at SOFREP.com in
October of 2014.
Stress Resistance. The typical individual who succeeds in BUD/S, Ranger school, or the
Q-Course, has a high resistance to stress. In fact, a man who can make it through such a
trial has an almost inhuman ability to absorb a stressful situation and carry on through it,
while suppressing whatever other emotions might be trying to bubble up during the course
of the stressful conditions. This can manifest itself in an often limited emotional range in
everyday social interactions, but in combat conditions, it is ideal. We enter a mental auto-
those sent to war than valor and courage ever would.
In a Sept. 26, 2017 column in the Indianapolis Star, U.S Army veteran and seasoned political
scientist Pierre Atlas strips away an insincere varnish from the historical record. In writing
about U.S. decisions about Vietnam that go all the way back to 1945, Professor Atlas writes
about “what was arguably the most egregious aspect of the war: one U.S. administration
after another, Democratic and Republican, knew that the war was unwinnable but kept
sending more troops nevertheless. They were more concerned with losing face than with
losing the lives of young Americans.”
A Rare Peak Inside the Machine
A “groundbreaking” exhibition re Special Operations opened in October at the Australian
War Memorial in Canberra.
Former Australian Minister of Defence, Special Representative to NATO, and current
director of the Australian War Memorial Dr. Brendan Nelson told the Sydney Morning
Herald that the new exhibition is a first-time-ever among the "Five Eyes" Special Forces
communities of Australia, New Zealand, the United States, Canada and Britain.
Dr. Nelson explained that State secrecy about these types of operations is necessary. But he
also recognized that one consequence of secrecy is that the public has “no idea” what these
soldiers face on the frontlines of the Middle East and elsewhere around the world. Fighting in
Afghanistan has often been “as intense as the battles of the Vietnam War,” said Dr. Nelson, a
physician.
And special operators pay a high price for doing the nation’s work.
Dr. Nelson asked the Australian public not to judge these warriors before they had seen the
new exhibition. “We can’t as a nation send these young men, highly trained, highly skilled,
repeatedly into operations and expect that everything will always go according to plan,” he
said. When U.S. Sen John McCain (R-AZ) spoke to the American Legion earlier this year, he
talked about those missions that don’t go according to plan. When that happens, he urged,
it’s not for lack of valor: “To somehow equate whether a mission succeeds or not with their
bravery is a failure to understand the courage and sacrifice because these brave Americans
when they are told to go they go.”
Combat: a Costly Business
Second Lt. Billy Bob Walkabout – also a Cherokee Indian and Airborne Ranger from Eastern
Oklahoma – was awarded for his service in Vietnam the Distinguished Service Cross, a
Purple Heart, five Silver Stars and five Bronze Stars. Following his death at 57 from
complications related to Agent Orange exposure USA Today quoted the Ranger as saying
France Airbus A300, killed the four Islamist hijackers in a 17-minute firefight and freed the
plane's 173 passengers and crew. With no else on that plane having to die that Christmas.
Special operators like Joshua Wheeler are among the most agile of weapons in a nation’s
arsenal. And as Army Gen. Raymond A. Thomas III, commander of U.S. Special Operations
Command (SOCOM) said during the Aspen Security Forum in July of 2017: “We are relevant
to most if not all national security challenges.”
MSgt Joshua Wheeler was among those operators who offer precision, scale, and discretion
to politicians seeking flexibility in a game of three-level chess that’s increasingly played atop
a checker board drawn from fault lines. Special Forces warriors who are ready to go
anywhere in the world when they get the order. Special operators who train for and then
tackle tasks they’ve known and done for decades. Warriors whose job it is to tackle the new
threat within hours of anybody knowing that threat exists. And when combatants now lock
horns in cyberspace, fake news is just another weapon in the arsenal, SIGINT remains a
limited tool, and reliable intelligence assets can be hard to come by, there are places and
circumstances on the planet where the clandestine special operator may be the only one left
who can separate fact from fiction and relay critical facts to those who must make decisions
that affect the nation.
