TACTICAL WISDOM: How Ready Are You – Minute Men
Originally published on Joe Dolio’s Tactical Wisdom blog. You can order all four volumes of Tactical Wisdom here.
Consider our world for a moment, as I did on Wednesday morning. Russia shows no signs of pulling out of Ukraine and is threatening the UK. China is becoming more and more bellicose in relation to Taiwan and the US. North Korea is off the chain (again). Iran is threatening both Saudi Arabia and Azerbaijan at the same time. The US and Brazil are reeling from election fraud allegations. Citizens all over the world are protesting governments in my predicted “worldwide civil wars” scenario. On top of all that, we have out of control inflation and energy shortages. It’s a scary time.
Against this backdrop, I walked into my gear room to assess my readiness, and I was not impressed. Don’t get me wrong, I have everything I need. It’s just not in a state of “walk out the door readiness”. So, I’ll be embarking on that process and testing myself to see if I can get there in under 72 hours, to see if I can beat my 72 Hour Theory.
In fact – God told us to have a bug-out bag ready:
Gather up your belongings to leave the land,
you who live under siege.
Jeremiah 10:17
Before we discuss those steps, I want to give a short history lesson on American Preparedness and discuss the roots of the “Minute-Men”, a key element in US History that should be our guide.
In the 1600s, as the Colonies were getting established, the British Governors had troops, but those were for protection of the Crown’s interests. The individual Colonies, with no established police forces, established militias. Militia didn’t have the negative connotation that it does today.
Generally, all men from 16-60 were required to serve in the militia. They met quarterly to train to defend their communities from Native American raids, bandits, and other colonial powers. You see, even if the French attacked, it would take weeks for British troops to arrive, so the local militia had to fight and hold the attackers.
As conflict became more common, the Governors ordered the militias to form special companies of the most fit, best trained, and most capable militiamen. These men would train every month instead of quarterly and would be required to be ready to respond to anywhere in their colony at “a moment’s notice”. They quickly became known as “Minute Companies” and “Minute Men”. The famous “Rogers Rangers” was one such company.
These men kept their gear packed and staged to go quickly. There was no police force to respond to a raided farm, just the Minute Men of the community. Eventually, as the tension rose between the Colonials and the British Government forces, these men trained even more, sometimes meeting 3-4 times a week.
The Minute Man concept is how we were able to field so many men so fast along the British GLOC (Ground Line of Communication) on their return to Boston the morning of April 19, 1775. The Minute Men arrived first and set a number of ambushes to slow the British allowing more men to arrive at Concord. The Colonials only had about 80 men at Lexington, but by time the British arrived in Concord, 400 men had gathered and by the end of the battle, 3,960 Minute Men had arrived.
It’s important to know that this concept didn’t die with our winning the War of Independence. In our expansion westward, pioneer communities did the same thing. The Mormon Nauvoo Legion was an expansion of this (side note – the Nauvoo fought the Federal Government and WON). During the Rhodesian Bush War, the “Agric-Alert” system was nothing more than a modernized “Minute-Man” system for responding to farm attacks.
As you can see, we have a heritage of being ready at a moment’s notice.
My first step was organizing all my radio equipment and charging all batteries. I’m guilty of only focusing on the radios I use daily, and yet I’ve added some equipment to the mix, so it needs to get organized, and triple checked. In conjunction with that, I decided to recharge my portable power supply and portable battery banks.
The next item will be winterizing my gear. The first snow fell today, so I need to swap out my mid-weight fall gear in all my bags with heavier winter gear layering options. It’s time to add the fourth season layer to my USMC Sleep System until March, because you don’t want to sleep outside in Michigan in a summer sleeping bag in December. On a side note, I may run a test by staying the night in a tarp shelter at my deer blind. It’s a ground blind of natural material, so tossing up a tarp lean to and rolling out my sleeping system is simple. It’s projected to be 16 degrees, so we’ll see.
Another winter change-over is on the camouflage patterns. I keep a camouflage jacket and a set of camouflage utilities in my full ruck. Now that the trees are down and there could be snow on any day, I’ll switch to MARPAT Desert and British Desert DPM. The browns and tans match the dead foliage and blend well with the snow. I’ll also add snow camo or white pack covers. I have a white poncho for use as a camouflage shelter in the winter that I’ll put in my ruck.
