The general decided that in order to deal with the pending attack from the east, his militia would have to first go on the offensive and eliminate the threat on the western border. However, he had no way of knowing how soon the attack from the east would materialize. He had discussed this with Ray when he had first been told about the enemy force in New Orleans and Ray had come up with a plan to slow the advance down. He sent word to his cousin Daniel with the National Guard members who were returning to Donaldsonville to lead their units to Texas. They informed Daniel that Ray wanted him to mobilize his local militia to do what they could to hinder the enemy movement through Louisiana. To help facilitate this effort, General Donnelly dispatched two East Texas Special Operations teams to assist Daniel’s men.
Chapter XXII
By the time the East Texas militia units arrived, Daniel had heard that the force out of New Orleans was ready to move in a day or two. Daniel’s militia was over three hundred strong and was now well armed thanks to Ray and the National Guard leaving it some automatic weapons, ammunition, hand grenades, and C-4 explosives. Since Daniel had no military experience, the actual commander of the militia was a thirty-four-year-old former marine recon first sergeant, who had been heavily involved in the war on terror for several years. The sergeant was Frank Hebert, a fit young Cajun who had once been a star running back on the Donaldsonville High School football team but had chosen to join the Marine Corps instead of playing football in college.
He and Daniel met with the two East Texas special forces leaders: Roger Hall, a former Navy SEAL, and Norman Blake, a former Green Beret. Both had been appointed to train and lead special forces teams made up of a combination of military veterans and young men who had undergone rigorous training to become elite fighters for freedom.
The four men had to devise a strategy for protecting the people of Donaldsonville while at the same time delaying the advance of the federal troops and doing as much damage to them as much as possible. However, they all agreed that before they could make any final plans they needed to know if the enemy was on the move and what its strength was. It was agreed that Norman Blake and his team would leave immediately to find out what was coming.
Within twenty-four hours, Blake’s team was just north of New Orleans, and they had seen the federal troops moving out of the city and determined that it was indeed a major force. There were thirty-two tanks, twenty-four mobile artillery pieces, thirty Stryker vehicles, and at least two thousand infantry troops. However, they were moving slowly, stopping first in Laplace, Louisiana, to look for National Guard units in hiding. They searched for several days but found nothing because the units had already moved north. This gave Blake’s team the time they needed to get back to Donaldsonville so that they could develop a strategy.
As the militia leaders and the special operations commanders met once again, they formulated a plan. For the most part, the people in the Donaldsonville area had not known that National Guard units were even in the area and obviously had not known where they were located. So the four men in charge could use this by creating a false narrative that would send the federal force to a false location, where at least part of the force could be trapped. Not far from the city was the Atchafalaya Swamp. It is the largest wetlands area in the United States, covering over 1.4 million acres.
There are many hunting and fishing camps on the edge of or on islands in the swamp, and several of them would be a suitable location for hiding National Guard units. One in particular was known to the men of the Donaldsonville militia. It was accessed on a single road that crossed two bridges over large bayous several miles away from the hunting camp that had not been used in a long time.
The plan was actually very simple and initially consisted of the East Texas special operations team under the command of Norman Blake taking a platoon of the Louisiana militia out to harass and slow down the advance of the federal column. By the time the militia force approached Laplace, Louisiana, the feds were heading up Airline Highway toward a bridge where they could cross the Mississippi River and use State Highway 70 to move into Donaldsonville. They would cross on the Sunshine Bridge, originally called the bridge to nowhere.
It had been built in 1964 under the administration of Governor Jimmy Davis who was a country singer and songwriter who had become famous for his iconic song “You Are My Sunshine.” Thus, the bridge was named for the song and became a joke because the project was underfunded and initially went from Gonzales, Louisiana, on the east bank of the river to a swamp on the west bank. After many years, it finally was connected to State Highway 70 and became an important hurricane evacuation route for residents of south Louisiana. Now, it had become the route for invaders.
The bridge was heavily guarded by federal troops, so the militia units crossed the Mississippi River upstream in small boats and deployed south of the Sunshine Bridge along Airline Highway. There were thick wooded areas along parts of the highway, so Blake divided his force into three teams made up members of his special operations unit and members of the Louisiana militia platoon. They were deployed in a staggered formation. Each team had a few automatic weapons, grenade launchers, and some RPGs.
The federal column was miles long with the tanks in the lead followed by the trucks carrying the infantry and their equipment and supplies. Dispersed among the trucks were Stryker vehicles to protect the trucks. The first team deployed by Blake had RPGs and fired on the lead tanks, knocking out the treads on two of them. That caused the column to come to a halt while infantry was bought up and dismounted from their transport vehicles to search the woods along the highway for the attackers. However, the small militia force was long gone, moving south through the woods to a position on the other side of the next two teams.
