WOJTEK - THE AMMO BEAR

12/2/1963 - In Edinburgh, Scotland, one of the unsung heroes' of WWII story ends with the death of Polish Corporal Wojtek (pronounced VOY-tek) ... an officially retired member of the Polish Army residing at the city's zoo that just so happens to be a 22-year-old Ursus arctos syriacus brown bear (a sub-species of the Northern American Grizzly Bear).  This is the corporal's story.

Corporal Wojtek & Friend

Captured by Russian soldiers near the city of Lublin at the end of September in the fighting that turns Poland into two pieces of meat to be devoured by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union at the beginning of WWII, members of the Nowogrodzka Cavalry Brigade of Lt. General Wladyslaw Albert Anders are sent to the U.S.S.R. as prisoners of war.  Futures uncertain, the fortunes of the Polish soldiers improve immensely in the spring of 1941 when Hitler launches Operation Barbarossa on his former ally, and like Napoleon Bonaparte before him, invades Russia.  Enemy to friend in a seeming heartbeat, with Great Britain mediating, the Polish government-in-exile and the Soviet Union sign the Sikorski-Mayski agreement on July 30, 1941, an arrangement in which Polish citizens and soldiers are released from the camps they have been held in to form an army that will fight the Germans.  Planned to be a part of the Soviet Army, but report to the Polish government, 25,000 soldiers and officers are recruited from the POW camps (one is Menachem Begin, the future anti-British Irgun leader, prime minister of Israel, and Nobel Peace Prize winner) in the spring of 1942.  Escaping the advances of the advancing Third Reich soldiers, a portion of the Poles are sent to Iran to begin a westward movement to join British forces fighting in the Mediterranean.  Across the Caspian Sea to the port of Pahlavi, the soldiers are then sent through Iran by railroad, cross Iraq, move through British Palestine (now Israel) before making their way into Italy to participate in the battles the Allies are fighting to punch through the German defensive positions of Luftwaffe Field Marshal Albert "Smiling Albert" Kesselring on the Gustav Line.

Polish POWs In Soviet Camp

Smiling Albert

On April 8, 1942 a group of soldiers and Polish civilian refugees are making their way across Iran when they pause their journey at the Hamadan railroad station.  There they become captivated by a young boy and the baby bear he is taking care of after finding the orphan ursine in the Alborz Mountains in the northern part of the country (local hunters had killed its mother).  Showing the effects of not having a mother to show him how to live as a bear, considering themselves orphans too after losing their country to Germany and the Soviet Union, far from their families, the soldiers, in the form of Lt. Anatol Tarnowiecki decide to purchase the cub as a mascot for their group (egged on by 18-year-old Irena Inka Bokiewicz, the great-niece of legendary Polish President and General Boleslaw Wieniawa-Dlugoszowski who volunteers to get her relative involved if the soldiers run into problems with their superiors over the animal.  Bought from the young Iranian for a handful of Persian coins, a portion of chocolate, a Swiss Army knife, and a tin of beef, the bear becomes an unofficial member of the 22nd Artillery Supply Company of the Polish II Corps.  For the next three months, the cub spends its time at a Polish refugee camp where he comes under the care of Lance Corporal Peter Prendys.  Named Wojtek by the Polish soldier as a derivative of the word "Wojciech," meaning Happy or Smiling Warrior, the name will eventually fit the bear like a glove.

Wojtek

The Cub

Staying Cool

Yummy

Later, And Bigger With Prendys

Initially having problems swallowing, the soldiers come up with a way of feeding their new friend his daily allotment of condensed milk that has them jury-rigging an empty glass vodka bottle with a rag nipple.  Growing by leaps and bounds from the milk, Wojtek eventually grows to a muscled mass of brown fur standing a little over six feet tall and weighing somewhere between 200 to 300 pounds that enjoys fruit (he will love chasing down and eating the oranges the soldiers throw when they practice pitching grenades), marmalade, honey and honeyed milk, syrup, coffee in the morning, and as a special reward when the men have deemed he has done something exceptionally good, his favorite drink, whatever beer is available (though he never gets drunk, his body and the heat of the Middle East absorbing the alcohol with ease).  Amusing his comrades to no end, the bear also develops the habit of taking one puff off offered cigarettes, before then swallowing whole the lit tobacco.  Kept hidden at first, but eventually found by officers of the 22nd, instead of having their pet taken away, Wojtek is granted mascot privileges and soon becomes a celebrity within the command.  Extremely intelligent, the bear is taught the military etiquette of saluting, engages in mock wrestling matches with the soldiers (in which Wojtek never loses, but also, never hurts anyone ... eventually, at over 400 pounds, the bear will wrestle six soldiers at the same time), figures out how to turn on the tent showers, is taught a game in which rookie soldiers are brought into the unit by Wojtek holding them up by their ankles while he harmlessly growls in their faces before dropping the men on their heads, marches with the soldiers on his hind legs, learns how to kick a soccer ball, and realizing it often is given treats for the behavior, mimics many of the actions the humans around him display.  And during cold nights, the bear becomes a warm and quiet wooly pillow for a handful of the unit's braver souls (beyond the Polish soldiers, Wojtek's favorite companion in camp is a soldier's pet Dalmatian dog, with the two animals playing a version of tag for hours on end).

Begging For A Treat

Yummy Beer!

You're Going To Lose!

