Rogue (Alex King Book 9), page 3
TM: Not a lot I can say about that.
WS: Well, that makes a change.
TM: Okay, well I didn’t mean to offend. Perhaps I should ask about your medals?
WS: (Shrugs) They mean little to me. I got the Purple Heart because I was shot.
TM: Twice.
WS: Sure.
TM: In two separate incidents. Surely you should have two of them.
WS: I lost my entire unit that night, I don’t want any more medals.
TM: But the Congressional Medal of Honor is a big deal. An award for valour and distinction. You killed three Iraqi commandos that night.
WS: It was a case of kill or be killed. You do what you have to do.
TM: So, you were leaving the battlefield for a gunshot wound, when you came under attack.
WS: Yes.
TM: And you were forced off the road, your driver was killed, and you fought the men off?
WS: That’s right.
TM: You were lucky.
WS: How so?
TM: Well, during your absence for a superficial wound to your arm, you were behind the lines when your unit was overrun. Everyone was killed. That was luck.
WS: If you say so. I was a commanding officer who lost all his men. There was nothing lucky about that. And if you’ve ever been shot, you know there’s nothing superficial about it.
TM: But had you stayed, you would have been killed, too.
WS: Perhaps. Perhaps not. Maybe I wouldn’t have called in the Broken Arrow order so soon. I guess we’ll never know.
TM: I’m sorry.
WS: It was war.
TM: No, I’m sorry… I’m checking my notes and I may have got the injury wrong. You were injured in the close quarter battle that followed as well.
WS: I was.
TM: So how were you injured in the ambush?
WS: (an unnaturally long pause) You tell me. What do your amateur hour notes say?
TM: It doesn’t say. Just that you were injured and leaving the battlefield.
WS: That’s right.
TM: Did it hurt at the time, the wound in the ambush? Or did adrenalin play a factor?
WS: I didn’t really have time to feel anything.
TM: On account of the morphine.
WS: I administered morphine, yes.
TM: Prior to the ambush, back where your unit would later be attacked?
WS: Yes.
TM: So, that’s probably why you didn’t feel the wound to your leg?
WS: Exactly.
TM: Sorry, your arm. It was the leg that you were seeking treatment for, not the arm as I said earlier. Is that right?
WS: Yes.
TM: Which?
WS: The leg. I was injured in the leg, then took another gunshot wound to the arm.
TM: The fog of war…
WS: Excuse me?
TM: The fog of war. I guess it is difficult to remember which injury came first, what with the fog of war descending.
WS: I guess you had to be there to understand.
TM: No doubt. So, Willard, what about the gold?
WS: Excuse me?
TM: The gold. In the Klondike and Alaska. You struck gold.
WS: My mining concerns have found seams of gold, yes.
TM: Another stroke of luck. The ground was thought to be mined out. First by the goldrush, then by the dredging in the seventies. You have managed to strike it rich in two forgotten locations.
WS: I wouldn’t say it’s luck. We used new technology to map the ground. We found a dried up-river bed in the Klondike and mined the natural bends where deposits would have built up throughout the years. Nobody would have found the dried-up rivers without the topography mapping equipment we utilised. In Alaska we found new seams of bedrock. The gold hits the bedrock and gets caught. The old miners did not realise there were two seams of bedrock.
TM: But how can there be two? Surely there is one, then soft earth on top.
WS: Well, there was. Are you a gold miner as well as a military expert?
TM: I guess not. Mister Standing, it’s been an interesting interview, thank you.
WS: (Nods and gets up. The interview is over.)
While Time Magazine recognises military service, it would seem that Willard Standing is a businessman with a great deal of confusion and hostility regarding his service and the Gulf war in general. Call it survivor’s guilt, or a distinct lack of respect for the media, but five years on from the Gulf war, it is evident that some battles are ongoing.
Article in The New York Times 1996
Time Magazine Apologises
Award winning feature magazine and photographic journal Time Magazine has apologised for a one-sided interview with retired United States Army Colonel turned multi-millionaire metallurgist Willard Standing. Standing, who won the coveted Congressional Medal of Honor and a Purple Heart in Operation Desert Storm five years ago, claimed there was bias and a leading agenda to reporter Peter Williams’ feature. Lawyers for the war hero are ignoring the apology and suing the publication for defamation of character. Standing’s spokesperson says, “Colonel Willard Standing suffered huge loss during the campaign and it is possible he has been left with survivor’s guilt. However, both he and his lawyers feel that Mr Williams and Time Magazine were digging unnecessarily for an angle that simply doesn’t exist. This has had a detrimental effect on shares in Standing Industries and as Director, he is entitled to take legal action.
