Calling All Literary Sluts (and Others)

Several SleuthSayers and I have been discussing the possibility of one or more panels at Bouchercon 2015 consisting solely or primarily of SleuthSayer authors.  Jan Grape suggested previously that many organizers and planners appreciate receiving suggestions of a specific topic and writers for the panel and/or moderator. I have inquired about where suggestions should be sent.

Melodie Campbell and I exchanged emails about making a few proposals.
We need your help.

A visit to the Bouchercon 2014 website schedule reveals many interesting panels last year (including three workshops with our own R. T. Lawton on Surveillance).  Format for the titles is primarily in the form of a catchy title, followed by a colon which introduces a more explicit explanation of what the panel is about.

Examples from 2014:  No More Badges:  Crime Solvers Who Left the Badge Behind

                                    Short but Mighty:  The Power and Freedom of the Short Story

                                    Crime Goes Visual:  Graphic Novels and Comic Books

Check out the website for more examples.

My question for everyone today, both writers and readers:

 What do you suggest as an interesting topic for a panel at Bouchercon 2015? 

Melodie and I are seriously considering a proposal (or maybe I should say proposition in this case) of a panel entitled:

      

Writers as Literary Sluts: Publishing in More Than One Genre

Of course, both Melodie and I are eager to be members of this panel.  Be sure to let us know if you want to be with us or if you want to be suggested as the moderator of this sure-to-be-fun session.

We are also looking for a super cool title and topic about short stories and will suggest SleuthSayer writers for that panel and moderator.

Another thought that's been roaming around in my mind is related to Bouchercon 2015's location in Raleigh, NC, as well as Ron Rash being one of the featured writers.

Would any of you want to be a participant in this one?

Murder Down South, Y'all: Southern Writers, Southern Mysteries

Please share your thoughts on topics for panels. If you're a writer, let us know if you are planning to register for Bouchercon 2015 by May 1, 2015 (deadline to be considered for presentations) and if you'd like to be recommended for a panel or rather handle it yourself.  If you don't want to announce your plans publicly, just email Melodie or me.

Until we meet again, please take care of . . . you.

Clan Labs

Several vehicles streak down the road. Each vehicle is loaded with agents wearing black Nomex gear, Kevlar helmets and turtle vests. At a predesignated location, they screech to a halt. Agents rapidly exit from the vehicles and take up assigned positions around the building. The door goes down by means of a handheld ram or sledgehammer and each room inside is secured. Any people are handcuffed, searched and immediately removed from the premises. Now, the agents back out without touching any potential evidence.
Why not touch the potential evidence? They've just hit an operating clandestine drug lab, a 'clan lab' in which case it is not safe to turn off any heating elements or disturb any chemical processes in any way until an expert takes over the situation. Chemicals can be explosive or even create deadly gases if handled incorrectly.

With the building secured, some of the agents change into white "bunny suits" which act as protection against chemical burns and contamination. Breathing apparatus may be required depending upon the air quality inside the rooms containing the clan lab. With the advancement of technology, agents can use "sniffing machines" to test the air before dismantling the lab setup. Now, the bunny suit team (sorry, no rabbit ears or cute bunny tail on these suits) along with a qualified chemist can enter the rooms and take photos and videos of the operation. The chemist and lead agent decide what equipment is collected and which chemicals are sampled as evidence. The rest is usually packed into 55 gallon metal drums to be destroyed rather than kept in an evidence locker until trial. After leaving the clan lab, the agents are showered down in a kid's portable swimming pool and their bunny suits are destroyed.

One source for recipes

If the image in your mind about these types of operations is a clean, tidy setup like the chemistry labs you used in high school and college, be advised that these setups are usually rare. The common clandestine lab is what's known as a "bucket lab" where plastic buckets and whatever glassware can be obtained is scrounged up to be used in very untidy surroundings. So if your total perception of the clan lab trade is from watching Breaking Bad, know that those type of guys are in the minority.

First off, there's the chemist, who knows what he's doing, and then there's the majority, who are merely "recipe readers." A recipe reader is a person who has learned all the necessary steps from a person in the know and can follow a chemical recipe, but does not truly understand how chemicals and chemistry work. This is the guy who decided a plastic bucket will work in some of the steps because he can't acquire lab grade equipment without attracting suspicion. This is the guy who when he runs out of a needed chemical will decide that a similar sounding chemical name will suffice. This is the guy who uses his own product, becomes over paranoid at strange sounds and discharges his firearm out the window whether anything is out there or not, or lights up a cigarette while washing the product with ether during a final step, or forgets he booby-trapped his lab against potential outsiders.

Available on the open market

This can be a short-lived occupation if you make the wrong mistake. Example: two gentlemen in California were using the red phosphorus and ephedrine method to make meth. One noticed that a glass beaker had cracked from too much heat. He promptly picked up the beaker and headed for the door. The second guy, also being a gentleman, held the door open for the first guy. Unfortunately, their step in the process produced phosgene gas. The gentleman holding the door didn't make it outside. [NOTE: if you have a sensitive mind, please skip the rest of this paragraph.] As for the one carrying the cracked beaker, he was found lying in the yard where he had stuffed mud down his throat while trying to stop the intense burning sensation in his lungs.

And of course, there is always the occasional explosion from improperly mixed chemicals, combining the wrong chemicals, or a spark from an electrical fan not lab grade equipment, not to mention that forgetful cigarette smoker who just has to inhale from one more coffin nail.

Since there is no quality control in these clan lab operations or afterwards, that means the buyer of these substances does not really know what he's getting and ingesting into his body. For instance, a meth lab in Washington had a faulty process which left lead in their finished product. Some customers subsequently expired from lead poisoning. Drugs are also diluted with various cutting agents such as baby laxative, milk sugar and arsenic to make them go further. Seems the arsenic helps provide a kick to some products, but since there is no quality control, who knows what percentage of the product is now arsenic? Of course, that may come out in a coroner's report, too late for the initial consumer.

Even with all this, the lure of large sums of money keeps seducing people into setting up clandestine laboratories. Guess they think nothing will happen to them personally. As for the street user, he's already addicted to the drug of his choice and is willing to take the chance on what he's buying. Helluvaway to live. Or to die.

Gone Again

by R.T. Lawton

He was too late for the Wild West and too early to be a Prohibition gangster, but the name of Roy Gardner was once well known to the American public as a celebrated outlaw and the most famous prison escapee. Nicknamed with monikers such as The Smiling Bandit, The Mail Train Bandit, and King of the Escape Artists by national newspapers, Roy was the Most Wanted Gangster of 1921.

Roy Gardner

Born on January 5, 1884 in Trenton, Missouri, Gardner was later raised in Colorado Springs, Colorado. He stood about five foot nine in early adulthood, had curly auburn hair and blue eyes, was considered as attractive and had a charming manner. Drifting to the Southwest, he acquired the trades of farrier and miner. To get out of the mines, plus avoid a life of crime and reform schools, he allegedly joined the U.S. Army, but soon deserted and headed to Mexico.

His first step into professional crime was as a gunrunner during the Mexican Revolution. While smuggling arms to the Carranza army, he got caught by General Huerta's soldiers. The sentence was death by firing squad. Declining to stick around for the sentence to be carried out, Gardner, along with three other American prisoners, attacked the guards at the Mexico City jail and escaped. This marked his first prison break.

