 |
| Pentagon room blown up by Weather Underground |
My new military thriller, Snowflakes in July, takes place during
the 1970s. Not many novels seem to be written about this period. I believe that
those of us in the United States have wiped these turbulent times from our
collective memory. I also believe that the human brain tends to suppress bad
memories and reinforce pleasant ones. But I agree with George Santayana’s
statement in his 1905 The Life of Reason that:
“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
Momentous
events occurred in the 1970s. Perhaps the Watergate Scandal that forced Richard
Nixon from office was the most significant. The fall of Saigon negated all the
American military efforts in the previous decade to preserve South Vietnam as
an independent country. At least our POWs were released and returned home after
years of confinement and torture in the infamous “Hanoi Hilton.” And then there
was the domestic terrorism that plagued our society.
As I wrote in
a previous blog, “The highest incidents of
terrorist attacks in the U.S. occurred during the 1970s. In a six-month period
in 1971 and 1972, over 2,500 bombings took place in the U.S. The following
chart from the Washington Post illustrates this point.
Why
were the Seventies so violent? The turbulent Sixties spawned a number of groups
seeking to impose their ideologies of the rest of the country through force and
terror. The Ku Klux Klan, perhaps the largest and most long-lived terrorist
group in U.S. history, was still attacking and sometimes murdering civil rights
leaders. Some radical black power organizations declared war on the police.
They began bombing police stations and shooting policemen and moderate African
American leaders, whom they branded “Uncle Toms.” Puerto Rican nationalists,
who had earlier tried to kill
President
Truman and had shot up the House of Representatives, carried out more bombings
and shootings. They blew up the Mobil Oil headquarters and ambushed a U.S. Navy
bus, killing some of the occupants. And then there were the terrorist groups spawned by the American New
Left.
Perhaps best known of the
New Left groups was the Charles Manson “family,” the murderers who massacred
movie star Sharon Tate’s family and tried to kill President Ford. Also fairly well
known was the Symbionese Liberation Army, principally because they kidnapped
Patty Hurst and brainwashed her into helping them rob a bank. They also
assassinated moderate African Americans. Less well known to the general public
was the Weather Underground or Weathermen. The Weathermen espoused the violent
overthrow of the U.S. government and replacing it with a Marxist society.
Terror was their weapon of choice. One of their leaders admonished them to be
“crazy MFs and scare the hell out of honky America.” The Weathermen exploded
bombs in police stations and government buildings, including the State
Department and the Senate Office building. Weathermen also conducted an
infamous armored car robbery. Fortunately, the deaths of some of their bomb
makers in an accidental explosion hindered their bombing campaign.”
The plot of Snowflakes in July tracks the founding
and expansion of a New Left terrorist group called the Phoenix Guards Brigade
(PGB). Like the Symbionese Liberation Army, their military commander is a
former special forces expert. The PGB’s principal advantage over competing
terrorist cells is a mole in the high levels of the Pentagon. Their mole
fingers weaknesses in U.S. nuclear weapons compounds that may allow the theft
of nuke bombs. The terrorists mobilize to mount a commando mission to steal
nuclear weapons.
My novel’s protagonist,
Captain Mike Duvall, is a U.S. Navy aviator who has just been released after
years of confinement in the “Hanoi Hilton.” His experiences as a POW are woven
throughout the story. Mike begins to suspect the conduct of the mole and starts
an investigation. After he enlists a Navy lawyer, Leslie Thomas, in his
efforts, he falls in love with her. The PGB learns of her queries and begins to
blackmail her with photos of a youthful indiscretion. Will Mike uncover the
plot to steal nukes before the terrorists can mount their raid? And what must
Leslie endure at the hands of the PGB before the climax of the story?
Read Snowflakes in July to find out.
Warren Bell is an author of historical fiction. He spent 29 years as a US Naval Officer, and has traveled to most of the places in the world that he writes about. A long-time World War II-buff, his first two novels, Fall Eagle One and Hold Back the Sun are set during World War II. His third novel, Asphalt and Blood, follows the US Navy Seabees in Vietnam. His most recent novel, Snowflakes in July, was released on Kindle on September 15, 2015, and a paperback version will be following. For more about Warren Bell, visit his website at: wbellauthor.com or see him on twitter @wbellauthor. 
No comments:
Post a Comment