So what do a lot of special operators have in common? A July 1994 report from the U.S Naval
Health Research Center says this of Navy SEALS: “. . . SEALs are more likely to be forceful,
energetic, and to become leaders than men of the general population. The average SEAL is
also more persistent, reliable, and scrupulous, viewing life as a series of task oriented
challenges.”
The Art of War, which is still ascribed to “Sun Tzu,” contains a teaching that warriors must
find frustrating: “[h]e will win who has military capacity and is not interfered with by the
sovereign.” For it remains true that in the United States and a number of other countries,
warriors report to the political class. No matter how elite. No matter how decorated. No
matter how close to power.
Like all who serve in uniform, warriors are de facto government property. Tasked by
politicians to act in the name of national security. When and where they are told to do so.
In a November 2010 review of A. J. Langguth’s Driven West, the Pulitzer Prize - winning
biographer of Andrew Jackson, Jon Meacham, wrote of two immutable truths of the political
class, two truths with life and death consequences for the special operator: (1) “[p]olitics is
rarely logical, and politicians are, at best, flawed logicians;” and (2) “[p]hilosophical
coherence is an academic, not a political, virtue.”
But cowardice can also be a truth of the political class. And in a series of decisions that
should be seared into the American consciousness, political cowardice killed legions more of
hallowed Veterans Day, tell you a bit about him:
I know the land and the good people Joshua Wheeler came from.
A Word about Special Operators
I’ve found during research for this task that my attention
is often drawn to the special operators – smart, broadly
skilled, deliberate, resilient and quick of mind, flexible,
multi-lingual, resourceful, ever lethal. Flawed mortals to
be sure, but efficient warriors known for their loyalty,
effectiveness, and ability to get the job done even if their
silence leaves hidden cavities in a nation’s historical
record. Even if their work prompts the powers that be to
burnish the nation’s historical record with some Bondo
and fresh paint.
“Quiet Professionals” Who Manage – and Deliver - Violence
I don’t look at special operators in the same way that, as a 6-year old State Department
evacuee still living below the Sahara, I looked at the Marines who provide the visible defense
of our embassies.
I was just a privileged white kid from America. A “young’un” whose gestating geopolitical
consciousness received plenty of nourishment during his years in Africa – only some of
which came by way of a welcome wagon of Guardia Nacional, soldiers who laid a bayonet
against him and then, months later, attempted to arrest the kid before later that day charging
him with the national security crime of making a “weapon dangerous to the Republic.”
Back then those Marines represented more to me than just a force to keep me and my family
safe. They represented my country, which was an ocean away. And they were visible evidence
that proved true all the national myths into which this son and grandson of veterans had
been baptized.
As an adult in 2017, I think sobering is the term that best fits what I think I now know about
those chosen to serve as special operators – whether they be the Navy SEALs who slipped
into Pakistan and in May 2011 killed Osama bin Laden as the President watched; in Sierra
Leone, where British JSFAW Chinooks joined with SAS/SBS forces in September 2000 to
rescue captured British military trainers while under fire; or French GIGN special operators
who, at a Marseilles Christmas in 1994 and in a raid broadcast on live TV - stormed an Air
France Airbus A300 killed the four Islamist hijackers in a 17-minute firefight and freed the
die in combat against the Islamic State... The mission freed some 70 prisoners who U.S.
officials think would have been executed and dumped in a mass grave later that day.”
The Presidential Citation that accompanied a posthumously awarded Silver Star declared
that team leader Joshua Wheeler’s fearlessness, selflessness, and effectiveness in the face of
enemy fire had been critical to mission success and had saved lives. His “. . . distinctive
accomplishments,” the citation says, “are in keeping with the finest traditions of military
service. . . .”
Those Sworn to “Fight Whenever and Wherever [Their] Nation Requires”
Master Sgt Wheeler is just one of the remarkable, non-fungible warriors I might never have
heard of were it not for my own consequential duty: to do what I can to help bridge the
spreading gap in knowledge, experience, and understanding that divides the 93% of us
who’ve never served from the seven percent who have.
