GWOT IV - Sabotage
Apr. 24th, 2021 09:36 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
drewkittyThe grind was brutal.
I sat in court from 7 AM to 6 PM, every weekday, half hour for lunch, plus minus the brief piss breaks and a couple quick adjournments to go throw up. Saturdays I could get up a little later, executions typically started at 10 AM. But more often I was following around the process, from the condemned men's lack of breakfast to the drunken sot of a 'doctor' confirming their death with a stethoscope that he had to be reminded to clean.
Sundays were inspection. For almost everyone else, that meant Saturdays were their rough day as they cleaned, maintained, painted and polished. But for me, the inspector, it meant I had to actually go over everything with a fine toothed comb.
Then I had to actually run the prison. Paperwork, supervision, emergency response drills, the actual inevitable emergencies, and the gnawing fear that the Americans were coming to pay a visit.
They would knock by blowing buildings up. Or by coughing - suppressed gunfire. Or by the sudden tightening of a wire around my own personal neck.
We had guard dogs. Our dog handler at Site had parlayed his three dogs for us into a squad, then a unit, then a training battalion. It dropped off fourteen dogs, trained two handler-instructors, and left us to figure out pet food and arranging for vet visits. Then off to the next installation.
So my day started around 5 AM and ended around 11 PM.
Then I had the enormous workload of supervising the justice process. The California Military Commission and I frequently exchanged E-mails and had heated (and recorded) conference calls..
From California's perspective, we were carving out justice and laying the groundwork for peace.
From the American perspective, we were all mass murderers bragging about our serial killings.
Then came the nightmares. I could just about time them.
I'd actually fall asleep around midnight. Then around 1:30 or so, I would be woken up by my own screaming. Or, more than I liked to admit, the reaction team would respond to a disturbance and I would hear the tentative knock. "Warden? Warden, sir?"
I had my pick of topics. The usual childhood shit, that I was amazed to find out well before the Firecracker that not everyone dreams of. The things I had seen - and done - in that first week. Shooting people didn't bother me. The idiot who'd walked into the rotor blades - on my watch! - didn't bother me much any more. I hadn't slept in three days, I could forgive myself a little.
That woman who'd gotten loose from Shane Shreve and finished killing herself with a faceplant in the stairwell. I kept seeing her and my decision to not try to catch her. The grin on her face as she dove. The hint of a smile when she''d breathed her last an hour later, my hand still in hers.
All sorts of stupid Site bullshit. So many incidents. So much pain.
Then what I'd experienced courtesy of Homeland.
I suppose I should have received some sort of treatment. I was seeing in the E-mails that mental health was a huge concern for the Resistance and for the nascent California Republic. We had the one psychologist and she was busy, but that was a good excuse for never seeing her.
I had ready access to powerful painkillers. But I had court. I wasn't going to condemn someone because my brain was fuzzy.
I didn't drink alcohol and was not tempted to start.
Some people handle desperate times through desperate measures. As 'The Old Man," I could not try to handle my own business through what a biologist calls the "Four Fs" - fleeing, fighting, feeding and ... mating. It was all I could do to carve out time to work out, and that was mostly power-walking during inspections at that.
I couldn't even indulge the solitary vice. My left hand wasn't the only thing broken. And my worst nightmares about my time in Homeland started with an erection.
###
We'd gotten through the straight up war crimes phase. Mostly Homeland troopers, mostly during the initial gathering up of so-called 'internees.' And mostly hung by the neck until dead.
Now we were digging into operations of war. The Resistance was pretty good about accepting battlefield surrenders; the Republic made it formal national policy. And we'd had our first case of a California Republic soldier accused of murder on the battlefield. I'd heard the case. And I'd ordered him shot.
The case in front of me this morning was a little different.
"The defendant stands accused of killing at least one hundred and fifty people, forensics is still in progress, by the deliberate setting of numerous fires in a populated area."
The defendant was thin, defiant, dressed in the remnants of BDU trousers and a newly issued bright orange POW shirt. He was also chained at wrists and ankles and held by two guards, who were sweating from recent exertion. Still combative, then.
