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 AMERICAN SONS
The Untold Story of the Falcon and the
Snowman
(40th Anniversary Edition)

Christopher Boyce
Cait Boyce
Vince Font
 Praise for American Sons: The Untold Story of the Falcon
and the Snowman

“A beautifully written thriller, an endearing love story, a

compelling narrative of survival and redemption, and a horrific
indictment of a prison system that dispatched a model prisoner at
the prime of his life to a decade of haunting solitary confinement
mostly because he had embarrassed the system, first by escaping
from a maximum-security federal penitentiary, then, as an eloquent
writer, publishing articles exposing to the outside world the often
brutal and dehumanizing conditions of prison life. His descriptions of
the brutality, knifings, murders, and beatings in prison will make you
cry out for reform. The book is full of new details about his
adventures and misadventures, probing personal revelations, and
twists and turns that keep you flipping pages as fast as you can.” –
Robert Lindsey, author of The Falcon and the Snowman and The
Flight of the Falcon

“Espionage, drug deals, the KGB, the CIA, a prison break, an

international manhunt, survival in the wilderness, a string of bank
robberies, and a gut-wrenching love story—American Sons has
everything. An incredible true story, grippingly told.” –Pablo F.
Fenjves, best-selling author and screenwriter

“An engrossing true account that challenges the reader to reflect

on multiple themes: from the questions, echoing in current events
with the Edward Snowden and Bradley Manning cases, about what is
patriotism in a time when the government and our institutions
threaten our civil liberties; to what constitutes justice within our
badly flawed penal system; to the personal and civic values such as
loyalty and perseverance that are revealed in this tale of long
struggle. It’s a good read with a multi-threaded story that provides
food for thought and discussion.” –Chris Bessler, Sandpoint Magazine

“I couldn’t put this book down. What is it really like? American

Sons answers that question in this detailed and often jaw-dropping
tale of survival. I’ve always been curious about what happened to
Christopher Boyce and Andrew Daulton Lee, the two subjects of The
Falcon and the Snowman. American Sons chronicles the gripping,
real-life story of true infamy and true love.” –Kathy Griffin

“Christopher Boyce paid an extremely high price for revealing the

extent of U.S. intelligence operations against Australia. This book
reveals some of the most dramatic events of his extraordinary life,
but in essence it is a story of redemption. A story not of a life ruined,
but of a life saved.” –Mark Davis, SBS Dateline

“A compelling, immersive memoir of crime, punishment, and the

redemptive qualities of love and atonement.” –Kirkus Reviews
 The people, places, and events described in this book are real.
However, in some cases the names and identifying characteristics of
certain individuals have been changed to protect their privacy.

Copyright ©2013, ©2014, ©2017, ©2018 Christopher Boyce,

Cait Boyce, and Vince Font

First published in 2013 by Vince Font LLC as The Falcon and the
Snowman: American Sons

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced,

stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any
means without prior written permission from the authors, except for
the use of brief quotations in a book review.

Published by Glass Spider Publishing

www.glassspiderpublishing.com

All photographs and images are the property of Christopher

Boyce and Cait Boyce, except where noted. All other photographs
used are courtesy the U.S. Department of Justice.

Christopher Boyce’s articles for the Minneapolis Star Tribune are

reprinted with permission.

Cover design by Chelsea Maki

www.chelseamakicreative.com

Edited by Nancy LaFever and Vince Font

Visit www.thefalconandthesnowman.com
Table of Contents
Dedications
Foreword
Preface
Introduction
1: THE BODY
2: THE GREAT ESCAPE
3: DIAL ‘P’ FOR PANIC (THE BODY, PART 2)
4: LETTER HOME
5: THE FLIGHT OF THE FALCON
6: SNOWMAN MELT
7: GOING SOUTH
8: YOU WILL MEET A TALL DARK STRANGER
9: FALCON CAGED
10: THE INVISIBLE MAN
11: TRIANGLE
12: THE ROAD TO HELL
13: DESCENT
14: MESSAGE IN A BOTTLE
15: IN UTERO
16: THE BODY, PART 3
17: TESTIMONY
18: LA CAGE AUX FALCON
19: MISSIVES FROM THE CONCRETE WOMB
20: MATCH POINT
21: THE UGLIEST WORD IN THE WORLD
22: MINNESOTA NICE
23: WHERE THE RIVER MEETS THE SEA
24: EXPECTING TO FLY
25: THE FINAL MILE
26: THE FALCON AND THE BRIDE
27: THE HARBINGER OF WINTER
28: ABSOLUTION
29: TAMPING THE DIRT
Epilogue
Afterword
Postscript
About the Authors
About the Publisher
Photo Gallery
Additional Reading and Video
 Dedications
I dedicate all that is mine in this book to my wife, Cait, who
rescued me with her love and legal wizardry. (Christopher Boyce)

For my family, always. For my brother, TJ, who continues to push

me in the right direction. And for Chris, who has in the past fifteen
years worked through incarceration, solitary confinement, PTSD, and
a familial disapproval rating for writing this book. He’s a kind and
decent person who has worked hard to be able to live this new life,
and he deserves every bit of credit for sticking with it. And finally, to
Daulton Lee. We’ve been apart as long as we were together, and
still, I miss you. More than eighteen years have passed since we’ve
been face to face, and not a day goes by that I don’t wonder and
worry about your happiness. I want so much to be able to reach out
to you, to somehow smooth the road between you and Chris, you
and me, you and the world. You will be in my heart always. (Cait
Boyce)

To my wife, Jane, for believing in me when I didn’t believe in

myself, and for busting my balls to start writing again. To Bryan
Denson, for the friendship and unfailing support. To Robert Lindsey,
whose work inspired a fascination that stays with me to this day.
And to Chris and Cait, two of the strongest and most fiercely loyal
people I’ve ever known. Thank you for taking me along for the ride.
And thank you for the trust; it means everything. (Vince Font)
 Foreword
By Bryan Denson

I first met Christopher Boyce in early 2014, about six months

after Edward Snowden’s name made headlines across the globe.
Snowden, you’ll remember, is the former NSA contractor who
disclosed that U.S. spy agencies were quietly collecting millions of
ordinary Americans’ phone records, with permission from a top-
secret court just down the street from the White House.
There were parallels between Snowden and Chris. Both had
despaired over their nation’s covert armies of eavesdroppers. Both
held security clearances that gave them access to America’s
chambers of secrets. And both betrayed their homelands. Chris
smuggled classified files about U.S. spy satellites directly to the
Soviet KGB and went to prison for espionage. Snowden handed over
troves of highly classified files to journalists and fled to Hong Kong
and then Russia, which granted him asylum.
I talked my editor at The Oregonian into letting me drive over the
Cascades to interview Chris for the newspaper, which published my
weekly national security column “Spy Games Update.” I wanted
insights into what mechanism inside Chris—and Snowden, and
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, and former Army intelligence
analyst Chelsea Manning—drove them to reveal America’s deepest
secrets. I was curious about what Chris thought of Snowden, who
seemed to enjoy twisting the nipples of the U.S. security apparatus
with each of the revelations he doled out to journalists around the
world.
Chris and his wife Cait had agreed to be interviewed at their home
in the sagebrush flats of central Oregon. I wasn’t entirely certain
what kind of reception I would get. I knew that Cait was fiercely
protective of Chris, and that he had spent decades behind bars,
much of that time in solitary, a form of confinement that frequently
turns sane humans insane. So I wondered, as I closed in on the
Boyce home, just how much of Christopher John Boyce was left.
Decades had passed since the FBI codenamed Chris “Falcon,” a
sobriquet that has shadowed him since his life and crimes were
immortalized in The Falcon and the Snowman—the title of a best-
selling book and a hit movie. I guess a part of me was expecting to
shake hands with an aging Timothy Hutton, the actor who played
him in the film. But this Chris seemed a little stiff. He wore nice
slacks and a spy-like turtleneck into our first interview session, but
he looked weary. Cait explained that they had spent days
entertaining an Australian TV crew and had been fielding calls for
months, since the first of the Snowden revelations. My take on Chris
was that he was all talked out. But when I brought up Snowden, he
perked up. He described Snowden as a hero who went to bat for the
American people to protect their civil liberties. Chris said this with a
bit of longing, as if he wished he had done the same.
What he had done, back in the 1970s, was go to work inside the
bug-proof vault of a California defense contractor called TRW. His
security clearance gave him access to CIA cables about U.S. spy
satellites and a secret effort by America to depose Australia’s prime
minister. Chris had been a critic of the U.S. government since the
Vietnam War, outraged by its spying and dirty tricks. He thought the
public had a right to know how its tax dollars were being spent—or
misspent, in his view. He briefly considered going to the press with
his pilfered files. But instead, he talked his childhood best friend
Andrew Daulton Lee into couriering them to Mexico City and selling
them to America’s biggest enemy, the Soviet KGB.
“I was an angry young man,” he told me. His gaze narrowed with
a combination of sadness and the keen introspection that comes
with age. “And it was a one-man war, without making much sense,
against the intelligence community.”
I eventually got around to asking Chris and Cait how they met,
and the question lit them up. The story they told, which by then had
already been chronicled in the first edition of this book, sounded like
a Hollywood movie script. I won’t give it away here. But theirs is a
surprising tale of two headstrong humans—smart and stubborn,
resilient and relentless—who teamed up on a mission to free Chris
from prison. Separated by miles of coiled razor wire and government
red tape, they alternately confronted an intractable federal parole
system, the pathos of solitary confinement, and a deadly and
determined form of cancer that nearly ended their dreams. Chris and
Cait became co-conspirators in the ultimate long-distance romance.
We were deep into the first day of interviews when Chris invited
me to meet his falcon, Higher Power. We were outside in the cold,
the raptor clutching his heavy falconer’s glove, when the daylight
gave me a good look at Chris. He was gray-haired and handsome,
and I was struck by how much he suddenly reminded me of the
author Malcolm Braly. Malcolm had given his youth to reform school
and terms at San Quentin and two other prisons. He was deep into
middle age when he came to teach writing at the University of
Maryland Baltimore County, where I was a student. By then, he was
a best-selling author—someone you’d expect to coast a little in late
middle age. But Malcolm’s freedom came with a boundless sense of
wonderment. His mirth often put those of us fresh out of our teens
to shame. And now, standing there in the snowy yard, focused on
his falcon and the freshly fallen snow, Chris was as alive and
connected to the world as Malcolm or any other man I’d ever met.
I shot photos of Chris and his bird. But the image I wanted, the
one I had conceptualized on the drive over the mountains, involved
taking a small social risk. Now I seized the moment, reaching down
with bare hands to scoop snow off the Boyces’ yard. I began to form
a large snowball and asked Chris if he could scare up a tiny carrot.
He looked at me quizzically, his brow scrunching tightly as he fought
back a smile, and vanished into the house with a new lift in his step.
When he reappeared with the carrot, I stuck it into the snowball,
which served as the head of a miniature snowman with two black
pebbles for eyes. Chris busted up laughing at my silly idea.
“You’re crazy,” he kept saying. But he sat down with Higher Power,
the snowman next to them on a table, and I lifted my camera.
Click.
The Falcons and the Snowman.
 The year 2017 marks the fortieth anniversary of Chris’s arrest,
followed by his conviction and a sentence that was supposed to keep
him imprisoned for a minimum of forty years, and quite possibly the
rest of his life. That part of Chris’s human education is part of history
and the public lore. But the climax of Chris’s human drama would
not be chronicled until 2014, in the first edition of this book, which
the Boyces co-authored with my talented friend Vince Font. Now the
story has been updated with expanded content, including many of
the articles Chris wrote for the Minneapolis Star Tribune during his
time at Oak Park Heights prison in the late ’80s and ’90s. It’s a
painfully revealing story of crime and punishment, perseverance, and
redemption.
But mostly, it’s a love story.

