Wars Are Won In Most Interesting Ways. . . And Places
A Key to Allied D-Day Victory in 1944 Was . . . Virginia's Vint Hill Farm Station?
Much is being made of President Joe Biden’s rather odd news conference yesterday going after guns and gun dealers to curb the epidemic of urban violence. I’m not getting into the “substance” of his remarks, but instead note the President channeling his inner Eric Swalwell (US Rep., D-CA, failed presidential candidate. And much more).
Stick with me; a segue to a historic winery is coming. I promise.
Biden, as did Swalwell, targeted one of the tenets held by Second Amendment advocates - that one of its purposes is to help protect citizens and preserve constitutional rights from a tyrannical government. After all, the framers envisioned the citizens themselves comprising the militia. Here is Robert Tracinski, writing in The Federalist:
Their solution was to make sure that the government drew its military power from the citizens themselves. That is the meaning of the much misinterpreted preamble to the Second Amendment: “A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state.” The idea was to rely for our defense primarily on an armed citizenry that can be called up as a militia. If the people themselves are the military power of the state, then that power cannot be used against the people. That’s what they meant when they called this system “necessary to the security of a free state.”
None of this is obsolete, despite advances in weapons, training, tactics, and the professionalization of the military. We still adhere to this system, both in letter and in spirit, in three ways: an armed citizenry, a military of citizen soldiers, and the National Guard.
So, Biden (and Swalwell) may be technically right. But who, again, are flying those F-15s and crewing the stations where nuclear weapons, God forbid, are hopefully never launched (especially on its own citizens)? Remember, the oath every member of the military takes commits their first allegiance, not to a President, a Member of Congress, or especially a political party but the Constitution of the United States, and to protect it against all enemies, foreign and domestic. Yes, their oath requires them to obey orders from the President - but fealty to the Constitution comes first.
Meanwhile, while threatening gun owners with F-15s and nuclear weapons, I can’t help but think of the threat to our democracy - “the worst attack on our democracy since the Civil War” (Admiral Yamamoto, call your office) - from a bunch of unarmed yahoos (a handful with baseball bats) on January 6th at the US Capitol. As awful, unacceptable, and punishable as that was, did it require 4 months of thousands of National Guard troops and concertina wire to prevent another “insurrection?”
But while real battles are fought and won in places like Normandy, those victories are aided, even made possible, by things we never hear about and don’t involve fighter aircraft and nukes.
Take Operation Overlord, for example, or D-Day, launched on June 6, 1944. A US Army Signal Corp listening station near Haymarket, Virginia - Vint Hill Farms Station, which had just been operational for little more than a year - intercepted a message from Japan’s Ambassador to Germany. I’ll let the historical marker at what is now Vint Hill Winery tell the story.
If you can’t read the fine print, it says this: “Private Leonard A. Mudloff is credited with intercepting a message here from Oshima Hiroshi, the Japanese ambassador to Germany, on 10 Nov. 1943. It described German coastal fortifications in western France, troop strengths, and contingency plans. The ‘Oshima Intercept’ was a crucial contribution to the planning for D-Day, the Allied invasion of Europe.”
Vint Hill Farm was purchased by Mitchel Harrison in 1911 and served primarily as a dairy farm. A Ham radio enthusiast and descendent later bragged how he was picking up transmissions from as far away as Germany. The unique topography of the area made it a hotbed of global high-frequency radio waves. Word reached the US Army. They would buy the land and turn it into “Monitoring Station No. 1.” Covertly, of course.
Today, it is a successful winery under Chris Pearmund, who operates two other outstanding facilities, Pearmund and Effingham. A visit to Vint Hill should also include a meal at the “Covert Cafe” and a visit to the Cold War Museum, co-founded by Frances Gary Power Jr., the son of the U -2 pilot downed by the Soviet Union during the height of the Cold War in 1960.
Pearmund’s winery features artifacts from the “monitoring station” days and is occasionally visited by descendants of those who served there. Even the wines have special names, such as “Enigma,” a terrific red blend that is its flagship. The wine glasses feature words like “covert” and “You were never here.” It’s a blast.
And if you’re a Civil War buff, this area teems with it. Confederate marauder John Mosby terrorized Union troops in the area. Union cavalry Gen. George Armstrong Custer was decisively routed by rebels, led by Major General and future Virginia Governor Fitzhugh Lee at the little-known “Buckland Races.” You’ll drive right through the battle site on US 29 on your way to the winery from I-66, about an hour’s drive from Washington, DC.
Who knew that you could turn a winery visit into a history lesson? It’s a fun way to learn. It sure beats fighting wars. Or threatening people with F-15s and nuclear weapons.