"What is the defendant's name?" I asked the military prosecutor.
"He will not give it."
I banged my gavel.
"Sidebar. I am opening a disposition hearing, time now, into the disposition of this person in front of me. Guards, let go of the prisoner and return behind the rail. Defense counsel, have you conferred with the prisoner?"
"Yes."
"And what was the results of that meeting?"
"The defendant remained mute."
"Detainee," I corrected. "I have seen no evidence that this person is a lawful combatant."
I turned to the detainee.
"My name is Captain [Echo 18]. I happen to be the Warden of Alviso Prison, but today I am serving as a member of, and at the request of, the California Military Commission as a trier of fact. In effect I am a military judge, and I have so far sentenced over five hundred people to die in the last two months. I tell you these things because, buddy, you're about to be next."
This got his attention.
"Never mind the arson. What I need to find out, right here and right now, is if you are a lawful combatant. For this part, if you exercise your right to remain silent, you will silent your way right into a hangman's noose, and you will die on Saturday at 10 AM. State your name, rank, and military affiliation now."
The detainee remained mute.
I lifted a finger and according to our procedures, the guard at the back of the room smacked her baton into the back door, making a sudden unexpected CLACK CLACK of wood on wood. Predictably, the detainee flinched.
"OK, so you can hear me. Habla espanol? Sprekenze Deutch? Your mom's a whore. OK, you can understand English. So, since you can understand me, you're about to lose any hope of prisoner of war status. Because if you're a soldier or a paramilitary, I'm a fucking Captain and I just asked your Goddamn name and rank, and normally it would be a UCMJ violation to refuse to answer that, but slowly strangling to death is a hell of a lot worse than breaking rocks in Leavenworth."
The detainee remained mute.
"Prosecutor. Under what circumstances was the detainee taken into custody? Why did the detaining unit classify him as a POW?"
House to house fighting in a mountain town in the Sierras. Opposing forces were a mixed bag of US Army, pro-American partisans, Homeland, mercs and even Special Troops. When it became clear that they'd lost the town, fires had popped up among the houses on the east side of town. In the face of the spreading fire, American forces had withdrawn and California forces had turned to evacuating the town.
But they'd tripped over this asshole, in unmarked black BDU fatigues, with the smell of gasoline on his hands and a tossed-down torch made of gas-soaked rags on a big stick nearby. They'd dragged him off with the other evacuees.
People had been hiding in their houses from the battle. Some of them had kept hiding, and died for it.
So the detaining unit fucked up. Easy to do in the stress of the situation. Also an easy fix.
"Detainee having stood mute, the preponderance of the facts and the reported circumstances force a conclusion that the detainee is not a privileged combatant, but a common criminal. Under my general authority as a California commissioned officer, I order that this criminal be hanged for capital murder. Remove him to execution cell. Next case."
The guards came forward to drag and/or beat the detainee and he cried, "Wait!"
I lifted a hand, and my tone brooked no dispute.
"Name, rank, unit."
"Rick Morris, Corporal, Special Troops."
A general growl went around the room.
Special Troops were the worst of Homeland. Recruited literally from insane asylums and prisons, their entire role had been to commit atrocities among civilian populations.
But we hadn't made a finding that they were ab initio a criminal organization. Part of this is because the Americans had California personnel as POWs.
I looked to the prosecutor. He shrugged. I look to defense counsel. He wanted to shrug but couldn't.
"Corporal Morris, I am now going to ask you some questions to prove your affiliation. What is your unit designator? Who is your commanding officer?"
He quickly and fearfully answered my questions. No doubt, he's a Special.
I had no doubt that if I asked him about the arson, he'd answer that too. But that would be a miscarriage of justice. And it would be unfair to the 150 odd people he'd murdered to let him walk that easiliy..
"Correction. The Court having been presented convincing evidence that the detainee is a member of a combatant organization, the Corporal remains a POW, and the disposition hearing is closed."