Wrestling Match

As the unit makes its way from Iran, to Iraq, then through Syria, Palestine, and Egypt, before crossing the Meditterean and landing in Italy, the bear also picks up its share of demerits for turning on, but not turning off the showers, playfully covering itself in the bras and panties of a nursing unit that hung out their lingerie to dry on a clothesline too near Wojtek, preparing to celebrate Christmas of 1942, the unit discovers that the bear has already feasted on all the food the soldiers have set aside for their celebration (on another occasion, the bear is found to have devoured 300 apples in one sitting), he often has to be stopped from turning another Polish mascot into monkey meat, and once while riding in an ammo truck along the coast, catching a glimpse of the water, he jumps out of the vehicle to frolic in the cooling waters of the Meditterean, much to the horror of bathers sunning themselves on the beach.  But the missteps are all forgiven due to the joy the men take in having their affectionate animal friend around, and when the bear catches a spy that has slipped into the camp to steal and set off a crate of ammunition, hiding in the shower tent (he is captured when his terrorized screams at being confronted by a growling bear standing on its hind legs in preparation of doing its rookie hazing act brings Polish soldiers on the run to the tent ... as a reward for his detective work, Wojtek is given TWO bottles of beer and a day of unlimited shower time).  Bear to Polish soldier, Wojtek takes the final step to becoming a member of the unit when he is stopped from coming aboard a troop transport ship bound for Italy.  Stopped by an officious British officer set on following orders that deny ship transport to mascot animals, members of the 22nd jump into action and Wojtek becomes Private Wojtek, a member in good standing of the Polish Army with a rank, serial number, and a pay book in which in lieu of currency, the bear receives double daily rations of whatever the cooks are providing to the troops).  Accompanied by his soldier friends, a surprised British officer yells, "But this is not a man," but allows Wojtek to board when the bear's papers are presented and the soldiers begin yelling, "Private Wojtek inspires the fighting spirit in Polish soldiers!"  And so Wojtek is allowed to cross the Meditterean with his friends in 1944, in time to participate in one of the grimmest battles of WWII.

More Beer Please!

Helping Around Camp

Friend Or Foe?

Friend!

In September of 1943, convinced by Winston Churchill that the Third Reich must be kept off balance while the Allies build up to cross Channel invasion of France in the spring of 1944, shortly after ousting the Germans from the island of Sicily, the Allies land on both sides of Italy and begin working their way north with the goal of freeing Rome.  Predictions of Rome falling by October way wrong, due to difficult terrain (mountains, swamps, and rivers), wet weather, and skillful German defenses, the offensive drive of the American Fifth Army commanded by Lt. General Mark W. Clark soon bogs down at the German's Gustav Line in front of the Monte Cassino massif (a 1710 foot high rocky mass topped by a Benedictine monastery built in 530 and a small village) in central Italy.  Thinking the structure is being used as an observation position to call down artillery fire on the heads of the advancing Allied soldiers, the monastery is bombed into oblivion by Boeing B17 and North American B24 bombers that drop 1,400 tons of ordinance on the position.  No more worries anymore about taking over the famous Christian abbey, the Germans move into the rubble and harden the position's defensive capabilities to the point where three different Allied assaults on the line fail to take the structure (in all, fighting at and around Monte Cassino will cost the Allies 55,000 casualties, the Germans 20,000 soldiers, and there will be 2,000 civilians killed during the battle).  On May 16, 1944, the Allies are ready to try again as Clark launches twenty-division attack over a twenty mile front to clear Axis troops from the area.  Among the divisions attacking is the Polish II Corps that the 22nd Artillery Supply Company and their mascot, Wojtek, are a part of.

Before

Clark

After

Fighting For Cassino

Cared for on the journey to Italy by Polish soldiers Henryk Zacharewicz and Dymitr Szawlugo, Wojtek rides to the front in a specially made crate in one of the ammunition supply trucks of the unit.  As the fourth attack on Monte Cassino begins, Wojtek experiences enemy shellfire for the first time and does not like it at all, climbing up into the relative shelter of a tree.  There, watching the humans it considers are its family carry ammunition up a hill to where the unit's guns are operating, Wojtek calms down, climbs out of the foliage, and goes over to where the 22nd's supplies are being unloaded.  Mimicking the actions of the soldiers, Wojtek walks up to a truck, extends its arms, and is given a crate of ammo to carry forward (the crates contain four shells each and are usually hauled forward by four man teams), which he successfully does (throughout his hauling, Wojtek does not drop a single case of ammunition), before returning to the trucks for a new load.  For hours as the Poles assault Cassino, the bear moves crate after crate of the shells that help the Poles and other Allied forces finally move the Germans out of Cassino.  Job well done with the Allies finally in command of the heights, Wojtek gets a reward of beer for his tireless efforts, and is promoted to the rank of corporal, and honoring their comrade, the men of the unit are allowed to change the official emblem of the company to a rendering of a bear carrying a shell.

Off To Italy

Four Shell Ammo Crate

Carrying Crates At Cassino

Wojtek

The Polish Flag Atop Monte Cassino

New Insignia

Battle won and Wojtek now a celebrity based on newspaper articles about the triumph featuring the bears exploits, the 22nd finishes up the war fighting at the Battle of Ancona as part of Operation Olive (an offensive to breach the next line of German defenses in Italy, the Gothic Line), and in March of 1945, at the Battle of Bologna.  War over and having had many bad experiences while under the "protection' of the Soviet Union and Joseph Stalin in 1940, many of the Polish soldiers refuse to return to Poland and its Communist overloads (that desperately want to show off Wojtek as the latest hero of the people's revolution).  The last years of Wojtek's life begin in November of 1945, when the 22nd and its mascot, are sent to Berwickshire, Scotland to be demobilized.  Stationed at Winfield Airfield on Sunwick Farm near the village of Hutton, Wojtek almost immediately becomes a favorite personage among the residents of the area, members of the press, and the Polish-Scottish Association (which make the bear an honorary member) as he attends community dances, local concerts, and children's parties while romping about the farm (his claw marks from climbing in the trees on the property can still be seen).  The unit completely demobilized by 1947 and sent off to live their post-war lives, arrangements are made for Wojtek to become a member of the Edinburgh Zoo, where he quickly becomes a favorite exhibit of visitors, especially former soldiers of the bear's unit who often climb up a fence and jump into his compound to play with their friend one more time (for the rest of his life, Wojtek will snap to attention, standing on his hind legs and salute whenever he hears someone speaking at the zoo in Polish).  Pampered despite his confinement within the zoo (he gets out from time to time to appear on the BBC television show for children, "Blue Peter"), wearing down finally from problems with his esophagus (with many feeling his throat issues come from his penchant for eating lit cigarettes after taking a puff off them), weighing over 1,100 pounds, the much loved ursine dies on December 2, 1963 at the age of 22.       