Ending up broke in San Francisco, Gardner robbed a jewelry store on Market Street, soon got arrested and was sent off to San Quentin. Here, he made parole after saving the life of a prison guard during a violent riot. Wasn't long out of the pen before he robbed a mail truck, netting about $80,000 in cash and securities. The law caught up with him three days later. For this crime, he was sentenced to 25 years at McNeil Island Federal Penitentiary in Washington state. On June 5, 1920, two Deputy U.S. Marshals accompanied him on the train headed for prison. Employing a simple ruse, Roy looked out the window and shouted, "Look at that deer." When both Marshals looked, he grabbed the gun away from one of them and then disarmed the other at pistol point. Roy handcuffed the two together, stole $200 from them, jumped off the train and headed for Canada.

McNeil Island Penitentiary 1890

The following year found Roy Gardner back in the U.S. robbing banks and mail trains. By now, he had a $5,000 reward posted for his arrest. He was recognized in the Porter House Hotel in Roseville, California and was subsequently arrested while playing cards in a pool hall. Once again, he was sentenced to 25 years at McNeil. As a ploy to reduce his sentence, Roy offered to show the Southern Pacific Railroad detectives where he buried some of his loot. They found nothing, so Roy was once more placed on a train headed for McNeil Island Penitentiary. This time, he was guarded by two different U.S. Marshals. During the trip, Roy went into the train car's bathroom and came out with a pistol which had been concealed there by a friend of his. He robbed the Marshals of their guns and money and left them handcuffed together while he jumped off the train. The biggest manhunt in Pacific Coast history was quickly launched for the boldest and most slippery criminal to ever be arrested.

Trying to conceal his identity by bandaging his face and leaving only one slit for an eye hole, Gardner turned up at the Oxford Hotel in Centralia, Washington. The proprietor became suspicious when he found a gun in Roy's room. Arrested once again, Roy stayed on the train this time and made it all the way to McNeil Island Penitentiary without incident. Third time must've been the charm.

After six weeks of confinement, Roy decided it was time to make a break for freedom. At the Labor Day 1921 prison baseball game when a ball got hit to center field and the tower guards had their attention on the ball, Roy told his two prison buddies that now was the time to go. He cut a hole in a high barb wire fence, then the three crawled through and took off running. Seems Roy had told the other two that he'd bribed the guards to keep looking away, but the three weren't far outside the wire when bullets started flying. Impyn fell mortally wounded, Bogart was badly wounded and Gardner took a bullet in the left  leg. Scrambling into the woods, Gardner hid under a log. Guards searched for Roy, but found no trace. Afterwards, Roy hid in the prison dairy barn, living off cow's milk and grain for several days until he swam to a nearby island and made his escape.

Back to robbing mail trains, Roy got captured by a mail clerk during a robbery a few months after his McNeil Island escape. With a third sentence of 25 years received for this train robbery, Roy got packed off to Leavenworth. In 1925, they transferred him to the Atlanta Federal Prison, the toughest penitentiary of its day. After unsuccessfully trying to tunnel under the wall and cutting through the bars of the shoe shop, he later led a prison break, taking guards as hostages. This last escape attempt earned him twenty months in solitary.

Roy's book

1934 saw Gardner transferred to Alcatraz where he rubbed shoulders with Al Capone. Roy was contemplating another escape when he was granted clemency in 1938. While in Alcatraz, Roy channeled some of his creative talent into writing his autobiography, Alcatraz: My Story. In 1939, his book was made into a movie, I Stole a Million, starring George Raft. The movie had good reviews, but tanked at the box office.

Unable to adjust to a life outside of prison and having no desire to go back behind the walls, Roy Gardner pulled his final escape. On January 19, 1940, he left a note on the outside of his door in a San Francisco hotel, sealed his room, dropped cyanide pills into a bowl of acid and breathed in the fumes. He was gone again and this time they wouldn't get him back.

27.3%

by R.T. Lawton

     Okay, so I fudged a bit on the math by rounding up for the title, but it's close enough for government work. Anyway, my point is that three of the eleven stories published in the January/February 2015 issue of Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine were written by members of the SleuthSayers blog. That's a nice percentage, and one of these days, the way we're all going, it may get even higher.

 Eve Fisher leads off this winter double issue with her story, "The Headless Horseman." How would you like to live in a small town where you were known by your nickname of The Headless Horseman, or even Headless for short? Clarence, a young man who lives two blocks away from the young female protagonist, is stuck with that nickname because of an earlier incident with the  protagonist. In time, the young girl believes Headless is involved in some not-so-nice activities, so she shadows him around town and starts collecting information about anything he does. Headless soon notices that he's being followed and tries to discourage her. This all comes to a head when the girl walks in on Headless standing beside the freshly dead body of a woman he worked with at a local restaurant. Headless must now decide what to do about the girl. It's another excellent story set in small town South Dakota.

     For "The Irish Boy," Janice Law continues the adventures of Nip Tompkins, the orphan boy who works for Madame Selina, one of the city's most famous mediums. Madame allegedly has the services of Aurelius, an old Roman emperor, to assist her in answering people's questions or in finding people or lost objects. In this episode, the brother of one of Nip's female friends has gone missing. Madame locates the missing brother in another town where he has joined a rough crew of Irishmen who are about to cross the river on a dangerous and violent mission into Canada. The problem soon becomes how to convince both the girl's brother and the Irish crew he has become a part of that he shouldn't cross the river on this mission. Are Madame and Aurelius up to the situation and if so, how can they do it? Read the story and find the outcome. As for me, I can scarce wait for the next episode of Madame Selina and Nip.

     The third contributor is...well...me, with "Elder Brother," the second story in my Shan Army series set in the Golden Triangle of Southeast Asia. [NOTE: The editor of AHMM has already purchased the third story, "On the Edge," so this is officially a series, plus Rob Lopresti recently critiqued the fourth story, "Merit Making," which is now on it's way to the e-submission slush pile.
     In this series, two half-brothers constantly jockey to be first in line to inherit the title of opium warlord upon the demise of their mutual Chinese father. The elder brother, Kang, is the offspring of a hill woman of the Shan tribe. Kang has grown up in the savage jungles of East Burma, while the younger brother is full-blood Chinese educated in the private British schools of civilized Hong Kong. At this point, a White Nationalist soldier under the command of our protagonist (the younger brother) has been kidnapped by some of Elder Brother's men from the Shan Army. This kidnapped soldier knows secrets that younger brother would prefer to be kept quiet. A squad of picked men is quickly formed to go on a rescue mission. But, in the deadly wilderness of the Golden Triangle, anything can happen.

Have some Happy Holidays, enjoy your reading and I'll see you in a couple of weeks.

After Action Report

In my blog article back on February 28th, I mentioned my upcoming Surveillance Workshop which was to be conducted at the Long Beach Bouchercon on November 13,2014. Roughly, it was to be eight celebrity author "Rabbits" and eight teams of conference attendees being taught how  to follow those Rabbits.
So, on Thursday morning at the conference, the Rabbits got a one-hour briefing as to what they could and couldn't do. Their pictures and physical descriptions were taken and they were provided with maps of the playing area and a separate starting location for each of the eight Rabbits.

