Dark Winds are stirring in the Navajo Nation. Joe Leaphorn and Jim Chee are on the case again, in the AMC crime show set in New Mexico in the 1970s. Season 3 premiers March 9.
The expanded third season, featuring eight episodes, picks up six months after the events of Season 2 and follows Lt. Joe Leaphorn and Jim Chee as they investigate the disappearance of two boys, with only an abandoned bicycle and blood-stained patch of ground left in their wake. Meanwhile, Bernadette Manuelito attempts to settle into her new life 500 miles from home with the Border Patrol, but stumbles across a conspiracy involving human and drug smuggling with far-reaching implications.
This series is quite good. I wish my mom could have seen Zach McLaren bring Joe Leaphorn to life. She loved the Tony Hillerman books the series is based upon. Seasons 1&2 are available on Netflix if you want to catch up.
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I mentioned recently that The Ranger Project has morphed slightly. I am pursuing case studies of Frontier Partisan-style warfare (la petite guerre) in the context of major clashes of empire. World War II saw significant instances of savage partisan warfare — on the Eastern Front; in France; and in Yugoslavia.
This is an interesting look at the the British SOE’s machinations in the Balkans, where partisan warfare pitted factions against each other as well as against the German enemy.
The doco features Fitzroy Maclean, a throwback Highland warrior-aristocrat who, when a British diplomat in the Soviet Union, slipped his handlers to roam around Soviet Central Asia. When war broke out, he was forbidden from serving in the military because of his diplomatic status. So, he resigned “to go into politics,” then immediately enlisted as a private. He would eventually rise to Brigadier General.
He served in the Libyan desert with the SAS, kidnapped a Persian general in Iran, then undertook the mission to the Yugoslav Partisans, seeking to find the partisans who were killing the most Germans and finding a way to assist them. He reported directly to Winston Churchill on this mission.
He married the widowed daughter of Simon Fraser, Lord Lovat (yep, those Frasers) after the War and served in politics and wrote a bunch of books. Remarkable man.
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We seldom look at it this way, but the partisan warfare in North America during the French & Indian War was also part of a world war. The Seven Years War is properly understood as a world war, fought among multiple powers on the European continent, on the sea, in the Caribbean, and in India as well as in North America.
Gary Zaboly, who has done outstanding work on Ranger history of this period, recently shared a piece depicting one of the finest Frontier Partisan warriors in the woods — Ensign Jean-Baptiste De Langis.
“Ensign Langy” was a member of regular colonial French forces, but he was deployed as a partisan scout, and he proved to be a first-rate operator — but not infallible. In this episode, he lost his way in the dense woodlands and ran his force into a superior British force, resulting in a nasty firefight.
Zaboly describes the scene:
LANGY AND TREPEZAC WATCHING THE ADVANCE OF ABERCROMBY’S HUGE ARMY. Atop Rogers’s Rock, July 6, 1758: officers of a French and Indian scouting party observe the British/Provincial army of some 16,000 troops sailing and rowing northward on Lake George to attack the French posts, including Fort Carillon at Ticonderoga, at and beyond the end of the lake. Later that afternoon this French party will collide into the advance units of the British army, in the deep forest west of Carillon. Brigadier Lord George Augustus Howe would be one of the first casualties, but the British — thanks to their Rangers, light troops, and Provincials — would prevail, decimating the enemy. Two days later, however, in a formal frontal attack on Montcalm’s breastworks outside the fort, the British suffered one of the worst defeats in their history, losing over 2,500 men.
We recounted the combat death of Lord Howe back in 2017.
The Hinge Of Fate In The North Woods — The Combat Death Of Lord George Howe
And here’s a ghostly tale from the disaster at Carillon. More Highlanders:
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Word is going around the African hunting community of a deadly incident in Uganda. Hunting Cape Buffalo is dangerous.
The rifle failure just makes you cringe…
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Quixotic Mainer says
The hunter falling to that buffalo bull reminds me of Michael Douglas’ character in “Ghost and the Darkness” chiding Patterson about taking an untested rifle into battle. I’m convinced nearly every serious shooter has that nightmare of the 100 lb trigger that doesn’t work.
I feel for the PH as well, it sounds like he fought damned hard trying to save his sport.
JimC says
The “gun dream.” The nightmare where the trigger won’t pull. I’ve had dreams where the gun falls apart in my hands. I understand that this is a common dream for LE personnel. In this case, it sounds like it literally came true. Ugh.
Quixotic Mainer says
Yup, you too! I’ve had it, and I’ve heard it from so many others. We know it’s a chance of mechanical failure, however infinitesimal it might be. That’s the little grain of sand that starts building to that dream. It would be really interesting for a psychologist to wade into a study on the matter. Seems like the sort of thing one of Col. Grossman’s outfit would be suited for.
Craig Rullman says
Grossman’s outfit is suited for it, and in his talks he addresses it directly. I saw him in Vegas where he held a talk. His first answer is that the only solution to the gun dream is shooting more. He’s right about that. The second has to do with breathing exercises. He also addressed the “suspect dream”, which for my money was even more horrible than the gun dream. Both are ubiquitous, and both leave a waking hangover of dread.
Quixotic Mainer says
I met the Colonel once at a speaking engagement, I was struck by how seldom the man blinks.
The proposed cure seems accurate as well. I don’t think I’ve been visited by either of those apparitions since my rookie years, some range session or sanguinary debacle must have shaken them loose.
Patrulje says
I either have the wrong ammo or have the gun broken down for cleaning and am not able to find all the parts when the attack starts. I am retired.mil
Matthew says
I’ve only read Skinwalkers by Hillerman. While I like it, I may not have the enthusiasm for it other people do. Not sure why, though.
I realized that the French and Indian War was a world war sometime in 11th or 12th grade. We tend to think of there only being two world wars, but the F&I and the Napoleonic Wars were world wars. It is probably stretching it to call the American Revolution a world war but it had aspects of it with the French involved and foreign fighters on both sides. (Famously, the Hessians.)
David Wrolson says
Check out Patrick Leigh Fermor for another guy in the Fitzroy MacLean mold.
I have some of his travel books on my TBR pile for a view of Europe pre-WW2.
I know he kidnapped a German general on Crete and such.
Also the Peter Kemp trilogy. I have read those.
Lynda A. Sanchez says
Thanks for posting about Dark Winds. It is one of the few programs that is pretty accurate about that often dark and unusual world most us know little about on the Rez. The characters in this series are well done and I salute the producers. I do get tired of Cowboys and Indians, so it is a welcome change.
Lynda
saasa says
In this episode, he lost his way in the dense woodlands and ran his force into a superior British force, resulting in a nasty Snow Rider 3D firefight.