The Fighting Bunch: The Battle of Athens and How World War II Veterans Won the Only Successful Armed Rebellion Since the Revolution

by Chris DeRose

Overview

In The Fighting Bunch: The Battle of Athens and How World War II Veterans Won the Only Successful Armed Rebellion Since the Revolution, New York Times bestselling author Chris DeRose reveals the true, never-before-told story of the men who brought their overseas combat experience to wage war against a corrupt political machine in their hometown.

Bill White and the young men of McMinn County answered their nation's call after Pearl Harbor. They won the freedom of the world and returned to find that they had lost it at home.

A corrupt political machine was in charge, protected by violent deputies, funded by racketeering, and kept in place by stolen elections - the worst allegations of voter fraud ever reported to the Department of Justice, according to the U.S. Attorney General.

To restore free government, McMinn's veterans formed the nonpartisan GI ticket to oppose the machine at the next election.

On Election Day, August 1, 1946, the GIs and their supporters found themselves outgunned, assaulted, arrested, and intimidated. Deputies seized ballot boxes and brought them back to the jail. White and a group of GIs - "The Fighting Bunch" - men who fought and survived Guadalcanal, the Bulge, and Normandy, armed themselves and demanded a fair count. When they were refused the most basic rights they had fought for, the men, all of whom believed they had seen the end of war, returned to the battlefield and risked their lives one last time.

For the past seven decades, the participants of the "Battle of Ballots and Bullets" and their families kept silent about that conflict. Now in The Fighting Bunch, after years of research, including exclusive interviews with the remaining witnesses, archival radio broadcast and interview tapes, scrapbooks, letters, and diaries, Chris DeRose has reconstructed one of the great untold stories in American history.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781250266194
Publisher:	St. Martin's Publishing Group
Publication date:	11/03/2020
Pages:	352
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.40(h) x 1.50(d)

About the Author

CHRIS DEROSE is the New York Times bestselling author of Founding Rivals: Madison vs. Monroe, the Bill of Rights, and the Election that Saved a Nation, and The Presidents' War: Six American Presidents and the Civil War That Divided Them. He has appeared on over 60 television and radio shows and spoken to audiences around the country, including having recently addressed members of Congress at the U.S. Capitol. A native of Chicago, DeRose lives in Phoenix, Arizona.

Table of Contents

Contents

A Note on Names

Players

Prologue: In Search of History

1. Home, Sweet Home

2. On the Little Tennessee River

3. Warrior Roots

4. The Rise of Paul Cantrell

5. The Best Fights of the Season

6. Civics at McMinn High

7. "Politicos in McMinn Split over Vote Robots"

8. The King of Tennessee

9. "For the Duration of the National Emergency"

10. Everything I Needed to Know About Geopolitics, I Learned from Frank Capra

11. George the Ripper

12. "We Were Like Young Tigers"

13. "A Monstrous, Shocking, and Revolting State of Affairs"

14. "High, Dry, and Bare Assed"

15. "Six Indicted for Vote Fraud"

16. "Come to the Rescue of a Helpless People"

17. "Say a Prayer for Your Pal on Guadalcanal"

18. United States v. Lattimore et al

19. "No Atheists on Tarawa"

20. United States v. William Rucker

21. From Athens to Normandy

22. "I Don't Know Which Way Is Up"

23. "Killed in the Service of his Country in Athens, Tennessee"

24. "The American Way of Life"

25. The Best Year of Their Lives

26. In the Basement of the Robert E. Lee Hotel

27. "A Thorn in the Flesh"

28. The Ballad of Otto Kennedy

29. Your Vote Will Be Counted as Cast

30. "Do You Think They're Going to Let You Win This Election?"

31. The Fourth of July

32. "The Hearts and Votes of McMinn County"

33. Election Day, 1946

34. The Battle of the Garage

35. Democracy, Athens Style

36. The Guns of August

37. The Night Watch

38. "Groping Back to Normalcy"

39. Fort Athens

40. Glorious Victory

41. Unknown Subjects

42. "Let Us Live Together and Love One Another"

Notes

Index

Editorial Reviews

09/07/2020

In this dramatic account, historian DeRose (Star Spangled Scandal) details how corrupt officials who had seized and held power in McMinn County, Tenn., from 1936 until 1946 were overthrown by a group of WWII veterans. Drawing on press accounts, private letters, and interviews with descendants of those involved, DeRose vividly describes ballot boxes stuffed with fraudulent votes, poll watchers forced out of precincts at gunpoint, and armed deputies intimidating voters. Orchestrated by sheriff and state senator Paul Cantrell, these voter suppression techniques ensured that his network of judges, deputies, and county officials won reelection year after year. In 1946, Navy veteran and lawyer Ralph Duggan led an effort to replace Cantrell and his cronies with a “GI ticket” split between Democrats and Republicans who had served in the military. When Cantrell’s men confiscated ballot boxes on election day and took them to a jail in Athens, Tenn., a group of armed veterans laid siege to the building and a gunfight broke out. Cantrell’s cronies were eventually forced to flee town, and every candidate on the GI ticket won. Doggedly researched and briskly narrated, this rousing chronicle testifies to the importance of free and fair elections. (Nov.)

Publishers Weekly

"Doggedly researched and briskly narrated, this rousing chronicle testifies to the importance of free and fair elections." —Publishers Weekly

"This is an especially timely tale in a year of social and political turmoil. The pulse-pounding narrative of The Fighting Bunch takes us to a place in America where the struggle against evil did not end when the war did and once more people of good will had to take a courageous stand." —Tom Clavin, bestselling author of Tombstone and Wild Bill

"In a remarkable feat of dogged fresh reporting, historical research and narrative aplomb, DeRose breathes new life into the little-remembered saga of the 1946 Battle of Athens, Tennessee, when a force of angry men, led by recent World War II veterans with the 'stamp of combat in their eyes,' mounted a successful armed rebellion against entrenched municipal corruption and police brutality." —Joe Sharkey, author of Above Suspicion

"History's best lessons are sometimes forgotten, and it's up to authors like Chris DeRose to resurrect them. He does so elegantly in The Fighting Bunch, the astonishing story of how, in August 1946, a band of World War II veterans summoned all their courage and fighting skills to stand up to and destroy a corrupt political machine in McMinn County, Tennessee. It's likely you never knew about it before - but once you've read this book, their act will resonate in your mind forever." —Jeff Guinn, New York Times bestselling author of Manson and The Road to Jonestown: Jim Jones and Peoples Temple

"Men who went overseas to defend the freedom for the world returned home to discover they had lost it here. How they fought to reclaim it is a riveting story that should remind every American of how precious and fragile are the freedoms we too often take for granted." —John Bicknell, author of Lincoln's Pathfinder: John C. Fremont and the Violent Election of 1856 and America 1844

“In ‘The Fighting Bunch,’ Chris DeRose unearths a fascinating and incredibly timely piece of American history. This lively and well-researched account of American GIs and their people-powered revolution, which restored democracy to McMinn County, Tennessee, soon after the war, is a lesson for us all – and a warning for those tempted by power or complacency not to forget the role that justice and fairness play in this country. Or to put it as one of the heroes might have (outside of polite company): Don’t screw with democracy, the ballot box, or angry GIs. It’s another reminder that the men and women who endured World War II were in fact members of the Greatest Generation.” —Jim DeFelice, New York Times best-selling co-author of American Sniper, Every Man a Hero

From the Publisher