Alabama National Guard In Phenix City-A High Watermark, The

Army, Aug 2005 by Allen, Richard F

The Alabama National Guard has participated, in varying degrees, in every significant military action undertaken by this country since the War of 1812, including World War I, World War II, Korea, Vietnam, Desert Storm, Bosnia and Kosovo, and now Afghanistan and Iraq, helping to defeat dictators and terrorists the world over. Nowhere has the Guard distinguished itself more, however, than in the battle for Phénix City in 1954, right at home in Alabama.

For more than 120 years, Phenix City had been a cesspool of decadence, where gamblers, vice lords and thugs, protected by corrupt local officials, exploited human weaknesses. After Fort Benning, Ga., was established just across the Chattahoochee River, many young soldiers, often away from home for the first time, fell victim to this wide-open den of iniquity. Sporadically, the state of Alabama tried to clean up Phenix City, but every effort failed until a sensational murder set the stage for the Alabama National Guard to tame "the wickedest city in America."

In 1833, the village of Girard, Ala., sat on the west bank of the Chattahoochee near the point where the first federal road crossed into Alabama. Girard was a lawless frontier town, as bad or worse than any cattle town of the old west, where booze flowed freely, gambling openly flourished, prostitution was rampant, and beatings, cuttings and killings were common. The frontier moved westward, but Girard remained a pocket of depravity in southeast Alabama. Periodically, the state cracked the whip, but as soon as the outsiders left, criminal activity in Girard returned to normal.

In 1923, in yet another attempt to tame wicked Girard, which was in Russell County, the town was merged with a God-fearing community just across the line in Lee County. The seat of the merged towns was moved to the Russell County side of the county line. The influence of the decent people of Phenix City, however, could not overcome generations of lawlessness; as soon as the state's back was turned, Phenix City became just as corrupt and wide-open as the former Girard, but there was at least now a counterculture of decent, but intimidated, citizens.

In the years just before World War II, and indeed during the war, conditions went from bad to worse as thousands and thousands of soldiers passed through Fort Benning and sought adventure when they were outside the gates. Lured by bright lights, liquor, open gambling and fast women, soldiers from Fort Benning were an easy mark in Phenix City. Neither the soldiers nor the honest citizens could turn to local authorities for help. Gambling kingpins and vice lords bought votes, counted votes of long since dead voters and terrorized honest citizens so that every political leader and law enforcement officer in the county owed their jobs to the crooks. The outlaws, in turn, paid license fees, taxes and fines that kept Phenix City from going bankrupt during the Great Depression.

Typically, a soldier would go to one of Phenix City's bars and be greeted by a friendly bar girl. He would buy her watered-down drinks until she got him drunk. She would then take him to a back room where slot machines and table games were played. (In addition, there were two lotteries running continuously in Phenix City.) Playing against loaded dice and marked cards, the drunken soldier was easy pickings. If he quit gambling before he was broke, he could take the girl to a side room for the going rate of a dollar a minute. If he did not drink enough, knockout drops could be slipped into his drink and he would then be rolled. Some Phenix City women married eight or ten soldiers and had allotment checks coming from them all. In one house of prostitution, the owner tattooed a mark inside the lower lip of his girls; if they tried to seek work elsewhere, the next proprietor would know to whom they belonged and send them back.

If a soldier caused trouble in Phenix City, the lucky ones were merely arrested by local police or sheriff's deputies, charged with being drunk and disorderly and turned over to the MPs. If they were too rowdy, there were brass knuckles, chains, clubs, knives and guns readily at hand, and the less lucky soldiers might be severely beaten. The most unlucky of all-those soldiers causing the biggest problems-were killed and their bodies thrown into the Chattahoochee River.

At the end of World War II, a lot of good soldiers came home to Phenix City, determined to rid their hometown of corrupt politicians, gamblers and vice lords. It proved to be an exceedingly difficult and frustrating task-one marked with arson, bombings, beatings and eventually, murder.

In 1951, an organization known as the Russell Betterment Association (RBA) was formed in the offices of a lawyer named Albert Patterson. Patterson practiced law with his son, John, a former artillery officer who had served in North Africa and Italy during World War II. Patterson himself was a partially disabled World War I veteran, having had one leg mangled by a German machine gun. The express purpose of the RBA was to bring law and order to Phenix City.