THE FORT IN FORT WAYNE
By: Stan Jordan
The area around Ft. Wayne was a trading post back in 1680 and before that it was the capital of the Miami Nation, known by the name of Kekionga. The first foreigners were the French fur traders.
Actually, this place was the portage area of about eight miles between the Maumee, the Great Lakes, the Mississippi River and Wabash River.
The first French fort was built in 1697 and named Fort Miami. It was one of many between Quebec and St. Louis. It was about 1760 when that English took it over and named it Ft. Miami. Then the Indians took it over for about 30 years. Then the U.S. army attacked the region and named it after the General “Mad” Anthony Wayne. Then in 1843 the Fort was besieged by Indiana but they retreated when General Henry Harrison arrived with a lot of soldiers. The fort part was abandoned by the government in 1819.
When the fort was abandoned, as I understand, there was about 32 houses on the outside. Probably 3-4 hundred civilians. The Indians stayed in wigwams on the outside on some meadow like ground.
This was taken from a book called The Maumee River in 1835 from a journal written by William E. Holgate, by Louis A Simonis.
There will be a little more from the book about this area in the next couple editions of the West Bend News.
See ya!
BOBCATS AND SNOWY OWL NEST SIGHTED
By: Stan Jordan
Over the past few weeks I have received reports of some bobcats in the area. The first report was a little ways past Dead Man’s Curve on 424. The other report was down in the area of Cecil bridge. Then I was told that a few months ago a bobcat was spotted over close to Oakwood. I’m sure these boys are right. These animals resemble a common house cat only bigger all over and have pointed ears.
If you are alone in the woods and hear a bobcat scream, you won’t forget it. It will make your blood run cold! It is something like a woman screaming.
As I understand, the bobcats are getting so numerous over in Indiana that the DNR is thinking about having an open season on them.
This is Thursday, March 8th, about 9:00 in the morning and I just got a call from Jan Parker over in Monroeville and he said he was pretty sure that he was looking at a snowy owl nest. He said there is both a male and female owl here and the area has all the signs of a snowy owl nest there on the ground, he said this is about a mile north of Payne on S.R. 49 and CR 106.
Jan said he and his brother are both bird watchers and they are sure this is a snowy owl nest and they will watch later for young owls to be sure that we have a nest.
This morning, again, we received a report of a big snowy owl over on S.R. 111
See ya!
THE U.S. INTELLIGENCE LACKS
By: Stan Jordan
As I understand, the sheriff’s department in Parkland, Florida had been warned about Nikolas Cruz, the shooter of 17 people. Yes, I guess some people told the authorities that this student was a risk. Well, all of us has seen and heard that he had been reported a number of times and no one was on any type of guard.
But, that is about normal for any type of intelligence in our country, army or navy. These incidents that I’m going to tell you are true, and yes, they can be looked up in the library.
Let’s start back in the late 1920’s and early 1930’s with J. Edgar Hoover and the F.B.I. The F.B.I. had a chance to get John Dillinger and Pretty Boy Floyd. They also had a couple of chances to catch Bonnie and Clyde, they finally ambushed them down south.
Even up in Ft. Wayne, when Walter Jordan was murdered, the F.B.I. came in because Walter was black, but the F.B.I. couldn’t co-operate with the Allen County Sheriff’s Department.
The F.B.I. leaves the impression that they are better than other policemen, but on the other hand, they have caught a couple of guys who are planning on blowing something up and raising mayhem.
In the army, then in WWII, they had what was called the O.S.S. What it means is The Office of Special Services or S2.
When the Japs bombed Pearl Harbor there was three soldiers who were operating the new radar up on the mountain and they reported that there were many blips on the radar screen that should not be there. But the officer that they reported it to just made light of the fact and he didn’t sound the alarm. I’m sure we would have lost some men in the raid, but not as many as we did.
On the night June 5th, 1944 in the Air Borne Division they dropped thousands of troops and gliders into the low ground that the O.S.S. said was alright, but the Germans had blown the dikes and flooded many miles, we lost hundreds of boys who drowned as the gliders crashed because of the water. The O.S.S. was very lax here.
On the night of December 15th, 1944, the 28th Infantry Division often wanted some boys to slip across the German lines and see what was over there. Well, the soldiers, on more than one occasion, reported that the Snee Eiffel was loaded with a number of S.S. armmored units…Tiger and King Tiger tanks. Well, the officers thought the boys were stretching the number of tanks. Well, that started the Battle of the Bulge the next day and for ten days the Germans ran all over our boys. We lost thousands of boys, killed and missing in action.
We made an air borne raid on a bridge at Arnhem, where the O.S.S. said was all clear, but that report was two weeks old and in the mean time two SS armmored divisions had moved in for R and R and the allies lost that battle because of bad leadership.
In August of 1944, General Patton was to make a big break out in the area east of Caen, so the O.S.S. told the air force to send 1000 bombers and bomb this certain area so Patton could make his big dash out of Caen and go east.
They had a bomber come in and drop their bombs to mark the front lines of the Americans. Well, that was a fine idea, so all of the rest of the bombers could drop their bombs on the smoked up area.
Well, no one was there to tell the rest of the bombers that the wind was out of the east and blew the marking smoke over on the waiting American boys and they killed hundreds of our boys like they had planned to kill Germans. We lost a little over 400 boys, but it was another case of our intelligence not doing a good job.
On the June 6th, 1944 invasion, through powers that be, put some Americans down to an area called Omaha Beach, it was a terrible place to land because of steep cliffs and a little ways back north, where the English landed, you could drive a vehicle off the boat right onto dry land and not a lot of resistance.
Someone was very wrong here. We lost lots of boys, boats and all that we would not have had to. Yes, I know hind sight is 20/20 vision, but facts are facts. What I’m trying to say here is America has always been lax or in second place in intelligence.
A year or so ago, down at Washington we kicked out 78 Russians for spying and sent them home. Not long ago, we sent a few more home for spying, now if they had caught some of our spies they would have retaliated, but we don’t have any spies over there. Why not?
I still think that America is very lax in intelligence and spying field, but on the other hand, everything we hear is hush, hush. Nobody tells us nothing. We can’t discuss that, it is classified. All kinds of reasons for not being told the truth.
For instance on January 1st, 1945, the Germans had a raid on every landing field in Europe and caught 450 American fighter planes on the ground and destroyed. We lost 450 fighter planes and the Germans lost 212, but we won that fight because we could stand to lose that many fighters, but the Germans lost 212 pilots that they could not afford to lose. Some people call that white wash.
See ya!
