On Wednesday, July 6, Major General Cornelius Troop, US Army (Retired), Marched into the Office of Special Commands at the Pentagon with a look of determination on his face and addressed his old friend, Major General Barney O'Rourke.
"Barney, my boy, I have discovered the perfect training program for all our special forces, from Army Rangers to Green Berets to Navy SEALS!"
General Troop then related his recent trip to Varmint County, along with Brigadier General Dean Swagger and Colonel Horace Ledenhoffer, to present an overdue Medal of Honor to a long-lost Viet Nam veteran.
That veteran was, of course, Varmint County's favorite fruitcake, Cooter McBean. You may recall how I related last month the story of Cooter, how he finally got himself a decent roof over his head, literally, when a tornado blew a fancy 12-room geodesic dome off the side of Flatiron Peak on top of Cooter's shack.
This mishap-turned good fortune caught the attention of some Varmint County veterans, including Fire Chief Stanley the Torch Aslinger, who decided it would be a nice gesture to honor Cooter by getting the Army to replace his long-lost medals. What they found was that the Army had been looking for Cooter for years, as he had earned the nation's highest military award without ever knowing it.
It was quickly decided, since Cooter was too paranoid in large crowds and among strangers to make a trip to Washington, that some Army brass would come down to Varmint County and present the medal at Lower Primroy's Fourth of July celebration.
Generals Troop and Swagger, accompanied by Colonel Ledenhoffer from the Army's Office of Vital Records, arrived in Varmint County the morning of the 4th, where they were met by Stanley, Colonel Hugh Ray Jass, Sheriff Hiram Potts and Judge "Hardtime" Harwell.
"Welcome, gentlemen. We've arranged a little reception for you so you and Cooter can get to know each other before the presentation ceremony," Hugh Ray announced. "He's a mite touchy around strangers and might need to be reassured that you're friendly if you want him to show up for his own medal ceremony."
The reception turned out to be a touching event. The generals had not only brought the medals, but three of Cooter's old cellmates from North Viet Nam's Hong Vhat Phoung Prison, American soldiers who had escaped back in 1969 thanks to Cooter's heroics.
Former Sergeant Cameron "Gunny" Glock from Texas, former private George Berry from Oregon and former Marine corporal Bubba Lee Grimes from Georgia all made the trip to reunite with the guy who they felt had saved their lives.
As one might expect, the reunion and the brief medal ceremony, attended by the majority of Lower Primroy's 2,000 citizens, were both moving and patriotic, and unlike most Varmint County public events, totally without mishap. Cooter, his nerves shored up by seeing his old army buddies again, managed to resist the urge to run and hide when he saw the crowd gathered at Viper Stadium.
There was that one incident, though, when the Varmint County High School marching band broke out in an unexpected stanza of something that sounded like a mix of "Hail to the Chief" and "America the Beautiful." Cooter quickly dived under the podium and Stanley thought he was about to make a break for it, but he recovered.
Fortunately, the music was so bad that most in the crowd had failed to notice Cooter, saving him some embarrassment. "What exactly, was that tune the band was playing?" Colonel Hugh later asked band director Herbert Fiddle.
"I'm not sure. The band got their song sheets mixed up on the bus ride over. I think the horn section was playing "John Brown's Body" while the clarinets were playing "This Land is Your Land" and the tuba section was playing "Rocky Top," Herbert replied. "Still, for this band it didn't sound half bad. We've got 30 new members this year, most of them freshmen."
"I'd hate to hear them when they're playing bad," Colonel Hugh told Doc Filstrup. "Sounded like somebody strangling a herd of cats."
After the ceremony, everyone in Lower Primroy got down to the serious business of celebrating July 4th. Cooter and his old POW companions reminisced and along with the generals, gave interviews to reporters from Channel 14 TV News, the Burrville Banner and Gopher Potts from WVMT, "Your Gospel and Total Sports Coverage Station."
The rest of Varmint County played Bingo, ate cotton candy, chased a greased pig or watched baseball games while waiting for the main event at any Varmint County 4th of July - the arrival of the Hockmeyers and Haigs.
Finally, around 3:00 in the afternoon, folks heard the beating of drums. Generals Troop and Swagger looked up from their conversation with Doc Filstrup and Sheriff Potts to see a long gray line marching into town from the east. It was the Haig clan, some 300 of the young men led by old patriarch Elijah Haig riding a big black stallion. Elijah wore the uniform of a Confederate general, actually the same uniform worn by his great grandpappy, General Boudreaux Haig, at the Battle of Shiloh in 1862.
Suddenly a chorus of flutes could be heard from the west, playing "Glory, Glory, Hallelujah" as a long line of young men dressed in blue uniforms marched into town, led by Caleb Hockmeyer riding a large red stallion and dressed in a Union colonel's uniform, the same one worn by his great grandpappy, Colonel Lucas Hockmeyer, at the Battle of Wilson's Creek in 1861.