Riding Around Europe

Scotland

Playing With A Friend

Saying Hello

In Retirement At The Zoo - 1949

A celebrity and national hero to the Polish, though gone, the bear is never forgotten by the Polish or Scottish peoples.  Tributes galore, the imperial War Museum in London, England includes a plaque dedicated to the corporal, the Sikorski Museum of London is gifted by a sculpture of Wojtek by Scottish artist David Harding, a wooden sculpture of the bear graces the greenery of Weelsby Wood park in the British town of Grimsby, on the 70th anniversary of the Allied victory at Monte Cassino, a sculpture of the bear is unveiled in Krakow, Poland's Jordan Park, the Polish city of Zagan donates a statue of Wojtek to its twin city of Duns, Scotland (near the farm where Wojtek began his Scottish sojourn), and unveiled by a former 22nd member, 86-year-old Wojciech Narebski (a teenager of seventeen when he first encounters the bear), paid for by donations from both Poland and Scotland, Edinburgh's West Princes Street Gardens gets a bronze statue of Wojtek by artist Alan Beattie Herriot in 2015 that stands on a platform made from Polish granite (Narebski will state at the unveiling, "Wojtek could not return to Poland, but he is staying on Polish soil."), along with five foot long relief map of Wojtek WWII journey across Europe.  And there are also the BBC documentary about Wojtek called Wojtek - The Bear That Went To War (narrated by actor Brian Blessed) and an animated film of the bear's life, "A Bear Named Wojtek," is made by Oscar nominated director Iain Harvey.  Above and beyond the movies and memorials there are numerous Wojtek t-shirts that can be bought on the Internet (along with Wojtek socks from Redbubble, coffee cups, travel mugs, pandemic masks, a chef's apron, baseball caps, pins, pillows, refrigerator magnets, and a keepsake box), and in print, there  are Wojtek: War Hero Bear by Jenny Robertson, Wojtek The Bear - Polish War Hero by Aileen Orr, Once A Hero: The Story Of Private Wojtek, WWII Soldier Bear by James A. Cutchin, Wojtek - The Bear That Went To War by Alan Pollock, Wojtek: The Bear That Went To War by Bob Moulder & Moy McCrory, and PrivateWojtek - Soldier Bear by Krystyna Mikula-Deegan.  And in tribute to the bear, a Glasgow band names itself Wojtek The Bear in 2016.

Sikorski

Weelsby Woods

Jordan Park

Duns

Zagan

Edinburgh

Well done, Corporal ... thank you for your service and rest in peace.

Corporal Wojtek

    

      

        

             

    

BEFORE BUTKUS, THERE WAS HARDY BROWN

11/8/1991 - One of the craziest NFL stories, and most unusual American success tales, ends in Stockton, California nursing home with the death at 67, from a combination of alcoholism, dementia, and emphysema, of former linebacker Hardy Brown ... a man who will appear as #5 (just one ahead of Jack "The Assassin" Tatum, and one behind cornerback and safety, Ronnie Lott) on the list professional football releases in 2009 of the Ten Most Feared Tacklers of All-Time.

Brown

Made tough by the hardscrabble and rough region of Childress County, Texas, on May 8, 1924, Hardy Brown becomes an orphan in 1928, when at the age of only four, he witnesses two men murder his 43-year-old father, Hardy Sr., by pumping four bullets into the farmer/bootlegger body from close range.  The next psychic blow Brown will receive takes place four months later when he is also a witness to a neighbor shooting to death one of his father's killers.  Unable to cope with being a widow responsible for keeping together a family of eight children, Hardy's mother places him, two brothers, 10-year-old Reb John and 8-year-old Jefferson) and 6-year-old sister Katherine Imogene at Fort Worth's Texas Masonic Home, an orphanage occupied by roughly 160 boys and girls, sitting on 200 acres of land opened in 1889 for the children of deceased Freemasons of the region (seventeen at the time, Hardy will not see his mother again until 1941, when he needs her to sign papers allowing him early enlistment in the United States Marine Corps).  Taught a shoulder tackle by his older brother, Jeff, in which a player hunches slightly and then launches his shoulder through the chin of his opponent (at the time there are no facemasks in football), often launching the hit player into "LA-LA Land" (the move is called "a humper"), Hardy discovers a vehicle for working out his anger at the cards life has dealt him.

Brown Scoring TD For Masons

1940 Mighty Mites - Brown Is #43 On Back Row

The relatively new football program at Masonic (it begins in 1927) is run by a veteran of the American fighting on the Western Front of WWI, Harvey Nual "Rusty" Russell (starring Luke Wilson and Robert Duvall, the story of Russell and his orphans will be made into.the 2021 release from Sony Picture Classics, "12 Mighty Orphans).  A former three-sport Varsity athlete in track, basketball, and football (and captain of the basketball and football teams), and an All-Texas choice at end, Russell serves as a medic during the Battle of St. Mihel and is severely injured during the clash by a German mustard gas attack that blinds Russell for a day and puts him in a Parisian hospital for six months (during his time there, Russell will pledge to God that he will spend the rest of life helping children if his sight can be restored).  After the war, his sight restored, Russell will begin fulfilling his pledge by putting together a football program for Masonic.  Hand-me-down equipment, mixed-matching uniforms, makeshift footballs, practice on a field that is often more dirt than grass, and small players out of a smaller pool than any of the other schools in the region, but Russell uses those impediments to turn his players into a family, a band of Shakespeare's "brothers," determined to fully engage any opponent.  Negatives turned to positives, mixed with incorporating the superior speed and quickness of his players into an offensive philosophy that will have the coach called "The Father of the Spread Offense" (the boys are often out-weighed by fifty pounds or more), Russell fields a rag-tag football team of orphans at Masonic that become known as "The Mighty Mites" as they put together a record of 8-2 in their first season of playing football (Russell will be at the school from 1927 to 1942, compiling a record of 127-30-12 for a winning percentage of 81% while going to the state playoffs ten times ... he will be called one of the greatest passing coaches of all-time by the legendary, Vince Lombardi).  At first traveling to practice and games in the back of a truck, the team becomes the darling of fans and in 1932 they tie Corsicana High, 0-0, in the state championship game and in 1941 field a team that goes undefeated but is eliminated from the playoffs for having an eligible player on the squad.  Successes that eventually result in the city of Fort Worth building a 15,000 seat stadium for the team and its thousands of fans.  Eligible to finally play when he gets older (and growing into a 6-foot, 190 pound package of mean), Hardy strikes terror in his opponents as he begins inflicting the "humper" on league foes as he almost leads the Mites to the state championship game (three-time state champ, Amarillo High wins when they stop the Mites on the one yard line in a 14-7 game), as he becomes All-State at linebacker and delights in earning the nicknames of "Thumper" and "The Hatchet."

