Horrors of War

In his book, "Adventures with The Connaught Rangers 1809 - 1814", William Grattan gives a first hand account of his experiences with Wellington's British army fighting against Napoleon's French forces in the Spanish Peninsula.

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As the French army retreats it leaves horrors in its wake.

"As we approached the town the road leading to it was covered with a number of horses, mules and asses, all maimed.  But the most disgusting sight was about fifty of the asses all floundering in the mud, some with their throats half cut, while others were barbarously houghed (crippled or maimed) or otherwise injured.   What the object of this proceeding meant I never could guess; the poor brutes could have been of no use to us, or indeed anyone else, as I believe they were unable to have travelled another league.  The meagre appearance of these creatures, with their backbones and hips protruding through their hides, and their mangled and bleeding throats, produced a general feeling of disgust and commiseration."

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"Two wounded French soldiers had been abandoned to the fury of the Portuguese peasants who invariably dodged on the flanks or in the rear of our troops.  These poor wretches were surrounded by half a dozen Portuguese, who, after having plundered them, were taking that horrible vengeance too common during this contest.  On the approach of our men they dispersed, but, as we passed on, we could perceive them returning like vultures that have been scared away from their prey for the moment, but who return to it again with redoubled voraciousness.  Both the Frenchmen were alive, and entreated us to put an end to their sufferings.  I thought it would have been humane to do so, but Napoleon and Jaffa flashed across, and I turned away from the spot."

(The discredited story is that at Jaffa Napoleon poisoned all his non-transportable wounded during his retreat to Egypt, in order to prevent them being massacred at the hands of the turks.)


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In the Second World War, Japanese troops were instructed to become self sufficient when they found themselves cut off from supplies.  This effectively gave them carte blanche to adopt whatever measures, no matter how extreme, were necessary to keep alive.  This included cannibalism of both Allied prisoners of war and the local inhabitants.  It is not clear whether they killed the prisoners or waited for them to die naturally.  This story was suppressed at the end of the war and was not brought up at the Tokyo war crimes tribunal because the authorities did not want the families back home to be left forever wondering if their sons had been cannibalized.

From Antony Beevor's book, The Second World War.

World War II Assassin and Wyatt Earp

In the Smithsonian magazine of September, 1993, is an article by Robert Wernick, on the wartime activities of an amazingly efficient British assassin working in Occupied France from 1941 to 1943.  Fascinating reading.

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There was nothing remarkable in the background of Ian (Johnny) Kenneth Hopper.  He was born in 1913 of solid East Anglian stock. In 1940 when the French army collapsed, and the Germans suddenly arrived, he was living in a village near Caen in Normandy, happily married to a vivacious girl named Paulette, with a little boy, Jean-Claude.

His reasons for becoming a killer were that, "I don't believe in taking things lying down.  It was the Germans who set the rules, don't you see.  I did terrible things, things as bad as the Germans did.  I was responsible for the death of innocent people.  But when you meet an aggressor, you have to aggress back, aggress all the time."

For security reasons, he kept no records.  You will not find Hopper's name in the official history of British secret operations in France.  His friend Dr. Chanel was convinced to his dying day, as were all the other French who worked with Hopper during the war, that he was an agent of the legendary British Intelligence Service.  He was not.  Officers of the Special Operations Executive, which was responsible for underground operations in France, only knew of him as an elusive maverick operator.

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A priest that Johnny Hopper had known when he was a little boy had drilled two rules into him: 'Never give up. Never complain'.

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For two years before he was caught, he roamed the roads of German-occupied Normandy and the streets of German-occupied Paris.  When he needed a German colonel's uniform so that he could walk unimpeded into a local German headquarters and talk his way (he was good at languages, and good at barking out commands) into picking up some documents that interested him, he waylaid and killed a German colonel.

A newspaper from Caen, 1941, wrote of "An Englishman named Hopper who, in defiance of a German ban against celebrating the French national holiday on July 14, had put on a French colonel's uniform and deposited a huge wreath of flowers on the monument to the war dead in Caen, directly in front of the German Army headquarters".

It was Hopper's first act of open resistance against the German occupation of France, and it was in many respects a model for all his future operations.  It was a spontaneous individual gesture, boldly conceived, carefully planned, neatly executed.  Every detail -- including finding the right French colonel (there were many who would be willing to make a small contribution to the national cause, but where would he find one whose uniform would fit his six-foot-three-inch frame?), the stealthy stealing of a truck to drive up in, preparing a hiding-place known only to himself for afterward - had to be precisely calculated.  It was only a symbolic gesture, it was not going to harm a single German soldier or a single stone of the German headquarters [which is today a Holiday Inn].  But as a symbol it resonated, all the way to Vichy, a faint suggestion that there might be a spark of resistance in defeated demoralized shell-shocked France.

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"Nerve, not technique" - compare to Wyatt Earp's thoughts on gunfighting!

"I worked at close quarters, and at close quarters you don't need technique, you need nerve.  I learned a great deal the first time I ever shot a man, a French policeman named Bernard.  He had ordered me to drive him to police headquarters, and when he saw that I was heading for open country, he pulled out his gun.  I was quicker.  I shot him in the head.  It was a small gun, a 7-millimeter, and it only wounded him.  I dropped him off at a hospital with a word of advice about keeping his month shut.

"I was quicker."

"The reason I was quicker was, at the moment he started reaching for that gun, I noticed a kind of tightening about his jaw.  I saw that tightening many times afterwards, saw it in some of the best killers the Gestapo put on my trail.  What it means, don't you see, is that at that moment when their lives are on the line, no matter how professional they are, there is just a moment when they can't help thinking of what might happen, what might happen to them and their careers and their families.  It might last only a fraction of a second.  But that was the fraction of a second I could use."

"...it was different with me. I knew that as one man against so many I didn't have a chance of surviving in the long run.  Betrayal or bad luck, something was bound to catch up with me. "

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First gunfight.

One day he was about to visit one of his garage depots when he heard a suspicious noise - it was a gun being loaded - warning him that he had walked into an ambush mounted by the local chief of police and a dozen underlings who were waiting for him a little further up the street.  He strode on nonchalantly, pulled out both his guns and started firing. The police chief fell dead, the others ran for shelter and began firing wildly into the void while Hopper jumped on a bicycle conveniently parked at the curb in front of a cafe and raced downhill (the brakes didn't work) through a crowded market place and out into the open country where the authorities would be looking for him in vain for weeks to come.

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Another gunfight.

He had a midnight rendezvous a street behind the Opera with a man he described as "a Jewish gangster, a man who gained enormous respect because he was the only man in Paris who went around the city through all the years of the occupation with a forty-five stuck into his belt."  There was a whole carload of Germans waiting for him instead, and they jumped on him and pulled two guns out of his pockets with squeals of triumph and were jovially kicking him and beating him and describing the joys that awaited him in the dungeons of the Gestapo, when the gangster, who had been hiding in a doorway, began firing at them and they scattered, giving Hopper all the time he needed to reach for the third gun strapped to his leg which had been overlooked by his unskilled captors, and could join in the firefight, from which none of the Germans emerged alive.

