In loving memory of Shontavius Lemonjello Jackson.
If you're a real American (as opposed to a posturing pantywaist who shoots his load in 3-5 minutes, can't hold his liquor, and fights like a girl), you've probably seen this a million times before.
If you are one of the posturing pantywaists I've just mocked and disparaged: Fuck off!
This post isn't for you.
It's for real men, by Gawd! Men with hairy chests and tank-top undershirts! Men who can fuck for 45+ minutes at a time, three or four times a day -- at age eighty! Men who can (in Gilbert Shelton's words) "...drink thirty-six cans of beer without barfing"! Men who "roll commando" -- even when wearing shorts -- and know in their hearts that he who does not "freeball" is never truly free! Men to whom the word "violence" is a synonym for "fun"! Men who consider the terms "deadbeat dad" and "repeat offender" high praise! Men who marry women who are so mean; they roll their own tampons and kick-start their vibrators! Men who -- well, you get the picture by now.
All kidding aside, the contents of this post were originally written in 1759. Yeah, I know that the French and Indian War, the Cherokee Uprising and Pontiac's War (which claimed 2,000 settlers' lives in Pennsylvania alone) were pre-9/11, and that the Indians didn't pose an existential threat to civilization, but it's still an interesting read.
Major Robert Rogers, founder of the legendary Rogers's Rangers, was not a great American.
(Radio hadn't been invented yet, and even if it had, I doubt he'd have spent the necessary three hours a day listening -- it would have cut into his drinking time.)
A typical, backwoods ne'er-do-well of Scots-Irish descent, Rogers was a stewbum, a suspected counterfeiter -- and a brilliant commander.
Possibly America's earliest master of guerilla warfare (although that's debatable --some historians maintain that the colonies' teeming Northern Irish and Lowland Scottish population brought the border reivers' old, hit-and-run combat style with them), Rogers served with distinction in the French and Indian War and Pontiac's war. During the Revolution, he accepted a command from the British (it didn't last long -- he was often too hammered to lead his troops or carry out orders), was jailed once, handed Nathan Hale over to the Redcoats, and eventually died in England, poor and forgotten.
His Standing Orders, however, have not been forgotten -- and with good reason. Contary to misguided popular belief, the nature of conflict didn't change on 9/11 --because it never changes. Only the technology and the name of the enemy change. This is why it's still profitable to study Sun Tzu, Cao Cao, the Tai Kung, Musashi Miyamoto, Yagyu Munenori, Karl von Clausewitz, Napeoleon Bonaparte -- and yes, Robert Rogers.
Unlike modern, American commanders, Rogers wasn't at war with an abstraction or a set of tactics. The British weren't fighting a "war on scalping" a "war on massacres" or a "war on torturing helpless captives." They were fighting a war against the French and the Indians. And they won.
During the American Revolution, our founders weren't fighting a "war on monarchy" -- they were fighting the Brits.
They, too, won.
Now let's compare their track record to ours.
In 1917 we entered "the war to end all wars," thanks to Wilson, House, and their unsavory cronies. This led to the most destructive war in history, Korea, Vietnam, the not-so-cold "Cold War," and innumerable "bush wars" in Asia, Africa, and Latin America.
In 1941, we fought to "make the world safe for democracy," or (if one happens to be a neocon), to "end fascism." We succeeded only in handing half the world to the "pink fairies," and in transplanting fascism from Europe to Latin America (where we often aided and abetted its growth) and our own country.
In 1965, Lyndon Johnson declared a "war on poverty." We now have third-generation welfare recipients, and -- I heard it on Neal Boortz's show, therefore it must be true -- 48% of the population is so poor as to pay no income taxes.
Since my wife and I (and I admit, we're kinda "bohemian") paid 9% and 11% of our respective incomes in federal taxes last year, for all that our combined income was a paltry $17,000; either 48% of the population (minus the 20.9% who are fiteen years of age or younger, and can't reasonably be expected to pay income taxes) has adopted our "edgy," spartan, nonconformist, antimaterialist, do-it-yourself lifestyle -- or they're dirt poor.
So much for the "war on poverty."
In 1989, we declared war on drugs. In 2010, drug abuse is so prevalent, nearly all companies test prospective employees for THC, meth, coke and smack. Another smashing success...
And now we're at war with tactics.
I suppose Rogers had it easy, the chickenshit bastard! He was only at war with human beings who employed "terror" tactics -- not with the tactics themselves. ( And if you don't think the Indians were masters of "terror," you're a historically illiterate fuckwit. Read John Cremony's Life Among the Apaches or Frederic Drimmer's Captured by the Indians, and hunt down the works cited in Drimmer's bibliography.) His lack of credentials aside (how can you trust a so-called "soldier" who never killed a noun or a process?), Rogers's reputation has stood the test of time.
