Chris Rodda reports on one U.S. Marine squadron’s “Return to Being ‘Crusaders’“:
In 2008, when Marine Fighter Attack Squadron 122 was preparing to deploy to Iraq, the unit’s commander, Lt. Col. William Lieblein, did something very wise and sensible — he changed the nickname of the unit from “Crusaders” back to its former name, the “Werewolves.” Stating the obvious, Lt. Col. Lieblein said, “The notion of being a crusader in that part of the world doesn’t float.”
But now, under new leadership, the unit is going back to being the “Crusaders,” complete with an insignia of a crusader shield with a big red cross on it and a crusader knight as its mascot.
According to the Beaufort Gazette, the squadron’s new commander, Lt. Col. Wade Wiegel, just doesn’t see calling a U.S. military unit the “Crusaders” as being “politically incorrect.” The paper quoted Wiegel saying … “The name change is a reflection of our heritage.”
As a general rule, if someone uses the phrase “politically incorrect,” it’s likely they are about to say or do something bigoted and rude. And at this point I think the word “heritage” has also acquired a heritage of association with past deeds and attitudes that require repentance and atonement more than commemoration.
In any case, “Crusaders” does not reflect the heritage of this Marine squadron. It reflects the heritage of the Crusades.
Here is what that heritage looks like:
And on the third day of the conquest, the final stage of the Jerusalem massacre began. Albert of Aachen was the only writer to describe it. As with his account of the pogroms along the Rhine, he showed a startling degree of empathy for the victims: The Franks “were beheading or striking down with stones girls, women, noble ladies, even pregnant women, and very young children, paying attention to no one’s age. By contrast, girls, women, ladies, tormented by fear of imminent death. … were wound about the Christians’ feet, begging them with piteous weeping and wailing for their lives and safety. … [But the] Christians gave over their whole hearts to the slaughter, so not a suckling little male child or female, not even an infant of one years would escape alive the hand of the murderers. The streets of the whole city of Jerusalem are reported to have been so strewn and covered with the dead bodies of men and women and the mangled limbs of infants, not only in the streets, houses, and places, but even in places of desert solitude numbers of slain were to be found.”
… Just enough Saracens were spared so that the Franks might have slaves charged with removing their bodies. Rather than giving a formal burial, these few survivors piled their friends and family in heaps outside the gates. “They made mountains from the bodies. There were as big as houses.” Six months later at Christmas, the bodies were still there.
That’s from Jay Rubenstein’s book Armies of Heaven: The First Crusade and the Quest for Apocalypse, which Russ Wellen has been writing about over at Scholars & Rogues.
Here’s hoping that some general smarter than Lt. Col. Wiegel corrects the counterproductive stupidity of his efforts to portray the Marine Fighter Attack Squadron 122 as a monstrous, illegitimate, indiscriminate invader.
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In