Month: November 2022

Hard Nosed Folks Both Good & Bad I am so grateful!!

SSG Lafayette Pool: The Real War Daddy by WILL DABBS

Post author By Grumpy
Post date November 28, 2022
No Comments on SSG Lafayette Pool: The Real War Daddy by WILL DABBS

Oftentimes truth is more compelling than fiction. Such was the case of the real War Daddy, SSG Lafayette Pool.

The 2014 WW2 film Fury was one of the finest war movies of the modern era. The narrative followed SSG Don “War Daddy” Collier and his tank crew through the final bitter days of the war in Europe. Crewing their M4A2 HVSS Sherman tank, Collier and his men explore such timeless concepts as fear, comradeship, sacrifice, and loss.

For gun geeks like me the real star of the movie Fury was Tiger 131.

David Ayer directed the movie, and the end result was simply epic. The weapons and equipment were spot on, and the story arc fast paced, poignant, and cool. Fury is the only war movie since 1950 to utilize a genuine German PzKpfw VI Tiger I tank. The previous film was They Were Not Divided, and it featured the same Tiger 131.

Tiger 131 is the apex predator among the Bovington Tank Museum’s inimitable collection of vintage armored vehicles. It is indeed an awesome thing up close.

Tiger 131 is maintained by the Bovington Tank Museum in Southern England and is the last operational PzKpfw VI in the world. Captured by the British in North Africa in 1942, Tiger 131 is an extraordinary piece of World War 2 history. I’ve run my hand across the side. It was pretty darn cool.

SSG Lafayette Pool made Brad Pitt’s Don Collier look like a Sunday School teacher. However, Pitt did utterly rule that captured MP44 assault rifle.

While the movie was indeed compelling, the man who actually inspired Don Collier’s character was all the more so. SSG Lafayette “War Daddy” Pool was a stone-cold warrior. SSG Pool was the most successful US tank commander of World War 2.

Origin Story

Lafayette Pool was a twin. His brother was clearly cut from the same cloth.

Lafayette Green Pool was born in 1919 in Odom, Texas, to John K. and Mary Lee Pool. His twin brother John Thomas joined the Navy and served in every major Pacific engagement from Pearl Harbor until the end of the war. Lafayette attended the Texas College of Arts and Industries and studied Engineering. At six foot two, he was also an accomplished amateur boxer, winning all 41 matches he fought. Pool even once held an exhibition match against famed heavyweight Joe Lewis.

SSG Pool was a hard-charging tanker. An aggressive, resilient, and inspirational leader, War Daddy was 100% pure unfiltered warrior.

In the summer of 1941 Pool left college and enlisted in the US Army. He was assigned to the 3d Armored Division and married Miss Evelyn Wright while on leave in December of 1942. Pool was known as an aggressive NCO. He refused a battlefield commission so he could stay close to the front, his men, and the action. His troops did indeed call him War Daddy.

The M4A1 Sherman carried a long-barreled 76mm high-velocity gun.

SSG Lafayette Pool first entered combat on June 23, 1944, commanding an M4A1 Sherman tank. He was assigned to the 3d Platoon, Company I, 32d Armored Regiment, 3d Armored Division. Pool’s crew was quite the cast of characters.

All tanks are cramped. However, the driver’s position in a Sherman was positively tomb-like. I’ve maneuvered a Sherman tank before. It was like driving a condominium.

In his own words, “My driver was PFC Wilbert Richards, five foot four at full attention. We called him “Baby”. He could have parallel parked that big Sherman in downtown New York in rush hour traffic.

The assistant driver’s position was primarily concerned with the Browning M1919A4 bow gun.

“Then there was CPL Bert “School Boy” Close, seventeen years old, still with peach fuzz on his gentle face, co-driver, and machine gunner to the stars.

The loader was responsible for keeping the big 76mm gun fed in combat.

“T/5 Del Boggs, my loader, had been arrested on manslaughter charges. The court gave him the choice of prison or the military. What could we call him but “Jailbird?”

The gunner’s position in the Sherman was one of the most confined. When buttoned up in combat the commander actually kind of wrapped around the gunner from behind.