POP7

A gunfight gone wrong.

"I was determined that they would not get me alive.  It was understood among whoever went into action with me that if there were any wounded who could not be taken safely away, they were not to be left to be tortured by the Gestapo, they were to be finished off then and there."

He had an appointment with a traitorous double agent.  He and his wife were waiting in a cafe.  The agent came in on schedule, and right behind him came two Germans in uniform and another in civilian clothes.  Soon there was firing all over the place, chairs being overturned, customers diving for safety under tables or behind the bar.  "I had to shoot around Mineur (the agent), who was a big man," said Hopper.  "If I had known then what I later learned about him in Mauthausen (concentration camp), I would have shot through him."

"I didn't know at first how badly I was wounded.  I ducked back through a door next to our table, to take stock and to get a fresh gun unstrapped from my leg.  It was only a sort of closet back there, but the Germans must have assumed it was a rear door to the alley.  I had hit all of them more or less badly, and when I kicked my door open, they were all running out the front door to get help.  All the customers and the bartender were still on the floor.  I looked around to the table where we had been sitting, and there was my wife with her head on the table."

Blood was gushing from her mouth.  In a single instant Hopper judged that the wound was fatal, but that she might live long enough to be tortured by the Gestapo and to tell them all she knew.  He did what he would have expected her to do to him in the same situation: he put the muzzle of his gun to her right eye and pulled the trigger.

"I have relived that moment every day of my life," he told the reporter 48 years later''

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A perfectionist

"I have never seen anything like Hopper preparing for action," said Dr. Chanel. "He was a perfectionist; he had to be sure that everything and everybody would be in the right place at the right time."

Sometimes these plans worked out beautifully.  Once he assigned himself the job of liquidating a high-ranking SS officer, a "nasty piece of goods" who knew altogether too much, who had made a specialty of infiltrating Resistance groups and getting them liquidated.  His base of operations was a fashionable Paris hotel, where he would check in as a prosperous German businessman looking for contacts and contracts, and where the staff was too well trained to ask why he would disappear without notice for days or weeks at a time and then come back looking pleased with himself.  Apprised of these comings and goings, and of the tastes and habits of this businessman by the night clerk, who was in touch with the friend of a friend, Hopper could set up a quietly efficient operation demanding exact timing and of course total discretion.  The German was an orderly man who always had some brandy sent up to his room before he went to sleep between eleven and eleven thirty.  One night Hopper slipped in through a side door a few minutes before eleven o'clock with a gun and a bottle of brandy in his coat pockets, borrowed a waiter's jacket and a tray and a glass and a napkin and a small pillow from the night clerk, waited till the expected call came down for room service, went upstairs and with the quiet dignity of a well-trained servant, poured out a drink, put it on the night table, put the pillow over the man's face and emptied his gun into it.  He dragged the body to the big old-fashioned fireplace, and signaled with a cigarette lighter to a pair of confederates - Robert le Kid and another man - who had just taken up positions on the roof in the blacked-out Paris night.  They lowered a rope attached to a sack into which he stuffed the body, the brandy bottle and the pillow, and while they were raising it, he phoned the desk clerk to come up and remake the bed, clean up any spare feathers that might be lying around, and take down the tray, and also the room key which would be put in its proper cubbyhole as the room's occupant did every time he left the building.  The rope came down again and hauled Hopper up, and he and his friends quietly went through the well-rehearsed routine of tossing the sack on to the roof of the adjoining building, to which they had acquired the necessary keys.  They took it down the stairway and out into the blacked-out street, tossed it into the trunk of a stolen car with German license plates and drove on to a house in the suburbs where a pit in the garden was ready, half filled with quick-lime. . .

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An old man reminisces.

For the details of what he did in Paris, we have to rely mostly on the stories of Johnny Hopper himself, and by the time he told them to the reporter, they were an old man's memories.  When he had come back, broken in health, from Dachau in 1945, the last thing he wanted to do was talk about what he had been through. Later on, when he was ready to talk, people were beginning to be tired of war stories, "The things we did every day then, people simply can't believe now.   Sometimes I start talking, and they listen politely, and after a while their eyes begin to glaze over.."

Sounds like Wyatt Earp in his later years speaking of his legacy.

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Bad luck.

He was captured and spent the last two year in the camps.   Despite the dehumanization of the camps, he discovered that in the most atrocious circumstances there could be spontaneous gestures of human solidarity: a man standing in one of the hours-long roll-calls who could take the coat off his own back to cover the shoulders of the man next to him who was shivering in his thin tattered pajama-striped prisoner uniform and save him from pneumonia (as a French West Indian did for another prisoner one day during a blizzard in Buchenwald).  The smithsonian article gives many details of his life in the concentration camps.

One day when they moved him from his cell, they sewed on his jacket the letters "NN," for Nacht-und-Nebel, the "night and fog" into which Goethe had seen the ancient Germanic gods disappear and into which a Nazi law commanded dangerous enemies of the Third Reich to be sent.


So that's where 'Night and Fog' comes from.

But he survived. ("They had knocked out all his teeth, and his whole body was covered with cigarette burns".)

For the latter part of his life he was happily married to a wife named Diana.  He settled down to a humdrum civilian life in a picturesque provincial village.  He ran a mushroom farm successfully until he felt that union demands had become too outrageous, and he shut the business down.   He died in 1991 of cancer, having at last met a foe he could not outsmart or out-shoot.

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An imposing figure.

"When he came down the street, every one was aware of him; when he came into the pub every pair of eyes swivelled to look at him.  Close to 80 and suffering from the cancer which would kill him a few months later, he was still an imposing figure, tall and gaunt, with a confident stride, piercing gunmetal eyes, and a deep voice which would not inflect whether he was talking to Jack the Plumber or Lord Whoever."

- could be a description of Wyatt Earp.

OK Corrall. Was it a fair fight?

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110 saloons in Tombstone.

After silver was discovered in the area, Tombstone grew extremely rapidly.  At its founding in March 1879, it had a population of just 100, and only two years later in late 1881 it had more than 7,000 citizens, excluding all Chinese, Mexicans, women and children residents.  It was the largest boomtown in the America southwest.  The wealth of the silver industry attracted many professionals and merchants who brought their wives and families, as well as churches and ministers.  By 1881 there were fancy restaurants, a bowling alley, four churches, an ice house, a school, an opera house, two banks, three newspapers, and an ice cream parlor, alongside 110 saloons, 14 gambling halls, and numerous brothels all situated among a number of dirty, hardscrabble mines.

Horse rustlers and bandits from the countryside came to town and shootings were frequent.

Apache warriors had engaged the U.S. Army near Tombstone just three weeks before the O.K. Corral gunfight, so the need for weapons outside of town was well established and accepted.

But there was a city ordinance against carrying firearms in the city.

Tombstone, 1880 and 1882

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Who were the Cowboys?