Russell

The Masonic Home

Mite Football

Brown Running For TD

Graduating from Masonic, Hardy is set to to play linebacker at SMU, but the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor skewers those plans, and the young Texas headhunter enlists in the United States Marine Corps, and in, joins up with one of the Marines elite groups, the paratroops.  Part of the forces scheduled to invade the heavily defended island of Iwo Jima in February of 1945, Brown instead receives orders to begin taking classes at West Point ... and to begin playing football for the Black Knights of the Army; a change of direction compliments of his former orphan teammate, Dewitt "Tex" Coulter.  Pumping up Hardy's football talents, Coulter gets his high school buddy an appointment to the service academy, but it is short lived and when the linebacker can't keep up his grades, he is sent packing (math does him in, and it doesn't help that he is caught drunkenly partying at a nearby girl's school).  But not for long (Coulter will make the NFL after the war and school, and will find out that Brown doesn't recognize him as a friend once the two face off on opposite sides of the ball), seeking to play football once more, and maybe learn something at college too, Hardy enrolls to become a Golden Hurricane for the state university located at Tulsa, Oklahoma and run by Coach Henry Frnka, and then Coach Buddy Brothers (based on the recommendations of Coach Russell) .  Still remembered as one of the meanest defenders to ever play high school football in Texas, Hardy's reputation grows to a national level during his three years on the Tulsa football team where the Marine veteran plays blocking back and linebacker, helping to lead the squad to a 22-9 record (including an 8-3 team in 1945 that loses to Georgia in that year's Oil Bowl) that includes selected as first-team All-Conference for the Missouri Valley Conference in 1945 and 1946, being twice voted his team's outstanding blocking and tackling back, and averaging 38 yards a punt during his playing career (He is still Brown however, reminiscing about his time with the hitter at Tulsa, Jim Finks, a QB and DB with Tulsa and a member of the NFL Hall-of-Fame for his work as the GM that turns the Minnesota Vikings and Chicago Bears into powerhouses in the 1960s and 1970s will state: "He broke my nose and gave me four stitches at a goddamned practice!").  Outside of the lines of a football field, Hardy develops a taste for liquor at Tulsa, and meets the women he will one day marry, Betty ... the pair get into trouble only once while matriculating at Tulsa, trouble that comes their way when they shoot up their campus apartment with a .22 rifle.

Coulter

Tulsa Oil Bowl Team - Brown Is Second From

The Left On Top Row

Out of school by 1947, Hardy is drafted into professional football in the 12th round of that year's college draft, on the 104th pick, by the New York Giants.  Starting a career that will last for over a decade, though Hardy never does play for the Giants, he does spend time as a professional playing for the Brooklyn Dodgers football team in 1948, in 1949 he is a member of the Chicago Hornets and the Baltimore Colts, in 1950 he is on the Washington Redskins for a single season, in 1951 he begins a five year stay with the San Francisco 49ers, in 1956, he plays for the Chicago Cardinals (and very briefly for the Hamilton Tiger Cats of the Canadian Football League, retires after the close of the season, and comes back for one last hurrah with the Denver Broncos in 1960 when the new American League Conference is created to challenge the NFL (his sole time making the NFL's Pro Bowl squad comes in 1952).  Hiring out his shoulder, Brown will become one of only two players (placekicker Ben Agajanian is the other) to spend time playing for squads in the National Football League, the All-American Football Conference, the Canadian Football League, and the American Football League.  And soon Hardy becomes infamously known as the player most likely to hand one his head if not attentive at all times to where Brown is on the field.

Lining Up The Rams' Crazy Legs Hirsch

Though only a so-so linebacker due to his lack of size and speed, and his inability to often use his arms to wrap-up when tackling, Hardy nonetheless becomes a legend among players of 1940s and 1950s for his devastating hits upon the elite of professional football (and none of the hits draw penalties for being after the play is over or coming from behind!).  Tall tales told over and over by old timers in the league, none of the stories prove to be made-up when they are actually examined ... opponents and members of his own team agree that Brown is the meanest man and hardest hitter in the sport.  In a time and place in which the weekly professional games are not shown regularly on television and there is no 24/7 coverage on the Internet, Brown is said to have knocked 80 players out of games during his career (others have the number at over 100!).  Warned by veteran players to always know where Hardy is while playing, rookie Pittsburgh Steeler running back Joe Geri forgets the admonition while running through a trap play hole and wakes up on his back, staring up at a teammate.  When he sees the man grimace and he asks how bad it is, Geri is told that one of his eyes has come out of its socket and is only attached by a thin tendon (Geri will recover from the "humper" he receives and later will only admit that the injury comes with a thirteen stitch payment).  Enraged, Geri's Steeler teammates will vow to get even with Hardy for their teammate, but the plan backfires horribly and Brown knocks three more men out of the game to keep Geri company at the local hospital.  And it seems that plans to get even with Brown always fail, and worse, often have disastrous consequences attached to the attempts.  Never collected, there are various cash pools about the NFL for the player that is able to take out Hardy, but no one ever collects the money.  Taking his turn at going after the money, Detroit Lions' Gilbert Lee "Wild Horse" Mains flies down the field on a kickoff in a 1954 game against the San Francisco 49ers and jumps feet first into Brown's thigh, opening up two large gashes (after football, Mains will become a professional wrestler).  Twenty stitches later, Brown rolls up his pants and goes back in the game ... where he quickly unloads another "humper" on the Lions, breaking the nose of and taking out running back, "Bullet" Bill Bowman.  In another attempt to win a pot of $500 in cash for Brown's termination, on a kickoff, more than half of the Rams will leave their men to unsuccessfully go after Brown.