But the guards didn't move.
Quite right, too. I motioned to the prosecutor, who took up his spiel.
"Corporal Morris, you stand accused of a capital crime. Under the Uniform Code of Military Justice..."
The facts had already been presented, but he laid them out slightly differently. There is a difference between collateral damage and an unlawful operation of war. As much as 150 lives, and as little as a 3/8" diameter length of rope.
The defense counsel said just one thing.
"I have not had opportunity to confer with my client on his defense."
I sighed.
"Let the record show that yes,, you did, but yes, I'll accept your request for a one day continuance. Next case."
###
My nightmares featured a helitorch. And somehow, the grinning Corporal was its pilot.
###
We opened the next morning on Corporal Morris and his defense.
Standard LOOW.
"Lawful Operation Of War."
He'd been given orders, one of four. The American commander had decided to fire the town to cover his retreat.
Necessarily, as part of his defense, he had to give up all sorts of information. Most importantly the name of his commanding officer. A Major Franklin.
I put the court on recess while I checked the enemy officer's list. Got him..
"Two issues are before this Court at this time. The first is whether the operation of war was itself lawful. The second is whether the defendant should reasonably have recognized that he had been given an unlawful order. 'Following orders is an indictment, not a defense.'
"It is clear under the modern laws of war that the operation was blatantly excessive. No effort was made by defendant or by other American forces to evacuate the town prior to the arson. Heavy civilian loss of life was inevitable and easily predictable. So this Court directs in absentia prosecution of Major Martin Franklin, US Army..."
The defendant flinched. How had I known the full name?
"... but that is for another time. Today, we have Corporal Morris before this Court. All parties have effectively stipulated to his actions. As a private person, we would be done here - PC 451 and PC 187 would end our discussion. But a soldier may do things in lawful war that a civilian may not.
"Does reasonable doubt exist as to whether his actions as a soldier were _prospectively_ illegal? Was he in possession of facts that would have led a reasonable person to realize that he was committing an atrocity?
"No and yes. Burning empty houses is a lawful operation of war. Burning houses with people in them, without ordering them out first, is a straightforward war crime. Defendant may protest that he was not taught the laws of war, but ignorance of the law is no excuse. The screams of the people burned alive should have alerted him, as it did for so many others, that his actions were not destruction of property but denial of life.
"The last and in some ways least important, at least to this Court if not to Corporal Morris, question is whether these deaths were from an excessive but essentially honorable act, or from inherently dishonorable conduct. In other words, how does the punishment fit the crime?
"It is clear from the defendant's own testimony, as well as that from the capturing unit's documentation and the California commander's report, that the fires were cowardly as well as brutal, that there was no corresponding military advantage, and that at best the act was indifferent to human suffering and quite likely the product of an abandoned and malignant heart."
That last line was very important. In pre-Firecracker jurisprudence, that was the essential element to convict of Murder One with Special Circumstances in the absence of specific intent to murder an individual person. Like firing a machine gun into a crowd.
"It is therefore the order of this Court that Corporal Morris be executed..."
The guards tightened their grip.
"... by ...."
The words would not come out of my mouth.
Everyone looked at me expectantly.
".... by ...."
Oh Goddamn it.
".... by hanging by the neck until dead.. Remove the prisoner."
No, I wasn't going to do it.
I had the precedent. I had the facts. And he sure as hell had the guilt. The relief at finding out that I would only be choking hiim to death was clearly visible on his face.
Because what I hadn't said, what I'd planned to say, and myself cowardly chickened out at the last minute....
By lighting him on fire with a flamethrower.
Still faster than what he'd done to those poor people in those houses. Unless I chained him down in a shed and then had the shed lit on fire.
No. There's a limit. Even in justice.
Because it wouldn't be me lighting him on fire.
It would be the California Republic lighting him on fire.
I'd taken an oath to dispense justice.
That wasn't the justice I wanted California to be a part of.
And that was why I'd flinched.