“CPL Willis Oller was my gunner. I often bragged that he could shoot the eyebrows off a gnat at 1500 yards with our seventy-six millimeter gun. He had seen every mile of the terrain we had liberated between Normandy and the Rhine through the sights of that big gun…The imprint of tanker’s goggles permanently stained his face. We never referred to him by any name but ‘Ground Hog’.”

The Panzerfaust or “Tank Fist” was one of the most effective Nazi weapons developed during the war. A self-contained disposable antitank rocket launcher, the Panzerfaust served as inspiration for countless subsequent anti-armor designs.

Pool’s first tank, an M4A1, lasted all of six days in combat. On June 29, 1944, this Sherman was holed by a panzerfaust and written off. The crew escaped unharmed.

The P38 Lightning sported four .50-caliber machine-guns and a 20mm cannon all clustered tightly in the nose. This made the plane a superb ground-attack platform.

Pool’s second vehicle, an M4A1 (76)W, entered service on July 1^st and was destroyed on August 17^th. Pool was leading an assault into the French village of Fromental when he was mistakenly strafed by an Allied P38 Lightning fighter-bomber. The crew emerged unscathed, but the tank was a write-off.

Each of SSG Pool’s three Shermans was customized with the same “In the Mood” slathered across the side.

Pool’s third mount, also an M4A1 (76)W, survived until September 19^th of that year. Most accounts I found said it was engaged by a Panther. Pool later described the offending implement as an 88mm high-velocity flak gun. All three Shermans were marked with “In the Mood” across their hulls.

The Vehicles

The Sherman’s primary attributes were that it was cheap and reliable. We produced 49,324 copies during the course of WW2.

The M4 Sherman was the most widely used American medium tank of the war. While German tanks were frequently markedly heavier and more formidable, the Sherman was reliable, ubiquitous, and fast.

The short-barreled 75mm gun shown here was designed more for infantry support than tank vs tank engagements.

Early Shermans sported a short-barreled 75mm M3 gun intended primarily for Infantry support. High explosive rounds for the M3 were exceptionally effective against soft-skinned targets. However, in tank-on-tank engagements, short-barreled Shermans were at a supreme disadvantage.

The later 76mm round (top) was a much more capable anti-armor load than the previous stubby 75mm sort.

The answer was the M4A1 (76)W. This Sherman variant featured a 76mm T1 gun that was markedly more capable against enemy armor. Despite the similar bore diameter of these two guns the T1 fired a much larger projectile at a much higher velocity. However, the short-barreled M3 still enjoyed greater antipersonnel effects.

The prominent muzzle brake fitted to later versions of the 76mm gun helped minimize the dust signature upon firing.

The larger T1 gun invariably created a prodigious dust signature on firing that would frequently obscure the gunner’s vision for subsequent shots. The new M1A2 gun featured a muzzle brake that redirected muzzle blast out the sides. Previous variants that lacked this brake were typically still threaded to accept it. These muzzle threads were covered with an obvious thread protector.

German tanks like this Panther were formidable opponents on the battlefield.

The T1 76mm gun mounted on the M4A1 Sherman was still only marginally adequate against the most advanced German medium and heavy tanks.

The M3 75mm short-barreled gun would penetrate 88mm of rolled homogenous armor (RHA) struck flat-on at 100 meters. The T1 76mm gun could defeat some 125mm of RHA under comparable conditions. In January of 1945 after fearsome tank losses during the Battle of the Bulge, General Eisenhower asked that no more 75mm Shermans be sent to the European theater.

The M26 Pershing heavy tank was available late in the war, but General Patton felt that a greater quantity of Shermans would better support his offensive goals.

The M26 Pershing heavy tank was developed late in the war and was a proper match for the German Panthers and Tigers. However, General Patton appreciated that a larger volume of the more reliable and more maneuverable Shermans would suit his offensive needs better than slower, more resource-intensive Pershing heavy tanks. While this decision was strategically sound, many a Sherman crew was subsequently lost to German armor overmatch.

The Engagement

SSG Lafayette “War Daddy” Pool led his crew on an unprecedented tour of destruction during his time in combat in Europe during WW2.