As I mentioned in my books, a camouflage poncho in your pack gives you a quick way to be camouflaged no matter what you are wearing. In the winter, I put a German snow camouflage poncho in the car. It’s white with grey splotches and pines needles on it – instant northern tier winter camo.
It’s a good time to rotate your food stocks, putting things that expire in the next 3 months in with your regular food. Remember to buy replacements. Being that it’s now wintertime, I replace my food in my packs with higher-calorie options.
With the world situation as it is, I’m going to do all of this and ensure that everything is stored in a fairly mobile status, so that I can move on much shorter notice.
A note about this though – high loft items like sleeping bags and down coats should not be kept compressed, like in a stuff sack, for more than 2 weeks at time. I generally only pack the sleeping system for periods of extremely high tensions, an imminent emergency, or for a trip. I can roll up and stuff it in the compression sack in under a minute, so I just store them together. I do the same with my ECWCS parka and insulated pants.
Go and check your gear and up your readiness. Remember to keep filling your car on a daily basis and keep your backup communications gear with you. Things are tough, and they are only going to get tougher.
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Great write up. As luck would have it my favorite passages are Matthew Chapter 24. Have been for a very long time. It never hit me as to “why” they are my favorites, until about a year or 2 ago when I started to put together my bug out system (systems).
Living out here in the wild wild west we we have tested many so called creature comforts and discarded most. In fact, looking back on it now, it would surprise you just how little is required to “survive.” In our late teens to early thirties we would all converge on our favorite fishing party spot or hunting party spot. On average once or twice a year.
People would show up with everything “wanted” to the point we could have set up home in the cold embrace of nature. In one case it devolved into a balls out screaming match. No joke here…we had a guy show up in his pickup loaded so full it was leveled off to the cab. It looked like he was moving someone instead of going on a 4 day camping trip. To that note, over the years it would surprise you just how little came out of those rigs for our “survival” and how often it was shunned.
So I was getting my crap together and doing the “I know I have one of those, where did I put it?” weeks. That stuff was parsed out from bed room to boat. Over the years bug out had been portioned out to every venue of my world. I have more ways to start a camp fire than any 5 people combined. In fact, my last resort uses water to create flame. Am inserting that method here–>Sight Blacker. It uses Calcium Carbide with water to generate Acetylene. As a side note oxy acetylene is the third hottest natural fuel flame. It works! Have a stove that fits in a 2″ x 1″ x 1.5″ package. Not my favorite, but works, and 2 or 3 others. Point is, multiples of everything!
So after putting together the main bug out bag, it went to the scales. 58lbs! That’s when the “what little we actually used for a camping trip” light bulb illuminated. It would be great to have the “I have the magic combination” thema going, but after a year of farting around it turns out, I’ve gotten soft. That’s right, I admitted it.
What has been settled on? Separate bags and devices other for differing conditions, with one all out survival bag, which actually, could find itself in one of two bags. Either the common large military framed molle2 or a Z something pack frame bad boy. My secondary bag, which is going into the car at all times is a modernized version of the internal frame jobber they used in Nam. Plenty of pockets and a little bit of gear for fishing and hunting for this general area. Basically, knife, cordage, first aid, and fire. Only a few extras past that. It’s still amazing how those few extras add up!
This article is an interesting and quite sound piece of advise for our present day requirements. I do think that some further discussion of the distinctions between minutemen, militia, and rangers in the historical context
is warranted to understand the manner in which these units were used and the relative effectiveness.
The militia, as stated was an institution as old as the colonies themselves. The shortcomings were chiefly that they were only really useful in the defense and performance tended to degrade rapidly without re-enforcement or a quick end to the fighting. Their strength was close bonds to one another as a community and masterful knowledge of the local terrain. When levied into offensive operations, militia tended to be much less capable, as offensive operations are usually much more complex and require a higher level of training than the typical militia unit possessed.
The shortcoming on both offense and defense began to make themselves obvious against the American Indians in the very early colonial wars. King Phillip’s War in in 1676 was a widespread and destructive fight that nearly saw the English colonists driven into the sea. Towns were attacked far and wide, and the English were many times reduced to defending one or more central strongpoints or garrison houses for up to a few days. Help was usually sent to nearby towns and a relief force was usually dispatched with mixed results. The reaction forces were always pickup militia units and simply approached to besieged town by the most direct and obvious route, many times with disastrous results.