–Bryan Denson, author of The Spy’s Son

 Preface
By Cait Boyce

It’s a scary thing, writing a book. Almost four years ago, after a
lot of hard work and mental catharsis, Chris, Vince, and I decided
the time was right to release our project, American Sons: The Untold
Story of the Falcon and the Snowman, and take a chance on public
opinion. We knew we’d be fine in Australia, but none of us were
prepared for how we would fare with an American reading audience.
Would people hate us? Would they understand that sometimes, the
folly of youth is lost in the message? We had no way to prepare for
what would happen next.
As synchronicity often happens in life, just as we were preparing
to hit the “publish” button, a young man named Edward Snowden, a
computer professional contracted to the NSA, was trapped in a hotel
room in Hong Kong waiting for asylum. Snowden left his job at an
NSA facility in Hawaii, flew to Hong Kong, and in early June 2013
revealed thousands of classified NSA documents to journalists Glenn
Greenwald, Laura Poitras, and Ewen MacAskill. The proverbial shit
had hit the fan. Stories based on the material appeared in The
Guardian, The Washington Post, and later other publications
including The New York Times and Der Spiegel.
It didn’t take the U.S. government long to figure out that whatever
Snowden had, it was information that could be potentially
detrimental to the CIA and the NSA, especially on top of the
American public being told that the NSA was spying on their cell
phone transmissions.
On June 21, 2013, the U.S. Department of Justice charged
Snowden with two counts of violating the Espionage Act of 1917 and
theft of government property. The Espionage Act essentially made it
a crime for any person to convey information intended to interfere
with the U.S. armed forces’ prosecution of the war effort or to
promote the success of the country’s enemies. Anyone found guilty
of such acts would be subject to a fine of ten thousand dollars and a
prison sentence of twenty years. Oddly enough, the act was most
often used against socialists, pacifists, and other anti-war activists
during World War I. J. Edgar Hoover liberally employed the
Espionage and Sedition acts to persecute left-wing political figures
on behalf of then-President Richard M. Nixon. Within two days,
Snowden flew into Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport seeking asylum
from the enemy—in this case, the CIA and the United States.
The following month brought the court-martial of Chelsea Manning
(née Bradley Edward Manning), a United States Army soldier so
outraged over the war in Iraq that she downloaded and disclosed to
WikiLeaks nearly three-quarters of a million classified or sensitive
military and diplomatic documents. The Manning charges included
violations of Articles 92 and 134 of the Uniform Code of Military
Justice (UCMJ) and of the Espionage Act. Manning was convicted on
July 30, 2013, on seventeen of the twenty-two charges in their
entirety, including five counts of espionage and theft, and an
amended version of four other charges; she was acquitted of aiding
the enemy.
So here it was again: espionage. I knew the Espionage Act of
1917 and the United States Codes regarding espionage better than
any other book in my library. Snowden, Manning, Boyce—each had
violated the Espionage Act, but all had done so with a sense of
ethical involvement.
Snowden: “I understand that I will be made to suffer for my
actions,” but “I will be satisfied if the federation of secret law,
unequal pardon, and irresistible executive powers that rule the world
that I love are revealed even for an instant.”
Manning: “Once you realize that the coordinates represent a real
place where people live, that the dates happened in our recent
history, that the numbers are actually human lives—with all the love,
hope, dreams, hatred, fear, and nightmares that come with them—
then it’s difficult to ever forget how important these documents are.”
Boyce: “I know a thing or two about predatory behavior, and what
once was a legitimate intelligence agency is now being used on
weaker governments.”
 Reading those words, I am reminded of a quote spoken by Atticus
Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird: “The one thing that doesn’t abide by
majority rule is a person’s conscience.”
Not long after the Snowden bombshell, the phones started to ring
off the hook at Casa Boyce. For the news services nationwide, who
could possibly shed some light on the Snowden and Manning fiascos
better than the spy who had fled over a prison fence in the dead of
night to escape serving time for espionage? They called on
Christopher Boyce, a man who had ideals and opinions—none of
which the American media was truly prepared to hear. Chris and I
were featured on CNN, SBS Dateline, BBC World Service radio, and
Russian television media, among others. We refused interviews with
the likes of Mike Huckabee and Geraldo Rivera, but we got the
message across: We felt Snowden and Manning had done the right
thing for the people of this country.
Four years have passed since we published American Sons.
Snowden is still in Russia and in the news almost daily. Chelsea
Manning had her sentence commuted by President Barack Obama
and was released on May 17, 2017. And in many ways, our own lives
have changed forever.
American Sons brought us into contact with people we would
never have connected with had it not been for the book. One of
those people was David Lee, Daulton’s younger brother, who wrote
me after a thirty-year absence. It wasn’t long before the three of us
were friends again. David and Chris now have their own business
together.
Comedienne Kathy Griffin posted a comment on Twitter back in
2013 regarding Edward Snowden: “This guy kind of reminds me of
Christopher Boyce. Remember?” We responded and started a
personal dialogue, which eventually led to telephone conversations,
lots of laughs, and Kathy naming American Sons one of her top
three favorite reads of 2016.
The strangers who started out as fans and have become our
friends are vast. Randy and Rebecca Rema stand out in my mind.
Randy had sent me an email years before we even wrote the book.
He and his wife, the incredible “Beckster,” have become our dear
friends. We celebrate our birthdays, our hits and misses, and our ups
and downs. From fans to friends, they were the first onboard guests
when I bought my boat, and they have meant the world to us with
their friendship and their humor.
Through Facebook, I was contacted by the daughter of Robert
Lindsey, the man who had coined the phrase “The Falcon and the
Snowman” and authored two books—The Falcon and the Snowman
and The Flight of the Falcon—about Chris. After all these years, for
Chris and Bob to finally be able to speak to each other without it
being in a prison visiting room made for a few tearful moments. Bob,
to his literary credit, not only read American Sons, but he also wrote
a glowing review.
I was deeply humbled by this, as I have been by the many
positive reviews the book has received. The acceptance, the love,
the humanity, and above all the kindness with which people write
these reviews, makes my heart full. That’s not to say it’s all been
wine and roses. We’ve had our fair share of negative comments,
starting with the people who write things like “they both should have
been put to death.” While it’s in my nature to try to explain to people
that espionage is not actually a death penalty offense, all these
years after the fact, I truly doubt I ever changed anyone’s mind.
Since the book’s first edition release, I have been asked many,
many questions. Two that seem to spring up most frequently are: 1)
Why didn’t you talk about the bank robberies; and 2) Whatever
happened to Daulton Lee? Since these questions seem to weigh
heavily on a lot of people, I’d like to take this opportunity to answer
them to the best of my ability.
So much has been made of the bank robberies that I’m at a loss
where to begin. In his book The Flight of the Falcon, Robert Lindsey
did an admirable job covering the bank robberies, and the last thing
we wanted to do in American Sons was to retread ground that had
already been covered.
The other reason we didn’t write about the bank robberies was
out of respect for the bank managers and tellers involved.
Sometimes, it’s best to allow the past to stay in the past. That said,
and despite the seriousness of the crimes, most people would be
shocked at the number of funny stories having to do with the bank
robberies, not the least of which were the comments by most of the
bank tellers when I contacted them while writing Chris’s parole brief.
“He was so funny” seemed to lead the remarks, followed closely by
“I was never afraid.” For people who know Chris, they can tell you
he has a disarming way of convincing you to do things. I know this
because, frankly, I never intended to get married!
Questions about Daulton Lee are always the most difficult to
answer. After reading American Sons, David Lee told me he thought
no one had ever been kinder to his brother. I’m not sure how kind I
was, but I can say I went out of my way not to rock the boat. That
said, I’d like to speak honestly about Daulton before one more
person asks me whether we all sit down to dinner together and talk
over old times.
For the record, Chris has not spoken to nor seen Daulton since
January 20, 1980, the evening before the prison escape. I have not
spoken to Daulton since the spring of 1999.
This was difficult for Chris. In the face of negative comments
about Daulton, Chris is the one who refuses to harbor resentment.
“He was my childhood friend, I always loved the guy,” is how Chris
unfailingly responds when asked about his old friend and erstwhile
partner in crime. Often, Chris relates some of the funniest Daulton
stories, and when he does, it’s almost wistful, as if the laughter of
those recalled moments could hold back a tear for a lost friendship.
This never was the case with Daulton. I spent nearly twenty years
with Daulton in prison visitation rooms, on the phone, in letters, and
finally, in person. Only once did he ever refer to Chris by name, and
never did he recall the early days before espionage and prison. Yet I
have photos of the two of them as boys, looking happy and silly—
camping, flying falcons, and generally just being boys.
I heard a lot of stories along the way from people who
encountered Daulton following his release. Some were good stories
and some were not. But I reached a point in my life and in my
relationship with him that stopped me from wanting to hear anything
further. I know he’s in ill health. I know he’s angry that Chris and I
wrote a book. I know he still hates Chris. And I know that no matter
what, I will always wish Daulton well in this life. I wish him
happiness and someone to care for and love him. I will wish that
until my dying day because to me, the word “friend” is not a passing
phase but a commitment so deep that no amount of anger could
take it away.
This bittersweet ending may not be what readers want to hear. In
a perfect world, Chris and Daulton would have mended fences long
ago. Sadly, this is not a perfect world—it’s also not the world we are
so often led to believe exists in movies. The one thing that seems to
get lost on people when they watch The Falcon and the Snowman is
the simple fact that Daulton is not Sean Penn, and Chris is not
Timothy Hutton. When I read some of the comments from readers, I
can see there is sometimes a disconnect between real life and
Hollywood. I think this is normal. Honestly, I still think of Robert
Redford as the Sundance Kid! It’s normal for us to associate a
character with the only face we know—that of Hollywood’s creation.
Be that as it may, both Chris and Daulton are genuine, card-
carrying, flesh-and-bone human beings. They aren’t just characters
in a movie. And being that real-life person comes with all the anxiety
and fear of being released from prison. Your youth is gone, your job
skills are nonexistent, and you’re a convicted felon. Sean Penn was
remarkably kind to provide employment for Daulton upon his
release. It afforded him a soft surface on which to land after years of
concrete and raw edges. Chris was equally lucky with my friend
Patrick Miller. A quiet place to sit and look out over the ocean
without fear is a valuable and infrequent commodity for prisoners
being released in today’s society. Having this shared history, as real
men in a sometimes cruel society, makes it all the more sad that
Chris and Daulton have no future as friends.
But life goes on, and the Boyce family continues to move forward.
Much to our dismay, the American public elected a man who is not
fit to be president, and Chris and I, both being political animals, try
to find ways to deal with this dilemma daily. Chris and David recently
purchased acreage, where they will continue to work together. In
addition to forming a new nonprofit for the dignity, respect, and
protection of the LGBTQQ community, I am working on another
book, which I hope to finish before the end of 2017. As for Chris,
he’s lived enough of the “Falcon and the Snowman” saga and
remains as elusive now as he ever was back in the 1980s. He does
no further interviews and prefers to spend his time quietly at home
with all the dogs and out in the field with his falcons.
American Sons was and continues to be a success. While I am
eternally grateful for that success as an author, I am more hopeful
that the message people will take away from this book is one of
perseverance and determination.
 Introduction
By Christopher Boyce

