For God and Country

President Obama and his national security team watch the live feed from
the Bin Laden raid on May 2nd, 2011.

     Sohaib Athar heard the sounds of helicopters overhead and decided to start tweeting about it. It was a little after 1 a.m. on Monday, May 2nd 2011. Athar tweeted "Helicopter hovering above Abbottabad at 1AM (is a rare event)." Unknown to Athar at the time, he was tweeting the results of the largest manhunt in history.

     The search for Osama Bin Laden began even before the September 11th, 2001 terrorist attacks. He was placed on the FBI's "ten most wanted fugitives" and the "most wanted terrorist" list for his role in the 1998 US embassy bombings in East Africa that killed over 223 people. By this time, the US intelligence community knew his name and were aware of Al-Qaeda as a new hostile force to be reckoned with. After September 11th, 2001, Osama Bin Laden became the most wanted man in history and for the next ten years, the United States led the effort to bring him down.

     The cleanup at Ground Zero had barely begun in December, 2001 when the US launched an assault into the Tora Bora cave complexes in the White Mountains of Afghanistan where it was suspected that Al-Qaeda and Bin Laden himself was holed up. Using a joint force of US, British, German and Northern Alliance troops, the attack into Tora Bora lasted until December 17th, 2001. After a thorough search of the Tora Bora area in January, no sign of Bin Laden or any senior Al-Qaeda personnel could be found. It was assumed he must have slipped into Pakistan during a brief truce in the fighting.

     What followed was a frustrating six years of dead ends, false leads and misinformation concerning Bin Laden's true location. Some believed he was dead, others claimed to have seen him in various locations around the world in a variety of disguises. The news media turned the hunt for Bin Laden into a farcical  "Where's Waldo" that no one took seriously. However, this did not phase a key group of dedicated analyst and agents within the Central Intelligence Agency who relentlessly burned the midnight oil and chased every lead no matter how remote. What was known about Bin Laden was that he used couriers for communication with other Al-Qaeda operatives to avoid detection and that he never, ever used telephones and email. After a Herculean effort, a breakthrough occurred in 2007 when the real name of one of Bin Laden's couriers was learned. It would be another two years before it was discovered that the courier, Ibrahim Saeed Ahmed known as Abu-Ahmed al-Kuwaiti, was living in Abbottabad, Pakistan in a custom built compound located at the end of a dirt road less than a mile from the Pakistani Military Academy. Satellite photos of this area prior to 2005 showed an empty field, so the structure was new to the neighborhood and featured some very unique features. For one thing, the entire compound was surrounded by a 12 to 18 foot high concrete wall topped by barbed wire. The main three story building had an additional 7 foot high privacy wall on the balcony so that whomever was on the other side could walk around and not be seen. This type of building was extremely unusual for the area and immediately aroused suspicion within the CIA that this building was meant to hide someone of great importance.

     Immediately, the place was put under surveillance and it was further learned that the residents of the compound burned their trash rather than putting it out to be collected and the house had no phone or Internet connection. Still, analysts at the CIA could not definitively say that it was Bin Laden himself who lived there. Some felt that it was probably a well to do drug dealer rather than the world's most wanted terrorist. Through the use of high resolution satellites and an RQ-170 Sentinel drone, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency was able to create a three dimensional  rendering of the house as well as identifying the number, height and gender of the residents of the compound. The circumstantial evidence was then put through a process known as "red-teaming" in which all the information is reviewed independently and it was concluded that no other candidate fit the profile as well as Bin Laden did. It simply had to be him.

     At this point, the mission to capture or kill Osama Bin Laden became "Operation Neptune Spear". It was decided to use a group of Navy SEALS from the ultra elite Navel Special Warfare Development Group (DEVGRU) sometimes erroneously referred to as Seal Team Six in the media. Red Squadron from DEVGRU was on their way home from a deployment in Afghanistan at the time, so they were chosen to be the go-team as they could be redirected without raising too much attention. Operational security was of the utmost importance here, no one wanted to tip off Al-Qaeda that their boss had been found and targeted. A mock-up of the Bin Laden compound was built in a remote area of North Carolina and the assault team from Red Squadron practiced daily without being told who the target actually was. Special top secret stealth UH-60 Blackhawk helicopters were used for the raid due to the minimal radar signature.The stealth helicopters had been developed in total secrecy and featured a special radar reflective paint and extra rotor blades to aid in reducing any sound signatures. Pakistan had not been informed about the impending operation for security concerns, so stealth was all important. The idea was to insert quickly and quietly and be on the way back across the border before anyone knew what happened. 