On September 19, 1944, SSG Pool’s third “In the Mood” Sherman was riding the flanks of an assault on the Siegfried Line at Munsterbusch, Germany, to the Southwest of Aachen. In 81 days of intense combat, War Daddy had destroyed a dozen German tanks along with some 258 sundry armored vehicles and self-propelled guns in 21 separate engagements. They killed more than a thousand German troops and captured another 250. Pool and his crew were, therefore, due to rotate home for a war bond tour.

SSG Pool usually commanded his tank with his head exposed for maximum situational awareness. Note how the barrel assembly is missing from the M2 .50-caliber MG in the background of this promotional still from *Fury*. I just thought that was weird.

Pool later said he was claustrophobic and needed the unfettered visibility that came from being outside the vehicle. As such, even in battle he frequently hung half out of the commander’s cupola. He was in this position when the first shell struck the tank.

In the frenetic chaos of combat SSG Pool’s Sherman teetered atop a steep ditch.

Whether the round was a high-velocity 75mm from a Panther or the dreaded 88mm round from the dual-purpose Flak 36 gun doesn’t really matter. The projectile failed to penetrate, but it did cause Pool’s driver to back the tank up in an effort at clearing the kill zone. As the Sherman teetered on the edge of a steep ditch the German crew hit Pool’s Sherman a second time.

The second German antitank round gutted SSG Pool’s tank.

War Daddy’s replacement gunner, PFC Paul King, was killed. Pool’s regular gunner, CPL Oller, had been transferred back to the States. The force of the blast blew SSG Pool out of the hatch and rendered him unconscious. A shell splinter split his leg along its length.

SSG Pool’s wounds ultimately cost him his leg. This freaking monster of a veteran is not SSG Pool, but he is clearly made from the same stuff.

When he regained consciousness, Pool injected himself with morphine and started to amputate his own leg with his combat knife. However, support troops soon reached him and evacuated him back to a military hospital. His leg was so terribly mangled that it had to be surgically removed eight inches above the knee.

The Rest of the Story

SSG Lafayette Pool, the most effective American tank commander of WW2, lived out his retirement as a pastor.

After 22 months of rehab, SSG Pool was fitted with a prosthetic leg. He opened a gas station as well as several other businesses before re-enlisting under a program that allowed injured veterans to serve on active duty presuming they were not deployed to a combat zone. Lafayette Pool retired in 1960 at the rank of Chief Warrant Officer Two and went to work as a preacher making $25 per week. He died peacefully in his sleep in 1991 at age 71.

The warriors who inspired the superb David Ayer movie Fury were indeed the Greatest Generation.

The following observations were taken from a paper Pool wrote while in business college. He never intended for these words to be published.

“We were the invincible arm of the Lord’s wrath. We were the battlefield inheritors of the mounted knights of old-Gawain and Galahad and Lancelot. We were the inheritors of their mantle of chivalry, as well. We were fighting a war we saw simply as good against evil.”

SSG Lafayette “War Daddy” Pool was the manliest of men.

Upon finding that his original crew had survived he said, “Tears built up and rolled down my cheeks. I wept unashamedly. These were four men I was closer to than family. We had faced death repeatedly together. We had brought death to countless hundreds of our enemies who had sought to end our way of life. We had given the Nazis pure hell from the beaches of Normandy right to Hitler’s front yard.”

We do indeed stand on the shoulders of giants.

As is often the case, the real story was even more poignant and powerful than the movie.

One Hell of a Good Fight

Jim Bowie and the Vidalia Sandbar Fight by WILL DABBS MD

Post author By Grumpy
Post date November 28, 2022
3 Comments on Jim Bowie and the Vidalia Sandbar Fight by WILL DABBS MD

This intense-looking gentleman is Jim Bowie. Jim Bowie was one seriously bad man.

What makes a person successful in life? It’s not being born into money. The road to hell is paved with rich spoiled kids bereft of initiative or ambition. It isn’t intelligence, either. A genius lacking in common sense will frequently not advance much past, “You want fries with that?” Someone markedly smarter than I am once opined that the best predictor of success in life is the capacity to control one’s emotions.

Kirk is obviously better with the ladies, but Spock will have your back when the Klingons come charging down your cozy little cul-de-sac.

