This is not going to be an overly entertaining post, not that (to me at least) any of them are entertaining, this post is more of a place holder. A place to hold the idea(s) kicking around in my head, and nearly kicking it in, while I try to go about my day to day business of being a lazy fuck. The recent revival of the Freikorps has set me to thinking about their history, and what of it I can with safety record on these pages. Certain actions of Wilson and the band of reprobates in the Korps were (are) quite illegal, and by that I mean permanently illegal. Some of their less romantic activities do not have statute of limitations. They were illegal when they did them, remain illegal to this day, and the punishments they face are not the type that have an expiration date. Those actions are not the "boys being boys" type of activities you and your mates engaged in whilst misspending your collective youth.
Of course, as mentioned before, the Freikorps had several banners they "fought" under. It was the nature of the beast back when they roamed the world, like violent, drunken buffalo that would kill you and yours for the right amount of coin. Sometimes they won, sometimes they lost, but they always managed to get paid, if even they had to steal it. They considered it payment, other people of less open minds would consider it theft, and really narrow minded people might throw around the term "war crime." Most of them are past caring now about their exploits, their (all too few) successes, and their (all too many) failures. Soldiering, using the term very broadly, is a young man's games, and has certain inherent risks. One of those risks is that people, sometimes a lot of really, really bad people want to kill you. Sometimes they succeed. It says it right their in the contract they all signed, "not responsible for any masses of lunatics that want to kill you." Now sign here, take the coin, and see if you can pretend you know how to march in a semi-straight line. The pox is another inherent risk, but that part of the story will have to be treated with a bit of delicacy (so to speak).
Poxes and murderous lunatics aside, the history of the Freikorps is probably nothing overly remarkable. They are not the grand conquerors in the Alexander or Napoleon mode. They are just a middling group of madmen, that figured out they individually and collectively possessed certain skills that were useful to a fair amount of people. That the skill was making a fair amount of other people cease to exist, well that's why we are here isn't it? The tales they have to tell are not heroic, they are not object lessons that will teach the younger generation how to be better people. If there is one certain fact that is undoubtedly true about the Freikorp it is they hate people. Which would make sense after all. No, their tales are just that tales. Stories that might entertain, might disgust, might make you laugh, or might make the tender hearted among you cry, but they are not the great deeds of great men. Few things are so great that they redound down the ages. Great men generally just cause great pain. Simple men just get on with the day to day disaster that is called, for lack of a better term, life.
The tales of Wilson, Corker, and the newly deceased Jackson and the rest of the Korps are something that will take a plan to tell, and the "good" news (if there is to be any good news) is that a plan is forming more and more everyday. The main problem in the telling is the laziness that afflicts me like a pox, and the difficult task of telling a story and making sure the objects of the story don't kill you for the indiscretion of airing their indiscretions. We all need something to live for, and maybe this is it for me. Looking around the landscape of my day to day wanderings, reasons to live for, truly live for, not just get out of bed are fairly thin on the ground. Not a cry for help just the facts of the matter as they appear to me at this time.
Again I am not promising anything, ideas come, stare at me a while, tap me on the forehead and tell me "I am your story, don't forget me, write me down." Which I then fail to do, and they leave with a sigh, and a whisper that they will be back some other time. Unrecorded, and unexplored like a large portion of the Louisiana Territory before Lewis and Clark and their Corps came along. I am attempting to get an outline of Korps story somewhere close to a piece of paper (hence this post) in the hopes that the idea(s) won't disappear like a summer dew under a summer sun. Here's hoping.
Then, of course, there is Felix. Felix does a lot more than tap me on the forehead when he wants a portion of his story told. Felix is not that type. He doesn't knock, he hammers, he doesn't talk, he bellows, and he doesn't ask, he orders. His story, which needs a lot of back filling, is also something I am working on at my own tragically slow pace. Trust me, it's there, it's just very complicated like the plot of some French film. There is a vague idea rattling around in my head that Felix and the Freikorps might be tributaries of the same thought river, and will someday flow into each other. Then again, it is quite possible they are like railroad tracks, parallel lines that never meet. There are rumors that they do meet, and there are an equal number of rumors saying that they do not, and even a couple of rumors saying that they should not.
Felix, Sully, David the Liar, Mutt and Jeff, and the rest of THAT merry band of bad men (and a couple of bad ladies as well) also demand attention. It is something they also deserve, after all I started their tale(s), I should have the decency to try to finish them before it is too late, and they grow stale, or out of date. Even though I am quite sure that neither Felix or the Korps are men/people of the times we find ourselves in at the moment. They are out of the past, and the past has something to teach us, at least those of us that will listen, it is just a matter of paying enough attention.
All these, somewhat pointless, words are a way of telling the 3 people that still read this dross, and more importantly myself. That I have to return to these stories sooner rather than later, after all what else do I have to do? The revolution has yet to come.