"This is the high point of our 4th of July celebration," Doc told the visiting generals. "The Haigs and Hockmeyers will now re-enact the Battle of McCracken's Nose. They were on opposite sides during the Civil War and have been feuding for the past 150 years.
"They used to shoot at each other with some regularity, but then a few years back the Haigs rescued Caleb's four-year-old great granddaughter who was lost in a snowstorm. Elijah and Caleb got together and agreed that it was time to end the feuding but they needed some way for their young men to blow off steam and keep the feuding tradition alive, without all the actual bloodshed."
"We tried a re-enactment of Varmint County's Civil war battle some years back, with tragic results," Sheriff Potts explained.
"Yeah, former Sheriff Smoky drafted trusties from the jail as re-enactors when not enough volunteers were found, somebody put too much dynamite in some holes to resemble cannon explosions and the shock wave knocked the nose off McCracken," Doc continued.
"That big boulder rolled down the mountain and flattened Sheriff Smokey's trusties and we gave up on celebrating our Civil War heritage after that," Sheriff Potts concluded.
"But the Haigs and Hockmeyers came to the rescue. They decided to replace their clans' blood feud with a good old-fashioned free-forall and offered to dress the boys up in Civil War uniforms so we could see a re-enactment once a year. Everyone in the county endorsed the idea. The young men, especially, looked forward to the show."
"I seem to recall you were particularly supportive," Judge Hardtime Harwell told Doc Filstrup.
"Naturally. I make enough setting broken bones, sewing up scalp lacerations and dispensing pain-killers to pay for my annual deep sea fishing trip, and it beats the old days of constantly treating gunshot wounds," doc observed.
And so Generals Troop and Swagger were treated to a Varmint County 4th of July. Cooter, who gets nervous around too much violence, excused himself from the festivities and he and his old army buddies retired to Smiley's Pool Emporium for a few rounds of shooting pool in air-conditioned comfort.
The rest of the crowd watched as the Haig re-enactors, representing the Confederate side, fired off a couple of volleys from their muskets, and the Hockmeyers, in Union blue, returned fire with a six-pound cannon and their own muskets.
Then Elijah and Caleb dismounted and retired to the grandstand to join the guests from the Pentagon while their younger clansmen completed the show.
"Fix . . . bayonets!" Curley Haig, dressed as a captain, ordered his Confederate troopers. Each affixed a rubber bayonet to the muzzle of their musket. The Haigs then charged the Hockmeyer lines and soon the fighting was hand-to-hand. This is when all semblance of the word "re-enactment" disappeared as the two sides began clawing, punching, butting, bayoneting, choking and biting each other with a fury reminiscent of the original war.
Doc filstrup had recruited a dozen off-duty paramedics from neighboring burrville to dress up like stretcher bearers and soon a constant line of stretchers was making its way from the melee to a makeshift field hospital, where nurs es dressed in florence nightingale-style period dress applied bandages and decided which haigs and hockmeyers should be declared "dead" and retired from the fight.
The hospital was soon overrun and bodies began to be laid out on the grass. Finally, one of the nurses interrupted Doc Filstrup up in the bleachers. "Doc, it's time for you to get busy. We've patched all the superficial wounds we can, but Toby Hockmeyer has a compound fracture, Peewee Haig may lose an eye and I think Curley has a broken jaw. We need your help, now!"
Two days later, General Troop was at the Pentagon arguing his case. "General O'Rourke, we need to utilize this event to train our Special Forces people in hand-to-hand combat. If they can survive what I saw in Varmint County this week, they'll be invincible.
"The two clans usually issue an invitation to the young men of the county to join the melee as `honorary Haigs or Hockmeyers for a day' but not many accept the offer. We can take a company of our best men down there and get them bloodied and combat-ready in a few short hours. It would be the ultimate Ranger School graduation exam, whether they could survive without major injuries."
"I can see just one problem with that sugges tion," General O'Rourke noted. "We have service regulations against drinking on duty, but all the Haigs and Hockmeyers are fortified with the Haig's "spring run" distilled spirits. It's why they don't feel any pain. In fact, our Air Force buys the excess from the Haig clan for jet fuel additive.
"Besides, we already invest a lot of money in training our soldiers. We just can't afford the battlefield losses we would suffer from participating in Varmint County's 4th of July."
"This is the high point of our 4th of July cele bration," Doc told the visiting generals. "The Haigs and Hockmeyers will now re-enact the Battle of McCracken's Nose. They were on opposite sides during the Civil War and have been feuding for the past 150 years. They used to shoot at each other with some regularity, then agreed that it was time to end the feuding, but they needed some way for their young men to blow off steam and keep the feuding tradition alive, without all the actual bloodshed."
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