The second team was stationed about three miles down the highway and would not attack the tanks. The initial hit had caught the feds by surprise, and because the tanks had their turrets and guns pointed forward, they were not able to immediately return fire on the attackers in the woods. Blake knew that this would not be the case for the next assault. The tank turrets would be alternating and be pointed toward both sides of the road so they could launch devastating fire at the positions of any incoming fire from the militia.
For that reason, the second team of Blake’s men let the tanks roll by their position along the highway and then opened fire with grenade launchers and automatic weapons on the more vulnerable trucks packed with enemy troops and, in some cases, supplies and ammunition. This particular team was led by a blond young, twenty-eight-year-old man named Robert Williams who was a first sergeant in the militia and second in command of Blake’s special operations team, but his story was different from most of the other leaders of the militia special operations units.
Bobby Williams had no prior military experience. His family owned a cattle ranch outside of Canton, and when Bobby had graduated from high school, he had been preparing to go to Texas A&M University on a football scholarship. He also was planning to join the air force ROTC and hopefully become a pilot. Unfortunately, his dream ended the summer before his freshman year when his father was kicked in the head by one of the horses on the ranch. The injury was severe and caused the elder Robert Williams to lose the use of his legs. Since the younger Bobby was the only son in the family, he felt obligated to take over the operation of the ranch in order to take care of his parents and two younger sisters.
Bobby was highly intelligent and hardworking. Within a few years, he had made the ranch even more profitable than before, and he was able to hire some help. After the EMP attack, he was therefore able to join the East Texas militia and volunteer for special operations training. He was an excellent marksman and a fast learner, so he did exceeding well during the rigorous training. He had also proven himself to be a very valuable member of the team he was assigned to as they conducted both recon patrols and combat patrols to destroy enemy troops and capture their vehicles and equipment.
He w
as quickly elevated to the rank of first sergeant and second in command of Blake’s team. Now he was commanding his own team made of other special operations and Louisiana militia members. He had deployed his men carefully. He had two grenade launchers, and the men who would fire them were on each side of him at the northern edge of the line. His riflemen were deployed to his south, and they would not open fire until the grenades hit their targets. After the tanks had passed his position, he allowed several Strykers to go by that were behind the tanks, but in front of the following trucks and Humvees. Bobby had seen that the Strykers both had 50-caliber machine guns, so he was not going to take them on.
Instead, he waited until they were far enough along that they could not return immediate fire on his team. He then ordered his men to open up on the trucks. The two men with the grenade launchers hit the first and second trucks that were passing in front of their position and both exploded in a ball of fire. Bobby used his M16 to first kill the driver of the third truck and then started firing into the canvas cover on the rear of the truck where either infantry or supplies were located. In this case, it was infantry, and those that were not hit by the initial rounds were jumping from the back of the truck. The same was happening with the other trucks taking fire from the remaining members of Bobby’s team.
The sergeant had given clear instructions to his men to fire empty their rifle clips at the dismounted infantry and then quickly disengage before the enemy could get organized and effectively return fire and start moving into the woods. The attacks were taking place at night, so once again, the muzzle flashes of the militia weapons would give away their locations. Before this could be used against them, the team was to retreat into the deep woods and gather at a predetermined rendezvous point. They would then leapfrog past the other two teams to set up another ambush.
The men were obeying, and the withdrawal was being made in an orderly fashion, but Bobby saw something that caused him to linger for a few extra moments. The burning trucks had the area brightly illuminated, and Bobby noticed that there was very little return fire coming from the infantry who had left the trucks. Most of them had instead run into the woods on the other side of the road in order to hide. He could see some regular federal officers trying to rally the men and get them organized but generally were being ignored. Clearly, there was confusion among the enemy, and it could not all be explained by the success of the militia attack.
Bobby suspected that something else was going on, and he immediately recognized two possibilities. He knew that most of these soldiers were from Middle Eastern countries, but they were commanded by federal officers who were Americans working for the new government. Either the foreign soldiers were ill trained, or because most spoke no English they did not understand the orders being yelled at them by the federal officers, or they were getting the translations of the orders from their own officers and ignoring them. Either way, Bobby was immediately aware that the force headed for Texas was not as formidable as was first thought, at least as far as the quality of the combat troops was concerned.
Chapter XXIII
Captain Blake’s teams conducted two more quick ambushes before regrouping and moving to the river so they could be ferried across before the sun came up. The combined attacks had accomplished exactly what was needed: the destruction of several tanks and Strykers as well as some supplies and the killing or wounding of scores of enemy troops. Just as important was the slowing down of the federal advance. To prevent further devastating attacks, the federal commander was forced to deploy a large portion of his infantry to lead the column. They were on the road itself and along both sides of the road. This meant that the column could move no faster than the infantry could walk.