I am an old man now, far older than my sixty years. A quarter

century in federal prison will have that effect on you. I was
introduced the other day to another fly fisherman, and I heard his
wife whisper in the background, “That old man can’t be the Falcon.”
In truth, I can hardly believe it myself.
When I look in the mirror these days, a young voice in my head
asks, What happened? This book is an attempt to answer that
question. It is for me also a catharsis. I have carried the weight of
this thing upon my shoulders since I was a young man. It has, at
times, ground me down into the dust, and I cannot do it anymore. I
must be done with it.
An introduction is a beginning. Let me try to begin there. When I
was a young boy, my father and I would read his history books. He
was an important part of the intelligence state in its crude infancy
and a lover of history. My father admired the audacious and I
admired my father. I read from his books that the ancient Gaels
judged a man by the power of his enemies.
When I was off doing boy things, running in the fields with my
hawks or fishing in the tide pools, I would dream of these judgments
of the ancient Gaels. One day, I told myself, I too would have
powerful enemies. I believed that a man’s life must be a quest worth
living, but these sentiments would one day turn my life into a living
hell. Still, it is my life, the only life I have ever known, and though I
would now change some of it, I would not change all of it.
When I was fifteen, my father took me to the Custer Battlefield
National Monument on the Little Bighorn. I imagined George
Armstrong Custer pitching his three hundred cavalrymen into four
thousand Sioux warriors and being annihilated. I stood on the
ground where he fell. I breathed it all in, the dust, the despair and
death, the whole gruesome fight.
 I must confess that I walked off that battlefield not thinking
thoughts generally associated with baby boomers. I was an incurable
quester. I was Don Quixote looking for a windmill. And not exactly a
prime candidate to work for a National Security Agency
subcontractor. In fact, I was their worst nightmare—a longhair with
top-secret clearance based on a joke of a background security
investigation. This blew my mind. And one day, I meant it to blow
theirs.
My enemy, I decided, was the United States intelligence complex.
I asked myself a dozen times a day, What would Thomas Jefferson
think of our current government that had somehow morphed out of
the limited, balanced, political institutions he had designed? I
decided that if Jefferson still possessed any consciousness at all, the
poor old patriot must be spinning in his grave.
In late 1974, I was hired to work in TRW’s Black Vault, which was
actually an NSA encryption operation supporting satellite surveillance
of Russia. The satellites used Pine Gap in the Australian outback as a
communications “foot.” At my first security briefing, the project
security director informed me that the NSA was not willing to live up
to our agreement to share all information gathered at Pine Gap with
our Australian allies. I was told we were also hiding the new, more
sophisticated successor Argus Project of surveillance at Pine Gap
from the Aussies in violation of the executive agreement between
our two countries.
I was told the elected Labor Government of Australia was a threat
to American interests; that the Whitlam Government was socialistic,
and that their inquiries about Pine Gap were compromising the
security of the project. I later read encrypted dispatches discussing
the infiltration of Australian trade unions by the CIA, and listened to
our project CIA resident refer to the Governor-General of Australia,
Sir John Kerr (the man who unconstitutionally sacked Gough
Whitlam as Prime Minister), as “our man Kerr.”
I watched my government deceive an ally, an English-speaking
parliamentary democracy who had fought next to us in two world
wars. I concede I was naïve, that allies deceive each other every
day, but still I was disgusted. Without giving it the deliberation it
deserved, I decided to do as much damage to the American
intelligence community as I could possibly do. And nothing I could
think of would bring greater horror to America’s spooks than to pass
NSA codes to the Russians.
So began my self-destructive descent into hell. I was an army of
one, out to damage what I saw as the Great Rotten Republic—at
which point, I went to see my old falconry buddy and ne’er-do-well
friend, a small-time drug dealer named Andrew Daulton Lee. I
explained to him what I had in mind. He looked at me in disbelief,
but after a few moments, I could see dollar signs dancing in his
eyes.
I cannot say that at that point we did not often enter the realm of
the absurd. We certainly did. We listened to Janis Joplin, ate
marijuana brownies, and had clandestine meetings with the KGB. We
laughed at Cheech and Chong while photographing crypto codes
with a miniature Minox camera. If ever such a thing as longhair,
amateur spies could exist, we were it.
One night, half the Palos Verdes police department chased
Daulton in their squad cars for twenty minutes all throughout our
wealthy neighborhood in what was undoubtedly the greatest road
rally of their lives. Meanwhile, my ear cocked to the approaching
sirens, I frantically buried secret documents under my mother’s
daffodils. The hijinks and shenanigans never ceased. Until, of
course, they did. As they had to.
In January of 1977, the past caught up. The intelligence complex
nailed us. They meant to destroy us. For Daulton, it meant first
being tortured within an inch of his life by Mexico’s Seguridad
Federal before being turned over to the American authorities. For
me, it was several dozen FBI agents coming at me from every
direction after a day of flying my falcons. It was time to pay the
piper. Chains. Humiliation. Incarceration with no end. Waiting to be
murdered. They must pay for this, the U.S. Attorneys told my
father’s lawyers. And we did.
On April 28, 1977, a jury found me guilty of espionage and I was
sentenced to forty years’ imprisonment. Weeks later, my old chum
and partner in crime, Daulton Lee, was sentenced to life for the
same.
By the time I made my decision to break out of federal prison or
die trying, there was already one book out. In 1985, Hollywood told
our story in the motion picture The Falcon and the Snowman. I got
to watch the movie on a small television set at Marion Federal
Penitentiary, seated right next to the guy who portrayed me,
Timothy Hutton. When it was over and the credits rolled, a part of
me wanted to cry out, “But that’s not the end!” The truth was, I was
still living the nightmare, long after the lights had gone up in movie
theaters around the country.
I would continue to live that nightmare for another seventeen
years, until a woman I met by the name of Cait Mills saved my life.
She also saved Daulton’s. Today, Daulton Lee and I are free men,
thanks to the dedication and hard work of a woman I now call my
wife. This book is the answer to every person who ever asked,
“What happened next?”
This is what happened next.
 1: THE BODY
August 2005

