In the jungle near the Laotian border in 1965, Billy Waugh lay bleeding where he fell. Bullets had ripped through his body. His head. His legs. His torso. North Vietnamese soldiers moved past him, stripped him of his clothes and weapons, and left him exposed in the undergrowth. Naked. Wounded. Alone.
Men usually died there.
Billy Waugh did not.
He pulled himself forward inch by inch. Every movement tore open gunshot wounds. Blood mixed with dirt and leaves. Insects crawled across his skin. Breathing hurt. Staying conscious hurt more. Still, he kept moving. For hours, he dragged himself through the jungle until somehow, against every rule of war and medicine, he lived.
When he finally made it out, doctors pieced him back together and delivered the verdict. His fighting days were done. His body had taken too much damage. He had earned the right to go home and stay there.
Billy Waugh listened politely.
Then he ignored them.
War had already shaped him long before Vietnam. He joined the Army in 1948, barely out of his teens. He fought through Korea while others were settling into ordinary lives. When that war ended, he did not look for comfort or stability. He chose harder ground.
In the mid fifties, he joined the Green Berets. Special Forces suited him. The silence. The endurance. The understanding that success often meant no one would ever know what you did. By the early sixties, he was operating with MACV SOG, a unit so secret it barely existed on paper.
Their missions crossed borders the United States officially never crossed. Laos. Cambodia. Deep jungle patrols where capture meant torture or execution. No public records. No ceremonies. Just the work.
The ambush that nearly killed him did not slow him down. Over the course of his military career, Billy Waugh was wounded eight separate times. Eight Purple Hearts. Eight clear chances to walk away. Each time, he chose to return.
He also helped pioneer high altitude parachute insertions, jumping from extreme heights and opening low to avoid detection. Today, it is standard practice. Back then, it was experimental and unforgiving. He learned it the hard way.
Eventually, age forced him out of uniform. But retirement never fit him.
In 1977, he joined the CIA.
For the next twenty years, he worked in places the military could not openly go. Fragile governments. Violent networks. Conflicts that required deniability. In the early nineties, the agency sent him to Sudan to track a man most Americans had never heard of.
Osama bin Laden.
Billy Waugh found him in Khartoum. He photographed him. Mapped his routines. Identified his associates. Long before the world knew the name, Waugh had already put a face to it. Around the same time, he also helped track Carlos the Jackal, contributing intelligence that led to Carlos’s capture in 1994.
Still, there were no headlines. That was understood.
Then came September 11.
As the United States prepared for war in Afghanistan, the CIA began assembling teams to operate in mountains where cold, altitude, and terrain were as dangerous as any enemy. Billy Waugh volunteered.
He was seventy two years old.
The agency hesitated. The conditions were brutal. Younger men struggled to keep up. Waugh insisted. He knew the enemy. He had chased bin Laden years earlier. He could still do the job.
They sent him.
In Afghanistan, he carried his gear like everyone else. He slept on frozen ground. He operated alongside men half his age. Korea. Vietnam. The War on Terror. One lifetime had not been enough.
Billy Waugh died in 2023 at the age of ninety three.
There was no grand public reckoning of his service. There could not be. Much of what he did remains classified. Many missions will never be named. Many lives saved will never be counted.
That is the bargain of that kind of service.
He never chased praise. He never waited for permission to stop. He went where he was needed because he believed someone had to.
Billy Waugh stands for a kind of hero most people never meet. The ones who endure quietly. Who accept that history will only ever tell part of the story.
They do not ask to be remembered.
But they should be.
On the tribulations of an expatriate in Europe
Friday, February 20, 2026
The Quiet Hero Who Never Stopped — Billy Waugh
Why wasn’t Prince Andrew arrested?
He just was, thirty minutes ago.
They were building a case against the Andrew formerly known as Prince. He was arrested this morning in England on the charge of “misconduct in office”.
You can say a lot about the British, not of all it positive, I’m sure. Every society and every government has its rotten apples, and every family has it’s black sheep. Andrew surely is the blackest of sheep ever to bleat in anyone’s family tree, ever. It’s been centuries since any royal has screwed up so badly that he got kicked out of his residences and stripped off his princely titles, his charitable causes and all royal organizations attached to him. The only thing Andrew was allowed to keep was his first name and his medal from the Falklands War.