The need for such a bridge is urgent: it’s too easy for our overwhelming majority to make
public policy that runs right over those who’ve served this nation in uniform. And we can do
it without ever even knowing that we hit something on the road.
None of the warriors I now think I know something about even those whose valor was
“accidental” – can be squeezed into the 1,300 characters and spaces allowed for most
LinkedIn posts. And any effort to make them fit would fail.
But few would question the decision to craft a longer piece about a decorated member of
“Delta Force,” a special operator who was killed in combat while saving others, a warrior who
deployed at least 14 times and whose “acts of heroism involving conflict with an armed
enemy” had been honored repeatedly.
It’s not Master Sgt. Wheeler’s many awards or his hidden service in 1st SFOD-D that has
prompted quiet reflection about him every day for weeks. It’s the fact that his life and service
demonstrate two truths that can kill if we fail to learn them. First, Cherokee Joshua Wheeler
from rural Oklahoma shows us how wrong we are to assume that “unseeables” of any stripe
are all the same, will never make the world a better place, and that no one will miss them
when they’re gone.
And Master Sergeant Wheeler, his widow, his four sons and other family aren’t asking us.
They’re telling us in unison that there is a second lethal truth: that we visit unforgivable evil
on the very ones who have kept us safe when we dare to insist that the civilian lives of most of
us in the modern, industrialized world are really no better and no worse than the lives of our
veterans and their families.
But there’s another reason that I keep thinking about this particular warrior and now, on this
center of Tokyo.
But this is also the story of an older brother who from his youth fed and clothed and
protected his 5 younger siblings, a big brother who by accident or purpose, enlisted in the
Army the month after what was until then the deadliest terrorist attack on American soil. 168
dead. Nineteen of them babies and young children. Their little shoes to become an exhibit
none should forget. And all the carnage . . . just two and a half hours west of the economically
struggling patch of eastern Oklahoma where that warrior had been born and raised.
This is a story about that same man, by 2015 a highly decorated member of “Delta Force,”
who died in combat with ISIL a little more than two years ago. A warrior who by creed
assured the nation that, "I will never surrender though I am the last." A special operator
whose last mission saved 70 lives destined for a waiting mass grave. As U.S. Senator Jim
Inhofe (R-OK) told his Senate colleagues during a floor speech on November 16, 2015, “I
think we all understand what Delta Force is all about. It’s a unit of the elite, the very best of
the best. That was Josh. The best of the best. A true American hero.”
The breadth and depth of this Oklahoma warrior’s valor over a 20-year career will likely
never be made public. And there may be many reasons for that. An October 10, 2017 article in
The Times (London) reveals just one of the easier-to-miss but closer-to-home reasons that
secrecy cloaks much of the work done by “special operators”: Operators like Joshua Wheeler
have families who can become targets of the same adversaries who plot to kill them: retired
SAS operator Chris Ryan told The Times that his adult daughter had become the target of an
Islamist-backed threat. A threat serious enough for her to need two years of police protection
and threat monitoring by the anti-terrorist branch.
Whatever the myriad of reasons for State secrecy surrounding special ops, what it means is
this: the research this article is built on is open source. So it may be only those with sufficient
clearance who will ever know if I told his story right.
An “Unseeable” American Hero
On Christmas Day in 1834, U. S. Rep. Davy Crockett (TN-12) wrote that the Federal policy of
removing Native Americans from their homelands was built on a particular assumption
about the nature and value of humanity: “The time has Come that man is expected to be
transfarable and as negotiable as a promisary note of hand, . . . .”
A little over two years ago and on the far side of the world, a Cherokee warrior from lands
forced on his tribe at gunpoint, testified that such a “transactional” view of humanity is a lie.
U.S. Army Master Sgt. Joshua Wheeler was the married father of 4 and a decorated member
of 1st Special Forces Operational Detachment-Delta (1st SFOD-D). As the Washington Post
wrote for Memorial Day 2016, “On Oct. 22, [2015] he became the first U.S. service member to
die in combat against the Islamic State The mission freed some 70 prisoners who U S
Let us therefore rely upon the goodness of the Cause, and the aid of the supreme Being, in
whose hands Victory is, to animate and encourage us to great and noble Actions—The Eyes
of all our Countrymen are now upon us.”