Article in the Washington Post 1997
Time Magazine sued for $3 million
Time magazine was successfully sued yesterday by Standing Industries for a leading article attempted to defame war hero and goldmining millionaire Willard Standing. The award-winning publication will also have to pay legal fees of $2 million. A spokesperson for Standing Industries said, “Willard Standing is delighted with the result of today’s judgement and will be giving the three million dollars to the Veteran’s Association.”
Footnote in Time Magazine 1997
A Sad Loss
It is with the deepest regret that we have to announce the death of our long-serving features reporter Peter Williams, who was shot and killed in a robbery at a Seven-Eleven convenience store in New Jersey. Peter was an outstanding journalist and had won many awards over the years for his honest, concise features. He was particularly active during the Gulf War, where he was imbedded with the US Army and wrote two award winning pieces, one for this magazine and one for National Geographic. He leaves behind his wife Angela and two sons, Adrian and James. He will be missed by his family and friends, all of us at Time Magazine and many other publications he worked with in an illustrious career.
Feature in Business Insider Monthly 1999
“The Midas Touch”
With many businesses and institutions preparing for the unquantifiable ramifications of the Millennium Bug, one business has no such worries. Standing Industries has gone back to basics in an industry becoming frequently reliant upon the digital age.
“We found that dealing with regional commanders, governments and self-governing districts throughout the Middle East it was evident that we needed to be on the same level… these are people who barter and haggle, deal on a nod and seal the deal with a glass of tea…” said company director Willard Standing. “Why try to computerise that?”
Not content with salvaging close to a million tons of scrap metals from the desert, Standing Industries recently proved it had the Midas touch when ground long thought cleared of gold in the Klondike and Alaskan heydays started to produce gold. A lot of gold.
“We invested in scanning technology used by palaeontologists and archaeologists to break new ground. Rather than computerise our accounts and personnel, we invested in equipment to generate source income,” Standing told us from his Alaskan family home on the banks of the Taku Inlet outside Juneau.
Standing Industries owns two gold mines. Both were thought of as a folly, the ground emptied of gold during the goldrush, then again with the advancement of dredging in the fifties, sixties and seventies. Ground would be flooded, and the dredgers would scrape out and separate the gold from the pay dirt, sluicing the water directly back into the flooded dredge fields. Miners were able to get the gold out in ways not available to their great grandfathers, but when Standing opened the ground back up and brought in machinery, the mining community thought the man who made his fortune clearing the battlefields of Kuwait and Iraq must be insane. Instead, he used a new type of technology to x-ray and scan the ground and find diverted riverbeds, now covered by ground from the last Ice Age. The ground was rich in seams of gold and took limited excavation to expose. Standing Industries is now one of the largest gold concerns in Alaska. In a bold move this year, the company patented the adapted version of the “Bore Scope” X-ray machine that the company puts down to their success. Other mining companies have employed the same x-ray equipment but have yet to generate new sources of gold on old ground. Some people are calling foul play, but Standing Industries stands by the technology it has developed and has cited criticism of the technology as detraction and part of a smear campaign to discredit them with their shareholders. It would not appear to have hurt them, though, as Standing Industries is riding high and entered the New York stock exchange top 100 last month. The man with the Midas Touch is clearly going places.
Forbes Magazine Feature 2006
The Governor
Not satisfied with striking gold where the smart money had pulled out years ago, the man behind cleaning the Middle East of the debris of war is running for Alaskan state governor.
Willard Standing III, former decorated army Colonel and Gulf War hero, has entered the world of state politics and garnered massive support in the brief time since throwing down the gauntlet to serving Governor Frank Turin, who has been critical of the devastation caused by gold mining to the Alaskan wilderness. Turin, who along with the Department for Fish and Game, set subsistence hunting quotas allowing one moose, two caribou and two mountain goats per household per year. For many, the quota did not allow for the Alaskan tradition of bartering. Many people go to Alaska and live off the grid, the stringent hunting quotas are viewed by many low-income families as simply not giving them enough bartering power for fuel, groceries and labour hire. Standing has vowed to double hunting quotas and lift the hunting ban on wolves, a creature he personally views as potentially ruinous for people keeping livestock as part of their subsistence lifestyle.
“My family ran a small farm and we had a hundred head of cattle,” says Standing. He looks every bit the ‘guy next door’, rather than a career politician. Dressed in chinos, a polo shirt and brogues. His whitewall hair shaved at the sides and back makes him look like one of NASA’s astronauts in the sixties. “When a smallholder, or subsistence farmer loses a calf, it has a huge effect on the household income. To lose three or four, it is catastrophic. Even farmers need to make up their hunting quotas to survive the winters or pay for services in meat. Frank Turin wouldn’t know what it can be like. He came up from California to run a dental practice in Anchorage. When he got into politics, it was because he saw Alaska as an easy seat. The state was ready for a change then, and they are due a change now. I was born here; I grew up here and I left to serve our nation as a soldier. When I was sent to the Gulf, I did not know that I would leave as the highest decorated officer in the conflict, but it was my Alaskan grit that got me through. It was the same native Alaskan determination that saw me take on two forgotten mines and find gold where others had lost a fortune in trying.”
