So the soldier comes back a day later in an Arab tank! The CO was so impressed, he asked “How did you do it?”

“Well, I jumped in a tank, and went toward the border with the Arabs. I approached the border, and saw an Arab tank. I put my white flag up, the Arab tank put his white flag up. I said to the Arab soldier, Do you want to get a 3-day pass? So we exchanged tanks!”

He had scouted all the colleges, and even the high schools, and he couldn’t find a ringer quarterback that would ensure a SuperBowl win.

Then one night, watching CNN, he saw the war zone in Bosnia. In the background, out of the corner of his eye, he spotted a young Bosnian soldier with a truly incredible arm. He threw a hand grenade straight into a 15th story window 200 yards away… ka-boom! He threw another hand grenade into a group of about 10 soldiers a good 110 yards away–ka-blooey! A car passes going 90 miles an hour–bulls-eye! Right into the barely open window.

“I’ve got to get this guy,” Al says to himself. “He has the perfect arm!”

So he brings him to the States and teaches him the great game of football. Predictably, the young man breaks all the NFL records for completed passes, and the Raiders go on to win the SuperBowl.

The young Bosnian is lionized as the Great Hero of that year’s SuperBowl, and when Al asks him what he wants, all the young man wants to do is to call his mother. “Mom,” the young man says into the receiver, “I just won the SuperBowl.”

“I don’t want to talk to you,” the old woman says. “You deserted us. You’re not my son.”

“I don’t think you understand, mother,” the young man pleads. “I just won the greatest sporting event in the world. I’m in the middle of thousands of adoring fans.”

“No, let me tell you,” the mother implores. “At this very moment, there are gun shots all around us. The neighborhood is a pile of rubble. Your two brothers were beaten within an inch of their lives last week, and this week your sister was raped in broad daylight….” The old lady pauses, in tears, “…I’ll never forgive you for moving us to Oakland!”

Response from a junior (very junior) sonar watchstander

“Sonar – Conn, Report all contacts in preparation in coming to periscope depth”

“Conn – Sonar, I hold no contacts – how ’bout you..?”

“Sonar – Conn, Supervisor to the Conn”

QMOW: “Navigator we’re on a course for sea mounts.”

NAV: “Exec we’re heading for shallow water.”

EXEC: ” Captain, we’re running out of water.”

CAPT: “What, no water, …very well, secure the showers.”

I was in Korea doing screening history and physicals for the troops on the way to the front. After a spotless checkup on a certain fine specimen of American manhood, I started in on the “Mental Status” exam. Who is the President, count back from a hundred by sevens, what is meant by A Stitch In Time Saves Nine, and all the usual old chestnuts. We were humming along fine till I came to the “Insight and Judgement” section. I read from my standard-issue manual: You are walking along the street and come upon an unlabeled envelope. In the envelope you find 1000 dollars in unmarked twenty dollar bills. What do you do?

The young private stared at me blankly for a moment then crisply replied, “I would report to my superior officer and await further instructions.” Dumbfounded, I asked him if that was all. “I would report to my superior officer and await further instructions, Sir.” he shot back.

Taking pen in hand, I forever eliminated my chances of a military career by noting in the soldier’s chart: Recruit displays either the most total lack of imagination and initiative I have ever seen in my career as a physician… or the most perfect dedication to the principles of military thought yet recorded in this battalion. I am not quite sure which.

by Robin Colgrove

Perhaps no events of the Civil War have been so misunderstood, and so incorrectly reported, as the secret Confederate operations that took place in Vermont during the year 1864. The events have usually been treated as a series of separate events culminating in the failed attack on the village of St. Albens. Recent information, however, suggests that the Vermont incidents were part of a well coordinated, but ultimately futile campaign against the maple sugar industry of that state.

The story begins on the 3rd day of the Battle of Gettysburg when Gen. George Stannard’s Vermont brigade smashed into the flank of Confederate Gen. Kemper’s brigade during Pickett’s Charge. The Confederates vowed revenge on the nine month men from the Green Mountain state. Their revenge on the battlefield never came, however, as Stannard’s men were soon mustered out and returned to their homes in Vermont, boasting of their achievement.

The plans for the Vermont Campaign grew solely from a desire by Kemper’s men to get revenge on those who had ruined their moment of glory. Several of Kemper’s soldiers, discharged due to wounds received at Gettysburg, plotted to take their revenge behind enemy lines.

The Confederate Secret Service, eager to lend a hand to any plan that would inflict damage on the hated Yankees, quickly approved the plan and provided logistical support for the conspirators. Dozens of operatives in New England and Canada were mobilized and sent to the rural regions of Vermont in an insidious plot to ruin the Vermont economy.

