The men huddle in their camps on the

hillside.

They should be resting. They should be

snatching some well-earned restbite away

from the trenches. But instead, they

scan the far horizon, braced for an

attack that could come at any moment. It

begins as something small and barely

perceptible above the ridge line, moving

soundlessly in the blue late summer sky.

But as the minutes pass, that thing

begins to grow and take on form. The

worring of its engine becomes audible on

the light breeze that ripples among the

maple and beach trees. It's a biplane,

and it's coming their way. Their rifles

won't do a thing at this range. Standing

to take a shot will only give away their

position. Instead, the men can only

crouch low in their makeshift defenses

and pray the thing passes over them. A

faint whistling sound begins.

Something falling from on high,

accelerating down toward the earth. The

biplane wheels away, heading back where

it came from. And then an enormous

thudding boom.

An explosion jutdders the hillside.

Within seconds, the desperate call goes

up from the centuries.

It's gas. It's gas take cover. This

scene would have been familiar to many

Americans on the mechanized battlefields

of France and Belgium in those final

months of the First World War. But this

scene is different. We're not in France

or Belgium in 1918. We're not in Europe

at all. In fact, we're on Spruce Fork

Ridge in the mountains of Logan County,

West Virginia, and the year is 1921.

And this time, it's American pilots

dropping American ordinance on American

men. In the words of historian James

Green, something extraordinary happened

on Spruce Fork Ridge that day. American

citizens were subjected to aerial

bombardment on their own soil. This is

the story of the Battle of Blair

Mountain. The brief period in the summer

of 1921 when a labor movement turned

into an armed insurrection and combined

arms warfare raged on US soil.

It's almost unthinkable that a group of

striking miners could elicit such a

response. But when you look at the early

20th century history of West Virginia,

the actions of 1921 appear almost

inevitable. Coal mining truly

transformed the state of West Virginia.

In the 20 years following the Civil War,

coal production increased almost 10fold

in the state, reaching 4.8 million tons

by 1889. By 1917, mines were pumping out

almost 90 million tons a year. West

Virginia went from being a sleepy

backwater of the burgeoning union to the

powerhouse of the entire country. The

state provided the energy America so

desperately needed to compete socially,

economically, and militarily. And yet,

West Virginiaians remained poor. They

lived in poverty in communities owned by

the mining companies. Many were paid in

coal script, which is basically a

voucher that they could use to redeem

items from company-owned stores. Miners

were the backbone of the country and yet

they lived in a state of quai feudalism.

Their entire existence was controlled by

the mining companies who offered only

the minimum required for survival and at

the time they were putting their lives

on the line. No profession in the United

States had a higher death rate than a

West Virginia miner. A new century

brought with it new class consciousness.

The United Mine Workers of America Union

or Ammoir became increasingly popular.

By 1902, 5,000 West Virginia miners had

joined the AMWA and now had collective

bargaining power. Strikes weren't far

behind and brutal repression followed

shortly after. At Stanford, West

Virginia in 1903, 50 US marshals and 500

militia men raided a community of

striking miners. According to the

raiding party, the miners were supported

by a gang of outlaws who confronted the

marshals. The outlaws fired first,

resulting in the massacre of up to 11

strikers. An eyewitness disputed this,

stating that the raiders divided into

five parties, which marched to different

sides of the town and then all closed in

at the same time. The Irishborn Labour

leader Mary Harris Jones witnessed the

aftermath of the massacre. I took the

short trail up the hillside to Stanford

Mountain. I pushed open the door to a

miner's shack. On a mattress wet with

blood, lay a minor. His brains have been

blown out while he slept. His shack was

riddled with bullets. Mary is better

known to history as Mother Jones, and

she will play a key role in this story.

There was now a deadly precedent in West

Virginia. Strikes would not be

tolerated, and industrial action would

be met with bloody force. Around Paint

Creek and Cabin Creek in 1912 and 1913,

striking miners did battle with the mine

companies once again. This time there

was no armed militia involved and

instead the Baldwinfelts Detective

Agency was called in to bring the strike

to an end. Baldwin Felts didn't really

offer detection in the traditional

Sherlock Holmes sense of the word. They

were more like the Pinkertons, offering

security and muscle through their

violent, heavily armed agents. The

agency made a fortune protecting rail

freight companies from bandits. But this

kind of work had basically dried up by

1900. So they turned their skills to

something else. Strike breaking. At

least 50 miners of the UMWA were killed

by Baldwinfelt agents at Paint and Cabin

Creek and more than 30 were arrested.