General George Washington, General Orders, July 2, 1776[i]
Author Note
In the United States, 92.7% of us have never served under arms.[1] And we - myself included
- seldom have a clue what life is like for those who do. One example: almost nothing in our
civilian reality mirrors a fundamental fact of life for our Marines, soldiers, sailors, and
airmen, as well as their families: an order to march into Hell is neither an invitation to nor an
opportunity for, a career change.[2] For this Independence Day 2018, I share the story of a
Cherokee warrior from the sticks who charged into Hell time and again to defend this nation
and its interests.
Please note: An earlier version of this article appeared on social media on Veterans’ Day
weekend 2017. Among changes that appear in this version is the inclusion after the endnotes,
of two short video clips from the James Gandolfini/HBO documentary, WARTORN:1861-
2010. These seek to answer Homer’s question of Achilles in the Odyssey: “Must you carry
the bloody horror of combat in your heart forever?”
Also provided in this American Independence Day 2018 version of this article is
sourced information re suicide among active-duty service members and veterans, including
the ungodly numbers of women who kill themselves. Reported 24/7 suicide prevention
contacts for veterans, service members, and their loved ones, even those who are not
registered with VA or enrolled in VA health care, are also provided.
Article Note
On this Veterans Day weekend 2017, I respectfully
offer this true story of a Cherokee warrior from rural
Oklahoma who, by choice or happenstance, enlisted in
the U.S. Army just five months after members of the
Armed Islamic Group (G.I.A.) hijack a passenger-
laden Air France Flight 8969 in Algiers on Christmas
Eve, 1994. It’s also a story of that same man, a soldier
who joined the Infantry only two months after
members of Aum Shinrikyo cult release Sarin, a
deadly nerve agent, at virtually the same moment into
five different subway lines . . . all converging on the
Your note was published successfully.
Combat Research and Prose
1 hr ·
Independence Day 2018: We Stil
Need Our Warriors
“Let us therefore rely upon the goodness of the Caus
and the aid of the supreme Being, in whose hands
Victory is, to animate and encourage us to great and
noble Actions—The Eyes of all our Countrymen are
now upon us.”
General George Washington, General Orders, July 2
1776[i]
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Comment ShareLike
COMBAT RESEARCH AND PROSE · WEDNESDAY, JULY 4, 2018
Independence Day 2018: We Still Need
Our Warriors
“Let us therefore rely upon the goodness of the Cause, and the aid of the supreme Being, in
whose hands Victory is, to animate and encourage us to great and noble Actions—The Eyes
of all our Countrymen are now upon us.”
General George Washington, General Orders, July 2, 1776[i]
Author Note
In the United States, 92.7% of us have never served under arms.[1] And we - myself included
- seldom have a clue what life is like for those who do. One example: almost nothing in our
civilian reality mirrors a fundamental fact of life for our Marines, soldiers, sailors, and
airmen, as well as their families: an order to march into Hell is neither an invitation to nor an
opportunity for, a career change.[2] For this Independence Day 2018, I share the story of a
Cherokee warrior from the sticks who charged into Hell time and again to defend this nation
and its interests.
Please note: An earlier version of this article appeared on social media on Veterans’ Day
weekend 2017. Among changes that appear in this version is the inclusion after the endnotes,
of two short video clips from the James Gandolfini/HBO documentary, WARTORN:1861-
2010. These seek to answer Homer’s question of Achilles in the Odyssey: “Must you carry
the bloody horror of combat in your heart forever?”
Also provided in this American Independence Day 2018 version of this article is
sourced information re suicide among active-duty service members and veterans, including
the ungodly numbers of women who kill themselves. Reported 24/7 suicide prevention
contacts for veterans, service members, and their loved ones, even those who are not
registered with VA or enrolled in VA health care, are also provided.
Article Note
Edit Note