Christopher Boyce was bleeding. The gash on the back of his hand
oozed a dark shade of crimson, mixing with dirt and sweat. He held
up his hand, stared at the cut, cursed. There had been seven
presidential elections since he’d last tangled so ferociously with a
chain-link fence, and he decided he liked it no more now that he was
repairing it than he did when he was scaling it.
He wiped the blood on his pant leg and inspected the cut again,
oblivious to the commotion unfolding a mere hundred yards away.
He didn’t even notice he was being approached from behind until he
heard the voice.
“Mr. Boyce.”
Chris jerked his head around, startled. His eyes met the sight of
two uniformed police officers standing only feet away. They were so
close, in fact, that he had no trouble recognizing the symbol on their
shoulder patches, the unmistakable logo identifying them as
deputies of the county sheriff’s department.
How the hell did I let these guys sneak up on me? he thought.
But before he could pursue that internal rebuke any further, Chris
froze. He saw that one of the deputies had his hand resting firmly on
the pistol grip of his holstered sidearm.
Instantly, his thoughts flew to Cait. Had she been in an accident?
Not likely. At this hour of the day, she’d surely still be at the office,
buried under a stack of legal briefs a foot high. But even if there had
been an accident, that certainly wouldn’t explain the pistol-ready
stance.
Unless something terrible had happened.
 “Mr. Boyce.” This time there was a more demanding tone in the
deputy’s voice.
He stood from his squatting position and faced the uniformed
men. It was an almost comical mimicry of an Old West standoff—
except in this case, the odds were two to one, and Chris hadn’t
owned a gun since the bank robbery spree a quarter century earlier.
“Yeah?”
“Did you bury a body in your back yard?”
The words rattled around in Chris’s head, seeking purchase but
meeting only flat incomprehension. After all, it isn’t every day you
get hit with an inquiry of such magnitude. For the absurdity of the
question, the cop might as well have asked him to explain his role in
the Kennedy assassination.
“What?” His mind was spinning in a thousand directions, trying to
figure out what was going on. Although his composure was
beginning to fall away, his face was as cool and expressionless as a
mask.
“Did you bury a body in your back yard?” the deputy repeated,
placing emphasis on body as if the man before him had somehow
missed the crucial noun that underscored the gravity of the question.
Chris didn’t care much for the tone in the deputy’s voice. It wasn’t
so much a question as it was an accusation. He had heard that voice
before, in a life almost twenty-five years past, and it wasn’t a voice
he’d ever hoped to hear again. A tingling sensation of shock began
to radiate downward from the center of his forehead.
“What are you talking about?” The bewilderment in his voice was
obvious only to himself. He noticed the tingling had now radiated to
his fingertips, causing them to tremble almost imperceptibly. He
could feel his heart pulsing in his temples, and beads of sweat began
to run freely down his ribs from his armpit.
“A body has just been dug up in your back yard,” the deputy said.
“What do you know about it?”
At fifty-two years old, Chris was no longer the tireless athlete he
had been in his youth. The days of effortless leapfrogging from one
sport to another and racing through the rolling hills and open fields
that had once surrounded the outskirts of his childhood home in
Palos Verdes, California, were long gone. He wasn’t exactly over the
hill—not yet, anyway—but he wasn’t a young man, either. The years
had brought the unavoidable evidence of age; signs that had
manifested in the all too frequent inclination to stroll rather than
trot, even when headed out for an afternoon of hawking with Zeke,
his peregrine falcon. The fact was, he hadn’t run from anyone or
anything in years. But at that moment, he found himself fighting the
urge to bolt.
And he almost did. But the realization that he’d been boxed into a
corner between the deputies and the chain-link fence told him it
would be impossible to escape if he tried. The deputies were both
large men and had the look of ex-athletes. They were also
considerably younger and he knew he’d be no match against them.
There was no way out.
He struggled to get ahold of himself. Post-traumatic stress, he
reasoned, almost as if to assure himself that he was okay, everything
was fine, that the urge to run was simply the last remaining remnant
of an incident long past. Bad memories, that’s all, and these guys
aren’t doing a very good job of assuring me they don’t think I’m
guilty of something.
The thought crystallized in his mind and he held it there, studying
it for what seemed like an eternity but was actually only a split
second. It snapped him out of his contemplative trance like a slap in
the face, with the last spoken words of the deputy still lingering in
the air like an unanswered charge: What do you know about it?
“Not a damn thing!” Chris answered. The indignation in his voice
caused the denial to come off more like a bark than a sentence.
Realizing he’d been standing in a defensive posture the entire
time, he relaxed his stance and stepped forward—but as he did, he
held his hands at his sides, palms out, in the walk of a man who’s
had his fair share of scrutiny under the eyes of the law.
He cast a quick, damning glance down at his hands and closed
them, reminding himself as he had so many times during the course
of the last three years that he was a free man, even though the
overshadowing memory of twenty-five years spent staring out from
behind barred windows would never truly leave him.
 His eyes met those of the first deputy, the one who had done all
the talking. The nametag on his chest read J WATERS. Chris hoped it
was a name he wouldn’t become familiar with.
“Show me,” Chris said disbelievingly, as if calling the bigger man’s
bluff.
Deep down inside, he didn’t know if he wanted Waters to show his
hand. A body discovered near his home could spell trouble. Even
though he was no longer behind bars, he was still a parolee of the
Federal Bureau of Prisons. A body discovered on or near his property
would most assuredly land him back in custody. If being pulled over
for driving too fast was an offense great enough to threaten his
newfound freedom, then certainly the evidence of a heinous crime
within a stone’s throw of his front door would be.
Waters made a sharp motion with his left hand, pointing the way.
It was more of a demand than an invitation, but it was entirely
unnecessary. By now, Chris felt himself being tugged at by a
deepening curiosity. He went willingly.
As the three men crossed the sagebrush plain toward the
northeast corner of his property, a question rose in Chris’s mind,
causing him to replay the events of what had started out as a
normal day but had quickly detoured into territory of the strange and
bizarre: Who had discovered the body and called the police?
He recalled that his neighbors, an older couple he and Cait were
acquainted with, had recently hired a contractor to build a fence
along the property line separating their lots. It was to be something
of a monstrosity, a one-hundred-yard wall of demarcation with little
purpose in such a rural area, but Chris had reasoned that what
wasn’t of any cost to him was also not of his concern.
An hour before the deputies showed up, he had set about the task
of retightening the tension wire on a sagging section of the chain-
link fence he’d installed in an effort to keep Cait’s dogs—Lola, Theo,
and Chase—from wandering off. Although the house sat on a two-
and-a-half-acre expanse of land, the majority of the lot beyond the
edge of the green lawn was a minefield of sagebrush and stickweed
burrs the dogs could seldom resist venturing into.
 As he worked, Chris had noticed a small group of men digging
post holes in the ground where the fence would be built. Noticed
was actually an understatement. The racket thrown out by the
motor-driven auger had made it impossible to ignore, a sonic blight
against the typically serene ambience of the surrounding plains and
the juniper woods beyond.
At some point, he recalled now, the auger had gone silent. When
he looked back in their direction, the workers were no longer
anywhere in sight. He hadn’t seen them run for the main road,
digging frantically for their cell phones as they beat a hasty retreat
to report their ghastly discovery to the police. Now Chris was about
to see with his own eyes what it was that had sent the handymen
scurrying and had brought the long arm of the law curling around
him in a decidedly chilly embrace.
He walked ahead of the deputies until they reached the property
line where the auger now sat mute. The hole in the ground was less
than a foot across and almost three feet deep. He stood at the lip of
the upturned earth and peered down.
There was no mistaking it was a body. Chris had expected to see a
neat pile of bones, but what he witnessed instead set his stomach
on edge. The auger had struck the body as it plunged into the
ground, rupturing the heavy-duty plastic bag that encased it. Some
of the bag’s contents were bulging from the tear, leaking a horrifying
stew of hair, bones, and rotted flesh.
He choked as his nostrils encountered the rising stench.
Instinctively, he clapped a hand over his mouth and nose, squinting
as if to protect his eyes from the odor.
“Shit,” he spoke through his hand, to nobody in particular. “Wait
’til Cait hears this one.”
“Who’s Cait?” Waters asked, and damned if his voice didn’t still
hold an air of condescending suspicion.
I thought we were over that hurdle, Chris thought to say, but
didn’t. Anyway, how many killers do you know who’d gag at the
sight and smell of their own deeds? He decided the deputy probably
didn’t know the answer to that question any more than he did.
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Not very long after this, the Bailie came to see me, and I happened
at the time to be superintending the drill of several strong squads of
my newly enlisted recruits. The Bailie looked closely at them all, and
I could not help fancying that I read alarm in the countenances of
many of my prizes. "Well, Colonel," said the Bailie, "the city of
Glasgow is infinitely indebted to you, for you have freed it of many
deserving characters;" but observing that I became rather chop-
fallen, he added, "Never mind, man—they'll fight—they'll fight like
devils. Was there ever a better fighting regiment in the world than the
——, and they were nearly all raised in Glasgow, which was, to my
certain knowledge, very peaceable for many a day after they were
gone from it."
I am at this moment reminded, by what occurred upon the retreat to
Corunna, of the state into which many of our men were brought upon
that and other occasions from want of shoes. I may venture to say,