Interestingly enough, many of his Standing Orders are just as applicable to staying alive in the modern "concrete jungle" as they were to surviving the backwoods over 200 years ago.
And I'm not the only one who thinks so. To this day, nineteen of the original twenty appear in the U.S. Army's SH 21-76: Ranger Handbook. Not that I think the Rangers are perfect, mind you -- their method of dressing small game (p. 11-14) is an appalling waste of good pelts. (If you remove the head and feet, then make an incision from the throat to the anus, you can shake a rabbit or squirrel out of its skin with a sharp flick of your wrist, leaving the hide intact). Still, the Rangers are tough, determined, bad motherfuckers (I know a few of 'em), and they know their shit from front to back when it comes to combat.Who am I to question their judgment?
Without further ado, then:
Standing Orders -- Rogers' Rangers
1. Don't forget nothing.
2. Have your musket clean as a whistle, hatchet scoured, sixty rounds powder and ball, and be ready to march at a minute's warning.
3. When you're on the march, act the way you would if you was sneaking up on a deer. See the enemy first.
4. Tell the truth about what you see and do. There is an army depending on us for correct information. You can lie all you please when you tell other folks about the Rangers, but don't never lie to a Ranger or officer.
5. Don't never take a chance you don't have to.
6. When we're on the march we march single file, far enough apart so one shot can't go through two men.
7. If we strike swamps, or soft ground, we spread out abreast so it's hard to track us.
8. When we march, we keep moving 'til dark, so as to give the enemy the least possible chance at us.
9. When we camp, half the party stays awake while the other half sleeps.
10. If we take prisoners, we keep 'em separate till we have time to examine them, so they can't cook up a story between 'em.
11. Don't ever march home the same way. Take a different route so you won't be ambushed.
12. No matter whether we travel in big parties or little ones, each party has to keep a scout 20 yards ahead, 20 yards on each flank, and 20 yards in the rear, so the main body can't be surprised and wiped out.
13. Every night you'll be told where to meet if surrounded by a superior force.
14. Don't sit down to eat without posting sentries.
15. Don't sleep beyond dawn. Dawn's when the French and Indians attack.
16. Don't cross a river by a regular ford.
17. If somebody's trailing you, make a circle, come back onto your own tracks, and ambush the folks that aim to ambush you.
18. Don't stand up when the enemy's coming against you. Kneel down, lie down, hide behind a tree.
19. Let the enemy come till he's almost close enough to touch, then let him have it and jump out and finish him with your hatchet.
20. Don't use your musket if you can kill 'em with your hatchet.
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Most of the orders are self-explanatory. Several, though, are especially noteworthy. Rogers's Rangers were largely frontiersmen, and thusly well acquainted with stalking game. In this respect, 3 echoes Musashi's admotion to "make your everyday walk your combat walk, and your combat walk your everyday walk." It's also common sense -- pay attention to your surroundings!
10 presages Bonaparte and agrees with Count Raimondo Montecuccoli. As the former wrote: "Montecuculli [sic] wisely observes that prisoners should be interrogated separately in order to ascertain by the agreement in their answers how far they may be endeavoring to mislead you."
11 and 17-- even today -- are effective methods of ditching/turning the tables on a suspected tail. My brother and actually employed both in altercations with the locals when we lived in Germany during the '80s. And every kid who's ever had to dodge a bully learns 11 very quickly -- or endures regular ass-kickings.
19 prefigures Andrew Jackson at the Battle of New Orleans ("Don't fire 'til you see the whites of their eyes"), and is still a preferred tactic of muggers, ambushers (gents who back down from bar fights, but wait outside -- concealed -- to settle the score) and low-rent, "cowboy" hitmen.
20 is my favorite. As my Bro Marc "Animal" MacYoung once said: "You guys and your guns. Give me a dark night and a knife, and your asses are mine." (Cheap Shots, Ambushes, and Other Lessons, p. 205). Or as my Bro "Doc" (whom I met through Marc -- hmmm... Maybe there's a lesson here...) says: "In the dark, from behind, at a distance."
"Animal" and "Doc" are two of the last people I'd ever want to fuck with (pardon my grammar; I meant: "with whom I'd ever want to fuck"), as there are much tidier ways of committing suicide. Therefore, I listen to them when they discuss conflict. I don't want this to sound like "circle of mirrors" mumbo-jumbo, but the way in which men from vastly different backgrounds often draw nearly identical conclusions has long fascinated me.
Suffice to say that if Rogers, Marc, and Doc are all in agreement when it comes to "low signature" efficiency, I'm not gonna argue with 'em.
G'night and God bless.