To use a Star Trek analogy, you want to be more like Mr. Spock than Captain Kirk. Kirk has his place, to be sure. Were it not for Kirk the Kobiashi Maru simulation would yet still be unbested at Starfleet Academy. However, it is the cerebral Vulcan you really want by your side in a proper fight.

Generally speaking, the kinds of folks who stop traffic on the interstate so they can vent their road rage on random drivers are not typically neurosurgeons, billionaires, or captains of industry. If you’re the sort who does stuff like that, then I hate it for you. I just call it like I see it.

Leave it to humans to come up with a civilized way to blow each other’s heads off when we get mad.

In years past there was a formal process by which the more hotheaded among us could vent their frustrations. Dueling as a method for gaining satisfaction or defending one’s honor against perceived affront is as old as mankind. The gory practice was first outlawed by the Fourth Council of Lateran convoked by Pope Innocent III with the papal bull Vineam domini Sabaoth of April 12, 1215. Since then society has strived to suppress dueling with varying degrees of success.

Early duels featured a variety of bladed weapons.

Though executed first with swords and later with pistols, the point of the duel was not necessarily to kill an opponent per se, but rather to satisfy an affront. On many occasions, the participants would intentionally fire wide so that honor could be regained with no harm to one’s person. On September 19, 1827, however, there was a duel staged on a sandbar in the Mississippi River near present-day Vidalia, Louisiana, that did not have such a tidy outcome.

The Background

The early 19th century was a rugged time in America.

Wealthy and influential, the Cuny and Wells families were interrelated by blood and a notoriously contentious mob. Central Louisiana was growing during this period, and business and personal interests would inevitably collide. New families would move into the area and find out the hard way that the Wells and Cuny clans could be tough folks with whom to deal.

Nobody clearly recalls what first precipitated this remarkable fight.

The details have been lost to history. Allegations of vote-rigging in a local sheriff’s election, bank loans both defaulted and denied, competing business interests, and the honor of an unnamed woman have all been suggested. The end result had already seen multiple duels, uncounted fistfights, and at least one spontaneous exchange of gunfire. The stage was set for a simply epic showdown.

Mississippi River sandbars come and go with the whims of the seasonal floods.

Samuel L. Wells III and Dr. Thomas H. Maddox were the primary players on this fateful day. They were attended, as was the custom, by seconds who helped manage weapons. These intimate supporters also ensured that the exchange remained fair and civilized, within the reasonable limits of the pursuit’s gory nature. The broad sandbar in the river was selected as a location because dueling was manifestly illegal. It was assumed that hosting the event on a sandbar in the river between Louisiana and Mississippi might insulate the players to a degree from the attention of local law enforcement.

Most of the major players came from money.

On the fateful day, the Wells troupe arrived by boat from the Louisiana side. The Maddox crew forded over from nearby Natchez, Mississippi. There were seventeen men known to be present along with an unknown number of slaves. Included in the group were two nearby plantation owners, a local guide, and a pair of neutral physicians. Several Army officers ranging in rank from Major to General were in attendance as was Jim Bowie, the father of the eponymous Bowie knife. On this particular day, Bowie had one of his big mean knives on his person.

The Duel

The Hamilton-Burr exchange is likely the most famous duel on this side of the pond.

The actual duel was a big nothing-burger. There were codified rules governing the prosecution of such an affair that included fairly lengthy periods between exchanges of fire. Both Wells and Maddox fired two rounds apiece to no effect, undoubtedly by design. The primary participants, by now relieved not to have had their brains blown out, approached each other and effectively resolved their disagreement with a handshake. No harm, no foul.

Emotions were running high, and there were guns aplenty.

Once the duel formally concluded the two participants, their seconds, and the two physicians, a total of six men, prepared to celebrate the event’s happy resolution. However, some members of the extended Wells mob weren’t quite ready to let things go. The specific details of what happened next are drawn from multiple conflicting accounts.

The Real Fight

Once the formal duel was complete things got a little nuts.

Colonel Robert Crain was Tom Maddox’s second and carried the two dueling pistols, by now reloaded. General Cuny, a friend of Sam Wells who had previously gotten sideways with Crain, purportedly said, “Colonel Crain, this is a good time to settle our difficulty.” Crain then fired at Cuny, missed, and struck Jim Bowie in the hip, knocking him to the ground. Cuny and Crain then unloaded on each other with verve. Crain caught a round to the arm, while the belligerent General was shot through the chest and died on the spot. At that point, all decorum was lost.