that we had seldom taken the field a fortnight—and our armies had
even more than once to halt on this account—when the greater part
of the soldier's shoes had gone to pieces, and others could not
always be got to replace them. This destruction of shoes was in a
great measure occasioned by the previous injudicious practice of
highly polishing them with injurious kinds of blacking, which I
suppose must continue to be the fashion in these quiet times; and I
hope I may be allowed to say, that whenever a corps of infantry is
ordered upon service, this practice should be positively forbidden.
Two good pairs of boots—not such clumsy concerns as some of the
Russian soldiers wore in France—should be properly prepared for
every man—that is, well saturated with the water-proof stuff, now so
much used by sports-men, and they should never after have
anything else put upon them but some of this composition, which not
only softens, but also tends to preserve them for a considerable
time. Such boots will certainly not look so well as those now in
general use; yet for grand occasions, the soldier might be made to
carry another finer polished pair; but with the boots I want, and good
stockings, every soldier should be furnished, or he cannot march as
he ought to do, and is, therefore, so far unfit for service. Some
people may consider this trifling, but experienced soldiers will think
otherwise.
The plan I have suggested of calling out the regular army, of course,
overturns the present defective depot system, which seems to me to
be only calculated to give officers habits of idleness and
restlessness; and their frequent removals from the companies
abroad to those forming the depots, requiring others to be sent out to
replace them, afford opportunities of indulging in such pernicious
habits. Depots are but very inferior schools for the instruction of
officers, non-commissioned officers, or privates. The ten companies
assembled form a fine battalion, well adapted for all kinds of military
movement and instruction: a depot is quite the reverse of this.
There are now before me notes upon certain points, which I wish to
bring under consideration; but if they should appear to some readers
tiresome, or uncalled for, I can only regret that they should seem so,
and I must request that they will arm themselves with patience
sufficient to enable them to accompany me to the end of the chapter.
Regimental bands are looked upon as very pretty and necessary
appendages to corps; but as it is most essential that as few soldiers
as possible should be taken out of the ranks, it might be advisable to
consider whether it would not be wise to place them upon a different
footing. The present plan takes away from their companies perhaps
twenty soldiers to make second-rate musicians; as more men are
almost always occupied in this way, (at least it was so formerly) than
regulations would admit of; and supposing that all our regiments
were made light infantry, there would, I conclude, be neither
drummers nor fifers; but, in place of them, one sergeant as bugle-
major, and two buglers per company, and two extra buglers to
accompany (when necessary) detachments, the whole to be clothed
almost the same as the other soldiers; and I would also arm them
with light muskets—indeed, those which belonged to light companies
generally contrived, when in the field, to arm themselves. These
muskets might be slung over their shoulders when they were
required to cheer the regiment on a march, or to attract the fair to the
windows as corps passed through towns; and most delightful strains,
at least, to a military ear, can be produced by key bugles, French
horns, trumpets, &c. There should, however, be one good sized
drum, on the new principle, allowed to mark the time; and surely
twenty-three men per regiment are quite sufficient for such purposes,
especially if some of them were also taught to perform upon a few
other instruments.
The corporal and ten pioneers per regiment, who are generally
nothing else but so many attendants upon the quarter-master and
his sergeant, should be done away with; that is, I would keep the
men hitherto employed in this way where they ought to be—in the
ranks. If men are wanted for fatigue, as it is termed, the soldiers
should be employed on it as a duty, and their time can never be
better occupied than in all kinds of labour or works, especially those
which may tend to instruct them in what is likely to be required of
them at sieges, or during campaigns; and above all, they should
have a knowledge of the best and quickest methods of making
roads, temporary bridges, &c., and even of preparing food, and
lighting fires; if they were also taught to be boatmen and good
swimmers so much the better. It certainly would be very desirable
that soldiers had more practice in this way than is the fashion in our
army. But having mentioned preparing food, I think it important to say
a few words upon the subject.
The comfort in which the men of the 5th battalion 60th regiment (who
were chiefly Germans,) lived upon service was very striking, when
compared with the wretched diet of the generality of British soldiers. I
must, however, preface my remarks upon this subject by the
following division order which was issued by Major-general Colville,
at Moimenta de Beira, in Portugal, on the 29th March, 1813,
respecting this corps:
"No. 9. A detachment of the 5th battalion 60th, has arrived at head-
quarters under the command of Captain Kelly, and which having left
Lisbon consisting of fifty men, has brought up all but one man who
was left sick at Coimbra, and no prisoners.
"This is so unlike the report of any detachment of the British part of
the division that has arrived at quarters since the Major-General's
taking the command of it, that he cannot help mentioning the
mortifying distinction, in the hopes that there may be yet left among
the good men of the division regard enough for their own honours to
keep a check upon the conduct of those of an opposite character."
It seemed to be settled amongst themselves, that every man of the
mess of the 5th battalion 60th, had to carry something, that is say—
highly-spiced meats, such as sausages, cheese, onions, garlic, lard,
pepper, salt, vinegar, mustard, sugar, coffee, &c.; in short, whatever
could add to or make their meals more palatable, nourishing, or
conducive to health. As soon as the daily allowance of beef was
issued, they set to work and soon produced a first-rate dinner or
supper, which were often improved by certain wild herbs which they
knew where to look for, whereas, in attempting this, I have known
instances of our men poisoning themselves; and what a contrast to
this were the ways of our too often thoughtless beings who rarely
had any of the above articles—day after day they boiled their beef,
just killed, in the lump, in water, which they seldom contrived to make
deserving the name of soup or broth. This and their bread or biscuit
was what they usually lived upon. But I lament to be obliged to add,
that their thoughts, of course unconnected with military matters, were
too often directed to ardent spirits and to the means of procuring
enough of it; for though a certain allowance, usually of rum, was
issued daily, this was not sufficient to satisfy their longings for more.
And it was always known when the rum was about to be given out
when we heard a shout in the camp, and from many voices a cry of
"turn out for rum!"
Our mode of messing in barracks is extremely regular, and much in
the style so carefully exhibited in Russia to visitors of importance,
and is well calculated to produce effect. In general (at least in former
times,) cooks were hired, and the soldiers' wives were sometimes
engaged for this purpose, so that most of the men were kept almost
in ignorance of learning the simple art of boiling beef and potatoes:
they only knew, that at fixed hours daily, they were sure of a
breakfast and dinner; and although this was to be admired in quiet
times, it sadly unfitted soldiers for what they were afterwards to turn
their minds and hands to in the field; and it also sometimes left them
more money than they could spend with propriety. But if their
thoughts could now be more directed to the German and French
style of living it would be attended with the best results, and we
should hear less of drunkenness and the crimes arising from out of it
in our regiments. These hints might, perhaps, be thought useful to
those interested in the welfare of our population in general, whose
early habits are too often very pernicious and demoralizing.
The observations of his Grace the Duke of Wellington, on the 1st
and 3rd of October, 1812, at the siege of Burgos, will shew the
necessity of our soldiers' being accustomed to labour and the
consequences of their not being habituated to it:—"The Commander
of the Forces is concerned to state, that the working parties in the
trenches do not perform their duty, notwithstanding the pains which
have been taken to relieve them every six hours, &c.;" and his Grace
adds—"The officers and soldiers of the army should know that to
work during a siege is as much a part of their duty as it is to engage
the enemy in the field; and they may depend upon it, that unless they
perform the work allotted to them, with due diligence, they cannot
acquire the honour which their comrades have acquired in former
sieges." The Guards were exempted from the censure contained in
this order; indeed their conduct was most exemplary on all
occasions. And we can again read in a general order, dated Cartaxo,
4th March, 1811:—
"No. 2. As during the two years which the brigade of Guards have
been under the command of the Commander of the Forces, not only
no soldier has been brought to trial before a general court-martial,
but none has been confined in a public guard; the Commander of the
Forces desires that the attendance of the brigade, at the execution
to-morrow, may be dispensed with."
This ought surely to convince the country, that though the changes I
have proposed, as to the officers of the Guards, may be necessary
for the general good of the army; yet the idea of disbanding such
troops can only be entertained by an ignorant and absurdly
prejudiced mind.
I have often wondered it has never been deemed indispensable, that
an uniform system of regimental economy was adopted for the whole
army. This most desirable object is by no means attained by the
book of general regulations and orders; for although there is to be
found in it much that is useful, still a vast deal more is required to
come up to what is necessary for the guidance of a regiment in the
various situations in which it may be placed; and the want of such a
well digested plan is the reason we see such a difference in the state
of corps; some being in every respect in the highest possible order,
whilst others are the very reverse. The former is entirely owing to
their being commanded by talented and judicious officers; the latter