Geri With The Ball

Bowman

Hit after hit after hit and the mantra around the league seemingly becomes the simple question, "Where is Hardy Brown?" (involved in a minor traffic accident in Los Angeles, Hall-of-Fame QB, Bob Waterfield, will quip to ambulance personnel that he didn't know "Hardy Brown was in town.")    Another player that forgets that question to his woe is Eagles running back, Ted Ledbetter.  Cutting inside a block he loses track of the linebacker and is rewarded with a shoulder to the face breaks the runner's cheek and causes an injury to Ledbetter's cheek that the team doctor will call the "worst" facial fracture the physician has ever seen (the play will cause a riot to take place later that lasts for ten minutes and includes the Back Judge having to be helped to the sidelines, 49er defensive end, Charlie Powell, and Eagles' receiver, Bobby Walston, are both thrown out of the game, and three 49ers, guard Bruno Banducci, Hall-of-Fame tackle Leo Nomelini, and center Bill Johnson all ending the clash with black eyes.  Another forgetful player is the 1946 Heisman Trophy winner, Army's Glenn Woodward "Mr. Outside" Davis.  Playing for the Rams, Davis receives a head shot from Hardy that causes the receiver to lose control of his body and crumple in such a manner that the running back blows out his knee and his career ends very shortly after it has begun (and for good measure, then Brown takes out the other Rams running back, Dick Hoerner ... in his book, "I Pass," Hall-of-Fame QB, Y. A. Tittle will claim that Brown lays low 21 different players during his 1951 season with the 49ers).  In a game with the Giants, running back joe Scott gets off lightly with only a broken nose, in an exhibition game in with Chicago, Hardy is said to have dropped six players breaking three more noses.  Tired of seeing his players carted off to the locker room, Hall-of-Fame player, coach, and owner of the Chicago Bears will have referees at halftime tear apart Brown's uniform and shoulder pads looking for illict pieces of hidden metal ... which of course are not found as Hardy grins through the whole process.   .Even his own teammates are not immune to Brown's attentions, and he is not allowed to scrimmage with the 49ers for fear that he will accidently take out someone from his own team.

Lining Up Hall-Of-Fame QB Otto Graham

After

Eventually, all the big hits and off field drinking catch up with Brown (along with his coaches finally tiring of Hardy not using his arms to wrap up tackled opponents) and in 1960, after a cup of coffee with the Denver Broncos, the linebacker is forced to retire from the game he loves so dearly (there will be one more documented splat ... out of professional football, playing a pickup game after work, Brown will be taunted as an "old man" by a youngster in his twenties until Hardy turns his lights out with a "humper").  Retired, Hardy has trouble finding work (the only thing anyone appears to want him for are construction jobs and quarrying rock) and begins to drink even more heavily as his marriage to Betty suffers.  Eventually, the big hits (before his death, arthritis in his hitting shoulder prevents Brown from being able to reach up and scratch the top of his head), numerous concussions, drinking, emphysema (from years of smoking) and the onset of dementia put the former linebacker in a nursing home in the northern California town of Stockton.  He dies there at the age of 67 on May 8, 1991.

Brown After An Orphan Victory

Gone, but not forgotten, the exploits of "The Hatchet" live on in sportswriter Jim Dent's book, "Twelve Mighty Orphans: The Inspiring True Story of the Mighty Mites That Rules Texas Football" and the 2021 movie that comes from the book, reels of grainy black-and-white film documenting some of the hits, and the memories of the handful of players still alive that witnessed, or were the subject of "humpers" from Hardy Brown.  Orphan teammate Coulter will recall, "When you are doing the hitting, when you stick someone with that shoulder, it's a beautiful feeling.  By God, it gives you a sense of power that reaches right to the back of your head.  I think Hardy enjoyed that feeling." San Francisco teammate Gordon Leroy "Gordy" Soltau will say of Brown, "Everybody feared him.  You whispered 'Hardy Brown' to them, and they began to shiver at the sound.  Nobody could hit the way he could.  If TV had been in when he played, he'd be immortal."  Chuck Bednarik, the Hall-of-Fame center and linebacker also known for his devastating tackles (his nickname is "Concrete Charlie" for the impact of his hits will call Brown the dirtiest "SOB" he ever played against.  Summing up Brown, his 49er teammate and on-the-road roommate, Hall-of-Fame QB, Y. A. Tittle will state: "Pound for pound, inch for inch, he was the toughest football player I ever met.  He was so tough he was damn near illegal!"  Rest in peace, Mr. Brown. 

A "Humper" Claims Another Victim

Hardy Brown Jr.

     

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END OF THE ESPINOSAS

10/15/1863 - Mostly unnoticed at the time in a nation awash in the blood of the American Civil War, legendary Indian fighter, scout, and occasional bounty hunter, Thomas Tate "Tom" Tobin, puts an end to a summer of carnage in Colorado that has cost the lives of between 30-40 "gringos," when while leading a small posse through the wilderness surrounding La Veta Pass, he puts killing bullets into members of his own family, 35-year-old outlaw and murderer Felipe Nerio Espinosa, and Espinosa's 14-year-old bandit nephew, Jose Vincente Espinosa, then chops off the heads of the pair to gain the "dead or alive" reward on the men while physically documenting his good deed.   