The Clantons and Mclaurys who faced off against the Earps at the OK corral were part of a gang known as the 'Cowboys'.  They were a loosely organized band of friends and acquaintances who teamed up for various crimes and came to each other's aid.

Tombstone resident George Parson wrote in his diary, "A Cowboy is a rustler at times, and a rustler is a synonym for desperado - bandit, outlaw, and horse thief."

The San Francisco Examiner wrote in an editorial, "Cowboys [are] the most reckless class of outlaws in that wild country...infinitely worse than the ordinary robber."

At that time during the 1880s in Cochise County it was an insult to call a legitimate cattleman a "Cowboy."  Legal cowmen were generally called herders or ranchers.

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Lack of experience of the Earps in the business of gunfighting:

Among the Earps involved in the gunfight, only Virgil Earp had had any real experience in combat.  He had served for three years during the Civil War and had also been involved in a police shooting in Prescott, Arizona Territory.

                  
                                                                       Virgil Earp

Prior to the OK Corral, Wyatt Earp had only been involved in one shooting.  It was in the summer of 1878, when Wyatt Earp was an assistant marshal in Dodge City, Kansas.  He and several citizens fired their pistols at several cowboys who were fleeing town after shooting up a theater.  A member of the group, George Hoyt, was shot in the arm and died of his wound a month later.  Wyatt always claimed to have been the one to shoot Hoyt, although it could have been anyone in the group.

Morgan Earp had no known experience with gunfighting prior to this fight, although he frequently hired out as a shotgun rider and stagecoach guard.

Doc Holliday on the other hand had a reputation as a gunman.  In 1879, he and his business partner, John Webb, were seated in a saloon they owned in Las Vegas, New Mexico, when former U.S. Army scout Mike Gordon got into a loud argument with one of the saloon girls who he wanted to take out with him.  He stormed from the saloon and began firing his revolver into the building.  Before he could get off his second shot, Holliday killed him.  Holliday was tried for murder but acquitted, mostly based on the testimony of Webb.

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But Doc Holliday was not always very accurate. (He was better with a shotgun.)

In October 1880, Holliday had trouble with a gambler named Johnny Tyler in the Oriental Saloon.   Holliday challenged Tyler to a fight, but Tyler ran.  Joyce, the owner of the saloon, did not like Holliday or the Earps and he continued to argue with Holliday.  He ordered Holliday removed from the saloon but would not return Holliday's revolver. Holliday returned with a pistol and fired several shots at Joyce and wounded him in the thumb and his business partner William Parker in the big toe.  Joyce then hit Holliday over the head with his revolver.  Holliday was arrested and pleaded guilty to assault and battery.

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Friendship of Wyatt and Doc:

The friendship was cemented in 1878 in Dodge City when Holliday defended Earp in a saloon against a handful of cowboys out to kill Earp.  A bar room confrontation occured and Earp "was surrounded by desperadoes".  Holliday assisted Earp who credited him with saving his life that day and the two became firm friends as a result.

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Morgan Earp was deputy city marshall of Tombstone and Virgil Earp was town marshall.  He had never been in a gunfight.  At this point neither Wyatt Earp nor Doc Holliday had been formally deputized.

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Ile Clanton, the instigator of the gunfight:

Some time after midnight on Tuesday, October 25, 1881, the day before the gunfight, there occurred a confrontation between Ike Clanton and Doc Holliday relating to a matter that had ben a subject of some rancor between them.  Virgil Earp threatened to arrest both Holliday and Clanton if they did not stop arguing.  Ike had been drinking steadily.   A few minutes later Ike and Wyatt talked, and Ike told Earp that the fighting talk had been going on for a long time and that he intended to put an end to it.  He told Earp, "I will be ready for you in the morning."

After the confrontation with Ike Clanton, Wyatt Earp took Holliday back to his boarding house to sleep off his drinking, then went home and to bed.

Marshal Virgil Earp played cards with Ike Clanton, Tom McLaury, Cochise County Sheriff Johnny Behan and a fifth man until morning.  Three of these card players would be antagonists in a few hours. This suggests a gray area in the middle of the conflict, in which the rules of law and order were not as fixed as today.  Doubts may have been raised in the minds of Ike and Tom as to how much value Virgil placed on his marshall's badge and how firmly would he adhere to what it stood for.

Ike Clanton had been drinking all night.  Future witness E. F. Boyle encouraged him to get some sleep, but Ike insisted he would not go to bed.  Boyle later testified.....Ike told him "As soon as the Earps and Doc Holliday showed themselves on the street, the ball would open - that they would have to fight"... and Boyle added that he "went down to Wyatt Earp's house and told him that Ike Clanton had threatened that when him and his brothers and Doc Holliday showed themselves on the street that the ball would open."

Later in the morning, Ike picked up his rifle and revolver from the West End Corral, where he had stabled his wagon and team and where he had deposited his weapons after entering town.  By noon that day, Ike, drinking again and armed, told others he was looking for Holliday or an Earp.

At about 1:00 pm, Virgil and Morgan Earp surprised Ike on 4th Street where Virgil buffaloed (pistol-whipped) him from behind.  Disarming him, the Earps took Ike to appear before Judge Wallace for violating the city's ordinance against carrying firearms in the city.

Ike was being fined inside the court house........

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..... and outside the court house Wyatt almost walked into 28 year-old Tom McLaury who had arrived in town the day before and who was required by the well-known city ordinance to deposit his pistol when he first arrived in town.

Wyatt testified that he saw a revolver in plain sight on the right hip of Tom's pants.

Wyatt drew his revolver from his coat pocket and pistol-whipped him with it twice, leaving him prostrate and bleeding on the street. 

It was early afternoon by the time Ike and Tom had seen doctors for their head wounds. The day was chilly, with snow still on the ground in some places.  Both Tom and Ike had spent the night gambling, drinking heavily, and without sleep.  Now they were both out-of-doors, both wounded from head beatings, and at least Ike was still drunk.  They were in no condition for a gunfight.

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At around 1:30-2:00 pm, Ike's 19-year-old younger brother Billy Clanton and Tom's older brother Frank McLaury arrived in town.  They had heard that Ike had been stirring up trouble in town overnight, and they had ridden into town on horseback to back up their brothers.

By law, both Frank and Billy should have left their firearms at the Grand Hotel.  Instead, they remained fully armed.

So now Frank McLaury and Billy Clanton, Ike Clanton and Tom McLaury were in town - the latter two not in the best physical condition.

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Leading up to the gunfight:

Virgil testified afterward that he thought he saw all four men, Ike Clanton, Billy Clanton, Frank McLaury, and Tom McLaury, buying cartridges.  It is important that the Earps establish that they saw this because the claim was made after the gunfight that Tom had been unarmed.

Wyatt said that he saw Billy Clanton and Frank McLaury buying cartridges in Spangenberger's gun and hardware store on 4th Street filling their gun belts with cartridges.[

Virgil picked up a 10-gauge or 12-gauge, short, double-barreled shotgun from the Wells Fargo office around the corner on Allen Street.  He gave the shotgun to Doc Holliday who hid it under his overcoat. Virgil took Holliday's walking-stick in return.