is evidently occasioned by their being under men who are
themselves ignorant, inexperienced, and yet very likely self-
sufficient. Many regiments have good standing orders if they were
steadily acted up to; but much depending upon the will of the
commanding officer, he most probably adopts something of his own,
which is often injudicious, or even injurious; or as much only of the
old standing orders as he thinks fit; or perhaps he allows the whole
to become a dead letter. A matter of such importance as this should
not be left to whim or caprice; but a simple, uniform, and sufficiently
comprehensive system should be established for the whole army, for
the guidance of regiments in barracks and quarters at home and
abroad; upon a march, or when on board ship, or in any situation,
but especially when employed in the field. If this were done, and
positive orders given, that there should not be the slightest deviation
from the system laid down, on the part of commanding officers, we
should hear less of corps being more annoyed and teazed by one
commander than another; and we should not be able to observe that
remarkable difference to be met with amongst them, both in
appearance and discipline.
There could not be much difficulty in effecting this most important
object. The standing orders of some corps, though in general too
diffuse and complicated, and requiring too many returns or reports
from companies, &c., would afford ample ground-work for all useful
purposes, except in what is essential for the field; in which respect,
all those I have seen were totally defective; but uniformity in every
point is as necessary in this as it is in military movements; and if
judiciously adopted, would be found as strikingly beneficial, as the
changes were from the fancies of every commanding officer to the
well known "eighteen manœuvres."
Having proposed to do away with regimental pioneers, to make up
efficiently for them, two men of good character should be enlisted—
but that only for service in the field, to take charge of and lead a bat-
horse each, to carry on well fitted pack-saddles a few of such useful
tools as might be required for ordinary military purposes. The
surgeon, at such times, also requires a man and a horse of this kind
for his instruments and medicines; and so do the pay-master and
adjutant, for the conveyance of money, books, and various
indispensable papers and returns. These ought always to march in
the rear of the corps to which they belong. Thus, by doing away both
with generally indifferent musicians and misappropriated pioneers, I
would save to each regiment about thirty soldiers, or about half the
effectives of a company of the present day.
It will surprise those who know nothing of war, and even many
military men, when I mention how many soldiers are lost, I may say,
to the service, taken out of the ranks of corps to be employed as
non-combatant clerks, servants or bat-men, horse-keepers or
grooms, &c. The head-quarters and staff sweep off numbers in this
way beyond belief. The general officers and staff of divisions and
brigades, including engineer officers, staff surgeons, commissariat,
&c. if allowed, quite as bad. Then come field officers and regimental
staff, and perhaps forty captains and subalterns per regiment, all of
whom must be supplied; a few with two, for taking care of their
chargers and pack-horses or mules, and all with at least one each to
look after pack-horses for the conveyance of baggage; most of it
probably indispensable, if it is expected that these gentlemen are to
be kept efficient. But there is another demand of a man per company
for the care of pack-horses for the carriage of tents, &c. as wheel
carriages for such purposes ought never to be allowed upon the line
of march.
For these various occupations, I have no hesitation in saying, many
hundreds of soldiers are taken away from where they should be, and
corps are thus deprived of their best men, and greatly weakened
before they come into contact with an enemy.
This must appear almost incredible to many good people, who will
naturally be surprised what Mr. Hume, that mirror of economists,
could have been about; but who, they may depend upon it, invariably
contrives to have, at last, the candle burnt at both ends. But how
indignant they must now be to hear, probably for the first time, that
they were obliged to pay for such a number of soldiers, who only
made a figure upon paper to the disadvantage of the general's
reputation who commanded the army in the field, who was supposed
to have had, perhaps, 30,000 men to act with, whereas in reality he
could not bring into action 25,000; and when a battle took place,
there were a few more drains from the ranks besides the killed and
wounded; for the latter and sick required attendants at the several
hospital stations, and also on the road to them; and how often have
I, as a Brigade-major of the 3d division, had to encounter the cross
looks of commanding officers of regiments, when I could not avoid
calling upon them for officers, non-commissioned officers, and
soldiers, for such purposes, when the enemy had, perhaps,
sufficiently thinned their ranks.
I would suggest that money should be allowed, and, if possible, no
soldiers whatever for any of these purposes at home or abroad, and
certainly not upon service; and even at home it would be advisable
to make officers a proper allowance for private, or non-combatant
servants, so that an end might at once be put to the custom of taking
away soldiers from their duties to be employed as such. All servants
should however, be regularly enlisted as soldiers are at present, but
for a limited period only; and they should be bound to accompany
their masters abroad, or upon any kind of service; and commanding
officers of regiments should have the power of discharging, at their
master's request, these servants if found guilty of bad or improper
conduct, and of enlisting others to replace them, of course, such
servants come under martial law; but what I have proposed, in this
respect, is nothing new, for does not history tell us, of non-combatant
servants being of old attached to armies; and allow me to ask, with
what intention is it, that officers receive at the commencement of a
campaign, and at fixed periods afterwards, bat and forage money? If
the sums granted are insufficient—which they undoubtedly are—for
providing servants, field equipments, pack-horses, &c. more should
be given, as it must be admitted, that they are all indispensable. It
could never, however, have been intended, that the number of
muskets and bayonets in the ranks, were to be so much reduced, as
I have shown is the case, to supply men for the purposes
enumerated, when by a trifling comparative increase of the expenses
of a war, our armies could be kept efficient, and in such a complete
state, as to enable a General to carry it on with that vigour, which is
always so essential towards its successful and speedy termination.
But the necessity of what I have just recommended being adopted,
appeared in so strong a light, to one of our best officers, that we read
in a general order, dated Tholen, 20th of December, 1813, as
follows:—
"No. 1. The Commander of the Forces being desirous to render the
army for the field as effective as possible, directs that all soldiers
acting as servants to officers, shall always appear in uniform, and
carry their arms and accoutrements on the march. The servants of
regimental officers to be in the ranks on the march, and the
Commander of the Forces calls upon the General and other officers
in command strictly to inforce this order."
"No. 2. With a view to diminish, as much as possible, requisitions on
regiments for soldiers as servants, General Sir Thomas Graham
authorizes any officer who is entitled by the usage of the service to
appear mounted and keep a horse, to hire a servant as bat-man in
lieu of a soldier, for which he will be allowed at the rate of 4s. 6d.
(quite insufficient) per week and a ration; but it is distinctly
understood, that the allowance is not to be extended to any persons
attached to this army, who, by the custom of the service, are not
entitled to soldiers to wait upon them, and whenever it is drawn, an
effective soldier is to be thereby restored to the army."
"No. 6. The Commander of the Forces strongly recommends to all
general officers of the army to return immediately any bat-men they
may have to their corps, and to direct their staff to do the same, at all
events no officer of any rank is to employ more than one soldier of
this army to attend upon him, whether he acts as his own personal
servant or bat-man."
"No. 7. Field officers of regiments are entitled each to a servant and
bat-man, and of course to draw the allowance for each, when men
from the ranks are not employed."
"No. 9 Announces that such servants come under martial law."
I believe that I could not any where, more conveniently or properly,
introduce some observations, I consider it necessary to make upon
the baggage of an army in the field, and upon some other matters
connected with it, than at the close of this chapter, and I feel
convinced that experienced officers will allow, that is a difficult
subject to enter upon. It must, however, have been obvious to many,
how much the quantity of baggage gradually increases as a
campaign advances. Various articles are accumulated in all sorts of
ways, but chiefly by servants upon the line of march, in the towns
they pass through, in the field of battle, and above all at sieges.
We unluckily have many wants, almost unknown to the people of
other countries, arising out of our early habits of indulging in many
comforts; indeed, so many and so productive are they of enjoyment,
that in spite of what some philosophers may say to the contrary, we
cannot easily divest ourselves of the remembrance of them, for with
most of us they too frequently become indispensables, or in other
words, they are apt to make us rather selfish. But a General who
may wish to keep such wants within reasonable bounds, or who is
determined not to be overwhelmed with baggage, followers, and
animals of burden, must be wholely uninfluenced by any other
feeling than that of the good of the public service, and must cut off,
at once, with an unsparing hand, all superfluities of every
description; and he must endeavour to keep the whole under due
restrictions. All the odium of this ought not, however, to be thrown
upon the Commander of any army about to take the field, as it must,
to a certainty, render him unpopular with many; but it would be much
wiser that a British army should have, at all times for its guidance,
established regulations, which no one could, on any account, be
allowed to deviate from.
Selfish feelings never, I believe, show themselves more strongly than
amongst landsmen on board ship, and amongst too many men in the
field. Some, I have no doubt, have seen individuals retire to a snug