Tobin

Roots of the confrontation in the Colorado (still a territory at the time) can be traced back to the end of the Mexican-American War in 1848 and the huge land transfer that takes place with the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo.  Members of the family of Pedro Ignasio Espinosa, and his wife, Maria Gertrudes Chaves, Felipe and his younger brother, Jose (the family will be comprised of five siblings, two daughters and three brothers) grow up in the small village of El Rito, about 35 miles to the west of the town of Taos.  Patriotic and intensely religious (Felipe will become a Catholic member of the flagellant fraternity, the Holy Brotherhood of the Blood of Our Lord Jesus Christ), trouble begins when the family suddenly ceases being Mexicans and instead become often put upon second class American citizens.  Madness already whispering in his head, when Felipe is 26, he goes courting in an unusual way.  Breaks into the nearby home of the Hurtado Family, he kidnaps 17-year-old Maria Secundina Hurtado, and her 11-year-old sister, Eugenia, and as ransom from the girls' father, releases Eugenia when the man agrees to the marriage of Maria to Felipe (despite evidence that Felipe likes to practice his whipping on his young bride).  In 1858, trying to make ends meet, members of both the Espinosa and Hurtado families move north and put down roots in the San Luis Valley, outside the village of San Rafael (near present-day Conejos, Colorado).  Eking out a minimal existence herding sheep and harvesting beans, while supplementing their meager lifestyle by occasionally rusting cattle and horses.  Finding themselves citizens of the new territory of Colorado, with new laws to obey and new taxes to pay, in 1861/1862 something goes terribly wrong and the brothers soon are in the Rocky Mountains seeking to assuage their wrath with wrath upon those they believe have wronged them ... there is talk of both brothers losing in court the land they think they own to white squatters, another tale has the men going bad after Felipe has his wife and two daughters raped by American soldiers (Maria is said to have died four days later), followed shortly thereafter by Jose killing a soldier raping his sister, fleeing into the hills, and then dealing with the turmoil in his heart when the soldiers return and kill his wife and family and take possession of his land and property, and there is talk that Felipe has had a vision of the Virgin Mary in which she tells him to slaughter 100 "Anglos" for every Espinosa lost in the Mexican-American war (600 killings to balance out the books on the six Espinosa relatives killed in Vera Cruz, Mexico by a warship's shell during General Winfield Scott's invasion of the port).  Or it is quite possible that Felipe is simply a psychopath, using racism as an excuse, that involves family in his crimes to the point where they see no way out other than to become murderers themselves.  Whatever the case, first operating out of the Sangre De Cristo Mountains of southwest Colorado, Felipe and Jose 

manifest the violence in their souls in the early spring of 1863.

The Land The United States Acquires

San Rafael

Felipe

The first hint of what is to come takes place when the brothers waylay a cargo of freight in New Mexico as it is hauled between Sante Fe and Galisteo, bound for a lonely trading post run by a priest.  After choosing the supplies they wish to loot, the freighter, Juan Flugencio Gonzales, is tied to the bottom of his wagon's tongue and the horse team hauling the load is whipped off down the road, dragging the man along with it over dirt and rocks until the damaged teamster (he will be disfigured and blinded for life) is spotted and set free by the priest the goods were meant for.  Vanishing back into the wilderness of the Sangre De Christo Mountains, the brothers are next heard from when they kill the owner/operator of a sawmill near Canon City, 58-year-old Francis William Bruce, with a bullet to the man's chest and then cutting the man's heart out with a knife.  On March 19, 1863, the Espinosas find Henry "Uncle" Harkens, known as one of the friendliest people in the region, alone in a small cabin where he is cooking dinner for his two partners in a sawmill the men run in a small canyon about 10 miles west of the town of Fountain (henceforth known as the haunted "Dead Man's Canyon").  Shot in the head, cabin trashed looking for loot, the brothers again vanish, but not before smashing a hatchet repeatedly into Harkens' skull.  Then the pair are off again for more mayhem ... mayhem they instigate by adding South Park rancher, J. D. Addleman, to their body count near Wilkerson Pass (about 50 miles west of Colorado Springs) with a shot to the man's head.  A few days later, around the Red Hill area of South Park, five more men are murdered ... near the Kenosha House way station outside the fledgling mining camp of Fairplay, a miner named Jacob Binkley and Abram Nelson Shoup are found shot and bludgeoned, prospector Bill Carter is found dead on his claim, robbed of gun, money, and clothing, and two California Gulch miners named Frederick Lehman and Sol Seyga are found, one with his head crushed in by a rock, and the other with a crucifix carved into his chest.

Henry Harkens Marker

Fairplay

The murders soon have much of the territory in a panic with newspapers calling the yet to be identified brothers, "The Axemen of Colorado."  Killers unknown (are they crazy outlaws, Confederates seeking to create chaos within the territory, renegade Indians, or something else), with law enforcement and the military widely scattered about Colorado, people men stop traveling on the roads at night and male strangers in the region are instantly suspected of being involved in the deaths.  At California Gulch, a man in the area no one knows is forced to save himself by running from Red Hill to Fairplay to avoid being lynched (there he is finally identified and saved by the legendary Methodist minister,"Father" John Dyer, who will gain fame for repeatedly walking over the mountains, even in the winter, to bring religious comfort to lonely mining camps and deliver the United States mail), and near Fairplay, a family is beset by a mob of friends of two of the deceased (sixteen men lead by Captain John McCannon) for taking in a man named Baxter for the evening (after shots are fired, Baxter is removed from the home, taken to Fairplay, and without the courtesy of a trial, given a necktie party).  The murders however do not cease with Baxter's death (most historians put the death count at between 30 to 60 unlucky individuals), and grow more depraved as the summer passes with bodies losing their heads, being disemboweled, having stakes driven through their hearts (those bodies that still have them) and having little twig crosses placed in some of the bullet holes.