Virgil Earp was told by several citizens that the McLaurys and the Clantons had gathered on Fremont Street and were armed. He decided it was time to act.  Several members of the citizen's vigilance committee offered to support him with arms, but Virgil declined their help.  That morning he had deputized his brother Wyatt and Doc Holliday.  Wyatt later spoke of his brothers Virgil and Morgan as the "marshals" while he acted as "deputy."


The Cowboys moved to the O.K. Corral where witnesses overheard them threatening to kill the Earps.

For unknown reasons the Cowboys then moved a block north to an empty lot next to C. S. Fly's boarding house where Doc Holliday lived.  This is where the gunfight actually took place - not the OK Corrall.

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The Walk:

The Earps carried revolvers in their coat pockets or in their waistbands.  Holliday was wearing a pistol in a holster, but this was hidden by his long coat, as was the shotgun. Virgil was carrying Doc's walking stick.

The Earps and Holliday walked west, down the south side of Fremont Street, out of visual range of the Cowboys, toward the Cowboys' last reported location.  The Earps then saw the Cowboys and Sheriff Behan, who then left the group and came toward the Earps. Virgil testified later that Behan told them, "I have disarmed them." - which if true would have been a potentially deadly deception.

When the Earps approached the alley, they found Ike Clanton talking to Billy Claiborne in the middle of the lot.

With the appearance of Billy Claiborne, this now made five 'Cowboys' against four of the Earp bunch.  So far a fair fight.

Beyond those two, against the MacDonald house and assay office to the west stood Tom and Frank McLaury, Billy Clanton, and two of their horses.  Billy Clanton and Frank McLaury wore revolvers in holsters on their belts and stood alongside saddled horses with rifles in their scabbards.

Virgil claims that, based on the strength of Behan's comment that he had disarmed the Cowboys, he was not looking for a fight.  He says, "I had a walking stick in my left hand and my hand was on my six-shooter in my waist pants, and when he said he had disarmed them, I shoved it clean around to my left hip and changed my walking stick to my right hand." - he went into the gunfight holding a walking stick in his gun hand.

Wyatt said I "took my pistol, which I had in my hand under my coat, and put it in my overcoat pocket."

These comments of Wyatt's and Virgil's suggest that they had let down their guard and were genuinely planning to disarm the Cowboys, rather than to get right into a gunfight. 

POP12

......... but Martha J. King, who was in Everhardy's butcher shop on Fremont Street, testified that when the Earp party passed by her location, one of the Earps on the outside of that party looked across and said to Doc Holliday nearest the store, "...let them have it!" to which Holliday replied, "All right." - which sounds as if they were ready to go in blasting.

However, a drawing Wyatt made in 1924 placed Holliday a couple of steps back in the street, which would have made it harder for any of the Earps to exchange words with Doc Holliday - which casts some doubt on the witness's statement.

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The two groups of antagonists were about 6 to ten feet apart.

Based on the Coroner's inquest and the Spicer hearing, a sketch was produced that shows -

Virgil Earp was on the left end of the Earp party, standing a few feet inside the vacant lot.
A few feet behind him, and to his right was Wyatt.
Morgan Earp was standing on Fremont Street to Wyatt's right.
Doc Holliday anchored the end of their line in Fremont Street, a few feet to Morgan's right.

Where the Cowboys were positioned is inconsistent, based on the inquest and Wyatt's recollections from the year 1924.

POP14

Virgil Earp was not planning on a fight.  He had given Doc the short, double-barreled shotgun and was carrying Holliday's cane in his right hand.  He immediately commanded the Cowboys to "Throw up your hands, I want your guns!"  But he said the Cowboys reached to draw their guns.

Virgil and Wyatt testified they saw Frank McLaury and Billy Clanton draw and cock their six-shooters. (The single-action revolvers carried by both groups had to be cocked before firing.)
Virgil yelled: "Hold! I don't mean that!" or "Hold on, I don't want that!"

Wyatt testified, "When I saw Billy (Clanton) and Frank draw their pistols, I drew my pistol.  Billy Clanton leveled his pistol at me but I didn't aim at him.  I knew that Frank McLaury had the reputation of being a good shot and a dangerous man, and I aimed at Frank McLaury. The two first shots which were fired were fired by Billy Clanton and myself; he shot at me, and I shot at Frank McLaury.  I do not know which shot was first.  We fired almost together."

According to the chief newspaper of the town, The Tombstone Epitaph, "Wyatt Earp stood up and fired in rapid succession, as cool as a cucumber, and was not hit."

Billy Clanton drew his gun right-handed.  Morgan Earp fired almost immediately, hitting Billy in the right wrist.  This shot disabled Billy's gunhand and forced him to shift the revolver to his left hand.  He continued firing until he emptied it.

All witnesses generally agreed that two shots were fired first, almost indistinguishable from each other.  General firing immediately broke out.  About thirty shots were fired in about thirty seconds

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Frank McLaury was shot in the abdomen.  He took his horse by its reins and struggled into Fremont Street.  Frank tried to grab his rifle from its scabbard on his horse, and continued to fire his revolver, only to lose the horse before he could withdraw the rifle from the scabbard.  Holliday followed him into the street.

A number of witnesses observed a man leading a horse into the street and firing near it. (Wyatt in his testimony thought this was Tom McLaury.)  However, Claiborne said only one man had a horse in the fight, and that this man was Frank, who was holding his own horse by the reins as cover, but then losing it and its cover in the middle of the street.  Wes Fuller also identified Frank as the man with the horse.

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According to Wyatt, as the firing broke out, "At that moment Tom McLaury threw his hand to his right hip and jumped behind a horse."

Tom McLaury hid behind a horse and fired once, if not twice, over the horse's back.  At some point in the first few seconds, Holliday stepped around Tom McLaury's horse and shot him with the short, double-barreled shotgun in the chest at close range.

There is some discrepancy in the accounts concerning the horse, or horses.  If there was only one horse, who was using it as a shield?  Was it Frank or Tom, as Wyatt claimed.

Witness C. H. "Ham" Light saw Tom running or stumbling westward on Fremont Street towards Third Street, away from the gunfight.  Light testified that Tom fell at the foot of a telegraph pole on the corner of Fremont and 3rd Street and lay there, without moving, through the duration of the fight.

After shooting Tom, Holliday tossed the shotgun aside, pulled out his nickel-plated revolver, and continued to fire at Frank McLaury and Billy Clanton.

POP17

Though wounded, Billy Clanton and Frank McLaury kept shooting.  One of them, perhaps Billy, shot Morgan Earp across the back in a wound that struck both shoulder blades and a vertebra.  Morgan stumbled and fell, yelling, 'I am hit,' as a bullet entered one shoulder blade and passed out through the other. He rose, but soon fell again, probably tripping on a mound on Fremont Street where the town was putting in new water pipes.