     In addition to the assault team, a quick reaction force (QRF) was to be positioned nearby in heavy lift Chinook CH-47 helicopters in case the team had to "fight their way out". At last, everything was ready. There was no moon at this time in Pakistan, so the conditions were perfect for a nighttime raid. On April 29th, 2011 President Obama gave the final go-ahead for the raid the following night, however cloudy weather prevented the mision from going off as planed so it was decided to go on May 1st. At 3 p.m. that afternoon, the president and his staff moved into the White House Situation Room to watch the raid happen live on night vision feed from a Sentinel drone flying overhead. On board both stealth helicopters piloted by members of the elite 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment, the two dozen men from Red Squadron sat in silence. As they approached the designated landing zone, one of the helicopters experienced a sudden and violent condition known as a "vortex ring state" caused by high air temperature and a loss of lift due to the compound's high wall. The aircraft bucked violently with the tail end clipping the top of the wall and the machine started to tilt. The pilot knew exactly what had happened and expertly drove the nose of the aircraft into the ground which prevented the craft from pitching onto it's side which would have been disastrous to the passengers. With one helicopter down, the remaining Blackhawk set down as planed and the SEALs made their way to the compound wall in total silence using only their night vision devices. In order to force their way into the compound, the assault team relied on breaching charges to blow the metal security doors. The concussive booms from these explosives going off startled nearby neighbors who began move outside their homes to see what was going on in the neighborhood.

     Moving just outside the main house, one of the two assault teams took fire from an AK-47 belonging to the courier al-Kuwaiti. He was killed by several rounds of 5.56 fired from the assault team's sound-suppressed HK 416 carbines. Kuwaiti's wife was hit in the shoulder but did not die. Next, the team encountered al-Kuwaiti's brother Abrar in a room downstairs. He was shot and killed as was his wife, Bushra. Moving up the stairs, Bin Laden's son rushed the second assault team and was also shot and killed. Moving up the stairs to the third floor, one of the SEALs saw Bin Laden peer over the third floor ledge, then dart into a room. According to a team member, Bin Laden then glanced out into the darkened hallway and was immediately shot in the head by a team member and fell back into the room. The team member then entered the bedroom and saw two of Bin Laden's wives standing over his body on the floor. One of them started to scream at him in Arabic and looked like she was about to charge, so the SEAL tackled both women and forced them out of the way. A second team member burst into the room and shot Bin Laden twice more in the chest. The worlds most wanted terrorist and mastermind of Al-Qaeda,  died on his bedroom floor in the company of two American commandos. A quick visual inspection of Bin Laden revealed that the first shot was the one that most likely killed him.

  The high velocity 5.56 round entered his forehead and had blown out part of his skull so that his face was distorted. Brain matter was spilling out from the gaping hole and his face was covered in blood. Several digital photos were taken and then one of the Seal team members went out onto the balcony where a number of children that were found in the compound were placed. He asked one of the older girls who the dead man lying on the floor was and she replied "Osama Bin Laden". He then went to one of Bin Laden's wives back in the room and asked her the same thing. At first she didn't respond, so he grabbed her roughly by the arm and said, "Stop fucking with me now, who is that in the bedroom?" "Osama" the woman replied. They had confirmation from two sources at the location.  The SEAL team leader then radioed "For God and country, I pass Geronimo, Geronimo E.K.I.A." (enemy killed in action). This was a predetermined confirmation that Bin Laden was dead. The confirmation was sent live to the White House Situation Room where President Obama said "We got him".