The Confederate agents, many of whom formerly fought with Kemper, quickly infiltrated the Vermont woods and began reaping a terrible toll on the vital maple sugar industry in that spring of ’64. Most of the damage was done by night, with the operatives traveling the wooded paths and pouring out the valuable contents of the sap buckets. Other methods included sabotaging equipment and polluting the raw sap.

Within a month the spring harvest was in serious jeopardy with desperate farmers were standing guard in the woods at night. The state economy teetered on the brink of bankruptcy and desperate measures were needed. A savior came in the form of Webster Finkle, president of the Bank of Vermont in St. Albans. The St. Albans bank had been built with a huge vault, capable of storing a tremendous amount of money. St. Albans however, was a poor rural community which had suffered greatly from the maple syrup recession. The great vault in the St. Albans bank was nearly empty, and available to hold the state’s precious stockpile of maple syrup. And so, as the maple syrup season drew to a close, the precious stockpiles of syrup that had survived the Confederate onslaught found their way to the steely confines of the St. Albans bank. For the time being the state’s economy was saved.

All through the summer months the Confederates fumed and cursed the Yankee ingenuity that had thwarted their evil plan. As summer turned to fall, and the maple leaves began to change, one Confederate operative named Bennett Young offered to lead a raid against the St. Albans bank to destroy the precious maple syrup reserve.

In October of 1864, Confederate agents converged on the small Vermont town, meeting at a nearby inn to finalize plans. As luck would have it, a free black woman named Aunt Jemima was working as a waitress at the inn. She overheard the Confederates plotting to attack the St. Albans bank and that night slipped out and warned the local constable of the impending attack.

The next day Bennett and his associates stormed into town, crashing into the bank with intentions to blow up the vault. Once inside they discovered an empty vault; sticky syrup residue told them that their mission was a bust. Thanks to the timely warning by Aunt Jemima, the local farmers had held an all-night boiling session and the bottled syrup was well on its way to Montpelier.

As the Confederates exited the bank they were met with a hail of bullets from dozens of Stannard’s veterans dressed in farmer’s overalls and hidden in nearby buildings and on rooftops. For a time the scene resembled Pickett’s charge, with dead and wounded Confederates lying in the streets. The survivors quickly mounted up and galloped out of town with a Yankee posse in close pursuit.

To this day folks from the Green Mountain state still honor the memory of the brave Aunt Jemima who risked life and limb to warn the citizens of St. Albans of the impending danger. And thus another Vermont legend was born.

“What a great realist that painter is!” he exclaimed.

“What painter?”

“The one that painted this picture ‘Soldiers at Work’.”

“Yes, hut something is wrong there. Those soldiers aren’t working at all!”

“That is just the greatest stroke of realism in the picture!”

War Virginia_ by Ervin Jordan and _Black Southerners In Gray_ by Richard Rollins have renewed interest in the role of African-Americans in the Confederacy. While there is little doubt that African-Americans made significant contributions, albiet reluctantly; as laborers, teamsters and servants, their role as soldiers in the Confederate armies is much less documented. While some insist that there were NO African-American Confederates; others point to accounts of hundreds or thousands of black men in gray uniforms. This story examines one possibility.

Professor Eugene Wigfall of the University of Southeastern Virginia has just released his research into free blacks who served in the Confederate armed forces. Prof. Wigfall’s research has taken more than a decade and is based on attempting to match the names of free blacks from the 1860 census with the names of known Confederate servicemen. Wigfall’s research also relied heavily on input from informed sources on several Internet discussion groups.

The results of Prof. Wigfall’s research show conclusively that a free black man, 32 year old Moses Johnson of Yorktown, Virginia served in the Confederate army. Records indicate that Johnson offered his services to the Confederates immediately upon the secession of his home state. He was rebuffed however, due to his race and, angered by the rejection, traveled to Fortress Monroe to offer his service to the Federals. Gen. Benjamen Butler, upon meeting Johnson, declared him to be a ‘contraband of war’, and put him to work polishing his silverware collection. Dissatisfied with his treatment by the Federals, Johnson deserted in early June, 1861. While walking down the road towards Bethel in the early morning hours, Johnson was stopped by a detachment of Union troops. Fearing a return to Fortress Monroe, Johnson told the soldiers that he had just passed a detachment of Confederate troops headed that way. The Union troops quickly set up an ambush and fired on a column of troops as it marched into view. In the resulting firefight Johnson slipped away to the Rebel lines where he told the story of how he managed to trick to Union regiments into firing into each other. His story so impressed Gen. John B. Magruder that he enlisted Johnson on the spot.

