DISTURBING HISTORICAL DISTORTION/WHAT THEY DIDN’T MENTION/GHOSTS

by Cole Coonce

(excerpted from THE DEVIL’S OWN DAY; Release date: Summer, 2008.)

DISTURBING HISTORICAL DISTORTION (1933)

As the film continues rolling, children play with sheets and scare each other, apparently an eureka moment for the formation of the Klan. This historical distortion disturbs Rommel.

“This film is less than useless,” he barks. “This is not the history I expected at all. Is this not the story of the origins of the Ku Klux Klan? Where is the ‘Wizard of the Saddle?’”

From the stuttering turntable Wagner’s Ride of the Valkyries pitch-shifts in full song. Onscreen, Ku Klux Klan vigilantes battle a hapless militia of black men.

After grunts of disapproval, Rommel rises suddenly and walks towards the film projector. A hyper-real superimposition of Klan footage on the Lieutenant, with two hooded horsemen galloping and holding a cross, make the staff officers scrinch their eyes.

“Turn it off!” Rommel fumes and whacks a rostrum with a pointer. The adjutants jump, reach for a light switch and fumble with the film projector.

“Enough of this buffoonery and propaganda. I am unconcerned with cartoonish portrayals of final solutions.”

WHAT THEY DIDN’T MENTION (2001)

The more I study the collectibles store, the more I realize the place is a shrine to Nathan Bedford Forrest. Despite interrupting their lunch hour, the husband-and-wife antebellum memorabilia merchants spend the better part of the afternoon discussing the myths and folklore of the object of their passion, Forrest.

The stories are legend. One tale after another of Forrest risking his own neck in some daring ill-advised personal assault on enemy positions while his inferior forces triumphed exquisitely over a legion of bamboozled Yankees, each battlefield assault punctuated with pithy, percipient yet cornpone punchlines such as “Get there firstest with the mostest” and “Never stand and take a charge… charge them too,” also “Get ‘em skeered and keep the skeer on ‘em.”

“This Forrest fellow was epic,” I tell my Cousin.

“Yes, he was,” he agrees, “but these fine folks didn’t tell you about all of his exploits.”

“Really? What did I miss?”

“What they didn’t mention was that Forrest was also the founder of the Ku Klux Klan.”

GHOSTS (1933)

“To know Forrest, I must go to the source,” Rommel cries. “To Brice’s Crossroads, the site of Forrest’s greatest triumph and the battlefield where he exercised his infamous pincer movement, movements to the detriment and annihilation of superior Northern forces. Find me a guide – a survivor… somebody who was there.”

“Herr Rommel,” Burgdorf reasons, “that was seventy years ago. Is there anybody there who is even still alive?”

“If not, we shall be guided by ghosts.” -30-

THE MICRO-FILM (2006)

by Cole Coonce

(excerpted from THE DEVIL’S OWN DAY; Release date: Summer, 2008.)

CHAPTER 2: THE MICRO-FILM (2006)

I had heard the oral history about some psychic, cerebral and strategic connection between Field Marshall Erwin Rommel and Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest – how Rommel had studied Forrest’s battle tactics to the point of actually retracing his predecessor’s steps. At the gates of a Confederate graveyard outside of the Brice’s Crossroads battle site I began to understand just how pushed, damaged and Jungian the folklore really was. At this junction – an intersection fabled to those who know the minutiae of war history, yet largely ignored and consigned to oblivion to the rest of the world — parked in front of a rather ramshackle replica of a cannon, sat a late model Chevrolet Impala SS sedan sporting Texas plates. Because of the generic make and model of the car, and the fact that it was domestic, it appeared to be a rental. Most probably, some Civil War moonie had rented the car in his or her hometown and blasted across Texas, Louisiana, and the Mississippi delta to get a glimpse of the same battlefield that – legend has it – had intrigued Rommel.

As I entered the gates near the graveyard for the confederate dead, I ran into the driver of the Texas rental. True to archetype, he was some mid-40s, mustachioed Civil War zealot/nut in a Hawaiian shirt, khaki shorts and leather sandals. My presence startled him, but he instantly recovered from shock to bug-eyed understanding, thinking he had encountered at this, arguably the most esoteric and forgotten battlefield in North America, a fellow traveler, another damaged authority on all matters military… a connoisseur of the conquest, and an enthusiast of eradication… and a friend of Forrest… (I am not sure I would have corrected him had he inquired to that effect…) In his zeal to share, he proffered a roll of 35mm film for my analysis and said: “I have the micro-film for Rommel.” This seeming non sequitur provoked a loud silence. I was stunned. He took my muted response as an appreciation for what he was saying.

“Everybody knows Erwin Rommel came here in the 1930s to study the lay of the land at the greatest American Civil War dark horse victories,” the Hawaiian shirt explained.

As the Teutonic Tropical Texan put his “micro-film” in the pocket of his garish garment, he concluded, “This time the Germans are going to get it right.”

Then he drove off. -30-