     A body bag was brought along on the raid and the team members worked quickly to put Bin Laden's corpse inside and zip it up tight. A quick search of the compound netted numerous computer hard-drives, thumb-drives, disks, cell phones and paper memos. All in all, they hit the jackpot for Al-Qaeda intelligence.  All of this material was stuffed into several duffel bags to be brought back to the base at Bagram Airfield in Afghanistan for analysis. As the two assault teams prepped to leave, one of the team members rigged the downed stealth helicopter with explosives to destroy it in place so that nothing could be gleaned from the top secret craft. As they were now down a helicopter, one of the nearby Chinooks was brought in to ferry the assault team back to base. In all, the raid to kill Bin Laden had taken less than 40 minutes from the time the first pair of boots hit the ground to when they were airborne once again. However, it took over 10 years, close to a billion dollars and numerous lives to even get to that point.

     I remember on the day that it was announced that we had finally gotten Bin Laden, I awoke early that morning and headed downstairs for a drink of water. It was my wife's birthday the next day and for some reason I just happened to glance at the news on my mobile phone. I went upstairs and climbed back into bed and told my wife the momentous news that we had killed Bin Laden. She said simply, "Best birthday present ever!"

My Boy Jack

     18 year old Second Lieut. John Kipling was weeping as he staggered through the mud. He lost his glasses and the pain from the bullet wound in his jaw was excruciating. How he wished he was back home instead of the stinking, filthy charnel house that was the Loos Battlefield. It was September 27th, 1915 and Kipling's regiment, the famed Irish Guards had taken a pounding while advancing on the German held positions near Hill 70. In reality, John (Jack) Kipling should not have even been here. His eyesight was so poor he was initially rejected from military service but was given a commission with the Irish Guards thanks to the influence of his father, famed author Rudyard Kipling.

     Jack had just turned 18 when he was posted to France. Within six weeks, 13 British divisions, including the Irish Guards, would be in action in what was to become the Battle of Loos. Initially, the huge number of both French and British soldiers gave them a brief advantage that allowed for the capture of the town of Loos. However due to communication and supply problems, the breakout could not be exploited and the delay gave the Germans time to reinforce their positions. This proved disastrous for the allies the next day as they attempted to take the fortified German lines. In four hours of fighting, there were over 8,000 casualties out of a total force of 10,000 men.

     Initially, Jack was listing as missing after the battle as were so many thousands of young men. The notion of being missing in combat can have several meanings. One can be unaccounted for, but completely safe in a different sector or, as is often the case, there can be no identifiable remains whatsoever. The body can be blown to atoms by high explosive shells in an instant or buried under tons of mud and earth. All anyone knew that 2nd Lt Kipling was missing from the battle. Rudyard and his wife, Caroline, were completely grief stricken. Using every possible channel and high level contact, they tried desperately to get any news of the whereabouts of their son, but as the weeks stretched into months and then years, it became apparent that Jack was dead and his remains had been lost. Shortly after he was declared missing in 1915, Rudyard Kipling wrote this poem for his son:

"Have you news of my boy Jack?"
Not this tide.
"When d'you think that he'll come back?"
Not with this wind blowing, and this tide.
"Has any one else had word of him?"
Not this tide.
For what is sunk will hardly swim,
Not with this wind blowing, and this tide.

"Oh, dear, what comfort can I find?"
None this tide,
Nor any tide,
Except he did not shame his kind -
Not even with that wind blowing, and that tide.

Then hold your head up all the more,
This tide,
And every tide;
Because he was the son you bore,
And gave to that wind blowing and that tide.

     In 1992, the Commonwealth War Graves Commission announced that a grave of an unknown Irish Guards Lieutenant located in the St. Mary's Advance Dressing Station Cemetery in Pas de Calais had been identified as that of Jack Kipling. However, that claim is in dispute for several reasons. The body that was found had rank pips belonging to a 1st Lt and Kipling at the time of his death was only a 2nd LT. Also, the location of where the body of the 1st LT was found was misidentified as well. The curator of the Irish Guards museum even stated that the body in the grave is most assuredly not Jack Kipling. So today, 2nd Lt. John Kipling has two memorials. One is the headstone in St Mary's Cemetery and the other is on the Memorial to the Missing at Loos that list over 20,000 men who have no known grave.

Shot at Dawn

     Called “shell-shock” during the Great War, today it’s known as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and it is a legitimate battlefield injury. Today having PTSD can give you access to medical care as well as disability benefits with the government. During the Great War, it could get you shot at dawn for cowardice.