Jim Bowie was terrifying in a close fight.

Jim Bowie, a man’s man if ever there was one, drew his massive knife and charged Colonel Crain. Crain turned and broke his now empty pistol over Bowie’s head, dropping the big man to his knees again. Major Norris Wright, a Maddox acolyte, drew his pistol, fired at Bowie, and missed. Wright then produced a sword cane and attempted to run Bowie through. Wright’s thin blade deflected off of Bowie’s sternum and just left him mad.

Before it was over the Mississippi River sandbar ran with blood.

Bowie then took a firm hold on Wright’s shirt and yanked him down onto the point of his big knife. The disemboweled Wright bled out in short order. Bowie was subsequently both shot and stabbed again by other members of Team Maddox.

Jim Bowie fought like a Norse berserker once wounded.

Carey and Alfred Blanchard, both of the Maddox tribe, then fired at the apparently indestructible Jim Bowie, striking him in the arm. Bowie responded by cutting off a major part of Alfred Blanchard’s forearm with his epic knife. Carey fired at Bowie again and missed. Then both of the Blanchard boys ran away screaming like little girls. In the process, Jefferson Wells shot Alfred Blanchard through what was left of his arm.

At such close quarters, much of the carnage was unintentional.

The entire exchange took about ninety seconds. Sam Cuny and Norris Wright were killed outright. Alfred Blanchard and the apparently unkillable Jim Bowie were grievously injured. One of the unfortunate unarmed attending physicians caught a round in his thigh and another in his finger.

It is amazing the things we tend to venerate. The Sandbar Fight was an unfettered bloodbath, yet we commemorate it today. I enjoyed researching the sordid details for this article.

Depending upon what you read, Bowie was shot either two or three times and received between four and seven separate stab wounds. Colonel Crain, the man who shot him in the first place, helped the injured Bowie off of the field. Bowie supposedly said, “Colonel Crain, I do not think, under the circumstances, you ought to have shot me.”

The Knife

Jim Bowie’s characteristic blade, essentially a modified butcher’s knife, became a legend overnight.

The true origins of the Bowie knife are shrouded in controversy. The primary knife Bowie carried to his death was crafted by an Arkansas knife maker named James Black. Black created his knives behind a heavy leather curtain so as to protect his proprietary technique.

The classic Bowie knife sports certain distinctive characteristics.

The design was described thusly at the time, “The back perfectly straight in the first instance, but greatly rounded at the end on the edge side; the upper edge at the end, for a length of about two inches, is ground into the small segment of a circle and rendered sharp…The back itself gradually increases in weight of metal as it approaches the hilt, on which a small guard is placed. The Bowie knife, therefore, has a curved, keen point; is double-edged for the space of about two inches of its length, and when in use, falls with the weight of a bill hook.”

The Rest of the Story

Frontier justice was not quite so refined as is the case today. Nothing much came of this tidy little slaughter from a legal perspective.

Sam Wells III died a month later of an unrelated fever. While it took several months, Jim Bowie eventually recovered. A grand jury was convened in Natchez to ascertain the details of this gory exchange, but they returned no indictments.

Bowie knives were produced around the globe. Some of the most popular were forged in England.

The Bowie knife subsequently became an international icon. These distinctive blades were manufactured and sold all around the world, most commonly advertised with the Bowie moniker. Jim Bowie subsequently relocated to Texas where he married a wealthy woman and searched unsuccessfully for a lost silver mine. His new family ultimately fell victim to a cholera epidemic.

Pulp writers of the day helped shape Jim Bowie’s outsized reputation.

In the 1950s Jim Bowie inspired a variety of Western-themed paperbacks and comics. Blade of guilt!?!

Bowie later took a leadership position in the Texas Revolution and achieved notoriety thanks to his remarkable knife and rugged frontier swagger. Jim Bowie ultimately died in 1836 at age 40 defending the Alamo. Grievously ill at the time, the most likely version of events had him propped up in his cot with his back to the wall, cut down by the attacking Mexicans after fighting to the death armed with a pair of pistols and his remarkable knife.