
The Fighting Bunch
The Battle of Athens and How World War II Veterans Won the Only Successful Armed Rebellion Since the Revolution
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Narrated by:
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David de Vries
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By:
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Chris DeRose
The incredible, untold story of the WWII vets who overthrew their corrupt hometown government - the only successful armed rebellion on US soil since the War of Independence.
Corrupt politician Paul Cantrell was in complete control of McMinn County, Tennessee, his whims enforced by the violent Sheriff Pat Mansfield and his deputies. On Election Day, Cantrell and the sheriff seized the ballot boxes and brought them to the jail "to be counted" in secret. Soldiers came home from World War II to find their community in the grips of this corrupt political machine. These veteran soldiers, who became known as "The Fighting Bunch", armed themselves and lay siege to the jail as the National Guard closed in. After six hours of gunfire and dynamite blasts, Boss Cantrell and Sheriff Mansfield fled the state. The deputies surrendered. The ballot boxes were opened and counted. The GI slate was elected, and the story buried.
This episode in US history has never been more relevant but has never been fully told. After years of research, including exclusive interviews with the remaining witnesses, archival radio broadcast and interview tapes, scrapbooks, letters, and diaries, author Chris DeRose has reconstructed one of the seminal - yet untold - events in American election history.
©2020 Chris DeRose (P)2020 TantorListeners also enjoyed...




















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With a political machine that would make Robert Penn Warren drool, Tennessee spent the depression and WWII years in the shadow of Memphian E.H. Crump. Evidence of Crump’s hand in East Tennessee, and especially McMinn County, was Paul Cantrell. During those years, Tennessee was a predominately Democratic state. However, much of East Tennessee was solidly Republican. Athens, halfway between Knoxville and Chattanooga, serves as the county seat for McMinn County, which was and remains to this day, one of Tennessee’s most heavily Republican counties.
DeRose begins quite simply by giving us a list of players. Tracing their days as children and teenagers, he provides insight into how they became the men whose lives would converge on August 1, 1946. With this, we learn they were not strangers that history drew together in place and time to create a life-changing event. Most knew or were acquainted with one another. Some had known each other their entire lives. DeRose’s telling of the months leading up to the election of 1946 pulls the reader back like the hammer of a pistol.
DeRose bookends his telling of the Battle of Athens between two poignant quotes.
“Yes, we broke the law. And so did George Washington.” – Felix Harrod
Growing in Athens, I knew Mr. Harrod, one of the veterans returning to Athens after WWII, as a very humble and mild-mannered man who I saw in church or around town with never than anything less than a smile and kind word to offer. I held him akin to Mr. Rogers, who premiered when I was six.
“The real story of the Battle of Athens is about reconciliation, thankfully.” – Paul Willson
The grandson of Paul Cantrell, Paul Willson, is also my distant cousin as well as someone who is and has been so incredibly supportive of so many over the years.
Chris DeRose pulls no punches in his telling of the Battle of Athens. For me, it erased the often-heard mantra that these were just good old boys whose argument got out of hand. Thousands of rounds fired, a few sticks of dynamite tossed, and a mason jar or two of moonshine consumed. Still, no one was killed, and in the end, this was just another story of McMinn County boys being McMinn County boys. You could expect no less from men whose grandfathers had declared war on Spain a week before the United States of America instigated the Spanish American War. Erasing this dismissive pasha version of history, DeRose makes room for the most prominent outcome of the Battle of Athens. On August 2, 1946, these men and their families who had been opponents and enemies for so long began working together on a new project. They constructed a community and way of life we proudly call home.
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