Prologue

                                                   War battered dogs are we

                                                   Fighters in every clime;

                                                   Fillers of trench and of grave,

                                                   Mockers bemocked by time,

                                                   War dogs hungry and grey,

                                                   Gnawing a naked bone,

                                                   Fighters in every clime-

                                                   Every cause but our own

                                                         -Emily Lawless "With the Wild Geese"

It is said that the real history of the Irish Catholics during the first half of the eighteenth century is in the Continental European Countries where the Irish exiles and their descendants rose to the highest levels of dignity and power. Whether they were Marshals of France, Prime Ministers of Spain, creators of victorious Russian armies, Austrian war lords, founders of the Indian Empire, leaders of European diplomacy acknowledged by the nations of the world, Ireland had a name of her own for themNa Geana Fiadhaine,  "The Wild Geese". The United States of America would be added to that list in time.

To Ireland, and those who look at history through her eyes, the story of the " The Wild geese" is a tragedy-stately and stirring, and noble if you will, in its grandiose setting and majestic movement; but the essence of that tragedy is that their accomplishments were not done for Ireland. The hope of the Irish people was that one day these heroic personalities would return and avenge her wrongs on her iniquitous oppressor Britain and that hope gave them the courage to stand and endure. An Irish poem in the eighteenth century is reflective of that hope:

                  " The Wild geese shall return, and we'll welcome them home

                     so active, so armed, so flighty,

                     a flock was ne'er known to this island to come

                     since the days of Prince Fionn the mighty.

                     They will waste and destroy,

                     Overturn and o'erthrow,

                     They'll accomplish whate'er may in man be!

                     Just heaven they will bring

                     Devastation and woe

                     On the hosts of the tyrannous Seaghan Buidhe."  

Ireland cried seeing her sons go forth from her year after year to serve as cannon fodder in the service of foreign countries. L'Abbe MacGeoghegan, a chaplain and historian of the Irish Brigade that served in France estimated that 450,000 Irishmen died for France between the years 1691 and 1745. Another half million shed their blood in the next half century. The misfortunes of Ireland, her inability to provide for young men at home, kept the ranks of foreign legions filled. It was the annual flight of the 'Wild Geese'. None was more reflective of this devastation then the American 'War Between the States'; where the Irish set about the task of killing friends, relatives and those who had been the best men at their weddings back in Ireland simply because of where the ship docked in the United States. However, the son's of the son's of Ireland would mature and rally to their new Motherland helping to build the world's only true superpower; and making sure in the process her protective mantle spread over the very land that provided her with the blood and courage to succeed. This is the story of the son's of the son's of Erin that answered the call of the United States in her most difficult time, the Cold War, World war III.

After the creation of the mightiest military machine ever forged on this planet the United States dismantled her military might with incredible vigor, utterly emasculating her armed forces after 1945. At the same time, the years following World War II had been a period of sparring , testing , posturing , and rearranging global balances. In that period the West had been found by its Communist rivals to be lacking in resolve. Though some backbone had been exhibited during the Berlin Crisis of 1949-50, and the Cuban Missile crisis of 1962, the Russians were bolstered in their determination to test the resolve of their rivals by the West's inability to prop up the weak Chiang Kai-shek regime in China.

The North Korean invasion of  South Korea in late June,1950, and the North Vietnamese intervention in South Vietnam on a massive scale in  the mid 1960's  were the ultimate test of the West by the Russians and their Communist allies.