This met with instant success, and in quick succession he caught three more beautiful trout, two Brook and one Brown. These were destined to feed the fishing camp. The General was feeling his oats, as the old saying goes.
Just then, a red squirrel was trying to jump from one branch to another. It missed its mark when a gust of wind blew its body and the intended landing area, further apart. It had not anticipated this event and its effort fell short. The intended target for the squirrel’s abortive leap was a good fifteen feet past the pool where the General was fishing. This resulted in the squirrel promptly falling about thirty feet away into the Wolf River and started swimming in the wrong direction.
The other fishermen noticed the commotion and started cheering and jeering, at the unfortunate squirrel. Someone threw a rock in its direction which caused the creature to veer again and he was headed downstream towards the General.
MacArthur decided to use the squirrel as target practice and possibly somehow assist the now-desperate swimmer. He cast his line at the moving target and missed by a good ten feet. This raised muted hoots from the onlookers. One does not hoot out loud, at a five-star general.
Two more tries, then the fly actually hit the back of the squirrel sliding down and impaling itself in the flesh of the bony part of the twitching, furry, bushy tail. To be sure the General was more than upset by actually hooking the squirrel. He was just taking target practice and got a thousand-to-one shot that hit home.
A bit irritated and more than a little embarrassed, without much thought to the consequences, he reeled in the now-drowning squirrel. The squirrel was on its last legs and was desperate for any kind of solid object to climb on to. General Douglas MacArthur’s leg turned out to be that object.
Before he could react or think, MacArthur found the little red squirrel with fishing line attached, climbing up his wader-leg in panic running circles up the General’s leg dodging the grasp of the by now, exceedingly alarmed MacArthur. The line stretched tighter and tighter over his torso, face and head. The trailing fishing line was high test and the more the General struggled the tighter the line became and eventually, pinning his right arm and was around his neck as well.
The muted mirth of the gathering crowd suddenly vanished as MacArthur lost his balance and fell into the shallow, but fast-rushing waters. His struggling body tumbled like a log with the current, rolling faster and faster until, to the horror of all, it hit the boiling, frothing, white water known as the Gardner Dam rapids, which was a solid three-rated rapids after the latest storm. In panicked desperation three of the General’s aides jumped in after the now fast-disappearing MacArthur, in an attempt to reach him.
The attempt was in vain and two of his aides lost their lives as well. The third managed to stay alive and was found the next day, in a daze three miles downstream. The General’s body was found three days later, thirty miles from Gardner Dam with the red squirrel still attached.
You know the official story of course, the one about the General vigorously hiking and then being felled by a heart attack. The true tale that was just imparted upon you, detailing the General’s ignominious end, was not one befitting such as MacArthur. A five-star general of the United States of America, the architect of the Island-Hopping campaign, the Savior of the Philippines and a true American hero, and it was thought that he deserved a better epitaph than being drowned by a red squirrel. The fictitious “official” story was presented to the world.
Even his last recorded words, “I shall return,” were some PR man’s brilliant idea.
In truth, General Douglas MacArthur had indeed returned to the earth, as will we all, eventually.[34]
Crenshaw was deep in thought. According to these reports we are certainly picking up their radar signals and they are primitive. Then why can’t we deflect those missiles? Smith reports here that they are obviously using old 1945 German technology. We pick up the signals and match them with the jammer signal and yet, nothing happens. The missiles just keep coming. Why are the jamming techniques not working? What have they done to change the signals?
He gets up walks around his cluttered desk and writes something on the wall behind the map that is hanging precariously from a couple of nails. The map is actually his real job. He is supposed to be keeping track of all the Red Army squadrons and their locations. All he has to do is read the intelligence reports and place pins into the map with little flags on them. Any mindless monkey could do that. His consuming passion was what was behind the map.
The Soviet ground control is trying to mark our bombers from the ground but all of our technicians are positive that the signal is jammed almost immediately. Yet the dang missiles keep coming, like a moth drawn to a flame, or a falcon closing in on an unsuspecting duck. What are they using to control those missiles from the ground? I have to write that down…
Something about those missile reports had briefly jogged his memory, but then he lost it when he started to cough. Too many cigarettes, he guessed. I have to cut back. If I think about it too much it will never come back. But how do you do that… count sheep? No, that was to go to sleep. He was so engrossed in thought that he failed to realize it was well-past quitting time. The guard knocked on the door asking if everything was alright.
Damn, it was almost there again! If this buffoon had not interrupted my chain of thought… “Yes, everything is just fine Chuck; just contemplating my navel. I’ll be out of here and upstairs in no time. I’ll see you up there.”
Damn! What was it? Radar that shouldn’t work, but yet is working… or is it?
Could the jammers be getting jammed? No, that’s ridiculous; some kind of optical system? But how would they fit it in and get a signal back to the operator? One sheep, two sheep, three sheep… Time to go home. Wait what if they were using…
Just then the phone rang. “Hello, Crenshaw here. Yes sir, I’ll have the map updated by 1000 hours. Don’t worry sir, it’ll be done. Yes sir. Good night sir.”
He hangs up, and drops back into this chair, wracked by a coughing fit. As he slowly recovers, all he can think about is the deep-down pain in his chest. I’d better get this checked out. It could be pneumonia or bronchitis, and I’m sure these Pall Malls aren’t helping. Maybe I should try and quit again. Yeah right, maybe I should forget to breathe again. Now, where was I? Something about radar? Or was it wire-guided? Damn, it’s time to call it a day…
All his little pea-brain could do was respond. Somehow, his hiding place had been discovered, and he was caught out in the open. The sun was blinding. The ground would suddenly burst in showers of dirt every few seconds, and all he could do was react. All he could do was to run away from one eruption until the next one happened and then run from that. His brain could not comprehend what was causing these unnatural splatters of dirt, nor did it matter. They scared him, and that’s all it needed to know.
34
Farfetched you say? This very situation happened to my Grandfather in the very spot described. Luckily he survived.