Web site wins spat with Army

The Christmas greeting cards are beginning to trickle in, many of them containing a personal note – sometimes scrawled on the card, sometimes included as a typewritten insert – filling us in on the sender’s activities in the year since last we communicated.

Like you, I look forward to these annual updates, be they detailed narratives of the benefits of domesticated bliss down on the farm or highly suspect accounts of the good life that some renegade distant relative purports to be living in the fast lane out in Vegas.

Highly Trained Observer that I am, I have noticed a difference between these latter-day Christmas messages and those of former years, though. Today, a goodly number of my computer-savvy correspondents pointedly advise me – the ultimate computer-illiterate goober – that they have kept pace with the times by creating a Web site on the Internet. I may want to check it out, they suggest, as it might be just the ticket to smarten me up about such stuff.

Some of the Web sites are light and funny, some are terminal yawners, some are repositories of material such as family genealogy and the like. Others are strictly business, their creators on a mission to improve mankind, fat chance though there may be of that ever happening. One such site is www.militarycorruption.com which is periodically called to my attention by Maine native and former newsman Glenn MacDonald, a retired U.S. Army Reserve major who helped create the Arizona-based site five years ago and is its editor-in-chief. Militarycorruption.com advocates reformation of the military justice system and investigates military malfeasance.

MacDonald, an old acquaintance from those halcyon newspaper days of yore, rang me up earlier this week from Phoenix to extend season’s greetings and tip me off to his site’s latest accomplishment.

A combat correspondent in Vietnam and a reporter for the Kennebec Journal in Augusta some 30-plus years ago, MacDonald grew up in Jefferson and Whitefield. He settled in Arizona after a career in journalism that included work at United Press International, the New York Post and a number of radio stations.

His Web site has had its successes, he said. But none has been more satisfying than a recent case in which he helped an Army veteran from California reclaim a commemorative handgun given to him by the widow of the late Gen. Omar N. Bradley, America’s last five-star general, who died in 1981.

The .45-caliber handgun, the second of 500 forged by Colt in 2001 for a Virginia organization specializing in limited-edition firearms, features Bradley’s portrait engraved on one side and is decorated in 24-karat gold and nickel.

It was given to Charles Honeycutt, 68, Gen. Bradley’s former personal aide, by Bradley’s widow, Esther, who died in February 2004 after having willed most of her husband’s treasured belongings to the Omar N. Bradley Foundation. The foundation is managed by the U.S. Army Military History Institute at Carlisle Barracks, Pa.

A problem developed when the Army picked up the general’s belongings last year and also took the pistol, despite Honeycutt’s insistence that it belonged to him. “To have it taken from me was a heartbreaking situation,” Honeycutt said after the weapon was returned. “To receive something from her [Mrs. Bradley] as a gift was extremely special.”

Before Mrs. Bradley died, Honeycutt had registered the gun in his name, although the weapon remained on display in her California home. He said he tried numerous times to get the gun back, but was continually stiffed by Army officials.

That’s when he turned to MacDonald’s Web site for help, a maneuver akin to throwing red meat in front of a starving tiger. There ensued a war of written words between MacDonald and the Army, the upshot of which was that last month a Riverside, Calif., superior court judge ruled that the pistol belonged to Honeycutt and not the Army, which had returned the gun to the executor of Esther Bradley’s estate.

Honeycutt gives much of the credit for his victory to MacDonald’s Web site, although his attorney’s threat to sue likely helped his cause, as well. In any case, a Carlisle Barracks spokesman said the Army respects the court’s decision and will not contest it. Merry Christmas, Charlie Honeycutt.

Meanwhile, MacDonald and his Little Web Site That Could slogs on. “One of the most gratifying things to me as a journalist is to be able to change people’s lives for the better through the written word,” he said, listing a number of other projects on what appears to be a rather full plate.

Next year’s Christmas report from Phoenix should be a doozy.

Columnist Kent Ward’s e-mail address is olddawg@bangordailynews.net.