"Nothing we can't handle"

Half a league half a league,

 Half a league onward,

 All in the valley of Death

 Rode the six hundred:

 'Forward, the Light Brigade!

 Charge for the guns' he said:

 Into the valley of Death

 Rode the six hundred.

It is my assumption most would recognize those words as the opening verse of Alfred, Lord Tennyson's epic poem, "The Charge of the Light Brigade." It was written to memorialize a suicidal charge by British light cavalry over open terrain at the Battle of Balaclava during the Crimean War. Of the 637 men in the charge, 247 were killed or wounded. There is no written account of casualties among the Russian troops defending the hilltops. For the record, the "scrap" took place on October 25, 1854, and Tennyson wrote the poem before the year had ended.

It also is my assumption I would not have to specify that the valley in the photograph is not the site of the charge in the Ukraine, but I will so specify anyway. This valley, more-or-less in the foothills of the Colorado Rocky Mountains, is about forty miles west of Denver.

Incidentally, I have blocked comments for this post and here is a link to a wax cylinder recording of Tennyson reciting this poem: https://youtu.be/MkqUq26z1CE

Actually, the reason Tennyson's poem came into my mind is because this valley looks familiar to me. Once upon a time long, long ago and far, far way, I stood looking down a valley much like this one watching the steady advance of a few thousand "other guy" troops. There were 13 of us watching and we took a vote whether to stay or to go. To a man, it was stay.

During the next scheduled radio check-in, we reported we were expecting enemy contact before the next morning. When asked if we wanted reinforcement, the reply was: "Nothing we can't handle."

Since the reply was sort of non-specific, someone with a higher pay grade ordered a flyover to determine exactly what the situation might be. After learning what was happening, that someone made another decision and before nightfall there were a few hundred Marines on that hilltop looking down into the valley watching aircraft attempting to blast the "other guys" to hell.

It really was not all that easy. It took three days before the episode ended and those still standing among the "other guys" broke off contact.

At some point during the course of those three days, I began to wonder if any of the "other guys" read Tennyson.