This brought the militias in both Louisiana and Texas valuable time. The butcher’s bill had been three members of the Louisiana militia killed and seven men wounded, including one of the East Texas special operations team members. No one was left behind. Blake’s team brought back both their dead and the wounded. Now it was time for the second part of the plan to be put in motion.
No more attacks were launched on the federal column, and it was allowed to cross the Sunshine Bridge unimpeded. The federal troops quickly occupied the city of Donalsonville, and the English-speaking members of the federal force started questioning the residents about the whereabouts of the Louisiana National Guard units they were looking for. The population was uncooperative, and everyone claimed ignorance of any guard units in the area and also claimed that there was not a militia in the area either.
The federal commander, Colonel Jacob Collins, was a heavyset balding fifty-eight-year-old former federal bureaucrat, who was a devote progressive and had serious political ambitions, so he quickly became frustrated and was preparing to order his troops to resort to torturing residents and threatening their families in order to get the information he needed. It turned out not to be necessary because a teenage boy walked up early the next morning and handed an envelope to one of the federal officers near the commander’s headquarters. The young man quickly disappeared, but when the envelope was opened, it contained exactly what the feds were looking for. In it was a handwritten letter from someone claiming to be a federal loyalist who could not reveal his identity for fear of reprisals by the other residents of the town.
The anonymous letter writer said that he knew the location of four National Guard units that were hiding out on a remote island in the Atchafalaya Swamp. The envelope also contained a crude map of the route to the hideout. However, the letter did not provide any specific information about the type of units that were at the location or their strength. Colonel Collins was not going to accept this letter on its face and immediately ordered a recon patrol of eighteen men in three armored Humvees to follow the route contained on the map. The patrol returned within twenty-four hours and told the colonel that it followed the road to within two hundred yards of the first bridge on the map and then deployed the infantry to check it out. They found nothing at the first bridge, so the column had proceeded to the second bridge about five miles down the road. When the infantry carefully approached that bridge, they found a heavily armed and manned roadblock consisting of over twenty men in Louisiana National Guard uniforms with a machine gun position set up covering the approach to the bridge.
This information appeared to confirm what the letter had stated, and now the colonel had to decide on a course of action. His major problem was that he knew virtually nothing about the strength of the units he would be attacking. He also did not know if they were just infantry units or if they had armor or even helicopters. He had no air support available at this point in his advance. There were some attack helicopters and fighter jets stationed at the New Orleans International Airport, but they were to support his attack on the East Texas militia—nothing else.
Aircraft fuel was a precious commodity in North America, as was gasoline. Prior to the EMP attacks, the federal government had been focused on the politics of climate change even though that theory had been discredited. That had resulted in most of the oil production and refining operations in the United States being either severely curtailed or completely shut down. The outcome had been that the United States relied almost entirely on imports of foreign gasoline and aviation fuel. With wars raging all over Europe and the Middle East, many countries were reluctant to part with fuel unless they were paid extremely well. Since the US economy was chaotic at best, there was only a limited supply of fuel of any type, especially aviation fuel. Therefore, air operations were limited for the federal units.
Colonel Collins decided that since he did not know what he was facing at the hunting camp and could be in for a major battle, he would commit a large portion of his force to the attack. The rest would be left in the Donaldsonville area to protect his rear against any possible militia activity and to act as a reserve force if needed. He had already lost two tanks and three Strykers to the militia ambush, so he decided to send in twenty of his remaining
tanks, ten mobile artillery vehicles, and ten Strykers along with two battalions of infantry, over nine hundred men, to overwhelm the National Guard units. He felt that such a force would have no problem regardless of the strength of the guard.
Chapter XXIV
The next morning, just after dawn, the advance guard of the federal force approached the bridge across the first of the bayous on the road leading to the hunting camp. As had been reported by the recon patrol the day before, the bridge was unguarded, but the colonel had his men check under the bridge to make sure it was not rigged with explosives. They found nothing, so the column proceeded down the road.
There were five tanks in the lead followed by three Strykers and three trucks transporting infantry. The plan was to have the tanks destroy the roadblock at the second bridge and kill all the militia guards. The whole column would then proceed rapidly to the island where the tanks would open fire on the guard units while the infantry deployed to support them. They would be followed by five more tanks, more Strykers and Humvees with infantry, and five vehicles containing the 105mm artillery pieces. This initial assault force would be laying down significant firepower and would be quickly followed by the rest of the force.
When the leading elements approached the National Guard roadblock at the second bridge, it quickly became clear that it had been abandoned. The assault force commander, a federal captain, assumed that his column had been spotted early on, and the squad guarding the bridge had retreated to the island to alert the guard units. He radioed Colonel Collins who was in a Humvee following the assault units and told him of his suspicions.
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