Not content with owning two of the most profitable mines in the Western hemisphere, Standing Industries operate a smelter facility, processing the gold and smelting into ingots and bars. They operate the same facility for other mining concerns and charge a fee payable at the day’s market rate which can be paid in cash, or for a discounted rate in gold. They also buy gold in rough state by the ounce.
“Some of the smaller guys are in debt for machinery and labour costs, so they are glad to take their smelted gold without handing over a dime in money. We simply take some off the top for the service. Or they can walk in and we buy directly,” said Standing. “We always give the best price, so we are helping out fellow gold miners, who we do not view as competition. They have their mines, we have ours and it’s not like fishing where people trawl in front of you. We can’t get the next guy’s gold, and he can’t get ours. We should support each other. If anything, it should be us against the federal inspectors and taxation. Alaska pays three-times in tax what gold mines pay in Utah. I make it a key pledge to take on the unfair and disproportionate taxation of Alaskan gold mines.”
2010
Washington Post Article
Alaska State Governor runs for Congressman
With the governorship of Alaska under his belt, and clearly the man of the moment above the Lower 48, gold mining mogul and Gulf War hero Willard Standing seems a shoo-in for congressman. Helped by allegations of corruption, complicity and a sex scandal against current congressman and former Alaskan state governor Frank Turin, Willard Standing has his sights set high, and it would seem he is about to hit his target.
Having doubled the state’s game bounty – a viable and clearly vital way of life in America’s largest yet least populated state – his support for further gold, oil and diamond mining licences to increase employment opportunities and an increase in the percentage of the Alaskan oil wealth trust fund has proved understandably popular with fellow Alaskans. The current average figure all Alaskan residents receive is around $2000 a year and under Standing’s directive would go as high as $2400 a year. For a family of four, the oil wealth trust fund is a huge part of their household salary and Standing’s game bounty means people are effectively twice as well off before wages are taken into account than under Congressman Frank Turin’s stewardship. Standing has also been active in bringing the rate of taxation down for Alaskan goldminers. He has never denied having a vested interest but sees the heavy taxation as the catalyst for employing less personnel at mining concerns, while exploiting their hours and days off. “When you’re on the gold, you’re on the gold. You can’t stop for days off and weekends away and the seasons can be short, especially up north with the short summers. The light is a factor, too,” says Standing. “If the sun is still shining at midnight, then we’re still mining at midnight. A fairer proportion of tax in line with Oregon, Utah, South Dakota, Colorado and even California would mean a few more guys could be hired at each mine who can take up the slack and ease the workload.”
It’s clear that Willard Standing has received a wave of support from fellow Alaskans and it is hard to imagine the tough-looking war hero not crossing the finish line and becoming Alaska’s new Congressman. So, the question is where next for the self-made multi-millionaire? President? You read it here first, folks.
2012 Feature in National Geographic
From battlefield to Oasis
As herons and cranes spear fish, wading in the shallows among reeds and lily pads, a sea eagle swoops and takes a sizeable fish in its talons, beating its large wings to get airborne again and climb higher, jostling with the struggling fish, repositioning it for the flight back to the trees on the edge of the shore. Further out at sea (and it is easy to forget this is the Arabian Gulf) a fisherman casts his nets for shrimps, a staple of the wading herons and cranes in the foreground. Further in the mangroves, closer to the sandy shore, frogs croak in the late afternoon sun and a million insects cast a cacophony on the arid air. From where I sit, taking pictures of this oasis, a snake slithers out from the reeds and zigzags across the hot sand. I assume it has come down for a drink, but then I remember that the sea is shimmering in the heat haze in front of me. Perhaps it has come down for a cooling off. As if reading my mind, my guide Josef tells me, “The rains and the cooling air at night that creates condensation, or dew, sit on top of the saltwater. In the mangroves, the first centimetre of water is fresh, or at least fresh enough to quench your thirst.” He beckons me to the edge of the water and takes the top off his water bottle. He scoops up the tiniest amount in the lid and hands it over to me. “See! Drink, drink!”
Not wanting to offend, I close my thoughts of bacteria and sipped the tepid liquid. To my surprise, it tastes relatively drinkable. Certainly not like taking in a mouthful of the Pacific or Atlantic while jumping over the breakers, and nothing like the saltiness of the Caribbean. It reminds me of the hit of tequila that takes away the mound of salt on the back of your hand. There is an essence of saline, but nothing more. It would sustain you in a pinch, or daily if you happened to be a parched desert viper.