Diagramming the ABC Method

Early that afternoon, the Surveillance Team Members received a one-hour lecture on the ABC Method of Surveillance, were quickly divided into eight teams and were given maps of the playing area, plus 8x10 photos of their individual Rabbits and a location for where their Rabbit would be at starting time. Cell phones and hand signals were to be used as communication in place of radios. Because conference attendees other than players were allowed to sit in on the lecture and the debriefing, the room was packed, with others left standing in the hallway outside the door.

At 2:30 PM, the Rabbits were off and, just like reality in the world of surveillance, anything that could go wrong did. Once again, I was amazed at how many of these civilians could adapt to and overcome adverse situations on the street. Since I was the only one in possession of the Master Rabbit Plan, I manned the base of operations where those who lost their Rabbit could call my cell phone and find out where to relocate their Rabbit at fifteen minute intervals. The phone soon began to ring, beep, chirp, whatever it is that cell phones do these days.

By 4 PM, everyone returned to the conference room for the Debrief. Each Rabbit, followed by the captain of the team conducting surveillance on that Rabbit got a few minutes of microphone time to tell their side of the story. The laughter began. One team started out trailing a member of another surveillance team. Well, in their defense, she did look a lot like their Rabbit photo. A local business, Radio Shack, got talked into recharging one team member's dead cell phone so she could continue playing, while another team kept running into what soon became a very paranoid drug dealer. No doubt he has moved his street business to another part of town to calm his nerves.

Here are some excerpts from an article in Ransom Notes (a newsletter from a Sisters in Crime Chapter in California) as written by Evelyn Moore with contributions by Eileen Magill, both players in the workshop.

     Our team's rabbit dashed north up the main road, cut across street against the light and stopped to talk with another rabbit under a yellow awning on the northwest corner. I raced up to the southeast corner and did my best to hide behind a palm tree. Ducking and weaving back and forth to avoid our rabbit's ever-scanning eyes, I attracted the notice of another sort. My attention was so intent on the rabbit that I didn't notice that I was standing outside the main entrance to a bank, and the security guard was not pleased with my furtive behavior.

     The tap on my shoulder nearly made me jump out of my skin. I was so rattled , I wasn't quite sure what he said to me, but the tone of his voice was rather harsh. I realized how bad the whole situation looked. The only things I had in my bag were multiple changes of clothes and disguises. No ID. Nothing to say that I was taking part in an exercise with Bouchercon. Gosh, nothing suspicious here. He did not look convinced when I described the exercise. Well, as they say, a good defense is a strong offense. When he told me to look at him--which would have meant turning away from my rabbit--I told him, "Sure, but you'll need to watch my rabbit for me," and then described the man I was watching.

     About this time, one of the members of the other team that was following the rabbit that my rabbit was meeting sidled up to the electrical box a few feet to my north. The guard looked back and forth between us, rolled his eyes, and disappeared back into the bank.

                                                     *      *       *

     At one point, while our rabbit was spending a long time under that yellow awning, I was on the other side of the street hiding in a doorway, or behind a large utility vehicle talking to Eileen on our cell phones while changing back and forth from my jacket to my sweatshirt. I noticed this woman who was also hanging out in my area. She was dressed in a provocative manner in a fancy black dress adorned with black roses and black lace. She kept glaring at me and I thought at one point she was going to come up and yell at me, but instead she angrily bustled away. It then occurred to me that she was perhaps what one would politely call "a lady of the night" and I was bad for business.

                                                       *      *       *

     I was also aware while running from one side of the street to the other that I needed to be very careful watching out for cars and buses. I didn't want my epitaph to read, "She got hit by a car while chasing a rabbit."

                                                        *      *       *

     At the end of the hour we followed our rabbit back to the hotel. We were certain that at several points he had made us, but were thrilled to find out during the debrief, that he hadn't. According to our rabbit Con Lehane, he had a good time but was "terribly disappointed that despite constant vigilance and innumerable evasive actions, I wasn't able to shake (or even see) you guys."

The SinC newsletter article afterwards concluded with hyperlinks to the four SleuthSayers blog articles I had written on surveillance tradecraft. These links allowed their SinC readers to obtain more information on how to conduct surveillance, both by foot and by vehicle, not to mention that it advertised our web site.

Other photos from the conference:

Eve, R.T. & Brian

Saturday panel on feds who write

View of the Queen Mary across the harbor at night

Making a podcast of AHMM story for editor Linda Landrigan

Old Russian sub berthed by Queen Mary (Ignore the people)

View from our room of Carnival Cruise ship & Queen Mary

Three Books by David Robbins

by R.T. Lawton

A few weeks back when I was looking for something new to read, I stumbled across The Empty Quarter (2014), the latest book by David Robbins. Its title intrigued me. I opened the book and scanned the inside. The offered sample read well, so I made my purchase.

The Empty Quarter opens in Afghanistan with a team of para rescuers from the Air Force's SOE branch being landed in an open field by a Pave Low helicopter, protected by a gunship. Their mission is to locate, treat and evacuate three wounded British marines whose patrol is pinned down by the enemy. In the process, the reader gets introduced to some of the main characters and finds out what makes them do the hazardous job they do. I then expected the rest of the book to take place in Afghanistan with that war. It didn't.

The story next moved to Yemen where the reader is introduced to Arif, a Saudi who returned from fighting the Russians in Afghanistan twenty-five years previously. Having returned to his native Saudi Arabia, he found he no longer fit into that society. Didn't help that he married a Saudi princess and became embroiled in conflict with her father, the prince. A short prison term for our likable antagonist soon followed. Then, acting upon the words from the prophet Muhammad from his own troubles centuries before, Arif and his wife fled to Yemen. Now, Arif uses his software programming skills to anonymously harass and embarrass the Saudi government through the internet.

      "When disaster threatens, seek refuge in Yemen." ~ The Prophet Muhammad to his followers
       after retreating from Mecca.

Tension remains taut throughout the entire book, all of which is leading up to an escape and chase into The Empty Quarter, a vast desert in Yemen controlled by various tribal factions who often set up road blocks on the desert highway and demand bribes for any wishing to pass. Tribal bonds and blood feuds soon affect both the escapers and the pursurers. The escapers are an American low level diplomat (ex-Army Ranger Captain) who wrongly believes that Arif's wife is trying to go back to her father, a slippery Yemen Intelligence Colonel who lives in the world of spies, and Arif's wife who is strangely silent on the entire matter. The pursurers are a desparate Arif, a Yemen family of brothers who owe a death bed vow to assist this Saudi mujahedeen who has lived in their village for many years. A SEAL unit is on standby for extraction and the para rescuers are prepared to assist, but the plans of men often go awry with events beyond their control. It all collides at the ruins of an ancient building just off the desert highway, and it sometimes becomes difficult to tell who the real bad guys are.

The ending was not what I expected. If you don't get a lump in your throat at the conclusion of this book, then you are made of stern granite.

Enjoyed that novel so much that I went back to see what else David Robbins had written. To my surprise, I had already read one of his earlier books years ago, War of the Rats (1999) which is set in Stalingrad during World War II. Hitler has decreed that his army will capture this city named after the leader of the Soviet Union, while Stalin for his part has sent Krushchev to bolster the city's defenses down to the last man, woman and child, no surrender. The war for ground in the city slowly grinds down to a virtual stalemate. Snipers are called in to assist both sides.

If you are starting to think this scenario sounds familiar, you're correct. Robbin's book, War of the Rats, was made into a movie, Enemy at the Gates. I liked them both.