The next month found Moses Johnson attached to Gen. Thomas J. Jackson’s command as a guide. During the battle of Bull Run, Jackson watched as Gen. Barnard Bee’s South Carolinians begin to withdraw in confusion. Jackson dispatched Moses Johnson to inform Bee of the whereabouts of Jackson troops. When Johnson reached Bee he conveyed the General’s instructions. Bee, still unsure of Jackson’s whereabouts, asked Johnson to point him out, to which Johnson replied: “dar’s Gen’l Jackson, next to dat stone wall”. In the heat of battle, Johnson’s response was relayed by Bee to his men in his now legendary statement.

The following year found Moses Johnson in the vicinity of his home town of Yorktown. Johnson was once again reunited with Gen. Magruder and was employed as a scout and guide. During this time it came to the General’s attention that Johnson was an excellent shot as well. Johnson soon became a terror to Union pickets and rumors abounded of a company of black sharpshooters. Magruder, always eager to seize the theatrical advantage, ordered all his sharpshooters to don blackface when on the front lines. Gen. McClellan, who had been provided with accurate estimates of the Confederate strength, suddenly fell victim to the ruse that large numbers of blacks were being enlisted by the Confederates. Accordingly, he revised his figures to reflect the enlistment of every black man of military age in Virginia, giving his enemy a strentgh of more than 500,000 troops in the trenches before Richmond.

Records of Johnson’s service are almost non-existent for the rest of 1862. In the spring of ’63 however, Moses Johnson again turns up in Jackson’s command. At the battle of Chancellorsville it was Johnson who suggested to Jackson that he: “sneak around dem Yankees and wop dem upside de head”. Johnson’s contributions at Chancellorsville did not end there, the following day, acting as a sharpshooter, Johnson spied a high ranking Union officer standing on the porch of a nearby home. The officer was partially obscured by a stone column, making it impossible for Johnson to get off a good shot. Johnson, ever the innovator, fired a shot into the top of the column, breaking off a large marble chunk, which struck the Union officer squarely on the head. The Union officer was, of course, Gen. Joseph Hooker.

Following Jackson’s death, Moses Johnson was attached to Lee’s staff . As plans unfolded for an invasion of the North, Johnson suggested to Lee that he enlist all the free blacks that they should come across in the northern states. This plan, like the rest Lee’s plans that summer, turned out to be a total disaster. Disappointed that other free blacks had not followed him into the Confederate army, Johnson accompanied the Army of Northern Virginia northward to the small town of Gettysburg. Following two days of fierce fighting, Lee ordered the massive, but suicidal, attack that ended with the bloody repulse of Pickett’s division. Riding forth to console his beaten forces, Lee remarked: “This was all my fault”; to which Moses Johnson unhesitantly replied: “Damn right! Gen’l Lee, what de hell wuz you thinkin’.”

In the fall of 1863 Moses Johnson accompanied Longstreet’s corps to the western theater, where he took part in the battle of Chickamauga. One evening, shortly after the battle, Longstreet introduced Moses Johnson to a group of Confederate generals who had spent the evening drinking and cursing Braxton Bragg. After hearing Longstreet’s description of Johnson’s distinguished service, Gen. Patrick Cleburne grabbed a piece of paper and scrawled a lengthy proposal for arming blacks for Confederate service. All of the generals present eagerly endorsed the document, although most denied recollection of having signed it the next day.

Moses Johnson continued to serve with the Army of Northern Virginia throughout the bloody campaigns of 1864. Disappointed with the Confederate government’s reluctance to enlist blacks into service, Johnson lobbied tirelessly to get legislation that would not only recognize, but encourage blacks to join the Confederate ranks. Moses Johnson finally got his wish in early 1865 when the Confederates passed a bill authorizing the War Department to organize black troops for Confederate service. He was bitterly disappointed however, when not one black volunteered for service.

As Petersburg and Richmond fell, Moses Johnson, ever the faithful Confederate, began the trek west toward Appomattox. At some point during the retreat he convinced Gen. Fitz Lee that his cavalry could escape through the encircling Union lines and strike in their rear if they donned blackface and pretended to be escaping slaves. Fitzhugh Lee was however, not as clever as his illustrious uncle and he forgot to have his men change out of their gray uniforms. It was Fithugh Lee’s troopers in ‘disguise’ that several witnesses reportedly mistook for black Confederate cavalry during Lee’s final retreat. The observant Yankees were, of course, not fooled by Confederate troopers in blackface and killed or captured most of the unit. A handful survived to surrender a few days later with Lee at Appomattox. They had not stopped during the retreat to remove their blackface and, consequently, were listed as being black on their parole papers.

Moses Johnson all but disappeared following Lee’s surrender. Some say that he was killed by vengeful ex-slaves, other stories have him fleeing to Mexico with several high-ranking Confederate officers, and one story has him travelling west to join Gen. Nathan Badford Forrest’s night riders following the war.

Whatever happened to Moses Johnson, his legacy as the only black man to serve in the Confederate army offers a fascinating twist to a war that continues to excite interest to this day.