The strike was broken and the miners

went back to work. In the aftermath of

the massacre, agency bosses William

Gibbony Baldwin and Thomas Lafayette

Felts became known as the two most

feared and hated men in the mountains.

The gathering storm of the First World

War seems to have calmed domestic

tensions somewhat, though the United

States remained outside the conflict

until 1917. An increasingly complex

political situation pushed things like

labor disputes way down the agenda. Once

the United States did actually join the

war, they enacted a process of

conscription and some 5 million men were

mobilized to fight in Europe and around

2 million made the journey across the

Atlantic. Many of those men came from

the coal fields of West Virginia, while

others remained behind to work the

mines. Those who'd stayed behind weren't

necessarily the lucky ones. Miners went

on working in miserable conditions and

went on dying. In fact, it's been

estimated that a West Virginia coal

miner was statistically speaking more

likely to lose his life in 1918 than an

American doughboy on the Western Front.

The miners that did go to fight in

France and lived to tell the tale

brought many things home with them. They

brought home wounds and psychological

trauma, but they also brought combat

skills and strategic experience. This

was going to come in very handy.

Mother Jones was not a young woman by

the beginning of the 1920s. She was

already 82 years old when in June of

1920 she gave a speech in a public

meeting in Williamson in West Virginia.

But as she stepped out onto the stage,

something was very clear. While her

youth may have faded, she still had fire

in her belly. She addressed the crowd.

Men were told, "Now let's clean up the

Kaiser in Germany and we will have

democracy." Well, they came home. They

didn't find any democracy, but an

increased autocracy at home. The

assembled miners hung on Mother Jones's

every word. Fired up by the elderly

labor organizers rhetoric, the crowd

grew increasingly boisterous as she

reached her conclusion. Now we are after

the robbers, the Kaisers at home. They

know their day is doomed. But they are

going to give us a fight. And if they

want to, we are going to give them a

fight. And we know how to raise hell as

well as they do. As Mother Jones

finished her speech, the crowd erupted

into applause. But it was more than just

words that fired up the crowd, it was

blood, too. Miners in Maitin in Mingo

County had been out on strike since

April. And so in May of 1920, the

Baldwin Felts agency were back at work.

Their detectives arrived in force to

evict striking miners and arrest their

leaders. They were met by Maitwin's

mayor, Cable Testament, and chief of

police, Sid Hatfield, in a scene

reminiscent of the gunfight at the OK

Corral just shy of 40 years previously.

A brief but deadly confrontation

unfolded outside Ed Chambers hardware

store in Maidman. Two unionized miners

were killed and Mayor Testman was badly

wounded. Seven Baldwin Feld's detectives

were also slain, including William

Felt's two brothers, Albert and Lee.

Tessman was rushed to hospital where he

died the next day. An explosion of

violence like this one with such

highprofile casualties feels like it

should be a conclusion of sorts, but it

wasn't. It was simply an escalation. By

July 1st of 1920, huge numbers of miners

had joined the strike, largely in Mingo

County to the south and in Canawa and

Boone counties to the north. The

authorities redoubled their efforts to

bring the striking miners under control.

And meanwhile, the miners were outraged

by the killing of the mayor and two of

their own and by the scores of arrests

in Mingo. They unionized and organized,

in, you guessed it, ever greater

numbers. The strike continued throughout

the next year, following a familiar

pattern. Detectives and police raided

mining communities and miners resisted.

Gunfire echoed around the coal fields of

West Virginia, but the miners remained

unbowed. In January of 1921, Sid

Hatfield went on trial for the murder of

Albert Felts. The case was a national

sensation. Before he was acquitted by

the jury, Hatfeld's magnetic persona

enraptured newspaper readers across the

country. They called him smiling Sid and

the general public began to warm to the

striker's cause. But Sid Hatfield had

another nickname, too. He was called two

gunid as he was not afraid to use

violence when he felt the situation

called for it. By the spring of 1921,

the striking miners were feeling the

strain. Gradually, their will began to

break and many returned to work. They

were offered redrawn contracts which

included the promise never to rejoin the

ammo. Those who remained on strike faced

the constant threat of arrest. Police

harassed striking communities and

hundreds were locked up in Mingo County.

