veteran’s corner
Tom Krabbenhoft
The American Legions over the top fundraiser for the Honor Flight was a HUGE success. If you missed it you missed one very good time.
As we welcome August many of us are looking back and wondering where summer went. The Canadian forest fires have made outdoor life a bit difficult. It’s a shame as we have 11 months of winter to make outdoor life difficult.
The Forest fires had me reflecting on the use of fire as a weapon. Fire itself is a weapon that can inflict casulities and pile up injuries. Many injuries can’t be more damaging to an Army than casualties, as it takes resources to treat wounded. We’ve all seen flamethrowers used in military, zombie and many other movies. This is a small scale application of fire. Fire can also be used to economically to ruin an adversary and tax their resources. It also can be used as an environmental terror weapon. Saddam withdrawing from Kuwait when they lit all the oil wells on fire is a prime example of both these.
Fire can be used as an offensive weapon. Tanks outfitted with flamethrowers flushing Japanese from their pillboxes. Or as a defensive weapon such as “scorched earth”. Scorched earth is the burning of anything of value when a Army retreats. The Russians did this in WW2 as they retreated from the Germans.
Perhaps the best use of scorched earth was used by Vlad Tepes of Wallachia. Vlad was put on notice by Mehmed 2 his reign was over that the mighty Ottoman empire was invading. Before they invaded Vlad burned everything that could be burned. He also poisoned the water supplies, set thousands of booby traps and destroyed bridges. He even diverted rivers and flooded fields to create marshes. The marshes created movement problems and hatched millions of Malaria infested mosquitoes. The Ottomans worse surprise was waiting. Vlad impaled 20,000 captured Ottoman troops on large poles. Imagine marching through this man-made hell on earth. The Ottomans lost their will to fight. Vlad forever more was known as Vlad the impaler. An author mortified by the scorched earth defense by Vlad wrote a novel inspired by him. He will be known through time as Count Dracula.
Forest Jihad. Since 2002, many Al Qeada videos, websites and magazines have urged followers to start forest fires. Montana seems to be the preferred target, as the rural home building has been booming. These videos contain information how to construct “ember bombs”. There is no way of knowing statistically if this has ever been successful, none the less it’s frightening to think about.
Next week is the anniversary of dropping the A-bomb on Japan. I’m going to write about that and F-bombs.
Didja know? The current English family has a bloodline to Vlad the Impaler. The young Princes may have a say in the future of Romania because of this.
Story ideas or veteran of the week email me 11btwk@gmail.com.