###
I slept peacefully that night. Like a baby. Waking up crying every couple hours, and only pissing myself once.
I sat in court from 7 AM to 6 PM, every weekday, half hour for lunch, plus minus the brief piss breaks and a couple quick adjournments to go throw up. Saturdays I could get up a little later, executions typically started at 10 AM. But more often I was following around the process, from the condemned men's lack of breakfast to the drunken sot of a 'doctor' confirming their death with a stethoscope that he had to be reminded to clean.
Sundays were inspection. For almost everyone else, that meant Saturdays were their rough day as they cleaned, maintained, painted and polished. But for me, the inspector, it meant I had to actually go over everything with a fine toothed comb.
Then I had to actually run the prison. Paperwork, supervision, emergency response drills, the actual inevitable emergencies, and the gnawing fear that the Americans were coming to pay a visit.
They would knock by blowing buildings up. Or by coughing - suppressed gunfire. Or by the sudden tightening of a wire around my own personal neck.
We had guard dogs. Our dog handler at Site had parlayed his three dogs for us into a squad, then a unit, then a training battalion. It dropped off fourteen dogs, trained two handler-instructors, and left us to figure out pet food and arranging for vet visits. Then off to the next installation.
So my day started around 5 AM and ended around 11 PM.
Then I had the enormous workload of supervising the justice process. The California Military Commission and I frequently exchanged E-mails and had heated (and recorded) conference calls..
From California's perspective, we were carving out justice and laying the groundwork for peace.
From the American perspective, we were all mass murderers bragging about our serial killings.
Then came the nightmares. I could just about time them.
I'd actually fall asleep around midnight. Then around 1:30 or so, I would be woken up by my own screaming. Or, more than I liked to admit, the reaction team would respond to a disturbance and I would hear the tentative knock. "Warden? Warden, sir?"
I had my pick of topics. The usual childhood shit, that I was amazed to find out well before the Firecracker that not everyone dreams of. The things I had seen - and done - in that first week. Shooting people didn't bother me. The idiot who'd walked into the rotor blades - on my watch! - didn't bother me much any more. I hadn't slept in three days, I could forgive myself a little.
That woman who'd gotten loose from Shane Shreve and finished killing herself with a faceplant in the stairwell. I kept seeing her and my decision to not try to catch her. The grin on her face as she dove. The hint of a smile when she''d breathed her last an hour later, my hand still in hers.
All sorts of stupid Site bullshit. So many incidents. So much pain.
Then what I'd experienced courtesy of Homeland.
I suppose I should have received some sort of treatment. I was seeing in the E-mails that mental health was a huge concern for the Resistance and for the nascent California Republic. We had the one psychologist and she was busy, but that was a good excuse for never seeing her.
I had ready access to powerful painkillers. But I had court. I wasn't going to condemn someone because my brain was fuzzy.
I didn't drink alcohol and was not tempted to start.
Some people handle desperate times through desperate measures. As 'The Old Man," I could not try to handle my own business through what a biologist calls the "Four Fs" - fleeing, fighting, feeding and ... mating. It was all I could do to carve out time to work out, and that was mostly power-walking during inspections at that.
I couldn't even indulge the solitary vice. My left hand wasn't the only thing broken. And my worst nightmares about my time in Homeland started with an erection.
###
We'd gotten through the straight up war crimes phase. Mostly Homeland troopers, mostly during the initial gathering up of so-called 'internees.' And mostly hung by the neck until dead.
Now we were digging into operations of war. The Resistance was pretty good about accepting battlefield surrenders; the Republic made it formal national policy. And we'd had our first case of a California Republic soldier accused of murder on the battlefield. I'd heard the case. And I'd ordered him shot.
The case in front of me this morning was a little different.
"The defendant stands accused of killing at least one hundred and fifty people, forensics is still in progress, by the deliberate setting of numerous fires in a populated area."
The defendant was thin, defiant, dressed in the remnants of BDU trousers and a newly issued bright orange POW shirt. He was also chained at wrists and ankles and held by two guards, who were sweating from recent exertion. Still combative, then.