Realizing that Robbins likes to base his characters and story backgrounds on real people, events and existing organizations, I decided to try a third novel, The Assassin's Gallery (2006). This one is set in 1945 with most of the story taking place in the U.S. During the dark of night on New Year's Eve, a swimmer comes ashore from a submarine. She successfully lands on a beach outside a small town in Massachusetts and starts walking up the beach road to go to the house of her American contact. Unfortunately for her, two civilian coast watchers are parked up that road in an old pickup. Now, she must use all her talents as a professional assassin to cover her tracks.

Meanwhile in Scotland, an American who teaches at a university also secretly trains Jedburgh teams to be dropped behind German and Japanese lines to operate as assassins and saboteurs. This professor gets recalled to America by a member of the Secret Service whom he once trained as a Jedburgh. This particular Secret Service agent believes an assassin is en route to Washington, DC to kill the president.

The rest of the book matches wits between the alleged assassin and the professor. As the story progresses, the calendar keeps moving closer to April 12, 1945, the actual date of Franklin D. Roosevelt's death at the Little White House in Georgia. If you think you know the ending, you should consider two facts to go with this tale of fiction. One, shortly after Roosevelt's death, Josef Stalin sent a telegram to the U.S. State Department requesting that an autopsy be performed to determine if Roosevelt had been poisoned. And second, no chemist's report concerning what may or may not have been in Roosevelt's last meal is available even though the Secret Service ordered a test on the contents of that meal.

Ah, happy reading.

Uncle Sam

Rainbow Division shoulder patch

Three days ago was November 11th, Veteran's Day, our national holiday to celebrate the end of World War I. The way the peace treaty was set up. at the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month in 1918, all the guns in Europe went silent. The War to End All Wars, which had started one hundred years ago from this year, was then over. More than 9 million combatants and 7 million civilians had perished. In those days, new technology for death and destruction, plus the stalemate of trench warfare had caused the increased casualty rate.

My Family

All this got me to thinking. When I was a kid, I remember times when my Uncle Sam Pritchard came to visit. He was always a quiet man, never said much, but was good to all his nieces and nephews and seemed to enjoy our company with fishing, camping and archery. Us kids though got reminders not to ask our uncle about the war he was in or even to mention that war to him at all. At our young age, we merely agreed and didn't think much about it. Although, I know my dad and Sam must have discussed the subject a few times because my dad would sometimes tell me stories about Sam and The Great War.

German soldiers on way to the front

As I was told, my Uncle Sam had been a mechanic in the Rainbow Division, an American army division which fought in France. At the front, their meals of cooked beans were loaded into large metal cans at the field kitchens and carried to the troops in the trenches on the backs of pack mules. Life at the front was short. Sam was sick when he came home after the war. Seems a slight whiff of Mustard Gas had burned his lungs during one of the German attacks, but he survived and made it back alive.

French reserves headed to Verdun

I always liked the old guy and had some good times with him. On a whim recently, I plugged his name into a Google search. Didn't really expect to find much, so I was surprised to locate a roster of the Rainbow Division for that time period. About two thirds of the way through the roster, I found his name under the 168th Regiment (3rd Iowa) Infantry: Samuel A. Pritchard, Mechanic, Van Meter, Iowa. All the other names had a rank behind the name, so evidently in those days Mechanic was a specialty rank. I had known Sam to be good with his hands, always making something out of wood or metal, inventing machines, tinkering and repairing stuff. It's easy to believe he was listed as a Mechanic.

British gas casualties

Unit History

The Rainbow Division (42nd Infantry Division) was activated in August 1917 and was made up of various regiments from 26 states and Washington, D.C. Their shoulder patch is a quarter arc of bands of red, yellow and blue on an army green border. Arriving in France in November 1917, the Division took part in four major operations: the Champagne-Marne, the Aisne-Marne, the Battle of Saint-Mihiel and the Meuse-Argonne Offensive. In 1919, the Division was deactivated until being placed back into service for WWII.

Russian troops awaiting German attack

Choosing Sides:

The main players in this 1900's world drama were:

     Central Powers ~ Germany, Austro-Hungarian Empire, Bosnia, Ottoman Empire, Bulgaria
     Allied Powers ~ America, British Empire, France and colonies, Belgium, Serbia, Russia, Italy

Aftermath

The aggressor was defeated and rightly so, but the aftermath of The War to End All Wars only set the stage for the next global conflict and some of the smaller conflicts which followed after that one. Treaties had been written by the politicians to punish the losing countries who then resented their poor economic conditions and stored away old grudges to be brought out later. Territories were distributed as the winners saw fit which caused future unrest among peoples and governments. The desire by various countries for valuable resources decided where the control for some lands went. The fire was being lit for World War II, it merely smoldered under the surface for a time. Tribes and cultures in Africa and the Middle East were set on collision courses still being reaped in today's world.

Canadian tanks & troops

Austrians executing Serbs, 1917

Politicians wrote the various treaties for their own purposes both before the war to choose sides and after the war to set the terms of surrender, but it was the soldiers who fought the war and suffered in the process. My Uncle Sam served in our army from a sense of patriotic duty to his country, as many soldiers do, however I seriously doubt that many, if any, of those politicians involved in the decisions before and after ever served at the front during that time of death, destruction and madness.

They Hung Lame Johnny

Not all the outlaws in the Old West became as famous as Butch Cassidy with his Hole in the Wall Gang or Jesse James with his bank robberies. Some were just lesser criminals who never rose to national fame. Here's one of those outlaws in the making.

Cornelius Donohue was born in Philadelphia some time about 1850. An injury from falling off a horse in his youth gave him the nickname of Lame Johnny. As an adult, Johnny wandered down to Texas to become a cowboy on a ranch. He showed up just as the cowboys were making plans to raid the Apaches who had stolen the ranch's horse herd. Johnny went along to help steal the horses back. In the subsequent exchange of raids between the cowboys and the Apaches, young Johnny soon acquired the skills needed to become an experienced horse thief.

A few years later, a man named John Francis Murphy was in Cheyenne, Wyoming, getting his bull teams and wagons ready to freight goods north to Deadwood, South Dakota, when he met a well-dressed fellow walking with a limp. The fellow said he was John Hurley from Philadelphia and he wanted to work his way up to Deadwood with Murphy's freight wagons. Murphy gave "Hurley" a job herding the cavyard at the rear of the wagons and loaned him a horse.

Upon arriving in the Black Hills, Johnny started prospecting for gold along Castle Creek. That summer, a band of Sioux stole his horses, so Johnny borrowed a horse from a friend and rode over to the Red Cloud Agency. There, he killed the man guarding the corral and then stole about 300 Indian horses. He spent the rest of the summer playing his old Texas game of being raided by Indians and then conducting his own raids against their herds. At the end of summer, he sold the horses he had left and gave up prospecting.

Next, he tried his hand as a bookkeeper for Homestake Gold Mine in Lead. This legal employment continued until he was recognized by a man from Texas who claimed "Hurley" was actually a horse thief named Lame Johnny. Seems that Johnny may have stolen horses from more than just Indians while he was in Texas.