As mines began to reopen, hardliners

began to realize that striking alone was

not going to be enough. They'd need to

do more. And so roving bands of Union

men worked to sabotage coal production

and fought guerilla actions against

Baldwin Felts and the police. It was

time for two gun Sid to show his rowdier

side. This landed Hatfield back in court

on accusations of sabotage and violence.

And so on August 1st, 1921, Sid Hatfield

and his old friend Ed Chambers strode

towards the McDow County Courthouse,

ready for another round of legal

proceedings.

They never made it. Before they even

reached the courthouse steps, a group of

Baldwinfelts agents opened fire. Sid

Hatfield was killed instantly in front

of his traumatized wife, Jesse Lee

Maynard. Maynard was Mayor Testman's

widow and had married Hatfield 11 days

after the fight at Mate One. She'd now

just lost two husbands in just over a

year. Ed Chambers was badly wounded by

the agents bullets. Before leaving, one

of the detectives calmly decided to

finish the job and shot Chambers in the

back of the head. The coal now erupted

into anger. In Canadaw and Boone

counties, miners began calling for an

armed response, rallying under Labour

leader Bill Blizzard that would march

south to Mingo and free their

incarcerated comrades. Mother Jones,

whose own fiery oratory had fueled the

claims of discontent, was alarmed. On

August the 7th, she pleaded for miners

to stand down, stating that they would

be marching into a trap. The strikers,

who had hither too been enraptured by

Jones, ignored her. Within weeks, 13,000

men had taken up arms in support of

Blizzard, and by August 24th, they were

on the march. The first days of the

march went well for the miners. At St.

Alburns and Canow County, marchers

hijacked a freight train. This

transformed the logistics of the

operation as miners from Canawa could

now link up with their comrades in Boone

County to the southwest. Together, they

then march on Mingo. But something stood

in their way. Between Boon and Mingo lay

Logan County, and the Logan County

Sheriff, Don Chaffin, was unfased by the

miner's rapid advance. Better known as

the boss or even the SAR of Logan

County, Chaffin hated the striking

miners, proclaiming, "No armed mob will

cross the Logan County line." In the

early 1920s, it wasn't unusual for men

in Chaffin's position to take on a few

extracurricular activities to line their

own pockets. But Chaffin was a master of

the dark, corrupt arts. He controlled

every aspect of public life in Logan and

knew the area like the back of his hand.

And if an armed insurrection was going

to sweep through his county, then it

wasn't going to happen on his watch.

What's more, he had serious financial

backing. Coal mine operators reportedly

paid Chaffin thousands of dollars to be

their key line of defense and to smash

the insurrection. This meant Chaffin had

the money to exercise his Second

Amendment rights. And by this, I don't

mean the right to bear arms. Literally,

everyone involved in this story, with

the possible exception of Pon Jones, was

already bearing arms. But instead, he

exercised his right to a wellorganized

militia. Chafflyn put together a private

army of 2,000 men, the largest militia

of its type the nation has ever seen,

before or since. He began reinforcing a

crackgy stretch of bridgeline outside

the town of Ethel in Logan on an area of

high ground known as Blair Mountain. Don

Chaffen almost needn't have bothered. By

August 26th, the vanguard of the

insurrection had penetrated into Logan

and were already exchanging fire with

some of Chaffin's men, but Uma officials

had heeded Mother Jones call for calm,

and they pleaded with the miners to give

up the fight and avoid the massive

bloodshed that would surely follow.

Initially, the miners agreed, but before

they retreated, a squad of state

policemen attempted to arrest the ring

leaders. Shots were fired, people died,

and the miners changed their mind. The

mood for peace had evaporated. By now,

news of the insurrection had traveled

all the way to the White House, and

President Warren Harding was disturbed.