     Between 1914 and 1918,  306 British soldiers were executed by firing squad for such offenses as desertion, cowardice, striking an officer, throwing away arms and falling asleep on duty. Those who were sentenced to death were denied legal representation and the right of appeal and were shot very soon after their court martial ended. In many cases, the men were not even examined by a physician before the hearing. The average length of a court martial hearing was about twenty minutes. Usually, the condemned was led back to his cell and shot by a firing party at dawn the next day.

     On the morning of the execution, the condemned soldier was led out of his cell or holding facility, having spent the night with the company of a regimental chaplain. He was then brought to the place of execution and tied to a single post. A small section of white cloth was pinned to the soldier’s chest over where his heart would be. This would give the firing party something to aim at and would, in theory, result in instantaneous death. If not, the commanding officer was obliged to shoot the wounded solider in the head with his pistol. The firing party was made up of six soldiers usually, and one would surreptitiously be issued with a blank round so that no one soldier could be 100% certain that he fired the fatal shot.

     One of the first soldiers to be executed was Private Thomas Highgate who fled from the Battle of Mons, unable to bear the carnage. He was found hiding in a barn and was immediately court-martialled and found guilty despite the fact that he was undefended as all of his comrades to a man had been killed in the slaughter at Mons. A senior officer insisted that Highgate be shot “At once, as publicly as possible”. Highgate was informed of his fate, and was shot 43 minutes later. He was 19 years old.

     Another tragic case was that of Herbert Burden, who at age 16, lied about his age to enlist into the Northumberland Fusiliers. Ten months later, he was court-martialled for fleeing the battlefield after seeing his comrades slaughtered during the fight for Bellewaard Ridge in 1915. At the time of his execution, Herbert was only 17 years old, not even legally old enough to be in his regiment. He was nothing more than a terrified teenage boy.

     To the British high command, these executions were necessary in order to make an example out of the condemned to ward off further desertions or other acts of cowardice. The fact that a large number of these men were no doubt suffering from post traumatic stress disorder did little to prevent their fate. In those rare cases when they were actually examined by a doctor, many of the attending physicians were predisposed by their own prejudices to find the accused of sound mind so that they might be executed.

     Nearly a century has passed and we look back on those dark days through 21^st century sensibilities. Today, executing a traumatized solider would be completely unthinkable as would the notion of forcing men to march slowly into machine gun fire. Perhaps if the British high command had paid for their criminal stupidity in these matters by they themselves being shot at dawn, the war would have been conducted very differently.

     In June 2001, a memorial to those 306 souls who were executed was unveiled at the National Memorial Arboretum in Staffordshire. Mrs Gertrude Harris, the daughter of one of the 306 soldiers executed, did the unveiling of the memorial which features 306 posts that list the names of all the soldiers who were shot at dawn.

What Remains



The Somme battlefield 97 years on



     "How did they fight the battle with all these monuments in the way?" was an actual question that was asked at the Gettysburg National Military Park. It was gently explained that the monuments in question were in fact erected after the fighting had ceased. To many, a visit to an actual battlefield can be many things depending on one's level of interest. It can be somber and reflective, intriguing, morbid or it can be confusing. With Gettysburg, it became a tourist attraction quite literally when there were still dead soldiers carpeting the fields. Throughout the long years, as Gettysburg became a national park, the landscape changed somewhat but not dramatically. Today, there is a policy within the National Park Service to return the battlefield exactly to it's appearance as it was in July of 1863. To this end, orchards have been replanted, large areas have been clear-cut of trees and much vegetation has been cleared away. The effect has been a dramatic vision of the battlefield as the soldiers of 1863 saw it. The exception here being the paved roads and monuments, of course.

     For the battlefields of the 20th century, in particular WW1 and WW2, change in the landscape can either be dramatic or nonexistent depending on where one is. In the area around the French town of Verdun which was the scene of brutal fighting in 1916 there are still areas today known as "Zone rouge" (red zone) due to catastrophic damage to the environment which has rendered the land uninhabitable and unusable for farming and forestry due to the soil being poisoned by human remains, gas and unexploded munitions. Two of the main forts near Verdun, Ft. Vaux and Ft. Douaumont have been preserved as they were as well as the surrounding land. Although green grass now grows where only a sea of mud once existed, one can still clearly see the pockmarks of shell holes and shallow trenches. In the red zones, unexploded shells, human bones and rusted equipment litter the surface of the ground and are clearly visible even today.