Either Frank or Billy shot Virgil Earp in the calf (Virgil thought it was Billy). Virgil, though hit, fired his next shot at Billy Clanton.

POP18 (and POP15)

Frank and Holliday exchanged shots as Frank moved into Fremont street with Holliday following. Frank hit Holliday in his pistol pocket, grazing his skin.  Frank lost control of his horse and, firing his weapon, crossed Fremont Street to the sidewalk on the east side. Holliday followed Frank across Fremont Street, exclaiming, "That son of a bitch has shot me, and I am going to kill him."

Frank, now entirely across Fremont street and still walking at a good pace according to Claiborne's testimony, fired twice more before he was shot in the head under his right ear. Both Morgan and Holliday apparently thought they had fired the shot that killed Frank, but since neither of them testified at the hearing, this information is only from second-hand accounts.  A passerby testified to having stopped to help Frank, and saw Frank try to speak, but he died where he fell, before he could be moved.

POP19

Billy Clanton was shot in the chest and abdomen, and after a minute or two slumped to a sitting position near his original position at the corner of the MacDonald house in the alley between the house and Fly's Lodging House.   Claiborne said Billy Clanton was supported by a window initially after he was shot, and fired some shots after sitting, with the pistol supported on his leg.  After he ran out of ammunition he called for more cartridges, but C. S. Fly took his pistol from him at about the time the general shooting ended.

POP20

Ike Clanton had bragged that he would kill the Earps or Doc Holliday at his first opportunity.  Wyatt told the court afterward that, once the shooting broke out,  Ike Clanton ran forward and grabbed Wyatt, exclaiming that he was unarmed and did not want a fight. To this protest Wyatt said he responded, "Go to fighting or get away!"  Clanton ran through the front door of Fly's boarding house and escaped, unwounded.

Wyatt Earp showed great prescence of mind under duress to allow Ike the chance to escape.

Billy Claiborne also ran from the fight.

Both Ike Clanton and Billy Claiborne were unarmed.

Wesley Fuller, a Cowboy who had been at the rear of the alley, left as soon as the firing began.

POP21

Tom was carried from the corner of Fremont and Third into the Harwood house on that corner, where he died without speaking.

Passersby carried Billy to the Harwood house, where Tom had been taken.  Billy was in considerable pain and asked for a doctor and some morphine.  He told those near him, "They have murdered me.  I have been murdered.  Chase the crowd away and from the door and give me air." Billy gasped for air, and someone else heard him say, "Go away and let me die."

POP22

As the wounded lawmen were carried to their homes, they passed in front of the Sheriff's Office, and Johnny Behan told Wyatt Earp he was under arrest.  Wyatt paused two or three seconds and replied very forcibly: "I won't be arrested today. I am right here and am not going away."

POP23

Dr. H. M. Mathews examined the dead Cowboys late that night.  He found Frank McLaury had two wounds: a gunshot beneath the right ear that horizontally penetrated his head, and a second entering his abdomen one inch to the left of his navel.  Mathews stated that the wound beneath the ear was at the base of the brain and caused instant death.

When he examined Tom McLaury's body, he found a single shotgun wound: twelve buckshot wounds on the right side under his arm, between the third and fifth ribs. The wound was about four inches across.  Both Virgil and Wyatt stated that Holliday had shot Tom, which the coroner's exam supported.

Clanton was shot through the right arm, close to the wrist joint and "the bullet passed through the arm from "inside to outside," entering the arm close to the base of the thumb, and exiting "on the back of the wrist diagonally" with the latter wound larger.  There were two other wounds on Billy's body.  The first was two inches from Clanton's left nipple, penetrated his lung.  The other was in the abdomen beneath the twelfth rib, six inches to the right of the navel. Both were fired from the front.

The wound to Billy Clanton's right wrist was inflicted by Morgan Earp or Doc Holliday immediately at the outset of the fight as Billy was drawing his gun.  This tends to confirm claims that Doc and Morgan fired first.

POP24

Excluding the shotgun wound that killed Tom McLaury, the other two dead Cowboys had five wounds between them.  Compare this to the amazing accuracy of Captain Davis in Popthem, Gunfight One Against Fourteen.  Gunsmoke may have been a factor at the 'OK Corrall', where a number of guns where being discharged at the same time and the smoke was swirling around in a relatively enclosed area making it harder to aim.

Doc Holliday seems to have been the deadliest of those involved in the gunfight, killing Tom with his shotgun, and possibly killing Frank.

POP25

No revolver or rifle was found near Tom, and he was not wearing a cartridge belt.  Tom McLaury's personal revolver was at the Capital Saloon on 4th Street and Fremont about a block away. The saloon-keeper (Mehan) testified Tom had deposited it sometime before the fight, between 1 and 2 p.m., after the time he was "buffaloed" (pistol-whipped) by Wyatt (Mehan witnessed both events, and said Tom deposited the pistol after the beating).

The Cowboys testified that Tom was unarmed and claimed that the Earps murdered him.

POP25

On the strength of the prosecution case,  Judge Spicer revoked the bail for Doc and Wyatt Earp and had them jailed on November 7, and they spent the next 16 days in jail.

Wyatt Earp prepared a written statement, as permitted by Section 133 of Arizona law, which would not allow the prosecution to cross-examine him.  On November 16, when Wyatt was called to the stand and began to read his statement, the prosecution vociferously objected.  Although the statute wasn't specific about whether it was legal for a defendant to read his statement, Spicer allowed his testimony to proceed.

Justice Wells Spicer ruled the case not be bound over for trial.  His ruling stated that there was not enough evidence to assure a likelihood of conviction.  The Cochise County Grand Jury would later reopen the issue and concur with Spicer.

POP26

Aftermath:

On December 28, 1881, Virgil Earp was maimed in an assassination attempt by the outlaw Cowboys, and on March 18, 1882, they assassinated Morgan who was killed while playing billiards.

Over the next several weeks Wyatt and his posse tracked down and killed four of the men they believed were responsible for their brothers' ambush and murder. The Tucson sheriff issued arrest warrants for their killing of Frank Stilwell. The ride for vengeance came to be called the 'Earp vendetta ride'. Wyatt and Doc left the Arizona Territory for Colorado in April, 1882 and parted company after a minor disagreement. Although they may have remained in contact, they never saw each other again. Holliday said in 1882 that he thought Behan was behind the assassination of Morgan Earp.  When Holliday died of tuberculosis on November 8, 1887, Wyatt Earp did not learn of Holliday's death for several months afterward.

POP27

So, was it a fair fight?

It was fair insofar as the Earps and Holliday went up against five opponents.  (Six if we include Wesley Fuller, the Cowboy who was at the rear of the alley and left as soon as the firing started.)  It's no discredit to them that the fight quickly degenerated into four against three, when Ike Clanton and Billy Claiborne ran.  To the Earps' credit, they were setting off to face the Cowboys with the just the three of them.  Doc Holliday joined them a little later.  The Earps did not lack courage

The fight was not quite so fair when we consider the readiness of the combatants, not just in regards to whether they were armed, but also whether they were mentally ready.

