How can a man die better...

Broken people are willing to risk everything because they have nothing to lose...

Combat-wounded Sergeant Lucky Frank Brandt is taking pickup work to supplement his medical retirement paycheck in a world where his skillsets are rewarded. As he plies his trade from the New Orleans slums to the Utah desert, his success puts him on a short list that will catapult him into the seats of power.

Captain Claire Hoffman’s life changed when an IED cut her Humvee in half, taking her legs with it. Struggling as a double amputee, army nurse Hoffman returned to school in search of a new way forward. The CIA, looking to fill a quota, offered her that opportunity. 

Laurel Vega-Mendoza, a congresswoman from Texas, is tapped to fill a vacancy when the United States Vice President suddenly dies in office. Now on a trajectory to fill the sitting president's shoes, she casts about for people she can trust among the most untrustworthy group of scoundrels on the planet.

Unbeknown to them, an extrasolar spacecraft devoid of organic life crashed in the Pamir Mountains on the Roof of the World on November 4, 1932. There, in that place, an intelligence awaits its resurrection.

In a world of risks and rewards, they are poised to do things you wouldn’t.

I will drag an e-mail discussion here to the blog. The question was outside of General George Patton who had his own ideas about side arms, what did US general officers carry (if anything) during World Wars I, II and the Korean War. There is an answer because the US Army issued them to general officers in particular.

The Colt Pocket Hammerless, either the Model of 1903, in .32 ACP, or the Model of 1908, in .380 ACP.

Let's face it, the general can carry what general wants to carry, but the fact that there was an issue firearm for generals meant that many of them who carried likely carried that.

Moving on to Patton. General Patton's daily carry handguns were fitted with ivory grips. “Pearl handles are for New Orleans pimps.” the General famously quipped to a reporter.

Although popularly remembered as the "two-gun" General, Patton actually seldom wore both of his "carrying guns" together. The handguns most associated with him, and which are now in the Patton Collection of the West Point Museum, are a .45 Long Colt Single Action revolver, 1873 Army Model, and a .357 Magnum Smith & Wesson revolver.

Of the two of them, aides and relatives have said that the .45 Colt was the one Patton stressed for everyday carry, while the .357 was to be the "killing gun," in his words if the battlefield situation ever demanded it. The .45 was his oldest companion, having been purchased in 1916. There are two notches filed in the left-side ivory grip of the highly engraved .45. They came to be through a 1916 gunfight that took place in Mexico where he killed two Mexican irregular officers.

As a young officer, George Patton was part of General Pershing’s punitive expedition into Mexico to hunt down Francisco (Pancho) Villa, Governor of Chihuahua. On 14 May he came under fire while leading a caravan of three vehicles to obtain food for his troops.

Patton was armed with his own Colt SAA .45 revolver. During the fight, he emptied the weapon as many as three times. In a letter to his father after the fight, Patton wrote, “I fired five times with my new pistol and one of them ducked back into the house. I found out later that this was Cardenes and that I had hit both him and his horse.” Captain Julio Cardenes was second in command under Villa when he was shot by Lieutenant George S. Patton.