He ordered General Billy Mitchell to use

his armed forces and take care of the

situation. But this deployment would

take some time. Meanwhile, on the slopes

and ridges of Blair Mountain, both sides

dug in. Even though their ranks were

bolstered by the state police and

Baldwin Felts agents, Chaffin's men were

outnumbered by up to five to one. But

the topography of the battlefield was on

Chaffin's side. The sheriff was well

prepared. He'd taken the higher ground,

overlooking the lower slopes of the

mountain, and he was in good position.

Both sides were wellarmed, as well as

rifles. They used machine guns and

gatling gun imp placements, raking the

hillside with bullets. Here and there,

it looked like the miners might succeed.

On August 31st, preacher and part-time

miner Reverend John Wilburn took a

patrol out onto the wooded slopes of

Blair Mountain. Reverend Wilburn had

declared it was time to lay down his

Bible and take up his rifle and led 75

men down to Logan County, including his

two sons. He had four of those men with

him that morning when he encountered a

detachment of Logan County deputies. The

resulting firefight claimed one minor, a

man named Eli Kemp, but it also left

three deputies dead, including the

former mine guard and anti-UN John Gore.

Gore was shot through the head. The

engagement was a small victory for the

miners. Later that same day, miners from

the center of the line launched an

assault on Chaffin's trenches, splitting

their forces into two thrusts. The

miners made a valiant charge up the

rugged slope towards Chaffin's position.

The defenders held firm and the miners

were driven back. On September 1st,

another minor raiding party laid siege

to a point in Chaffin's line known as

Kratock Fork. This time, the miners

carried with them a Gatling gun that

they'd looted from a coal company store

on their way down to Logan. Why a coal

company store needed the Gatling gun in

the first place has never been

confirmed. But for 3 hours, the miners

sprayed Kredock Fort with rounds from

the Gatling gun, and Chaffin's defenders

returned fire with their own machine gun

until the imp placement jammed. This

could have been it. The breakthrough

that the miners had hoped for, but their

surge through the line was halted by

another machine gun nest high on the

ridge, and once again, the troops fell

back. The words of minor Ira Wilson give

us an idea of the chaos on Blair

Mountain. Machine guns cracked up there,

so you would think the whole place was

coming down on you. But despite the

repeated incursions, both lines held

firm. The scene gradually came to mirror

the situation on the Western Front with

two sides eyeing each other uneasily

across no man's land. Something would

need to break the deadlock. And on

September 2nd, 1921, that something

came.

It was an aircraft. That morning,

General Mitchell ordered his AirOD DH4

and Martin MB1 planes into the air.

While two planes were lost on route to

the base at Canawa City, 15 aircraft

reached the battlefield. This could have

been a bloodbath. Even in 1921, an air

force of this size was capable of

pummeling the miners positions and

killing them in their scores. However,

the commanders showed some restraint.

Mitchell's fellow general, Harry

Bandholtz, ensured that guns and bombs

were stripped from the aircraft before

they reached Blair Mountain and ordered

the crews, "You will under no

circumstances drop any bombs or fire any

machine guns or do anything to

unnecessarily excite the invaders."

Instead, the squadrons ran a

reconnaissance mission, mapping the

miners lines and gathering valuable

intelligence. Though they didn't engage,

the US Airfleet did take casualties.

When the planes were ordered back to

their base at Canawa, one of the bombers

encountered heavy weather near the city

of Summersville. The pilot, one

Lieutenant Harry L. Spec, battled to

keep his plane in the air, but as

visibility failed, Spec lost control and

slammed into thick forest in the hills

of West Virginia. Spec and four of his

crew mates died in the accident. One

man, Corporal Alexander Hazelton, was

badly injured, but survived two days on

the hillside before he was rescued. This

was the first time American air power

had been used against her own people.

But September 2nd was still young, and

there was to be another first that day.

While Michelin Bandholds had favored

restraint over violence, Don Chaffin was

in no such mood. With his financial

backing from the mining companies, he'd

procured three private planes for

himself. And working with fresh

intelligence, he packed his planes full

of pipe bombs and poison gas and sent

them out over the lines. A series of

explosions then ripped through the Logan

County. As the planes dropped their

payloads on the miners camps in the

hills around the towns of Jeffrey,

Sharples, and Blair, the miners came

under an unprecedented aerial

bombardment. The miners knew what they

were doing. They'd live tough lives

underground and knew a thing or two

about earthworks. They also knew their

way around a firearm. This would have

made them tough opponents all by itself.