     Much of the Western Front today has been erased from the land due to farming and expansion. Many of the battlefields were farmland back then and are still farms today. Farmers still regularly plow up shells, grenades and other deadly relics from the intense fighting that once raged over their land. It is estimated that one in four shells from WW1 never detonated and lie sleeping in the soil. To this end, the French Department of Mine Clearance recovers and destroys about 900 tons of rusted ordinance each year and it is estimated that this work will continue for the next twenty five years or so such is the staggering number of shells that were fired during the Great War.

     Many of the battlefields of the Second World War are in a similar state. With housing and industry expanding at an exponential rate, it's almost impossible to find what would be considered a "pristine" battlefield in this day and age. The exception here would be certain islands in the Pacific, such as Peleliu, which up until recently were largely untouched since the fighting ended. As little as ten years ago, one could still walk the trails and find rusted helmets, canteens and human remains in the numerous caves. Today, thanks to relic hunters and looters, this is no longer the case. Over on what was once the Eastern Front, many of the more obscure battlefields remain largely untouched in remote areas in Estonia and Latvia. Recently, some remarkable relics in pristine condition have been found in the numerous peat bogs that dot the area. Tanks, weapons, equipment and even human remains were found in incredible states of preservation due to the natural preservatives of the bogs.

      Despite all this, one constant remains. The land itself changes over time. The war torn landscape heals itself bit by bit. Shell holes and trenches fill in, barbed wire rusts away to dust, concrete bunkers crumble away and trees sprout up and grow thick over what was once barren and shell torn land. With very few exceptions, it's now all but impossible to stand on a battlefield and get a clear vision of what the area once looked like. Perhaps it's really for the best that way.

The Worst Place on Earth

When speaking of the Holocaust in Europe, one tends to think of such monstrosities as Auschwitz, Chelmno, Treblinka and others. Today the names of these appalling places are burned into our collective minds and rightly so. However few have heard of the concentration/extermination camps that existed in Yugoslavia. One in particular, Jasenovac, was the epitome of savage barbarity and cruelty so extreme it’s hard to fathom in this day and age.

Built in August of 1941 by the fascist Ustase regime, Jasenovac became an extermination camp for ethnic Serbs, Jews and Roma. The camp actually consisted of five subcamps spread out over eighty one square miles on both banks of the Sava and Una rivers in what is now the Independent State of Croatia. The actual extermination grounds were located in the village of Donja Gradina.

The exact numbers of people killed is still unknown to this day. The US Holocaust Museum in Washington D.C. estimates that between 77,000 and 100,000 people were murdered in the three and a half years the camp was in operation. Some scholars believe that number is actually closer to 700,000.

In April of 1941, the independent state of Croatia was founded and supported by Nazi Germany and fascist Italy. Croatia adopted similar racial and political policies that the Nazis followed in that their goal was the complete destruction of Jews and Roma, but the main goal of the Ustase regime was the total annihilation of the Serb people.

The conditions for the inmates were perhaps worse at Jasenovac than at other similar camps. There was no potable water so the prisoners were forced to drink from the Sava River. The barracks were filled with decomposing corpses and unimaginable filth which quickly spread diseases like typhus, dysentery and diphtheria.

The Ustase were particularly adept at generating fear and anxiety through extreme acts of cruelty in which the prisoners were forced to witness. Often, they would be kept standing for hours while a small number were selected at random to be tortured and killed in full view. Many times just for sport, the guards would drown prisoners in the open air latrines by either tossing the weakest ones in, or by physically holding them under.

The guards would often make bets with each other as to how many inmates they could slaughter. One guard, Petar Brizica, used a special curved knife blade normally used for cutting wheat to slash the throats of over 1300 newly arrived prisoners.

