The Fighting Bunch: The Battle of Athens and How World War II Veterans Won the Only Successful Armed Rebellion Since the Revolution
Nov 2020 · Macmillan + ORM
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In The Fighting Bunch: The Battle of Athens and How World War II Veterans Won the Only Successful Armed Rebellion Since the Revolution, New York Times bestselling author Chris DeRose reveals the true, never-before-told story of the men who brought their overseas combat experience to wage war against a corrupt political machine in their hometown.
Bill White and the young men of McMinn County answered their nation's call after Pearl Harbor. They won the freedom of the world and returned to find that they had lost it at home.
A corrupt political machine was in charge, protected by violent deputies, funded by racketeering, and kept in place by stolen elections - the worst allegations of voter fraud ever reported to the Department of Justice, according to the U.S. Attorney General.
To restore free government, McMinn's veterans formed the nonpartisan GI ticket to oppose the machine at the next election.
On Election Day, August 1, 1946, the GIs and their supporters found themselves outgunned, assaulted, arrested, and intimidated. Deputies seized ballot boxes and brought them back to the jail. White and a group of GIs - "The Fighting Bunch" - men who fought and survived Guadalcanal, the Bulge, and Normandy, armed themselves and demanded a fair count. When they were refused the most basic rights they had fought for, the men, all of whom believed they had seen the end of war, returned to the battlefield and risked their lives one last time.
For the past seven decades, the participants of the "Battle of Ballots and Bullets" and their families kept silent about that conflict. Now in The Fighting Bunch, after years of research, including exclusive interviews with the remaining witnesses, archival radio broadcast and interview tapes, scrapbooks, letters, and diaries, Chris DeRose has reconstructed one of the great untold stories in American history.
Bill White and the young men of McMinn County answered their nation's call after Pearl Harbor. They won the freedom of the world and returned to find that they had lost it at home.
A corrupt political machine was in charge, protected by violent deputies, funded by racketeering, and kept in place by stolen elections - the worst allegations of voter fraud ever reported to the Department of Justice, according to the U.S. Attorney General.
To restore free government, McMinn's veterans formed the nonpartisan GI ticket to oppose the machine at the next election.
On Election Day, August 1, 1946, the GIs and their supporters found themselves outgunned, assaulted, arrested, and intimidated. Deputies seized ballot boxes and brought them back to the jail. White and a group of GIs - "The Fighting Bunch" - men who fought and survived Guadalcanal, the Bulge, and Normandy, armed themselves and demanded a fair count. When they were refused the most basic rights they had fought for, the men, all of whom believed they had seen the end of war, returned to the battlefield and risked their lives one last time.
For the past seven decades, the participants of the "Battle of Ballots and Bullets" and their families kept silent about that conflict. Now in The Fighting Bunch, after years of research, including exclusive interviews with the remaining witnesses, archival radio broadcast and interview tapes, scrapbooks, letters, and diaries, Chris DeRose has reconstructed one of the great untold stories in American history.
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November 6, 2020
I received a free ARC of this excellent history at the invitation of the publisher, St. Martin's Press, the author Chris DeRose, and Netgalley. Thank you all for sharing your hard work with me, I have read this work of my own volition, and this review reflects my honest opinion of this work. This history is set up and rounded up enticingly, a hard book to set aside when necessary, and at times it seems nearly impossible to have transpired on our soil in the mid-1940's, but it did and can again. I sure am glad these fellows were on OUR side. The way things are going post-election in 2020, I hope those folk, similarly inclined, are out there, again on our side.
About the author
CHRIS DEROSE is the New York Times Bestselling Author of Founding Rivals: Madison vs. Monroe, the Bill of Rights, and the Election that Saved a Nation, andThe Presidents' War: Six American Presidents and the Civil War That Divided Them. He was formerly Senior Litigation Counsel to the Arizona Attorney General, a Professor of Constitutional and International Law, and Clerk of the Superior Court, where he led a team of 700 in serving America's fourth largest county.
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