Johnny promptly quit the mine and returned to his old ways of acquiring horse flesh., but it wasn't long before he embarked on a new occupation. On the west side of the Black Hills was a trail that ran from Deadwood south to Custer and then over to Cheyenne. Every month, the Homestake Mine sent a bullion coach down that trail with a shipment of gold. Johnny soon got accused of several stage holdups. Unfortunately for him, one of his victims recognized him and spread the word after Johnny stopped a Buffalo Gap to Rapid City stage on the east side of the Hills.

Thinking it might be best to revert to his horse stealing business for a while, Johnny headed down to Pine Ridge to acquire some Indian horses. His luck went against him when a lawman got word of his whereabouts and arrested him for horse stealing. Soon finding out that Johnny was also wanted for robbing and stealing a mail pouch from a stage coach, the lawman took him down to Chadron, Nebraska, and put him on the Sydney to Deadwood coach to go to court. To ensure his safe arrival, Johnny was shackled and handcuffed. Then a blacksmith attached an anklet made out of iron. A chain ran from the anklet on one end and on the other end it was riveted to a metal plate fixed to the floor of the coach.

As further measure, Boone May and Frank Smith rode on the coach as prisoner escorts, while Jesse Brown trailed at a distance on horseback. About eight miles north of Buffalo Gap where Highway 79 now crosses Lame Johnny Creek, a bunch of masked vigilantes, as the story was later told, rode up from the south, stopped the coach and pried the metal plate off the coach floor. They then shot Johnny and hung him from a nearby elm tree. Ironically, this spot was not far from where he'd robbed another stagecoach earlier in his career.

Allegedly, neither Boone nor Smith were able to protect their prisoner. And when Brown tried to ride up to the coach, he was supposedly warned off by a voice in the bushes along the creek.

When Pete Osland's bull train came up the trail the next morning, Johnny was still swinging from the elm tree. They cut his body down, buried it and placed a marker.

Rumors soon spread that a cowboy had cut off Lame Johnny's head and sold it to a museum back east. To find out for sure, Ephrien Dean, W.H. Sewright and others went to the site and dug up the grave. Johnny's body was still in the shackles and chains, but his head was missing. They removed the shackles and boots, then reburied the body. The boots, one of which had a raised heel to accommodate Johnny's injured foot, were later displayed in Wood's store in Buffalo Gap. A subsequent fire destroyed both Johnny's boots and the building. One of the shackles is at the State Historical Museum in Pierre (the state capitol) and the other is on display at the Frontier Museum in Custer where I saw it.

Johnny was gone, but no one knew how he and his gang could disappear so easily into the Hills after a robbery. Their trail always seemed to disappear in the area of King's Ridge.

Then in 1919, according to Mrs. Halstead, she and her husband filed a homestead claim on King's Ridge. Their land lay between Custer and Buffalo Gap near Lame Johnny Creek. On the western portion of the land set a high rim rock and a box canyon with no visible way down. While searching for a missing steer one fall, her husband followed tracks in the snow to the rim rock. From there, he could see the steer moving around on the canyon floor. Where the steer's tracks disappeared up top, her husband found three large rocks forming a gateway to a hidden trail going down.

On the canyon floor were two large caves that couldn't be seen from the top. The larger cave looked to have been a corral large enough for about 25-30 horses. The smaller cave contained rotted ropes, rusty cans, whiskey bottles and rotted bedding. Black soot from an old fireplace covered the walls of this cave. All was undisturbed as if the owners had left, but somehow hadn't made it back.

Not long after, Orval Halstead and her family moved away. They never told anyone about the caves until she told her story to the Eastern Custer County Historical Society in the late 1960's

                                                                   #

Historical facts taken from Our Yesterdays, published by the Eastern Custer County Historical Society which collected written copies of oral stories from many of the early pioneers in that area and compiled them into a book. Other information was acquired from displays at the Frontier Museum in Custer.

Arch Riordan

A few lawmen in the Old West became famous, like Wyatt Earp, Bat Masterson and Pat Garett, but what about the ones who didn't get written up in dime novels and didn't have some version of their lives and dramatic events turned into movies for the silver screen or into weekly episodes for television? What of those who went about their jobs in once growing towns which later faded into almost obscurity, those individuals who did not receive much recognition in the records of history?
Arch Wilder Riordan was one of those old time lawmen overlooked in most history books.

In late 1874, after gold had been discovered in the Black Hills of South Dakota, prospectors started heading into the area. Many traveled north from Sydney, Nebraska, and then turned west where they followed the route used by buffalo herds making their way from the prairie into the hills and out again with the seasons. The great influx of people soon called for a town to be established at the beginning of this natural opening in the landscape. This town became known as Buffalo Gap.

Eleven years after the gold rush started, the Fremont, Elkhorn and Missouri Valley Railroad reached Buffalo Gap and made it a shipping point for both cattle and travelers. At one point, the town claimed to have 17 hotels and eating establishments, 4 general stores, one hardware store, Bonesteel's Ready To Wear store, 2 drug stores, Van der Vort's furniture store, 4 Chinese laundries, 3 livery barns, 4 blacksmith shops and 2 large sporting houses plus several small ones. It also had a station stop established by George Boland for the Sydney Stage Line. As there were no churches, religious services were held in tents.

The quickly growing town soon attracted a collection of low-lifes and law-breakers. Since the local sheriff was not held in high esteem, the town's businessmen met in secret to discuss the problem of law and order. That's when they asked Arch to become their Town Marshal. The salary by 1886 became $75.00 a month.

Arch stood about six feet tall and weighed in at 240 pounds, had an easy manner and a southern accent. He'd come into the Dakota Territory as a cattle drover and found the community and surrounding area to his liking. Deciding to settle down, he opened up a combination drugstore and saloon, which became quite profitable. Believing that a good citizen should do his part in the community, Arch agreed to take on the job of Town Marshal.

Unhappy at the prospect of a cowboy turned Town Marshal riding herd on their rowdy activities, the local hoodlums had their own secret meeting. As a result, they hired Charlie Fugit, a gunman, to come over from Wyoming and take care of their problem. The plan was to start a fight in one of the dance halls, and then when Arch showed up, Charlie would kill him. All went as intended until Charlie confronted Arch in the dance hall. Turned out Arch was a deadly shot and faster than Charlie. Charlie did not survive the shooting.

In another incident, Arch took a gun away from a bad guy named Sam. (Sorry, Sam's last name didn't make it into the history book.) Sam got lodged into the Buffalo Gap jail, a ten foot by ten foot building with stout doors and bars on the windows. Arch turned his back and started to walk away, not knowing that Sam had a small revolver concealed in his boot top. The outlaw called out to Arch. As the marshal turned back to him, the outlaw shot and missed. Arch drew his own weapon, informing Sam that he would bear evidence of this attempted murder for the rest of his life, and then shot off Sam's left ear lobe.

Arch went on to survive several dangerous situations, never using his firearm without due provocation. In later years, he was appointed a U.S. Marshal.

Over time, the railroad pushed north up to Rapid City, the new hub for the Black Hills. Several businesses from Buffalo Gap then moved up the line. Buffalo Gap had peaked and soon faded into near obscurity.

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Historical information for this article was taken from Our Yesterdays, the collected writings of oral histories from early pioneers by the Eastern Custer County Historical Society during the late 1960's.