The Ustase would also cremate prisoners alive who were still conscious and awake. Others were killed by hammers, saws and blunt instruments and others still would be disemboweled and thrown into the river while still alive. All of this being done with the implicit approval of the Nazi overlords. The Ustase even ran a camp for Jewish, Serbian and Roma children. The Sisak children’s concentration camp housed over 6,000 children aged 3 to 16 in deplorable conditions. Over 4,000 of them perished often at the barbaric hands of the guards who took special delight in killing the tiny helpless victims.

The end of Jasenovac came in April of 1945 as Yugoslavian partisans started to approach the camp. The Ustase attempted to speed up the killings which resulted in a camp revolt on April 22^nd.  Over 600 prisoners revolted and 520 were killed with only 80 escaping into the surrounding woods. The Ustase then killed the remaining prisoners and set fire to the camps leaving nothing but ash and bones behind.

After the war, Yugoslavian president Josip Tito sought to erase the memory of the Ustase crimes as a way of uniting his countrymen and this policy continued into recent times. The Jasenovac Memorial Site was officially opened to the public on July 4^th, 1966 and continues to be reinterpreted to this very day. Most of the physical evidence of the camp has been lost, much of it by the Ustase as they attempted to hide all evidence of their crime. Only depressions in the ground and the occasional foundation can be seen today alongside memorials such as the massive Stone Flower, offer any tangible evidence of the massive and sadistic crime that was committed.

The Mines of Messines

     Captain Oliver Woodward wiped the sweat from his eyes and carefully placed the stethoscope to the clay wall in the gallery. Nothing.........the German sappers were still unaware that beneath their feet lay close to 70,000 pounds of ammonal explosive. Mining under ones enemy was not a new concept and had been a method used in siege warfare since ancient times. Now on the Western Front, it was about to enjoy a brief and violent resurgence in what was to be known as the Battle of Messines.

     With a trench system stretching from the Swiss border to the North Sea, the Western Front was a static battlefield that quickly degenerated into a bloody war of attrition. Ground taken by either side could be measured in yards, not miles. The allies were desperate to break the German lines while avoiding a catastrophic loss of life like they had experiences during the Battle of the Somme in July of 1916. To this end, it was decided to dig a series of mines under the German trenches, pack them with tons of explosives, then right before the assault, detonate the mine which would create a massive crater which could then be occupied and reinforced. This was tried on July 1st, 1916 when the Hawthorne Ridge mine was detonated under a German redoubt near the village of Beaumont Hamel. Unfortunately, the mine was blown ten minutes too early before the main assault was to begin, so the Germans had enough time to occupy part of the massive crater and the assault failed.

     The British, not wishing a repeat of that disaster decided to dig a series of 21 mines under the German lines in the Ypres Salient. A special unit made up of Australian miners, the 1st Australian Tunnelling Company, were brought into the area to dig the mines. Largely made up of veteran miners, the Australians began to dig their way under the German lines starting in September of 1916. Working in depths of over 125 feet deep, the miners used a technique known as "clay-kicking", which was a laborious process in which the miner inserts a special tool with a cup-like end into the soil and then withdraws a sizable chunk which is then placed in a sandbag and handed off to the next man. The advantage to clay-kicking, although labor intensive, it's virtually silent which was a huge consideration when digging under the German lines. Often if a mine was discovered, the Germans would try to counter the mining operations by using a technique called "camouflets", which were small explosive charges designed to collapse the mine tunnels of the allies. On several occasions, desperate hand to hand fighting erupted in the underground galleries between the Australian and Germans.

     Overall, the British had the advantage when it came to digging mines due to their experience and techniques. The could dig quickly and silently, which is something the Germans apparently could not do. By the time of the Battle of Messines on June 7th, 1917, the 22 mines were ready. As was the plan, an artillery barrage began six days earlier and continued up until 2:50 a.m. on June 7th. Two parachute flares were then fired, and the German defenders rushed back to their forward positions thinking an infantry assault was eminent. At 3:10 a.m., 19 mines were simultaneously detonated in what at the time was the greatest man-made explosion in history. The blast lit up the night sky around the Messines Ridge in what was described as a "pillar of fire". Over ten thousand German soldiers were obliterated in the explosion that could be heard and felt over 20 miles away. Some even claim the shockwave was felt as far away as London. The largest mine created a crater over 40 feet deep and over 250 feet in diameter. Surviving Germans soldiers were completely disoriented by the blast and many cried in pure terror at what they had just witnessed. Immediately after the detonations, the British artillery fire resumed in a creeping barrage that screened the advance of the infantry. By noon of that day, all the intended target of the assault had been reached and the majority of the Messiens Ridge was now in British hands. Overall, the attack into the Ypres Salient was a resounding success thanks to the tactics of using mines, artillery, tanks and infantry. As for the remaining three mines that did not go off, one was discovered by the Germans prior to the attack and dismantled, one detonated on June 17th, 1955 when lightening struck a steel pylon that had been erected over the location of the hidden mine and the one remaining mine has yet to go off although the authorities believe they have identified it's location. As for Captain Woodward, he survived the war and passed away quietly at the age of 80 in Hobart, Tasmania.