Andrew just got arrested. The wheels of justice do not always move fast, but they DO move. Meanwhile in America, the entire network of creeps being dismantled methodically around the world remains free — perks of electing the biggest creep of all as your President, I suppose. Andrew Mountbatten was not so fortunate; King Charles has turned his back to his wayward brother, as have the government and all other royals.
Footnotes
Does blood pressure medication have to be taken forever?
I was placed on blood pressure tablets six years or so ago after my routine medical checkup indicated that my blood pressure was alarmingly high at 165/105. I was given a prescription by my doctor and told that I would have to take the tablets for the rest of my life.
Of course, aside from my personal frustration over the diagnosis, whether or not you really need medication forever would depend on what is actually causing your high blood pressure to begin with. If it is genetics, kidney diseases, or damage to organs, then indeed, it would require long-term medication. If it is lifestyle changes, if it is your obesity, your lack of exercise, or your drinking habits, you could actually manage to lower your blood pressure enough to successfully stop your medication, under medical supervision, of course. By the way, it is absolutely not advisable to stop your blood pressure medication on your own, as the rebound effect is quite dangerous.
I have been made aware of different ways in which one can address the real causes of hypertension with the help of an article that was recommended to me by a functional medicine doctor. This article has literally enabled me to decrease my medication by seventy-five percent and to get my blood pressure completely into normal range with lifestyle changes alone.
Well, I no longer just accept the fact that I am on these medications for good or that medications are the only answer to hypertension, etc. And instead, I have made it a point to address this issue or condition through various facets while, at the same time, working hand-in-hand with my doctor. This is in addition to losing some weight, which is known to greatly lower blood pressure in most people, eating a healthy diet full of potassium and magnesium while avoiding sodium, as well as regular exercise, which is good for the cardiovascular system, reducing stress through meditation and adequate sleep, giving up drinking, which was a huge contributor to my hypertension, getting regular blood pressure monitoring, etc. In addition to all this, there is still a big difference between understanding that, sometimes, medication is a lifesaver when you need it, but it doesn’t have to be a lifelong sentence if you are willing to really make some significant lifestyle changes. Work with your doctor, really, and you would be amazed at just how your body heals itself.
True protection comes from kindness, not confrontation
Lisa Marie always considered herself a daddy’s girl, and for her, those words held profound weight. To Lisa, Elvis Presley wasn't the towering legend the rest of the world saw; he was simply her father, a man whose love felt absolute and safe. When he passed away in 1977, Lisa was only nine years old—far too young to realize how rare and fragile that kind of protection truly was. Yet, the memories he left behind remained vivid, serving as quiet proof of his deep devotion.
In her memoir, From Here to the Great Unknown, Lisa Marie recalled a specific moment that stayed with her forever. She had spent the night at a friend’s house nearby, and the next morning, an older neighbor began speaking to her cruelly. The woman mocked her father, dismissing him with sharp, hurtful words that stunned Lisa. It was the first time she had ever heard anyone speak poorly of the man she adored, and it left a wound she didn't yet know how to heal.
When Lisa told Elvis what had happened, he didn’t brush her feelings aside. He listened intently and then asked a simple question: "Where does she live?"
Shortly after, he drove Lisa straight to the woman’s house. Elvis stepped out of the car looking unmistakably like himself—calm, composed, and dignified. Lisa watched from a distance as they spoke. What began as a tense encounter ended in something entirely unexpected: the woman softened, asked for an autograph, and even posed for a smiling photograph with him.
For Lisa, that moment became a defining image of her father. He didn’t respond with anger or a desire to humiliate. Instead, he chose presence, dignity, and love. He showed her that protection doesn’t always require confrontation; sometimes, it means standing tall and letting kindness disarm cruelty. In her eyes, Elvis was never just the King of Rock and Roll. He was the man who showed up when she needed him most, making her feel safe in a world that could often be loud and unkind.
One person's victory opened the door for generations to come
Her father whipped her for running. Her country made her leave her own celebration through the back door. But first, a king placed gold around her neck.