But there was something else, too. Many

of these men had been fighting in Europe

only 3 years before. They'd experienced

the heat of battle at places like Bellow

Wood, St. Mikil, and the Muzagon. They

understood trench warfare, and they knew

how to fight, but they also knew about

things like combined armed tactics and

how effective this kind of strategy

could be. So when the planes came

sailing out of the sky to the southwest,

they knew they were in trouble. While

there were no reported casualties from

the bombs, the raids did manage to send

a psychological shock wave through the

men. But their resolve held firm.

Chaffen had just three planes.

Destroying the 13,000 strong force of

miners would be a difficult task. The

miners would have known they still had a

chance. They could still break through

Taffen's line, and they could still

march onto Mingo and release their

imprisoned comrades. But far worse than

the bombs was the gas. By most accounts,

Chaffin was not able to procure lethal

gas, although it seems likely he would

have if he could. Instead, he was

dropping tear gas from his planes, which

threatened to rip through the lines and

make the trenches indefensible. The

veterans amongst the miners would have

been no strangers to gas. Some 80,000

German mustard gas shells fell on Allied

forces during the Le offensive in 1918,

and chemical weapons were used

repeatedly during the Muzagon offensive

that autumn. Many soldiers would have

had their psychological traumas

triggered by the gas attacks from

Chaffim. They would have been left

severely shaken and in little condition

to fight. By the evening of September

2nd, morale was much higher on Chaffen's

side. While the miners had weathered the

aerial storm, they would have been

wondering just how much longer they

could hold out. The following day, they

suffered a final fatal setback.

President Harding wasn't content simply

to send in the air fleet. Victory on

Blair Mountain required boots on the

ground. And so, on September 3rd,

thousands of federal troops poured onto

the mountain. Federal forces posed a

real conundrum for the miners. Shooting

at the detectives who had murdered Sid

Hatfield was no problem for them.

Neither was killing the state police and

the strike breakers that they deemed to

be the enemies of their cause. But

federal troops, actual American

soldiers, for many of the miners who'd

worn that same uniform just 3 years

previously, this was too much. There was

also, of course, the issue of

repercussions. Battling detectives and a

local militia was one thing, but firing

at federal troops would carry a far

stiffer penalty. Was it really worth

facing life in prison or even the

hangman's robe? Most decided it was not.

And with that, it was all over. The

miners broke and began pouring back to

the northeast, back to their homes and

families. Before they left, many stashed

their weapons in caches around the

nearby hills. The weapons caches have

become somewhat of a national TV show

for archaeologists and historians ever

since. As the battle lines fell apart,

both sides counted their debt. 30 of

Chaffen's men had been killed across the

minor series of offensives. As the

federal troops did not take any fire,

they suffered no casualties, barring the

four men killed when Speck's plane came

down outside Somerville. Of the miners

themselves, it's difficult to know how

many were killed. Official estimates say

anywhere from 50 to 100 of the strikers

lost their lives. Most of the 13,000

escaped, either fleeing following the

deployment of the US Army or never

making it to the fight at all. Around

1,000 were captured. Of these, 985 stood

trial for murder and treason. Crucially,

this was treason against the state of

West Virginia, not the United States of

America, because no shots had been fired

on federal troops. By this point,

however, the sorry scenes of Blair

Mountain had become a national

embarrassment. The heavy-handed tactics

of the strike breakers were laid bare

when an unexloded bomb from one of

Chaffin's aircraft was produced as

evidence. Most of the miners were

acquitted. Those who did serve time were

released within 4 years. Reverend Wilbur

and his son were both sent down for the

killing of John Gore, but were pardoned

after 3 years. For decades after the

clash, Blair Mountain became a forgotten

chapter of US history. The miners went

back to work. Union membership went into

freefall and most people tried to forget

about the whole incident. But in recent

years, enthusiasm for this bizarre

sequence of events has reemerged. The

battle has become the stuff of poems and

ballads and has permeated into the

folkloric bedrock of this corner of West

Virginia. For the rest of the nation and

indeed the world, the Battle of Blair

Mountain is remembered for one reason in

particular. It's the only time in

history that American planes have bombed

their own soil and their own people.

At least

for now.