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Plot Twists From History That Still Surprise People

Khalid Elhassan May 15, 2022 38 min

Michael Rockefeller surrounded by New Guinea aborigines. Smithsonian Magazine

21. It Did Not Take Long for This Unexpected Hero to Go Back to Being a Disliked Jerk

Plot Twists - Michigan Governor Harry F. Kelly, who feted Snuffy Smith upon his return, and issued a warrant for his arrest a few years later — Michigan Governor Harry F. Kelly, who feted Snuffy Smith upon his return, and issued a warrant for his arrest a few years later. Wikimedia

Finally, the outfit’s operations officer recommended that Smith be demoted to private for an “insufferable” attitude and poor performance. The hero was often AWOL, and displayed “no responsibility to his duties, or to his officers and fellow NCOs“, and it took repeated warnings and reprimands to get any work out of him. The USAAF agreed, and on December 17^th, 1944, Snuffy Smith’s tale witnessed another plot twist when he was busted down to private. It was a demotion that he angrily described as “the rotten deal that lousy outfit gave me“. A medical board grounded him that same day, and he was sent back to America soon thereafter.

Back in Michigan, Smith was still a hero. His hometown welcomed him back with a parade that featured the state’s governor, Harry Kelly, and gifted him a pricey gold wristwatch. He got his discharge papers soon afterward, and settled in Washington, DC, where he worked for the IRS. He was bitter about his time in uniform, which he told a friend “was just so much time of my life wasted“. When the Pentagon tried to set up some PR interviews, Smith made sure that they wouldn’t call again “when I [got] through putting them in their proper place“.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.