August 1948. London's Wembley Stadium. Rain falling on 83,000 spectators.
Alice Coachman stood at the high jump bar, 24 years old, competing with an injured back that doctors said should have ended her athletic career. No American woman had claimed gold at these Olympics. The pressure was immense.
She cleared 5 feet, 6 and 1/8 inches on her first attempt.
Olympic record. Gold medal. History made.
King George VI himself placed the medal around her neck. She became the first Black woman from any nation in the world to win Olympic gold. She was the only American woman to win gold at the 1948 Games.
But nothing about her path to that moment had been remotely fair.
Alice was born November 9, 1923, in Albany, Georgia, the fifth of ten children in a family struggling with poverty. She picked cotton to help feed her siblings. She sold plums and pecans. She hauled corn to local mills. And whenever she could, she ran.
The girl could fly. She could jump higher than anyone had ever seen.
But she was Black. She was female. She was living in the Jim Crow South.
Public athletic facilities existed for whites only. Organized girls' sports barely existed anywhere. Her father believed athletics were unladylike and wanted her sitting on the porch looking "dainty." When she kept running anyway, he punished her physically for it.
She didn't stop.
She ran barefoot on dirt roads. She constructed her own high jump equipment from rope and sticks in her backyard. She found people who believed in her dream when her own father couldn't: her fifth-grade teacher Cora Bailey, her aunt Carrie Spry who defended her against parental disapproval, and high school coach Harry Lash who recognized exceptional talent when he saw it.
In 1939, Tuskegee Institute offered her a scholarship.
Before Alice Coachman ever attended a single college class, she had already broken the national high school and college high jump records. Barefoot.
For nine consecutive years, she dominated American track and field. Ten straight national high jump championships—a streak never equaled. Twenty-six national titles across high jump, sprints, and relay events. Three-time conference basketball champion. Sportswriters dubbed her the "Tuskegee Flash."
By every measure, she should have been a multiple Olympic champion. But World War II erased the 1940 and 1944 Games—precisely the years when she was at her physical peak. "Had she competed in those canceled Olympics," one sportswriter later observed, "we would probably be talking about her as the greatest female athlete of all time."
By 1948, at 24, she was past her athletic prime, managing chronic back pain, finally getting her only Olympic chance. At the trials, she shattered the American record despite the injury. In London, her closest competitor—Britain's Dorothy Tyler—eventually matched her historic jump, but only on a second attempt. Coachman achieved it on her first try.
Gold.
When she returned home, America wanted to celebrate its history-making champion. Count Basie threw her a party. President Truman congratulated her at the White House. Georgia organized a 175-mile motorcade from Atlanta to Albany.
But in the Albany auditorium where her own hometown honored her achievement, Black attendees and white attendees were forced to sit in separate sections. The white mayor sat on stage beside her but refused to shake her hand. After the ceremony, she had to exit through a side door.
"To come back home to your own country, your own state and your own city, and you can't get a handshake from the mayor?" she recalled years later. "Wasn't a good feeling."
She retired from competition after London, completed her degree at Albany State College, and became a teacher. In 1952, Coca-Cola signed her as a spokesperson, making her the first Black female athlete to endorse an international brand. She was eventually inducted into nine Halls of Fame and honored at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics as one of the 100 greatest Olympic athletes in history.
Alice Coachman died on July 14, 2014, at age 90.
But she understood exactly what her victory meant.
"I made a difference among the Blacks, being one of the leaders," she told The New York Times in 1996. "If I had gone to the Games and failed, there wouldn't be anyone to follow in my footsteps. It encouraged the rest of the women to work harder and fight harder."
She opened a gate that would never close again.
Wilma Rudolph walked through it. Evelyn Ashford walked through it. Florence Griffith Joyner and Jackie Joyner-Kersee walked through it. Serena Williams. Simone Biles. Every Black woman who has ever competed in the Olympics stands on the shoulders of a barefoot girl from Albany, Georgia, who built her own high jump bar from rope and sticks because no one would let her use theirs.
Alice Coachman didn't just win a gold medal. She proved that greatness cannot be segregated, that talent refuses to be silenced, and that sometimes one person's victory opens the door for generations to come.