Ike Clanton had spent the previous 24 hours inviting the Earps to a gunfight.  He had called them out, and if he wasn't armed, he should have been armed.  He had been drinking and he and Tom had been pistol-whipped.

So, as far as mental preparedness, it is evident that only one side was ready.  The Earps and Holliday had made the 'walk' toward the OK Corall, during which they would have steeled themselves for the upcoming action, like Pike and the Wild Bunch at the end of that movie; and if the exchange that  the witness claims she heard between Wyatt and Holliday to "Let them have it" is true, then at least those two of the four were coming ready to kill.  But all four of them were ready for a gunfight because they were bringing it.

The Cowboys, on the other hand were standing around not sure if there would be gunfight.  They could not have been mentally prepared.

In the movie 'Old Gringo', Gregory Peck plays American author Ambrose Pierce who crosses the border to team up with Pancho Villa.  A Federale captain is captured by the rebels and is condemned to be executed the next day.  He accepts his fate with grace and courage.  Ambrose Pierce proposes to the rebel leader to try an experiment.  He suggests that the captain be executed immediately and be given no time to prepare himself for death.  The captain is informed of his imminent death.  He loses his resolve and goes all to pieces.

The Earps and Doc Holliday had had time to prepare themselves.  The Clantons and McLaurys were faced with the possibility of imminent death, and no time to prepare.

POP28


There's no question that, from the evidence, Billy Clanton and Frank McLaury were brave men, and game fighters, and they were not quitters.  They suddenly found themselves in a gunfight where they were outnumbered four to two if Tom was unarmed, and at the best four to three if Tom was armed.  They put up a gallant fight.  Billy Clanton, as he sat dying, propped up against a wall, was still calling for more cartridges. He was only nineteen and shooting with his left hand.

Vikings. Pops

POP1

Cnut (he of the legend of the tide) was driven out of England by King Ethelred. According to Adam of Bremen, he returned in 1015 with a fleet of over 1000 large ships. Undoubtedly an exaggeration. Wikipedia quotes 200 ships and 10,000 men. The invasion was successful and in 1016 Cnut, at the age of about 20, became the king of England.

POP2

Compare to other invasions:

The Spanish Armada of 1588 consisted of 132 ships, amomg them some of the largest ever built till that time; 3000 cannon and 30,000 men.

Harald Hardrada of Norway in 1066.  300 ships.  Resoundingly defeated at the battle of Stamford Bridge by the new Anglo-Saxon king Harold Godwinson, a mere 25 ships sufficed to take what was left of the Viking army back to Norway.

Two days later William the Conqueror arrived in England.  He had between 600 and 700 transport ships to carry 7000 men (including 3000 cavalry.)

Julius Caesar had 800 ships 5 legions (25,000 men)and 2000 cavalry.  54 BC.

POP3

The period of fifty years from Cnut to William The Conqueror is perhaps the pivotal period of English history, not just because of the Norman conquest of 1066, but because of what might have been but was not.  Consider the possibilities:

Cnut died in 1035.  His two sons ruled for a brief period dying respectively in 1040 and 1042.  Had either of them lived longer, William the Conqueror would probably not have invaded in 1066, and England would have been a Scandinavian nation; the English language would have been a mix of Scandinavian and Anglo-Saxon.

The battle of Hastings was a very closely fought battle that could have gone either way, even despite the weariness of King Harold's army which had just defeated Hardrada's Vikings and endured a forced march from the north of England.  If Harold had been victorious, England would have remained Anglo-Saxon and the English language would not be this glorious amalgam of Anglo-Saxon and French.

POP4

The Normans (Norse-men) were the descendants of Vikings who settled in what became Normandy.  Their leader was Rollo who, in about 911, became baptized and married the daughter of King Charles the Simple.

POP5

In the Heathen calender, the midwinter feast was called Jol. In the three scandinavian languages of today Jul is the term for Christmas, and in the English language we have Yuletide.

POP6

According to the Icelandic historian and poet Snorri Sturluson (1179-1241), Odin promised his followers that each man who came to him in Valhalla would have the use of "what he himself had buried in the earth". This would go a long way toward explaining the treasure troves that farmers sometimes dig up, such as the Silverdale hoard, or the Spillings hoard discovered in 1999.

POP7

From about 800 to about 1200 there occured the Mediaeval Warm Period (also known as the Little Optimum) which producd some of the warmest centuries of the past 8000 years. Previously inhospitable regions now became destinations for Viking settlers, who now had the incentive to make the long journey westward toward a desirable end, and were thus induced to travel ever further, to Iceland, on to Greenland and finally to America. Iceland for example was covered with woods from the mountains to the seashore, and whereas now only 20% of the land is suitable for pasture, then the figure was between 45 and 70%.

In 1495 Pope Alexander VI (that would be Alexander Borgia) found time amidst his intrigues to express concern in a papal letter about the spiritual life of Greenlanders noting that "no vessel has touched there during the past eighty years".

POP8

Charlemagne's forced Christianization of the Saxons in the 780's included sanctions that were far divorced from any intimation of brotherly love - death for eating meat during lent, death for cremating the dead in accordance with Heaten rites, death for any who hid themselves unbaptised. But for a Christian to kill a Heathen earned no penance because the Heathen were considered less than human.

POP9

The Vikings were not always victorious.  In 844 a fleet of 80 Viking ships appeared off Lisbon, "covering the sea like dark birds". The city was captured and the fleet continued down the Spanish coast to Seville, at this time part of the Muslim empire.  The city was also taken and occupied.  A Muslim army with the use of siege catapults drove the Vikings out.  A few months later the Vikings suffered another defeat with the loss of thirty ships.  The corpses of Viking captives hung from the palm trees of Seville and Talyata - an incongruous picture of Norsemen amid the palm trees.

Vikings. Going Berserk

POP1

Norse warriors are reported in Old Norse literature to have fought in a nearly uncontrollable, trance-like fury.  They would charge their enemies in a mind-numbed rage, feeling no fear and no pain.  Individuals also were capable of going berserk.  Mediaeval scholars no longer regard Berserk madness to be a form of collective insanity; it was deliberately induced, they now believe, by the eating of fly-amanite mushrooms.

This condition is said to have begun with shivering, chattering of teeth, and chill in the body, and then the face swelled and changed its color.  With this was connected a great hot-headedness, which at last gave over into a great rage, under which they howled as wild animals, bit the edge of their shields, and cut down every thing they net without discriminating between friend or foe.  When this condition ceased, a great dulling of the mind and feebleness followed, which could last for one or several days.

Remember the movie Jacobs Ladder.  In it the US army is testing a new drug to enhance the fighting abilities of its soldiers. The horror is that the soldiers on whom the drug had been tested had attacked, killed and mutilated their fellow soldiers.