corner, to enjoy unobserved something good which they had in their
haversacks, lest they should be obliged to offer part of it to hungry
comrades. Others have been known to sleep sound, warm, and dry
in their tents, having probably offered shares of them, but in such a
way to the officers of their own companies, that even they could not
accept of their liberality, and preferred reposing at the roots of trees,
or behind hedges, exposed to the pitiless storm. My only object in
alluding to such trifling matters is, in the first instance, to show that
these things do sometimes occur, and, moreover, to try to inculcate,
if I can, into such badly brought up men, at least a little feeling for the
wants of others. Yet I would not leave it in their power thus to enjoy
their comforts—at all events in such situations, for I would make the
officers of a company live and sleep in the same tent or hut, and be
partakers of the same fare whatever it might be.
A regimental mess at home or abroad, is admirably calculated to
keep up respectability, by insuring a proper degree of genteel
economy; but of this the officers of corps cannot avail themselves in
the field, and then it becomes requisite to act upon established
regulations. The officers of a company should be made to have in
common, a tent of a particular size and shape, and they should all
three contribute towards its purchase, as well as towards the
procuring of two horses or mules, which they should be obliged to
keep. I would also fix upon a trunk or rather a portmanteau for each,
of a certain size and shape. One of the horses should carry, on a
well-fitted pack-saddle, the two subaltern's portmanteau, and the tent
between them. The other horse should carry the captain's
portmanteau, which might be a very little larger than those allowed to
subalterns, but care should be taken that its size was also fixed
upon; and this should be balanced upon the horse's back by a
canteen (bought also amongst them) for the use of the mess, and
between them a bag of a certain size, made of some water-proof
stuff, could be placed, in which might be conveyed some useful
articles for general comfort, especially such as might be considered
necessary, when the country, the seat of war, could afford but few
supplies.
It appears to me that the officers of a company could not possibly
contrive to get on, for any length of time, with less than those two
animals; but in the portmanteau should be carried, besides their
clothes and a blanket each, their mattresses made air tight, so as to
be inflated when necessary, and which can be rolled up into very
small compass, when not wanted for use; and such mattresses not
only make excellent beds, but also secure those who use them
completely from damp from the ground. This is all that could or ought
to be allowed to company officers in the field; and positive orders
should prevent any other article whatever from being put upon the
horses, as all good purposes are at once defeated if they are
permitted to be overloaded; and even the private servants or bat-
men should be made to carry their own knapsacks, in place of
fastening them, as they will always try to do, upon the loads. I at the
same time conclude, that the baggage of a company, regiment,
brigade and division, marches in proper order, and if one overloaded
or sore backed animal knocks up, the whole is most annoyingly and
injuriously detained in consequence upon the road. In any
arrangement, however, of this kind, I should expect that the baggage
and animals allowed to field officers and regimental staff, and to
commissariat and medical officers, &c. were likewise strictly brought
under regulations, and the name of the owner, or the number of the
troop, company, and corps, being conspicuously painted on a water-
deck or cover, to go over the load of each animal, any irregularity,
and the individual who might occasion it, could be at once
ascertained.
It is quite impossible to make arrangements for company officers
who may be taken ill, and obliged to go to the hospital stations in the
rear. A company in the field is what must be kept in view in any plan
of this kind. The medical department, with the means I have yet to
propose to place at its disposal, would have to look to such
casualties. I must, however, here observe, that in Portugal
especially, we had often far too many officers at such stations—for
instance at Lisbon, or rather Belem, Coimbra, &c. where it was well
known many of them staid so long, that Lord Wellington had often to
give them very broad hints, that it was high time they should
remember that their regiments were in presence of the enemy. Some
of these gentlemen, when absent from their corps, had well supplied
their wants, and returned at last to their divisions, nicely mounted on
a horse, probably purchased in Lisbon, attended by a soldier, and
perhaps a Portuguese boy, leading a mule or two heavily loaded with
the good things of this world. Thus the baggage and animals with the
army were always increasing. The mule or horse had very likely
soon to be sold, from want of food and people to look after them, so
that the good things brought up being consumed, the temporary
campaigner again fell so sick, that it became indispensable for him to
revisit an hospital station, to recruit his health and replenish his
supplies. This is by no means an over-drawn picture; and when it
was sometimes asked by those with the army, what had become of
so and so, the common answer was, that he had taken up a strong
position near Lisbon, his right upon the Tagus, and his left at Belem;
or that he was teaching the good people of Lisbon to cross the river
in cork boats,—for these gentlemen were not without their
amusements. It however strikes me at this moment, that as many of
these frequenters of hospital stations were really seriously ill, it
would be desirable, that when young gentlemen presented
themselves to be examined for commissions, it should not only be
ascertained that they had been educated, but also that they were fit
for service. But I must proceed with other matters. The large bell
tents now in general use for soldiers in the field, accommodate
certainly a great many of them at night, when well packed with their
feet to the poles; but they are much too heavy to be carried on the
backs of animals when wet, or when they must be struck before
sunrise, saturated with heavy dew. The baggage mules were often
knocked up by them in this state. It is a bad plan that of carrying the
large iron camp kettles upon animals for the use of companies; the
light tin ones carried in turn by the soldiers themselves, in a bag
made for the purpose, are greatly to be preferred, as they are always
at hand.
It must altogether depend upon circumstances, but it would at all
times require serious consideration, whether company officers
should be allowed to keep riding horses or not. When they are
allowed to ride on the line of march, they are certainly enabled to go
unfatigued into action, and to look more closely after their men at the
end of a day's work; but I beg to ask (servants being along with the
baggage) who are to take the charge of their horses, when they must
dismount when near the enemy, on going into action; and no soldier
should be taken out of the ranks for such a purpose; how can any
country be supposed capable of furnishing the enormous quantity of
forage required for such increased numbers of animals, after
regiments of Cavalry, Infantry, (I mean those that must be kept by
them) Artillery, and the other departments have been supplied? Here
therefore an almost insurmountable difficulty presents itself, and it
becomes wise to curtail as much as possible in time, for every
animal allowed to be kept, must be fed in some way or other.
The fewer women permitted to accompany an army the better, for
they are generally useless, and tend immensely to increase the
number of animals and quantity of baggage. I once knew a general,
who, in an order he issued, was so ungallant, as to style these
ladies, "his advanced guard of infamy;" and I must admit that he had
too often just cause to style them so.
His Grace the Duke of Wellington was often greatly annoyed at the
enormous consumption of forage by his army, and found it
necessary to issue many orders upon the subject, of which I shall
now give a few.
"G.O. San Pedro, 19th May, 1809.
"No. 10. As the Commander of the Forces has reason to believe
many horses and mules are kept by even the soldiers of the army,
and maintained by means entirely inconsistent with discipline and
good order, he desires officers commanding regiments and brigades,
to inquire into the number of horses and mules which are attached to
the regiments under their command, and to enforce the immediate
sale of those not allowed to be kept by the regulations of the army."
"G.O. Zarza Mayor, 4th July, 1809.
"No. 17. The Commander of the Forces requests the attention of
general officers commanding divisions and brigades, to the general
orders of the 4th and 5th of March, by the late Commander of the
Forces, relative to the use of mules allowed for conveying camp
kettles, in any service, except for the carriage of camp kettles.
"No. 18. The consequence of loading them with other baggage is,
that they are unequal to carry the kettles which they are given to
convey, and the loads are so ill put on, that they fall from the mules,
and the camp kettles do not arrive from the march till after the hour,
at which they ought to be used by the troops."
"G.O. Merida, 25th August, 1809.
"No. 3. The army must not forage for themselves, but must get it
from the Commissary according to the usual mode, by sending in
returns of the number of animals for whom forage is required, and
receiving from him the regular rations; or if forage cannot be
provided in that mode, and it is necessary it should be taken from the
fields, it must be taken according to the general orders of the 17th of
June, 1839."
"G.O. Villa Formosa, 13th April, 1811.
"No. 1. The Commander of the Forces requests, that, if possible, the
green corn may not be cut for the horses, &c. belonging to the army;
and that they may, if possible, be turned into the grass fields in
preference to the green corn. It must be understood, however, that
the horses, &c. attached to the army, must be fed, and must have
the green corn, if they cannot get grass."
"G.O. Nave de Rey, 16th July, 1812.
"No. 1. The Commander of the Forces particularly requests the
attention of the commissariat attached to divisions and brigades of
Infantry, and to regiments of Cavalry, and of the general officers of
the army, and commanding officers of regiments, to the orders which
have been issued regarding the cutting of forage.
"No. 2. He desires, that whenever it is possible, grass may be given
to the horses and other animals, instead of straw with the corn in the
ear.
"No. 3. The Assistant Provosts must be employed to prevent the
plunder of the corn-fields, and their destruction by turning cattle into