Another Espinosa Murder

Dyer

The culprits are finally identified when the two men attempt yet another murder, ambushing a lumber freighter named Edward Metcalf on the road between the small mining community of Alma and the Fairplay diggings.  Driving his wagon, about three miles outside of Fairplay, Metcalf is hit in the chest by a rifle bullet fired by Felipe Espinosa ... a failed fatal shot that instead of killing the man, knocks the freighter down, saved by the bullet hitting a small book and a packet of papers Metcalf has stuffed into the breast pocket of his jacket that includes a copy of President Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation.  Righting himself, the freighter rides into Fairplay and describes to McCannon's recently arrived posse that his assailants were a pair of Mexican cowboys that match the wanted posters of Felipe and Jose Espinosa.  It is a description that is validated two days later when the vigilante posse finds and follows the trail of the killers and follows it to the mountain camp of the Espinosa's.  Quietly surrounding the area, the posse fires on Jose as he comes out of a thicket and begins taking the hobble off his horse.  Slammed into a tree with a shot that breaks the second rib on his right side (fired by Joseph M. Lamb) as his horse is killed by a shotgun blast, Jose is reaching for the pistol on his hip when a killing round hits the outlaw between the eyes (fired by Charles Carter) just as his brother steps out of the trees (afterwards, Jose's body will be dumped in a quickly dug grave and his head will be cut off and returned to Fairplay for identification, where before disappearing, it will spend many years in the office of a prominent Denver doctor).  Weapons pivot on Felipe, but when McCannon mistakes the killer for a member of his posse and calls for his men to hold their fire (luckily for Felipe, he is wearing the expensive coat of a recent victim that looks similar to one also being sported by a posse member named Billy Youngh), the bandit uses the few seconds he is gifted with to vanish into a nearby stand of trees.  

Alma

With two more killings added to his tally as Felipe escapes south through the Canon City region, for awhile, with no new deaths to report it seems the menace of Espinosa murder has passed (though little mail or commerce passes through the region out of fear over summer's mayhem), but big brother is simply biding his time.  In hiding, the killer contemplates more killings, sneaks into San Rafael to secretly visit family, writes in his journal about the many wrongs done to his family and justifies his actions, writes a letter to Colorado Territorial Governor John Evans, telling the politician that the deaths will cease if Espinosa and his followers are granted full pardoned for past criminal acts and Felipe is rewarded with a five thousand acre tract of land on the Conejos River and that if Evans doesn't agree, six hundred "gringos" will be killed, including the governor himself (Evans of course does not agree to Felipe's "terms," and instead, ups the bounty on the outlaw's head to a dead-or-alive reward of $2,5000, authorizes Conejos County Sheriff Emmett Harding to take out the killer, and moves members of the Colorado Volunteer militia into the area ... the governor will live to the ripe old age of 87), whips himself bloody for his many religious failings, and recruits his fourteen-year-old nephew, Jose Vincente, into helping him with the family vendetta by promising the youth, money, women, and lots of tequila (which Felipe has now gained an addiction to).  For reasons known only to himself, Felipe also secretly returns to the site of his brother's death, digs up the headless corpse, buries the remains in an unmarked grave, and rides off with a souvenir of his sibling's demise, Jose's dried, chopped off foot.  With the murder of a fisherman named William Smith, Espinosa begins another chapter of terror in the territory, but it does not last long. 

Felipe

Evans

Three sheets to the wind blasted on a major tequila bender, on October 5, 1863, Felipe and Jose ambush an Anglo man named Leander Philbrook and a Mexican woman named Dolores Sanchez in a buggy traveling over La Veta Pass, in the Sangre De Christo mountains of Colorado.  Aim skewed by the booze they have consumed, the Espinosas fire on the couple, but miss, killing the buggy's mules.  Gifted with life instead of assassinated, Philbrook runs up into the stony mountainside, while Sanchez runs down the road where she is soon picked up and hidden in the back of a wagon driven by a man named Pedro Garcia.  Giving up on finding Philbrook (the man will eventually make it down to Fort Garland where he reports the crime), the Espinosas return to the pass, where they see Garcia, and threaten the man with death if he doesn't tell them where Sanchez has escaped to.  Location refused to be divulged, Felipe is ready to shoot Garcia when Sanchez reveals her hiding place and asks the outlaws not to molest Garcia.  Letting the Mexican drive away, the Espinosas tie up the woman, rape her repeatedly, and then leave her by the side of the road as they once again vanish into the wilderness (she will be found and rescued by a small military force that rides up the pass after Philbrook makes it to the fort).  Ire raised at the rape of a defenseless woman, the commanding officer at Fort Garland, thirty-two-year-old Lt. Colonel Samuel Forster Tappan (the following year, Tappan will head the military commission that investigates the role Colonel John Chivington will play in the infamous Sand Creek Massacre of members of the southern Cheyenne and Arapaho tribes), summons local mountain man, Thomas Tate "Tom" Tobin, to his headquarters to give the man an assignment ... kill or capture Felipe Espinosa and his nephew, Jose. 