"What is the defendant's name?" I asked the military prosecutor.
"He will not give it."
I banged my gavel.
"Sidebar. I am opening a disposition hearing, time now, into the disposition of this person in front of me. Guards, let go of the prisoner and return behind the rail. Defense counsel, have you conferred with the prisoner?"
"Yes."
"And what was the results of that meeting?"
"The defendant remained mute."
"Detainee," I corrected. "I have seen no evidence that this person is a lawful combatant."
I turned to the detainee.
"My name is Captain [Echo 18]. I happen to be the Warden of Alviso Prison, but today I am serving as a member of, and at the request of, the California Military Commission as a trier of fact. In effect I am a military judge, and I have so far sentenced over five hundred people to die in the last two months. I tell you these things because, buddy, you're about to be next."
This got his attention.
"Never mind the arson. What I need to find out, right here and right now, is if you are a lawful combatant. For this part, if you exercise your right to remain silent, you will silent your way right into a hangman's noose, and you will die on Saturday at 10 AM. State your name, rank, and military affiliation now."
The detainee remained mute.
I lifted a finger and according to our procedures, the guard at the back of the room smacked her baton into the back door, making a sudden unexpected CLACK CLACK of wood on wood. Predictably, the detainee flinched.
"OK, so you can hear me. Habla espanol? Sprekenze Deutch? Your mom's a whore. OK, you can understand English. So, since you can understand me, you're about to lose any hope of prisoner of war status. Because if you're a soldier or a paramilitary, I'm a fucking Captain and I just asked your Goddamn name and rank, and normally it would be a UCMJ violation to refuse to answer that, but slowly strangling to death is a hell of a lot worse than breaking rocks in Leavenworth."
The detainee remained mute.
"Prosecutor. Under what circumstances was the detainee taken into custody? Why did the detaining unit classify him as a POW?"
House to house fighting in a mountain town in the Sierras. Opposing forces were a mixed bag of US Army, pro-American partisans, Homeland, mercs and even Special Troops. When it became clear that they'd lost the town, fires had popped up among the houses on the east side of town. In the face of the spreading fire, American forces had withdrawn and California forces had turned to evacuating the town.
But they'd tripped over this asshole, in unmarked black BDU fatigues, with the smell of gasoline on his hands and a tossed-down torch made of gas-soaked rags on a big stick nearby. They'd dragged him off with the other evacuees.
People had been hiding in their houses from the battle. Some of them had kept hiding, and died for it.
So the detaining unit fucked up. Easy to do in the stress of the situation. Also an easy fix.
"Detainee having stood mute, the preponderance of the facts and the reported circumstances force a conclusion that the detainee is not a privileged combatant, but a common criminal. Under my general authority as a California commissioned officer, I order that this criminal be hanged for capital murder. Remove him to execution cell. Next case."
The guards came forward to drag and/or beat the detainee and he cried, "Wait!"
I lifted a hand, and my tone brooked no dispute.
"Name, rank, unit."
"Rick Morris, Corporal, Special Troops."
A general growl went around the room.
Special Troops were the worst of Homeland. Recruited literally from insane asylums and prisons, their entire role had been to commit atrocities among civilian populations.
But we hadn't made a finding that they were ab initio a criminal organization. Part of this is because the Americans had California personnel as POWs.
I looked to the prosecutor. He shrugged. I look to defense counsel. He wanted to shrug but couldn't.
"Corporal Morris, I am now going to ask you some questions to prove your affiliation. What is your unit designator? Who is your commanding officer?"
He quickly and fearfully answered my questions. No doubt, he's a Special.
I had no doubt that if I asked him about the arson, he'd answer that too. But that would be a miscarriage of justice. And it would be unfair to the 150 odd people he'd murdered to let him walk that easiliy..
"Correction. The Court having been presented convincing evidence that the detainee is a member of a combatant organization, the Corporal remains a POW, and the disposition hearing is closed."
But the guards didn't move.