POP2

The Norse Berserks were magicians and sages, and seem to have used the scarlet amanita muscaria (fly-amanite) for inducing prophecies. They were called Berserks (Bear-shirts) because they worshipped the Bear goddess, which accounts for our Great Bear constellation, and wore bear skins in her honour. Their cult was suppressed by royal proclamation - in AD 1015 (Norway) and AD 1123 (Iceland).

Snorri Sturluson (1179–1241) wrote the following description of berserkers in his Ynglinga saga:
His (Odin's) men rushed forwards without armour, were as mad as dogs or wolves, bit their shields, and were strong as bears or wild oxen, and killed people at a blow, but neither fire nor iron told upon them. This was called Berserkergang.

In 1015 King Erik outlawed berserks, along with 'holmganga' or duels.  It had become a common practice for a berserker to challenge men of property to holmgang, and upon slaying the unfortunate victim, to take possession of his goods, wealth, and women. This was a difficult tactic to counter, since a man so challenged had to appear, have a champion fight for him, or else be named 'ni(dh)ingr' and coward.

Check out the Popthems about the Fly-Amanite mushroom for its association with the Berserkers  and its influence on our civilization.

Vikings and Slaves

POP1

The word 'heath' is defined as barren land, wasteland, uncultivated land.  It refers to land found in Northern Europe.  'Heathen' is the name for those who lived on the heath - the Heath-men.  These were the Vikings who, unable to survive from cultivating this barren terrain, crossed the sea to pillage the cultivated lands of others.

Today the word 'Heathen' is a derogatory term used by Christians to describe their enemies, opponents etc., and though it's been a thousand years since the Vikings terrorized the Christian nations of Europe, their depradations and the fear they aroused must have been extraordinary to have left such a mark on the psyche of Christianity that the term 'Heathen' exists to this day to denote all that is the antithesis of Christian thought and belief.  Jews for example call their enemies anti-semites, not 'Romans' despite the fact that Rome destroyed Israel, burned the temple, and caused a diaspora of almost 2000 years.

POP2

A book called 'The Vikings' by Robert Ferguson gives some insight into what the Vikings were all about.  Like this example of the inhumanity of the Vikings:

In the year 1014 in a sermon, Wulfstan, Archbishop of York, abominated the shameful Viking practice of men banding together to buy a female slave to use for their sexual gratification before returning her to the auction block to sell her on down the line.

Here's his vivid description of captives being herded, probably to ships, to be transported to a life of slavery - "Often two seamen, or maybe three, drive the droves of Christian men from sea to sea, out through this people, huddled together, as a public shame to us all" - a vivid picture of a demoralized English populace.  Two or three Viking guards - all it takes to control a crowd of Anglo-Saxon Christians; like SS guards in Auschwitz.

POP3

Slave trading was by far the greatest source of income for the vikings.  The source of the slaves was the British Isles in the west and the lands of the Slavs in the east.  But such was the volume of human trafficking in captives taken from among the Slavs that the term "Slav" became, via the mediaeval Latin sclavus, our word for all humans held in bondage - "slave".

Vikings and tattoos, vanity, table manners and sexual mores

POP1

The word 'heath' is defined as barren land, wasteland, uncultivated land.  It refers to land found in Northern Europe.  'Heathen' is the name for those who lived on the heath - the Heath-men.  These were the Vikings who, unable to survive from cultivating this barren terrain, crossed the sea to pillage the cultivated lands of others.

Today the word 'Heathen' is a derogatory term used by Christians to describe their enemies, opponents etc., and though it's been a thousand years since the Vikings terrorized the Christian nations of Europe, their depradations and the fear they aroused must have been extraordinary to have left such a mark on the psyche of Christianity that the term 'Heathen' exists to this day to denote all that is the antithesis of Christian thought and belief.  Jews for example call their enemies anti-semites, not 'Romans' despite the fact that Rome destroyed Israel, burned the temple, and caused a diaspora of almost 2000 years.

POP2

A book called 'The Vikings' by Robert Ferguson gives some insight into what the Vikings were all about.  Like this example of the inhumanity of the Vikings:

In the year 1014 in a sermon, Wulfstan, Archbishop of York, abominated the shameful Viking practice of men banding together to buy a female slave to use for their sexual gratification before returning her to the auction block to sell her on down the line.

Here's his vivid description of captives being herded, probably to ships, to be transported to a life of slavery - "Often two seamen, or maybe three, drive the droves of Christian men from sea to sea, out through this people, huddled together, as a public shame to us all" - a vivid picture of a demoralized English populace.  Two or three Viking guards - all it takes to control a crowd of Anglo-Saxon Christians; like SS guards in Auschwitz.

POP3

Slave trading was by far the greatest source of income for the vikings.  The source of the slaves was the British Isles in the west and the lands of the Slavs in the east.  But such was the volume of human trafficking in captives taken from among the Slavs that the term "Slav" became, via the mediaeval Latin sclavus, our word for all humans held in bondage - "slave".

POP4

Ibn Rustah tells of The Rus as covered even to their fingertips in tattoos depicting trees, figures and various designs.  Alcuin writing around 780 describes the Heathens' fashion for 'blinded eyes', probably black eye shadow - "..once applied it never fades, and the beauty of both men and women is increased".

POP5

Arab travellers have described their impressions of Vikings. Ibn Fadlan describes a band of Rus traders that were travelling down the Volga - I have never seen more perfect specimens, tall as date palms and ruddy complexioned", but he's quite disgusted at their lack of hygiene - a pitcher of water was passed among the menbers of the group in which each washed his hands, face and hair and then cleared his nose and spat. The process was repeated until all had used the same water in the same fashion". Probably a bonding ritual bcause their was plenty of cleaner water in the river Volga. In the movie "The Thirteenth Warrior, Tony Banderas' character is proffered a bowl of water by his new Viking friends in which they have carried out similar ablutions, but he declines to wash in it.

POP6

Ibn Dihya, in a poem/play has a Viking female speak of the liberated sexual mores of her sex - "Our women stay with their men of their own free will; a woman stays with her man as long as it pleases her, and leaves him when she wearies of their life together." The independence of women from the heathen north was a source of great surprise to Arab travellers.  One noted that "among them women have the right to divorce.  A woman can herself initiate divorce whenever she pleases."

POP7

In the Saga of the Jomsvikings: following their defeat, the Jomsvikings are being executed one by one.  Among them is a seventeen year old whose hair is "long and golden yellow like silk". Asked about the prospect of his imminent death, he replies that he has lived the best part of his life and has no desire to survive his companions.  He asks that his hair be held away from his head so that his it will not become bloodstained.  Someone comes forward and twines the long blonde hair around his hands as requested.  As the axe come down the youth jerks his head away and the assistants hands are cut off.  "Whose hands are these in my hair?", the youth coolly asks.  He is reprieved and invited to become  a member of Earl Erik's 'hird'.  He has shown the essential qualities of the heroic Viking: youth, sharp wit, bravery, and vanity.  The family of the Viking who has just bled to death with no hands might not agree.