them."
"G.O. Frenada, 25th November, 1812.
"No. 4. The Commander of the Forces has taken the precaution of
having the grass mowed, and saved as hay, in many parts of the
country in which the troops are now, or may be cantoned, which
resource is ample for the food of all the animals of the army during
the winter, if duly taken care of, and distributed under the regulations
of the service.
"No. 5. The Commander of the Forces is sorry to learn, however, that
much of what was thus provided in this part of the country, has been
already wasted, or trampled upon and destroyed, and in particular
35,000 rations of hay, which were at Espeja, and of which Lieutenant
Holborne took possession, has been destroyed.
"No. 6. He entreats the attention of general officers, and
commanding officers of regiments, to these orders, as they relate not
only to the hay provided by the orders of the Commander of the
Forces, but to the forage, and other resources of the country."
Much more might be given and said upon this most important
subject; but being apprehensive that I have already exhausted the
patience of many readers, I shall only farther observe, that in the
French armies they act in a very summary manner with respect to
carriages and animals kept contrary to the rules of the service. All
such carriages and animals, and the persons along with them, are
laid hold of by the police, and taken to head-quarters, to be delivered
up to the provost, who reports the circumstances to the major-
general, and who commonly orders the transgressors to be punished
by the provost-corporals, and the carriages and animals to be sold
for the benefit of the captors.
It now becomes necessary to consider other subjects connected with
the higher branches of the military profession, and which require to
be so well weighed, that I may, if possible, give offence to no one; at
least it shall be my study to endeavour to avoid doing so.
 CHAP. V.
There are many schools in which officers should study in order to
gain a perfect knowledge of the military profession, but certainly
none can be selected superior to that of experience, in which
previously acquired science or theory can be usefully exemplified.
But the best of all teachers is decidedly Cæsar, who still speaks to
soldiers in a language which they can understand; and of this
Napoleon was so well aware, that he always expected his officers to
have carefully studied that great general's Commentaries, and which
are so well translated into French by General Toulongeon. As an
instance—selected out of many to be found in that finely written
narrative—what can possibly be a more admirable piece of military
policy, than when Cæsar, as he tells us, having found that his army
had become alarmed at the accounts received of the warlike
appearance, and desperate valour of the Germans under Ariovistus,
he decides at once, to allow all who had no stomach for fighting to
depart, if they thought fit to do so; and which instantly produced the
effects he so wisely anticipated. And let me ask, if a British army
were again to get into a scrape, like that in which the 3rd division,
and part of our troops, found themselves on the Garonne, just before
the battle of Toulouse, and had at least four to one pitted against
them; and if our General announced, that those who did not like the
appearance of matters might go home; how many would go?
Cæsar perfectly understood the feelings of a Roman army, and knew
how to act upon them; but let us see what were those of even a
commander of a British regiment.
Colonel Forbes was left by order of Sir Thomas Picton, after the 3rd
division moved up the Garonne towards Toulouse, with the 45th
regiment, to guard the pontoon bridge across it, where a
considerable part of the army had passed. He had reason to think
that a battle was about to be fought; and the idea of his remaining in
the rear in command, even of such a regiment as the 45th, and
though employed upon an important duty, was intolerable. Almost
every hour I received a letter from him, urging me to represent to Sir
Thomas Brisbane how unhappy he and his regiment felt, at being left
in such a situation; and entreating that he might be allowed to give
up his post to some troops more in the rear, or to detachments
coming up to join the army. His impatience was for some time
laughed at; but at last I had the pleasure of sending him orders to
abandon his post, and to replace himself and his regiment at the
head of the right brigade of the 3rd division. He came up just in time
for the battle of Toulouse; and in it he fell, gallantly leading on his
regiment in the unfortunate attempt made to force the passage of the
canal.
To be able to take advantage of the proper moment for acting upon
national feeling or character, is a strong proof of an officer being
qualified to command. But a Commander-in-Chief cannot give the
world a stronger proof of his fitness or unfitness for his high station
than in the men by whom he surrounds himself or employs—if the
choice is left to him—upon the staff of the army placed under his
orders.
It is the opinion of many of our best soldiers, that no officer should
ever be taken from his regiment to be employed upon the staff,
unless his place in it be immediately and permanently supplied by
another; for no corps ought thus to be deprived of those allowed for
carrying on its duties; and such appointments have often been found
to injure, in some degree, the individuals themselves ever after as
regimental officers. What a corps might suffer in being thus deprived
of its officers, seemed to be always overlooked; and interest or
patronage alone too often guided those who had the power of
recommending or selecting officers for such important appointments;
their fitness to perform the duties attached to them was quite another
matter, with which they did not appear to trouble themselves; and I
have no doubt but I would be set down as a mere simpleton in the
ways of the world, if I were to imagine that they would ever act
otherwise.
It must be acknowledged, that our selections of officers for staff
appointments were too often injudicious; but I do not allow that they
were ever carried to the extent, shewn by an able French writer, that
they were brought in France at the commencement of the year 1792,
when the Etat Major of their armies were in so wretched a state, that
it was found necessary to re-establish, quietly, but imperfectly, what
had been destroyed by a decree of the 5th of October, 1790. The
difficulties of the service augmented incessantly, from their ignorance
even of the old forms gone through, and which some fancied they
could remedy, by multiplying the numbers employed. The power of
attaching assistants to the Etat Major consequently grew into a
complete abuse; and at last, in the month of April, 1792, rose to such
a pitch, that what with the numbers employed, and through the
choice made, the Minister of War saw himself forced to try to put
things to rights, by a circular letter addressed to Generals
commanding military divisions, and which led to the dismissal from
their employments of the whole of these assistants. It, however, soon
after became necessary to employ the same, or others equally
useless; and this letter did not by any means put a stop to the
increasing evils of interest and patronage, for there were still
appointed to the Etat Major the most improper and ignorant men,
and even girls, who had mounted uniforms, and substituted the
sword for the distaff. We are told that there is still to be seen a letter
from General Dumourier to Pache, the Minister of War, reproaching
him for having sent to his army an opera dancer as an adjutant-
general. Men of abilities were, as may be well supposed, disgusted,
whilst they were overwhelmed with business, to make up for the
ignorance of others; and they were necessitated to use every
expedient in order to get through, in any way, the tasks assigned
them; and thus the service only presented one mass of confusion,
the Minister of War not receiving connected reports or returns; and,
as a matter of course, he could not give satisfactory information,
when called upon to do so, to those really interested in knowing the
state of the army. Another circular was, in consequence, issued by
the Minister of War, dated Paris, the 20th of April, 1793; but it had no
effect whatever, because it was not only unreasonable, but
ridiculous, to require from men what they neither could do, nor knew
how to do. The Committee of Public Safety, struck with this state of
things, set about putting matters to rights; but two or three of its
members, interested that the disorders should continue, found
means to overturn all, and the state of the Etat Major was allowed to
remain as hopeless as ever. It was not therefore until about the 4th
year of the Republic, that they were able in some measure to put
things into order, by turning out ignorant and incapable men, and the
Etat Major then became composed of some good officers, who
established plans to keep its machinery in movement; but France
had then had time to see the danger, which there always is, in even
slightly disorganizing useful establishments, under the pretence of
reforming them. These remarks do not apply directly to us, farther
than in the occasional appointment, through interest, of inefficient
officers, for the returns of a British army, at least its regiments, were
and are still well and regularly kept. Yet, I must say, that for the
guidance of our staff in the field, we can scarcely show that we have
a system, or what ought to be considered as such.
The staff of an army ought to be a distinct and permanent branch of
the service, and no officers should be employed upon it but those
who had received such an education, as is usually given to our
engineers, the usefulness of which is so ably demonstrated by
experiments and practice under Colonel Pasley, whose
establishment for instruction (if we except what the artillery are
taught at Woolwich,) is the only one worth keeping up; but it is a
great drawback to our military service, that the officers of engineers
are not more frequently placed in high responsible situations, and
intrusted with high important commands and missions; at all events,
officers employed even as Aides-de-Camp, but certainly as Brigade-
Majors, or in the departments of the Adjutant and Quarter-Master-
General, should have had a first-rate military education; but I repeat,
that I would not ask where it had been acquired, whether in France,
Germany, or wherever it can be had upon the most reasonable
terms, for in England it is far too expensive.
Staff officers ought to be men of talents and of great enterprise and
perseverance, and should possess even a certain knowledge of
what is considered business, both in a civil and military point of view,
which would render them capable of ascertaining and calling forth
the various resources of a country. They should also be well