Hold on a Minute

They say you always remember the first one. That would be a girl named Rachel. She was followed by Carmen and then a few more after her, but I don't remember all the names now. Wasn't really my fault they kept coming back for more. I tried to stop it all with a simple push of a button, but evidently that part of my phone no longer worked because they just kept right on calling, even when I asked to be taken off their phone lists.
Finally, after the last time Rachel called, I hit the phone button labeled with the number 1 and I immediately got put on HOLD. A pleasant female voice, obviously pre-recorded but not by Rachel, informed me I was Caller #22 and thanked me for holding. There was no background music while I waited, but I wasn't worried because I quickly moved up in priority to Caller #17, got thanked again for holding, then jumped to #12, always very polite, and before I knew it I was in single digits and a real person came on the line. Never did figure out what happened to all the numbers I got to skip over. Maybe this was a big business outfit with lots of operators to handle all these important phone calls. My girl Rachel must really be something special to work at this place.

Just as I was ready to actually connect with Rachel on a personal one-to-one basis, some guy who must've been her boyfriend came on the line. I knew it wasn't her brother because this guy had an accent from India. Oh sure, he was pleasant enough and spoke good English, but still, he had that very distinctive accent. I quickly learned he was from Card Member Services and was offering to help me get a lower rate on my credit card. Hey, who wouldn't appreciate paying less money every month to those greedy credit card companies?

Unfortunately, I probably won't be getting that lower rate he offered. Seems I failed to meet his expectations. Not sure where I went wrong. Had to be something I said since he soon asked to speak to my wife so he could explain everything to her.

I will admit things went downhill after I broke out in a laugh, accused him of being a scam artist and informed him (thank you Rob Lopresti) that as long as he was talking with me, this was time he wasn't able to con someone else. He emphatically denied being such a person and then asked for my mother so he could talk to her. Sadly, I explained that he would have to travel to Texas where she was buried. It must have been a bad day at the office or maybe he was merely feeling frustrated with his job, because he moved on to the more colorful aspects of the English language. By now, my wife who was listening from the other room started laughing herself.

He and I continued, with me laughing and having a great time, while he became more colorful with his adjectives. I wonder if the FCC is aware of this type of conduct on our telephone airways? I fear such rough language could offend the ears of some of our more sensitive citizens. As he started to repeat his apparently limited vocabulary, I asked for a phone number so I could call him back. He promptly found some new words he hadn't yet used in our conversation. As the ten minute mark approached, I changed tack and politely inquired if he could hold on to the line for a few more minutes while I got someone to trace the call. The line went quiet. Then it died. Guess that means I may not hear from Rachel again.

But hey, Carmen called again as I was busy writing this, so those girls are still out there. I was sorry I didn't have time to speak with Carmen right then when she called. Wonder if she too has a boyfriend with one of them foreign accents?

The very next day, to my surprise, I got a call from another gentleman with an accent from India. This time, it was direct, without any pre-recorded voice and without being put on HOLD for a Caller Countdown. I quickly determined this caller was not Rachel's boyfriend from the previous day. Nope, this fellow sounded more like the same guy I always get when I call for support on my hail-damaged computer or wandering software. I will say this gentleman was very polite and had great patience with me, even though we had a bad connection (probably not his fault) and a slight problem understanding each other (this could have been my fault). I chalked the latter up to the fact that I was conversing in American English which I understood perfectly, whereas he was speaking some form of India English, no doubt derived from the King's English some decades after India dropped out of the bottom of the British Empire. In any case, there appeared to be a slight language barrier as he had to constantly repeat his directions. I do commend his patience in this trying endeavor. Of course, there is always the possibility that I could be a slow learner and therefore none of the blame should be laid at his doorstep. He was merely attempting to help me out.

He quickly explained that he was from Windows and that hackers may have gotten into my computer. I thanked him profusely for his awareness. He instructed me to go to my computer (several times) where he would then show me if I had a problem. He then inquired (several times) if I were in front of my computer. Next, (several times) I was instructed to sit at my computer. Then, stupid me, I had trouble understanding if I were supposed to be on the internet during this process, or not. We finally determined it was not. Hey, what did I know? I'd never been through this harrowing process before.

Now, I was supposed to hit the Windows key and the "R" key. In case you don't know, this brings up the RUN screen. Next is to type in "event log" at which time he would ask if I saw any error messages. Naturally, the screen will show some errors because sooner or later every computer gets an error message, but this was supposed to prove that my computer had been hacked and infected with a Trojan virus. At which point, the helpful "guy from Windows" would have me type in a certain website to clean out the virus. He was doing such a good job that I hated to disappoint him, so in the interests of congeniality, I said "good one," laughed to show we'd had a good time together and hung up.

Obviously, these two gentlemen from India have not read Rob Lopresti's 950 word short story, "Shanks Holds the Line." Rob mentioned this story in one of his previous blogs, plus editor Linda Landrigan posted the story on AHMM's blog site a few months back.

For more on this scam subject, feel free to Google "Card Member Services" and/or "Windows key and R."

Oh, and if Rachel calls be sure to say hi for me.

Postscript~ I just got a call from Emma. Evidently she is busier than Rachel because I started out at Caller #33 while on Hold. When a live voice, a nice black girl named Ashley with an American accent, came on I inquired why I never got to talk with Rachel or Carmen. She said, "Who?" I explained they were the names on the pre-recorded tapes that called me. I must have confused her because she went into a long rambling explanation before finally hanging up on me.

Oh Rachel, where art thou?

When I Was Three

It's been three years now. To tell the truth, I never thought, even at the low rate of posting once every fortnight Friday, that I would last three years at this blogging thing. So far, I've talked about writing topics and about my writing successes, failures, how-to's and humorous outcomes. Sometimes, as novelist Raphael Sabatini said, you just gotta laugh at the world. I've told tales of the street, touched on some facets of law enforcement and dug up facts on peoples, customs and oddities out of various times in history. Don't know what you guys out there thought upon reading some of these bi-weekly contributions, but it's been fun on this end. It's also been great learning about all you guys and what you know.

SIDE NOTE: Yeah, I know there appears to be a male gender in the word guys if you happen to be thinking in terms of guys and dolls, but in my 1960's Webster's, definition 3, Colloquial, it says person, which is not gender specific, thus I mean all of you. Sure, I almost lost the argument in my 1974 Webster's, but that dictionary is a small paperback version. And, I get my genderless definition back in my giant 2002 Barnes & Noble Webster's Encyclopedia version which says in definition 2: a group of people regardless of gender. Hope we're all good with that one..

As for my tales of the street, don't take any of those as bragging when I mention events I played a part in. For our Sleuth Sayers blog, they are merely meant as entertainment for yourselves and as possible use for characters or events in the writing of your fiction. When these same types of tales are told among law enforcement personnel, this becomes a way of informal training having nothing to do with age, rank or length of service in the field. Everyone learns from the storyteller, which may mean a better chance of survival on the street. Every agent has different experiences during his career, thus his or her telling of these experiences gives fellow officers a chance to learn what worked under a certain set of circumstances, and maybe what didn't work out so well and could be done better the next time those circumstances happen to occur. Either way, it could be a lesson in life or a life lesson.

Photo by Puschinka 2009

It has been my great pleasure to rub shoulders with all you posters and readers on this blog site for the last three years, and to actually have been able to meet and converse with a few of you in person at writers conferences or other gatherings. Know that I look forward to your future postings and comments.

Happy 3rd Sleuth Sayers Birthday to all and a special thanks to Leigh, Rob and everybody else who keep this thing going..

