Preface & Dedication
“Punch them in the gut first. Get it out of the way. Then tell them what to do, and then go from there.”
Jimmy Hoffa: circa October 1971, New Jersey Federal Penitentiary1
This is a true story. But a memoir is based on memory, so anything I write is inherently flawed. I wrote what I believed to be true, and cited sources when I could.
Sometimes, to keep the voices at a reasonable volume, I blended a few childhood friends and old army buddies into single characters; otherwise, it would be sipping water from a fire hydrant. And to prevent writing how most of us talk in daily chatter, full things like “um,” “hmm,” “what’s for dinner,” and “Dude,” I compressed conversations into dialogue, “so that what’s said moves the story along.”
I try to keep it light. A lot of the story is harsh, and metaphors are more fun to write and read than what really happened. I make a few jokes, and whether funny or not, they are just jokes, appropriate for the characters in this book, and not meant to offend anyone other than the person I’m intentionally calling a dumbass, asshole, or jerk.
I’d be a jerk if I didn’t begin any memoir I by acknowledging my teammates from the Delta-Company, 1st Batallion, 504th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 82nd Airborne Division. And I should talk about the 82nd itself: The AA on the 82nd Airborne’s shoulder patch stands for “All Americans,” a name given to the 82nd Infantry when they were formed to fight WWI, surprisingly soon after the civil war, and the first time in American history that we had soldiers from every state in the same military unit. To heal wounds, the 82nd was dubbed The All Americans, and they united to fight a common enemy. In WWII, they were reactivated and became America’s first paratrooper unit, the forefathers of modern special forces. For decades, the All Americans served as the quick-reaction force of presidents who had the power to send 12,000 All Americans into battle for 30 days without approval from congress: think about that the next time you vote for a dumbass, asshole, or jerk.
In the late 1970’s to late 1980’s, The All Americans were the first to arrive by airplane or parachute into Honduras (1979), The Dominican Republic (1982), Grenada (1985), Panama (1989-1990), and Sadia Arabia and Iraq (1990-1991); their August 3rd, 1990 reaction to Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait and impending invasion of Saudia Arabia with 400,000 soldiers and the world’s largest fleet of tanks was stopped by a handful of paratroopers who drew what President Bush Sr called “the line in the sand” (we called it more of a “speed bump in the dirt,” kids laid out on the ground in 117 degree summer heat with a few machine guns against a ton of tanks), starting Desert Shield, and a few months later, 560,000 allied forces led by General Stromin’ Normin Swartzcoff began Desert Storm. The American team that spearheaded the ground invasion (the French went just before us) was the Delta Dawgs, the 82nd’s anti-armor infantrymen, and my platoon was AT4: Anti-Tank Platoon #4. They were my teammates, and not all of them are still here. That sucks – I don’t have a joke for that.
This work is dedicated to the All Americans, wherever they are now. In a way, this is a story about teams without describing every person on every team. So this is dedicated to a lot of people, and it starts with the All Americans, specifically anti-tank platoon 4 of Delta Company, 1st of the 504.
But this book is less about my teams in the military, and more about my family, Jimmy Hoffa, and President Kennedy. But I wanted to get the part about D-Co. 1st/504th PIR out f the way, and then go from there.
The story begins my final high school wrestling match in March of 1990, and transitions into my grandfather’s funeral on 16 March 1990; he was Edward Grady Partin, the Baton Rouge Teamster leader famous for infiltrating Jimmy Hoffa’s inner circle and sending him to prison, and was behind teh scenes in killing President Kennedy. After my grandfather’s funeral, I touch on to the first Gulf war of 1990-1991, officially called Desert Shield and Desert Storm, and the Delta Dawgs role in capturing the Khamisiya airport. I finish with my brief service on President Bill Clinton’s quick reaction force, and his partial release of the then-classified 1979 congressional committe on assassinations report on the murders of President John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Junior.
My grandfather was behind killing president Kennedy, and this story is mostly about that. But, I had to get some background out of the way first.
Peace,
Jason Partin
In the first photo, I’m the bald guy kneeling down on the left. Unfortunately, all of the Kurds in those villages died, including several little girls we failed to save; I don’t have a joke for that. For the middle two photos, I was holding the 12-photo disposable camera. I may add a few more from that roll here and there in later chapters. Maybe. We’ll see. This is still a work in progress, and when done I’ll come back and iterate the introduction to make more sense.
Go to The Table of Contents
Footnotes:
- I made that up, but the rest is true; I couldn’t find a better introduction, but that may change in a future introduction. ↩︎