My best friends were with me, Mr, Smith & Mr. Wesson
One of my enlisted men was dealing drugs back in the early 1980's. I didn't like him, he didn't like me. We were stationed in a fairly rough little New England industrial town.
Matters escalated. I had some advanced warning that some sort of BS contract had been let out on me and my then girlfriend, because the girl (a local) had been labeled as a snitch, and me as some sort of narc. Supposedly just to have us beaten up to teach us a lesson.
I began being careful about where I parked my car when I went to pick her up or drop her off. We got caught anyway, because it was a small city, and there were a limited number of variations I could make in my routine. About five nights after I was warned, a car full of people roared up as we crossed a dark street, accellerating and putting its bright lights on when we were in the middle of the road, and something was thrown at us that I couldn't see, but which sounded heavy and metallic as it bounced along the pavement at our feet. A pipe or wrench, maybe.
Three cars then stopped, one of which I later took to be a local resident who stopped because he/she just wondered *** was going on, but it took me a while to sort it out later.
I put my girlfriend behind me, and walked slowly backwards up onto somebody's lawn, creating distance, and not taking my eyes off of anything in front of me. There was no cover, and because of my girl rapid retreat was not an option. I had a brown belt in karate at the time, but at least two car loads of people kind of suggested I might have a bit of trouble using just my hands and feet.
One guy got out of the passenger side of the closest car and began striding toward me quite quickly and aggressively, well off the sidewalk and right up to where we were in the middle of a stranger's front lawn in the dark, saying nothing. I was using a "soft focus" that my martial arts training had taught me, where I was deliberately avoiding not fixating on any one element of what was unfolding in front of me. The guy started toward me from about ten yards, with the car he had exited immediately behind him.
My brain was split right in two. The civilized part of it was screaming that this whole thing was like a bad movie and just could not be happening. The reptile part of my brain had decided that if a projectile-launching weapon showed from either vehicle, or if the man in front of me approached closer than a spot I had noted on the ground maybe 3 yards in front of me, I was going to kill him with a center mass shot, and then turn my attention to the vehicles as needed. I felt that the use of the weapon was justified because of the numbers of opponents I was facing, whether they were armed or not. I was absolutely, totally determined that neither one of us was going to be hurt by these maggots.
When the guy advancing on us got to about 7 yards, I drew my 6" S&W M66 .357. Once the weapon was in my hand, I kept it pointed at the ground behind my thigh, in the manner in which I had been taught to use a police baton. Why? Because I had a weapon in my hand, and up to that time the only weapon I had really been trained to fight with at close quarters was a baton, and that was the ready position I had been taught. Anyway, that gleaming stainless steel S&W must have made quite a flash in the side wash of all of the headlights as it came out and went behind me.
Had the guy advancing on us gotten to the spot I had marked as his personal gateway to Hell, I would have killed him. But he took only one pace after I drew, and said, "I think something fell off of my car." I suggested that he go back and try to find it.
He got back in his car and everybody drove away, no harsh words being used by anyone.
It took me a while to come down from the adrenalin surge. I reported the event to my commanding officer, who was one absolutely stand up mench who to this day I would follow anywhere. He backed me up with the local cops when we reported all this, who went completely nuts, the chief of police declaring that their town was "not like Chicago" and that this all had to be total nonsense. Dream on, Chief. My CO sent me out of town on leave for a week until things cooled off a bit.
I've learned a good deal since this happened to me. I eventually dumped the chick, because I began to have real misgivings about who she really was and what she was into. I think I would have had a very hard time justifying lethal force on that night, especially if I had dropped the first guy and then had the others drive away without leaving evidence of the threat they had posed, or just as bad, lie as adverse witnesses. ("Hey, man! We weren't doin nothin' and this a**h*** just started shootin' "). We would have survived the encounter in any event, but the legal aftermath would have been horrendous. Now I would be very sure to make very loud, repeated verbal demands of an assaulter, and would have less hesitation about holding the weapon in a low ready in front of me if the decision to shoot had not already been made, or even pointing it an attacker if the situation warranted.
And now I carry a 1911. Always.