The Capo's Son

by R.T. Lawton

As you may recall in The Godfather, Vito Corleone declined to do business with the Turk Sollozzo because Vito believed that trafficking in drugs was not a good idea. Such involvement in that business would bring heat on the family and then they would lose some of the judges and police who were in their pocket. That was the movie being shown in 1972.

In real life, many heads of mob families did have concerns about the stiff penalties to be had for becoming involved in the narcotics business. They feared that omerta as they knew it would cease to exist when family members started considering long years in prison versus ratting out their fellow traffickers. And, they were right, the first major member to testify against the mafia in America was a made man turned by the old Federal Bureau of Narcotics.

In 1971, when I was working Kansas City, Nick Civella was the local crime boss for that area. He'd been around for a long while, to include the ill-fated Appalachian meeting of mafia bosses. I never personally heard what Nick had to say about his men having any involvement in the drug business, but I soon got a pretty good idea what one of his capos thought.

By 1972, I'd been transferred over to a federal task force consisting of five feds and about twenty state and locals. My partner, Big Jim, was a KCMO vice cop. He had about fifteen or more years of time on the streets. As for me, I was looking at two, if I stretched. One Friday evening when arrest warrants were being handed out to be served, Jim and I ended up with paper for the son of one of the mob capos. Seems the boy had been indiscrete enough to sell several thousand mini-whites (amphetamine) to a Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs guy. Jim said he would show me the best way to handle this situation. Fine by me.

We didn't go to the future defendant's residence, which is usually the first place to look for an arrestee. Instead, we drove out to a night club owned by the capo, parked in the lot, walked inside and sat down at a table. When the waitress inquired what we wanted to drink, we placed our order and then asked for the capo by name. She never batted an eye, as if it were an everyday occurrence. The drinks came fast, the capo took about ten minutes. As the capo stood by our table, Jim introduced himself and me, both of us still seated. We discretely showed our badges. Didn't want to spook the patrons or staff.

Jim proceeded to explain in a quiet voice that we had a federal arrest warrant in the capo's son's name for the illegal distribution of a controlled substance. Jim continued by stating that we came directly to him (the capo) rather than going to his house and unnecessarily disturbing his wife and the rest of his family. The capo stared at us in silence for a couple of moments and then stated that his son would be at our office in the federal building at 9 AM on Monday morning. Before he walked away, the capo thanked us for bringing this matter directly to his attention and said the drinks were on him.

I must've had a questioning look on my face because Jim chuckled before letting me know how these types of situations were taken care of. According to his theory, we left an amount of money on the table to cover the price of the drinks plus tip. The capo would not be offended because we had not blatantly rejected his offer, the waitress would be happy because she got a great tip and Big Jim and I, by leaving that much money on the table, could not be accused of accepting inappropriate gratuities. (In Basic Agents Training ethics class, the instructors stressed that it all started with something so simple as a free cup of coffee.) So, our actions sent a subtle message to the capo, plus made us look smart in his eyes because we had found a way around a potential dilemma and yet still got the job done with a minimum of problems.

And yes, the son did show up on time at the federal building. One thing I did notice that morning though was that he sported a fresh black eye. I guess his father was sending him and us his own message.

Bang, You're Busted

At some time or other, in the back of every criminal's mind lurks those dreaded words, "You're under arrest." He hopes to never hear any form of speech which includes himself and the word arrest in the same sentence, but every time he breaks the law he realizes that the possibility exists. And, he never knows when the phrase may be spoken. These fateful words could sear his ears in the middle of his criminal action or even years later, assuming the statute of limitations has not yet run.
Our criminal might be a mastermind who has carefully plotted out his crime and kept a very low profile in order to reduce his exposure and therefore the risks he runs, but sooner or later, he has to deal with other people. Therein lies one of his greatest dangers. You see, a counterfeiter needs someone to lay off his fake paper. A career thief needs a fence to receive the stolen goods. The fence in turn needs customers to purchase those same stolen goods. An embezzler has to deal with and fool auditors and supervisors. An inside trader has to get his valuable information from someone inside the business. And yes, even a murderer has to deal with someone, if not the person from whom he acquired his contract or murder weapon, then at least the victim of his crime.

In the case of conspiracies and RICO laws, it takes time for investigators and prosecutors to assemble and correlate all the needed witnesses and other evidence before presenting everything to a grand jury for indictment and subsequent arrest warrants. These type of indictments cast broad nets which may be able to roll up entire criminal organizations. Just when the criminal thinks his exposure to a particular crime in the past is safely put to bed and he can forget about it, he finds himself and his buddies swept up by the law. What's a smart guy to do and who can he trust?

The truth is, if you are a criminal, you can't trust anyone. You can't trust a spouse or other relative, your life-long best friend, the members of whatever organization you all swore allegiance to, not even the anonymous but intriguing person you met on the internet, much less the stranger your trusted associate just introduced you to. Naturally, your associate vouches for the guy. None of these people can be trusted, as many a convicted felon has found out to his chagrin. It seems an unhappy, pressured and/or betrayed spouse will give you up in a heartbeat. Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. You may have long forgotten a particular incident, but your relatives may still be harboring a long-time grudge for the bad you once did them. As for your life-long best friend, if it comes down to you or him, he may decide it's going to be you. And, let's face it, the mafia has changed. Omerta is out the window. The big bosses didn't want to do big time, so they rolled on everybody. Bike gangs preach brotherhood, but the top dogs only look out for their own welfare. That anonymous guy on the other end of the computer keyboard could be anybody, even a vice cop. And that hard-looking stranger you just asked to kill your spouse, boss or worst enemy, how many videos of those meetings with incriminating statements end up on television news programs for the general viewing public? Don't those criminals ever watch television or somehow keep up with current events in their field of endeavor these days?

Some of the most embarrassed criminals are the ones caught in undercover operations. They have bought so far into the U/C guy's story that when it comes time for their arrest, their disbelief is interesting to watch. Some reactions have ranged from, "Are they arresting you, too?" to "Does this mean we're not going to Mexico" to the outright "I don't believe you." These defendants are the ones who usually plead out rather than have their stupidity revealed in open court.

And yet, the next generation of criminals is coming of age. Even though they have the opportunity to hear about recent and past arrests on television, see similar articles on the internet involving all types of crime, potential defendants don't steer away from making the same mistakes their predecessors did.

That leaves me wondering.

Are these people optimists in their thinking and planning for their crimes?

Are they wading in the shallow end of the gene pool?

Or do we just catch the stupid ones?

More Black Market

(continued from 18/Jul/14)

In the low end of the Vietnam Black Market, almost everyone had a hand in the trade. It was politely called the barter system and was for small immediate gain. What could it hurt?

See, every soldier in-country had a ration card which allowed him to buy two cartons of cigarettes, two cases of beer, two bottles of wine and/or two fifths of hard liquor per month. But, not every soldier smoked and not every soldier drank booze, which then created a market for those extra goods. The rationed amounts mentioned above generally sufficed for the needs of most G.I.'s, however there were outsiders who had no access to the PX (cigarettes) or the Class Six Store (booze).