Quite right, too. I motioned to the prosecutor, who took up his spiel.
"Corporal Morris, you stand accused of a capital crime. Under the Uniform Code of Military Justice..."
The facts had already been presented, but he laid them out slightly differently. There is a difference between collateral damage and an unlawful operation of war. As much as 150 lives, and as little as a 3/8" diameter length of rope.
The defense counsel said just one thing.
"I have not had opportunity to confer with my client on his defense."
I sighed.
"Let the record show that yes,, you did, but yes, I'll accept your request for a one day continuance. Next case."
###
My nightmares featured a helitorch. And somehow, the grinning Corporal was its pilot.
###
We opened the next morning on Corporal Morris and his defense.
Standard LOOW.
"Lawful Operation Of War."
He'd been given orders, one of four. The American commander had decided to fire the town to cover his retreat.
Necessarily, as part of his defense, he had to give up all sorts of information. Most importantly the name of his commanding officer. A Major Franklin.
I put the court on recess while I checked the enemy officer's list. Got him..
"Two issues are before this Court at this time. The first is whether the operation of war was itself lawful. The second is whether the defendant should reasonably have recognized that he had been given an unlawful order. 'Following orders is an indictment, not a defense.'
"It is clear under the modern laws of war that the operation was blatantly excessive. No effort was made by defendant or by other American forces to evacuate the town prior to the arson. Heavy civilian loss of life was inevitable and easily predictable. So this Court directs in absentia prosecution of Major Martin Franklin, US Army..."
The defendant flinched. How had I known the full name?
"... but that is for another time. Today, we have Corporal Morris before this Court. All parties have effectively stipulated to his actions. As a private person, we would be done here - PC 451 and PC 187 would end our discussion. But a soldier may do things in lawful war that a civilian may not.
"Does reasonable doubt exist as to whether his actions as a soldier were _prospectively_ illegal? Was he in possession of facts that would have led a reasonable person to realize that he was committing an atrocity?
"No and yes. Burning empty houses is a lawful operation of war. Burning houses with people in them, without ordering them out first, is a straightforward war crime. Defendant may protest that he was not taught the laws of war, but ignorance of the law is no excuse. The screams of the people burned alive should have alerted him, as it did for so many others, that his actions were not destruction of property but denial of life.
"The last and in some ways least important, at least to this Court if not to Corporal Morris, question is whether these deaths were from an excessive but essentially honorable act, or from inherently dishonorable conduct. In other words, how does the punishment fit the crime?
"It is clear from the defendant's own testimony, as well as that from the capturing unit's documentation and the California commander's report, that the fires were cowardly as well as brutal, that there was no corresponding military advantage, and that at best the act was indifferent to human suffering and quite likely the product of an abandoned and malignant heart."
That last line was very important. In pre-Firecracker jurisprudence, that was the essential element to convict of Murder One with Special Circumstances in the absence of specific intent to murder an individual person. Like firing a machine gun into a crowd.
"It is therefore the order of this Court that Corporal Morris be executed..."
The guards tightened their grip.
"... by ...."
The words would not come out of my mouth.
Everyone looked at me expectantly.
".... by ...."
Oh Goddamn it.
".... by hanging by the neck until dead.. Remove the prisoner."
No, I wasn't going to do it.
I had the precedent. I had the facts. And he sure as hell had the guilt. The relief at finding out that I would only be choking hiim to death was clearly visible on his face.
Because what I hadn't said, what I'd planned to say, and myself cowardly chickened out at the last minute....
By lighting him on fire with a flamethrower.
Still faster than what he'd done to those poor people in those houses. Unless I chained him down in a shed and then had the shed lit on fire.
No. There's a limit. Even in justice.
Because it wouldn't be me lighting him on fire.
It would be the California Republic lighting him on fire.
I'd taken an oath to dispense justice.
That wasn't the justice I wanted California to be a part of.
And that was why I'd flinched.
###
I slept peacefully that night. Like a baby. Waking up crying every couple hours, and only pissing myself once.