Modern Road Over La Veta Pass

Ft. Garland

Tappan

Born on March 15, 1823 near St. Louis, Missouri, to an Irish immigrant and a widowed Indian bride already taking care of seven children, the scruffy, 140 pound, black haired, blue-eyed, ill-tempered 5'7" forty-year-old mountain man that shows up at Fort Garland carrying a huge Bowie knife, two 1851 Navy Colts in a homemade holster made from a buffalo's hair and rump, and a 16 pound, .53 Hawken rifle in answer to Tappan's summons has a Wild West resume that is peppered with adventures beside legendary characters that includes Kit Carson, Ceran St. Vrain, John C. Fremont, Wild Bill Hickok, Buffalo Bill Cody, Charley Bent, and Uncle Dick Wootton.  Off for the high country while still a youngster, Tobin travels to Taos, New Mexico when he is only 14, where he hunts beaver in the nearby mountains with his brother, works out of Bent's Fort, Colorado as a scout & trapper, and supplements that income by working as a whiskey distiller, store clerk, and miller for Simeon Turley out of Arroyo Hondo, venturing into the mountains to trade whiskey and other supplies for furs that can then be sold in St. Louis.  He also rides dispatches to Fort Leavenworth for Brigadier General Stephen Watts Kearny (who will march his command from New Mexico to California in 1846).  In 1847, he manages to survive (he is one of only two men to escape the distillery when a mob shows up to burn the place to the ground) the rebellion of Hispano and Pueblo people over their recent citizenship as "Americans" that will become known as the Taos Revolt.  Surviving, Tobin spends the rest of the "Revolt" scouting for his partner and friend, Captain Ceran St. Vrain.  "Revolt" settled, in 1847, Tobin starts farming a plot of land southeast of El Pueblo, on the San Carlos River, and selling the produce to Lt. Colonel William Gilpin's command near the Bent's Fort trading post ... a job which soon expands into scouting and becoming a dispatch rider (an admirer will state that Tobin could "track a cricket through sagebrush).  In turn, those occupations lead to Tobin becoming a scout guiding an Army expedition responsible for finding a railroad route to California.  Unaware that Tobin is a distant cousin of the Espinosas by way of marriage when he offers the killing hunt to the mountain man, Tappan will insist that Tobin goes into the mountains at the head of a small group of men consisting of Lt. Horace Baldwin, fifteen enlisted men of Company C of the First Colorado Cavalry, a civilian named Loring Jinks, and a Mexican youth named Juan Montoya (to take care of Tobin's horse),  Scretly, Tobin is told to kill both men "for humanity's sake.").

Tobin

Bent's Fort

Leaving Fort Garland at around midnight on October 12, 1863, the party makes its way to La Veta Pass and it takes Tobin less than a day to find the trail the Espinosas have left leaving the scene of their most recent crime.  Dividing the group in two, part of Tobin's company hides along the pass, while the other portion follows the scout into the mountains.  Unaware they are being tracked, twice Tobin comes within view of the bandits before they get away ... campsite to campsite, Tobin tracks the killers from on foot (the brush and fallen trees make riding impossible), looking for a good spot to ambush the two men.  Finding the tracks of two oxen being driven down La Veta Creek, Tobin guesses that the hungry outlaws are driving the beasts back to their camp.  After three days of tracking the men through the wilderness, on the morning of 10/15, Tobin sees a group of crows flying about a small column of smoke and surmises it is the Espinosas slaughtering their breakfast as the birds await cleaning up afterwards.  Leaving all but two soldiers and Montoya behind, slowly, crawling at times, the five members of the party creep up on the outlaw's camp ... until the snap of a twig underfoot alerts Felipe that his camp has been located.  Jumping up from where he is cooking a recently butchered steak, Felipe goes for his gun, but before he can use it, a round from Tobin's gun (the soldiers will also fire on the Espinosas during the confrontation, but miss, leaving all the killing up to Tobin) slams into the killer's side and sends him face first into the fire.  Screaming, "Jesus favor me.  Escape, I'm killed," Jose jumps up and sets off down the hill, but can't avoid the speed and accuracy with a rifle that Tobin can bring to shooting down located prey.  Powderhorn, gunpowder, patch, ball down the barrel and round tamped home, Tobin is reloaded in seconds and firing again.  Spine severed by the shot, Jose goes down in a heap and is dead almost instantly, falling just short of the trees he'd been headed towards.  Rolling at of the fire, Felipe fires blindly towards the sound of the soldiers, but fails to hit anything but air.  Not wanting to risk Felipe getting off a lucky shot that might hurt any of the party, Tobin walks up, knocks Felipe's pistol away, and then grabs the killer by the hair, drapes him over a fallen log and then cuts off his head with two huge blows from his Bowie knife.  The serial killings which have petrified the territory for months are finally over.

Where The Espinosas End

Tobin Portrait

But of course there is gruesome coda to Espinosa killings.  Returning to Fort Garland, Tobin goes to report in to Colonel Tappan, and finds the man in a large room where a number of his officers and their ladies are relaxing after returning from an earlier horse ride in the area.  Spotting the tracker approaching him, Tappan calls out, "Any luck, Tom?"  Tobin answers the inquiry with the words "So, so," and a laugh, while dumping the contents of a burlap flour sack he has been carrying over his back onto the floor ... sending two bloody heads bouncing across the floor, and causing the room to immediately empty out (the heads are sent to the Colorado capitol as proof that the bandits are dead, stored briefly in the treasurer's office, and then stored in a basement of the building, before eventually disposed of in a furnace).  Though it will take years to collect because the coffers of the territory are light at the moment from fighting Confederates and Indians, for killing Felipe and his nephew, though promised a sum of $2,500, Tobin will eventually receive $500 from the Colorado territorial government and $1,000 from the Colorado State government (the other $1,000 is never paid out as far as anyone can tell).  Additionally, the mountain man receives from the governor a large buckskin coat lined with a red blanket (similar to one gifted to adventurer Kit Carson by the governor) and gets a silver inlaid Henry rifle from the Army as thanks, along with many free drinks in a host of saloons over the years.  And making up for the lost reward money, Governor Shoup of Idaho gives Tobin $1,000 for killing the man that murdered his brother and in 1893, Colorado Senator Smith, an old friend of Tobin's, gets the state to pay the mountain man another $1,000.

Felipe's Pistols

Felipe's Journal

And even in death, the Espinosas and their deeds continue to haunt Colorado (they are still the most prolific serial killers in the history of Colorado) ... literally.  Restless, the ghosts of the men and women the family slaughtered are said to still walk a lonely stretch of La Veta Pass, shadow the streets of Fairplay, and wander the mining ruins outside of Leadville.  Felipe and Jose themselves are said to ride their horses up and down the Capitol's grand staircase, trying to find their heads ... and no matter how tired you are if out backpacking in the state's Sangre De Christo mountains ... DO NOT MAKE CAMP ANYWHERE NEAR WHERE TOM TOBIN ENDED THE CRIME SPREE OF THE ESPINOSAS! 

Artist Rendering Of Felipe