The New Englanders were fortunate that a few among them in the military establishment had the foresight to make institutional changes. One of these men was Benjamin Church. What Church did was emulate the individual tactical skills and long range light strike capability of the Indians and utilize that against them. This was the first of the ranging units and it overcame the various shortcomings of the militia. Aside from offensive deep strike, and tactically sound quick reaction, they were also masterful at long range reconnaissance, which completely changed the course of this and the following Indian wars in colonial New England. Others followed, Lovewell and Rogers, and many more. It is important to understand that at least in this time and place, rangers were special units created in wartime and were not militia or minutemen. Roger’s Rangers were a British Army irregular unit made up initially by commissioning Rogers to recruit and train New Hampshire backwoodsmen for the purpose. They were men who already possessed the skills of frontier partisan warfare. after a few years, attrition from fighting the excellent French and Indian partisans, ranger recruitment opened up to almost anyone.
Minutemen lastly were created on the eve of the Rev War as stated. The necessity that led to this unit concept was the need to for a higher skill level and reaction time than was expected of the usual militia., while still being militia and not a full time unit. The British in Boston began raiding the countryside for arms prior to the outbreak of fighting. This was usually done in an amphibious manner due to the dominance of the Royal Navy. Raids for militia arms took place in Salem, Portsmouth, NH, up the Mystic River, and elsewhere. All but one of these was foiled by forewarning from an excellent spy network (Paul Revere) and the timely mustering of nearby militia in greater strength then the raiding British. This all broke down for both sides with the Lexington battle. Paul Revere initially warned the Concord and the surrounding towns the weekend before April 19th. The famous ride on the night of the 18th was merely confirmation of the route, (by water). The Minutemen were ready and there was time for the militia to join them. There was no plan to ambush the British as War had not broken out yet. The plan was to just stand their ground and defend themselves against “offense”. This lack of a clear mission did not serve Captain Parker’s militia well when the British finally arrived in great strength at dawn. The skirmish was one sided, the militia lost, and the Regulars marched on to Concord.
The great strength of the mobilization system the Patriots built was early warning through the spy network and multiple express riders to warn every town in New England. As it turned out, this would prove to be the end of the minutemen concept . The whole idea was for rapid reaction in what was still peacetime. It worked in the pre war powder raids, but New England was so riled up by this time that the regular militia was also training at a fever pitch and responded just as quickly. In the battle, they all were informally integrated under informal command and harried the British all along the 20 mile retreat back to Boston. With open war now underway, the minutemen were no longer required. That mobilization on 19 April 1775 is undoubtedly one of the most remarkable in military history. The warning sent out across the Boston Neck and from the Old North Church reached all the way to Long Island Sound in Connecticut and modern day Maine and saw 10,000 militia descend upon the British in Boston and initiate a long siege.
I apologize in advance for the length of this comment. I did not set out to write a novel here, but it seems that I have. I hope it adds to the original work.
We all wish for a solid, fortified, permanent bug in position from whence we emerge victorious & continue to live our good life, however much truth lies in the surprised to see quote from Jeremiah.
Why go out to the remote woods to try and survive? How many of you are going, 50,000? 50? 5? If you’re in the woods at night in wintertime, you didn’t have a good plan. Get back into town, suburb, or city. Let’s get real. You can’t engage the enemy freezing in the woods. The enemy is in town. And take the camo off. Get back into civies. Blend in and kill.
Watch out boys, we got a badass over here.
Found this kinda interesting. So what’s your plan when the lights go out, the food lines are cut and the garbage trucks quit picking up trash? That’s not to mention living in your own sewage and dealing with the marauders other. Do you have a guille suit built with whiskey bottles, beer and soda cans so you can lay in the waste to get a superior firing position? It may surprise you to know that most of the same survival items that work in the woods, will be what is required in the cities. Being ready is not stupidity, it’s very wise! The Boy Scouts told me so…
Temps are staying low now. Good time.to check your zeros on your rifles, especially the precision ones requiring special ammunition. And don’t take that ammo from the warm shelf in the house, and head out to the range to “re-zero” in the cold. Leave a couple of mags in a pouch outside on the deck overnight to get down to operating temps. Leave your rifle out there too, and see how well that awesome wonder-lube doesn’t work in the cold. Full mobility, full utility, under all conditions. This is what I strive for.