The Vikings were very vain about their hair, as evidenced by the fact that when a Viking burial trove is uncovered it invariably includes a comb.

POP8


The vikings had a 'one for all, all for one' attitude.  Ibn Fadlan observes: "If one group of them is challenged to war, they all join forces.  They stand firm as one man against their enemies."
He also writes: "They treat their servants well and dress exquisitely....They are generous to each other, honor their guests and treat well those who seek refuge with them, and all who come to visit them.  They do not allow anyone to annoy or harm these.  And whenever anyone dares to treat them unfairly they help and defend them".


POP9

Trousers discovered in Danish and German bogs suggest that squatting was the position of choice when it came time to rest weary legs.  The trousers have narrow legs widening out across the buttocks, and with no central seam down the rear that would have had a tendency to split from prolonged squatting.  So let's not visualize Vikings lounging around on some chair-equivalent of our lawn chairs.


POP10

Norse warriors are reported in Old Norse literature to have fought in a nearly uncontrollable, trance-like fury.  They would charge their enemies in a mind-numbed rage, feeling no fear and no pain.  Individuals also were capable of going berserk.  Mediaeval scholars no longer regard Berserk madness to be a form of collective insanity; it was deliberately induced, they now believe, by the eating of fly-amanite mushrooms.

This condition is said to have begun with shivering, chattering of teeth, and chill in the body, and then the face swelled and changed its color.  With this was connected a great hot-headedness, which at last gave over into a great rage, under which they howled as wild animals, bit the edge of their shields, and cut down every thing they net without discriminating between friend or foe.  When this condition ceased, a great dulling of the mind and feebleness followed, which could last for one or several days.

Remember the movie Jacobs Ladder.  In it the US army is testing a new drug to enhance the fighting abilities of its soldiers. The horror is that the soldiers on whom the drug had been tested had attacked, killed and mutilated their fellow soldiers.

POP11

The Norse Berserks were magicians and sages, and seem to have used the scarlet amanita muscaria (fly-amanite) for inducing prophecies. They were called Berserks (Bear-shirts) because they worshipped the Bear goddess, which accounts for our Great Bear constellation, and wore bear skins in her honour. Their cult was suppressed by royal proclamation - in AD 1015 (Norway) and AD 1123 (Iceland).

Snorri Sturluson (1179–1241) wrote the following description of berserkers in his Ynglinga saga:
His (Odin's) men rushed forwards without armour, were as mad as dogs or wolves, bit their shields, and were strong as bears or wild oxen, and killed people at a blow, but neither fire nor iron told upon them. This was called Berserkergang.

In 1015 King Erik outlawed berserks, along with 'holmganga' or duels.  It had become a common practice for a berserker to challenge men of property to holmgang, and upon slaying the unfortunate victim, to take possession of his goods, wealth, and women. This was a difficult tactic to counter, since a man so challenged had to appear, have a champion fight for him, or else be named 'ni(dh)ingr' and coward.

Check out the Popthems about the Fly-Amanite mushroom for its association with the Berserkers  and its influence on our civilization.

POP12

Cnut (he of the legend of the tide) was driven out of England by King Ethelred. According to Adam of Bremen, he returned in 1015 with a fleet of over 1000 large ships. Undoubtedly an exaggeration. Wikipedia quotes 200 ships and 10,000 men. The invasion was successful and in 1016 Cnut, at the age of about 20, became the king of England.

POP13

Compare to other invasions:

The Spanish Armada of 1588 consisted of 132 ships, amomg them some of the largest ever built till that time; 3000 cannon and 30,000 men.

Harald Hardrada of Norway in 1066.  300 ships.  Resoundingly defeated at the battle of Stamford Bridge by the new Anglo-Saxon king Harold Godwinson, a mere 25 ships sufficed to take what was left of the Viking army back to Norway.

Two days later William the Conqueror arrived in England.  He had between 600 and 700 transport ships to carry 7000 men (including 3000 cavalry.)

Julius Caesar had 800 ships 5 legions (25,000 men)and 2000 cavalry.  54 BC.

POP14

The period of fifty years from Cnut to William The Conqueror is perhaps the pivotal period of English history, not just because of the Norman conquest of 1066, but because of what might have been but was not.  Consider the possibilities:

Cnut died in 1035.  His two sons ruled for a brief period dying respectively in 1040 and 1042.  Had either of them lived longer, William the Conqueror would probably not have invaded in 1066, and England would have been a Scandinavian nation; the English language would have been a mix of Scandinavian and Anglo-Saxon.

The battle of Hastings was a very closely fought battle that could have gone either way, even despite the weariness of King Harold's army which had just defeated Hardrada's Vikings and endured a forced march from the north of England.  If Harold had been victorious, England would have remained Anglo-Saxon and the English language would not be this glorious amalgam of Anglo-Saxon and French.

POP15

The Normans (Norse-men) were the descendants of Vikings who settled in what became Normandy.  Their leader was Rollo who, in about 911, became baptized and married the daughter of King Charles the Simple.

POP16

In the Heathen calender, the midwinter feast was called Jol. In the three scandinavian languages of today Jul is the term for Christmas, and in the English language we have Yuletide.

POP17

According to the Icelandic historian and poet Snorri Sturluson (1179-1241), Odin promised his followers that each man who came to him in Valhalla would have the use of "what he himself had buried in the earth". This would go a long way toward explaining the treasure troves that farmers sometimes dig up, such as the Silverdale hoard, or the Spillings hoard discovered in 1999.

POP18

From about 800 to about 1200 there occured the Mediaeval Warm Period (also known as the Little Optimum) which producd some of the warmest centuries of the past 8000 years. Previously inhospitable regions now became destinations for Viking settlers, who now had the incentive to make the long journey westward toward a desirable end, and were thus induced to travel ever further, to Iceland, on to Greenland and finally to America. Iceland for example was covered with woods from the mountains to the seashore, and whereas now only 20% of the land is suitable for pasture, then the figure was between 45 and 70%.

In 1495 Pope Alexander VI (that would be Alexander Borgia) found time amidst his intrigues to express concern in a papal letter about the spiritual life of Greenlanders noting that "no vessel has touched there during the past eighty years".

POP19

Charlemagne's forced Christianization of the Saxons in the 780's included sanctions that were far divorced from any intimation of brotherly love - death for eating meat during lent, death for cremating the dead in accordance with Heaten rites, death for any who hid themselves unbaptised. But for a Christian to kill a Heathen earned no penance because the Heathen were considered less than human.

POP20

The Vikings were not always victorious.  In 844 a fleet of 80 Viking ships appeared off Lisbon, "covering the sea like dark birds". The city was captured and the fleet continued down the Spanish coast to Seville, at this time part of the Muslim empire.  The city was also taken and occupied.  A Muslim army with the use of siege catapults drove the Vikings out.  A few months later the Vikings suffered another defeat with the loss of thirty ships.  The corpses of Viking captives hung from the palm trees of Seville and Talyata - an incongruous picture of Norsemen amid the palm trees.