Simple solution, trade those extra goods which you bought from the non-smoking, non-drinking soldiers who otherwise didn't use their ration cards. Want some cases of steaks or lobster to supplement your C-rations or scant mess hall chow? Trade some of those extra purchased goods to a civilian contractor or merchant seaman who had connections to his company's kitchen. Need a freezer to keep those extra steaks cold as they're hidden behind a false wall in your company area? Once again, trade some of that booze or cartons to a civilian for that freezer. You say a real ice cream factory went into operation down in the ville and they don't make their product out of reconstituted milk like the military does? Now you're trading PX items to Vietnamese workers who smuggle out gallons of whichever flavor of real ice cream you desire. This may be bartering, but it's still operating in the Black Market, only on a much lower scale.

Today's World

But then you don't need a time of war to have a Black Market in existence. I once entered a mob joint in downtown Kansas City and sat at the corner of the bar where I could watch everything going on. When I ordered my second drink, I gave the bartender some extra money and asked her to get me a pack of Winstons. My second drink came fast, then she wandered around for a while before disappearing into a back room. A few minutes later, she came out and wandered around again before finally depositing the cigarettes in front of me on the bar. I had paid full price for the pack, but it didn't have a federal tax stamp on it. She never went near the vending machine in plain sight against the wall. These smokes were contraband, smuggled out the back door of an East Coast factory or else high-jacked from a semi trailer before the government got paid and put a tax stamp on them.

Operators in this market may only make nickels, dimes or quarters on every small sale, but they are in it for the volume. In the end, all those nickels, dimes and quarters add up to very big dollars, and those are untaxed dollars not subject to state and federal sales or income taxes. Free money, so to speak.

All this merely goes to show that any economic system with man-imposed restrictions or regulations allows for the creation of a Black Market for desired goods. The schemers will find a way to operate in this environment.

There's also the underground market created between thieves and those loose-moral people who are not adverse to buying on the "midnight discount" or "three-finger discount" plan. The first refers to goods stolen by burglars and the second to goods stolen by pickpockets and shoplifters.

You've all read news articles or seen TV shows where law enforcement has run a sting operation. This usually consists of a rented storefront or warehouse where law enforcement installs concealed cameras to record all transactions, plus law enforcement personnel in an undercover capacity, or an informant, work the front counter to purchase stolen goods from criminals. After a period of time, the crooks get arrested. But, cop sponsored stings are only a small portion of the real fencing of stolen goods operations we never hear about.

And then there are those who make and sell counterfeit t-shirts, computer chips, fake brand-name handbags, etc. Don't forget DVD's of pirated movies or pirated songs from the music industry. All trade mark and copyright violations done on the sly to be sold on the Black Market.

Bottom line, criminals and schemers will keep looking for ways to work the system. Like the line says in that song, Smuggler's Blues: "… it's the lure of easy money."

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To read about the black market with the U.S. Army in Cold War Germany, get Black Traffic, an e-novel by our very own David Edgerley Gates. (kindle, nook) It's a good one.

Black Market Money

Somewhere not too far from where you are right now, there is a person scheming on a way to make some money. It's human nature to desire an increase in our financial status so we can acquire items that we want in life or think we need. To make this money, most people go out and find a legal job, but there are always those who look to make the easy dollar, the quick buck, regardless of the legality involved. Times of war make for several opportunities.
Summer of '67

The large aircraft finally rolled to a stop. This was it, the Central Highlands. When the door opened, all passengers filed out onto the tarmac. Dressed in rumpled khaki's and low quarters, with all our allowed worldly goods in O.D. duffel bags slung over our shoulders, we lined up for the arriving green buses. Our first indication that we were now in a world different from the one we'd left behind came as the buses quickly emptied out those soldiers going back home on the same plane we'd just arrived on. Those guys in jungle fatigues, with red mud splashed up to their knees, ran joyfully screaming and hollering toward their "freedom bird." Looked like a bad omen to us new guys.

Our second indication came as other in-country soldiers, with time left before rotation back to "the World," walked down our lines quietly offering to exchange MPC (Military Pay Certificates) for good old American greenbacks. They would even pay a little over a dollar in exchange. Some arrivals went for it, some didn't. When we later arrived at the REPO Depot in Pleiku, one of the first things that happened was all U.S. currency was officially converted to equivalent MPC, all brightly colored paper bills much like monopoly money.

Here's how the system worked from then on. Come payday, every soldier reported to his military paymaster (usually a Lieutenant or a Captain), saluted, signed a pay voucher and received about fifty dollars in MPC. The rest of his paycheck got deposited in his bank account back in the States. The military didn't want any soldier to have a lot of money in-country and the also didn't want him to have American dollars, so they gave him MPC which was only good at the PX and other military stores in Vietnam at the time. If he went to the local village, he was first supposed to exchange his MPC for Vietnamese Piasters (so named as a carryover from Vietnam's days as a French colony, whereas the Vietnamese DONG was usually the denomination word printed on the bill itself). Officially, the conversion rate was one U.S. dollar to one MPC dollar and one MPC dollar for about 113 Piasters (or Dong). The Saigon Black Market exchange rate in July 1967 was 157 Dong to one U.S. dollar. A year later in June 1968, it was 180 Dong to a dollar. The entire system made for a lucrative black market in money.

Vietnamese gladly accepted MPC because they would then use it later to purchase goods from the local PX. They couldn't buy anything there directly, but it was easy to make a straw purchase through a sympathetic G.I., and there were plenty of those around. "Third Nationals" had to be careful though about how much MPC they accumulated at any one time because every year or so, the military called in all of the current issue of MPC and exchanged those bills for a new issue. No advance notice was given of the one-day conversion, but Vietnamese citizens weren't allowed to do an official conversion anyway because they weren't supposed to have MPC. Most Vietnamese caught short holding the old issue would offer to pay a commission to a sympathetic G.I. to induce him to exchange their MPC for them. After conversion day, the old bills were only good for starting fires. However, any G.I. making a large exchange came to the attention of military authorities, which meant the CID (army's equivalent to the civilian FBI) would be looking into his affairs.

The locals also gladly took U.S. dollars in payment, if they could get it, because there was no sudden call-in on those bills, plus American dollars were more secure than their own Piasters/Dong. American currency in their hands often made its way up to the Vietnamese politicians and high brass who then deposited this money into personal Swiss or other foreign bank accounts. Other American bills made their way to the Viet Cong who used this currency to purchase medical and other supplies for their own war effort. Sometimes paying it to corrupt G.I.'s who diverted our military supplies.

This should give you a good idea how money itself could become a black market item, which then led to a clandestine market in money orders. Any G.I. making extra money through gambling in the barracks, becoming an entrepreneur in the underground market, or whatever illicit activity he schemed up, soon had a currency problem. Holding large amounts of MPC was no good because those bills only had value in-country. Back in the States, they were worthless. Piasters were a little shaky and not readily convertible out of the country without drawing undue attention, unless you were a legitimate business company. But, as long as a guy was careful, he could use MPC to purchase money orders at the military post office and mail them back home to the States. Trouble was, to stay out of the lime light, he had to find a lot of friends, acquaintances and/or willing G.I.'s, not also in the same trade, to make these purchases for him so his name didn't keep showing up. And, those straw-purchased money orders then had to be spread out to friends, relatives, acquaintances and/or willing G.I.'s on the receiving end to avoid suspicion from the same name always popping up as a receiver. Of course, if you could bribe the money order guy in the military post office that solved part of your problem.

Two weeks from now, more Black Market.