A Most Valiant Action

     It was a little after 4:30 in the morning when 33 year old Captain Edward Bradbury roused the men of “L” Battery, Royal Horse Artillery from their slumber just outside the French village of Nery. It was September 1^st, 1914 and the British and French troops were engaged in a long, fighting retreat to the River Marne on the Western Front. The German army, acting under the Schlieffen Plan, had plowed through the allied attempt to stop their push to Paris. In what was to become known as the Retreat from Mons, the British and French troops were engaged in a desperate fighting retreat to stop the marauding Germans from reaching the capital city. The conflict known as The Great War had begun on July 28^th, 1914 with a declaration of war by Austria-Hungary against Serbia. Great Britain declared war on Germany on August 4^th after Germany ignored a British ultimatum that Belgium be kept neutral. War had now come and the world would never be the same again.

     The men of “L” Battery were stood down to rest due to the fact a thick fog had enveloped the town of Nery and the surrounding countryside. Visibility was down to nothing, so the men were ordered to rest, prepare breakfast, and water their horses. At this time, horses were used to transport the quick firing thirteen pounder guns of the Royal Horse Artillery. Although the men were stood down, they kept the horses harnessed to the guns, but with the limbers lowered to ease their burden. At 5:25 a.m., a patrol from the British 11^th Hussars encountered a large force of German cavalry just outside the village and raced back to alert the gun crews. About 20 minutes later, machine-gun and artillery fire began from the heights overlooking the village. The German 4^th Cavalry Division had signaled it was surrounded by a “considerable hostile force” and were now trying to counter-attack what they thought was a large number of British cavalry. The German commander, realizing what was going on, ordered a dismounted attack on the village itself.

      Down in the village of Nery, the German gunfire caused panic amongst the horses of the cavalry and artillery, many of which bolted leaving the guns immobilized where they now stood.  The overall commander of “L” Battery was knocked unconscious by a shell blast and it was Captain Bradbury who now took command. He managed to get three guns into position to counter the twelve or so German guns up on the ridge. Two of the thirteen pounders were knocked out almost immediately, which just left the one remaining gun. That one remaining gun, under direction of Captain Bradbury, Sgt David Nelson and Sergeant-Major Thomas Dorrell kept up a steady fire, which drew the German artillery fire away from the British cavalry. Captain Bradbury was acting as an ammunition bearer when a shell fragment tore off one of his legs. Although bleeding to death, he continued to direct the gunfire until he died. Sgts Dorrell and Nelson continued to fire the gun until reinforcements arrived around 8 a.m. As a result of the gunfire from the single thirteen pounder gun of “L” Battery, the British cavalry regiments were able to outflank the German cavalry which was attempting an attack on the village itself and were able to force them to retreat taking approximately seventy eight German prisoners. Three Victoria Crosses were awarded to “L” Battery that day, one going to Captain Edward Bradbury who was killed in the action, the other two going to Sergeant-Major George Dorrell and Sergeant David Nelson. Nelson was killed in April 1918 while Dorrell survived the war and would reach the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel. He served in the Home Guard during the Second World War and died at the age of 90 in 1971. The three Victoria Cross medals as well as the actual thirteen pounder gun used in the engagement, now called the “Nery Gun”, can be seen today at the Imperial War Museum in London. In an unusual honor, L Battery had the title of “Nery” added to their official name. They are now known as “L (Nery) Battery, RHA Tactical Group Battery”.