Irving Morrell

Irving Morrell (b. 1891) was the United States' expert on barrels. Despite his expertise on barrels he did not make many friends in the U.S. General Staff and so was only slowly promoted. Indeed, it was only after the Confederate States attempted to assassinate him early in the Second Great War that he was promoted to brigadier general He was known for commanding his attacks from his own barrel.

At the start of the Great War in 1914, then-Captain Morrell, was part of the U.S. offensive into Sonora. His troops were caught in an ambush outside of Imuris and Morrell suffered a leg wound which left him with a slight but permanent limp.

During his time in hospital he came up with the idea of the personalized helmet for each soldier, which later drew the attention of General Leonard Wood and President Theodore Roosevelt. During 1915-16 Morrell won local victories in eastern Kentucky, earning him a promotion to major and a position in the General Staff. He drew up an imaginative plan for crushing the Mormon insurrection in Utah, endorsed by Roosevelt over the objections of long-serving General Staff officers. It was due to this that Morrell's antagonistic relationship with the General Staff began, and John Abell, another up-and-coming officer in particular. Things were not helped by the fact that the plan proved unsuccessful thanks to the Mormons' unexpected use of land mines.

Nonetheless, Roosevelt and Wood kept faith with Morrell. He was sent to British Columbia, Canada, where he was observed by German Captain Heinz Guderian and Austro-Hungarian Major Eduard Dietl, both of whom were quite impressed with the young major. Again, his planning proved successful, and Morrell was promoted.

In 1917 Lieutenant-Colonel Morrell was posted to George Custer's First Army in Tennessee. Beginning his lifelong involvement with barrels, he devised the Barrel Roll Offensive with Custer and Colonel Abner Dowling, a plan that eventually won the Great War for the United States, and Morrell the rank of Colonel.

Soon after the war he designed the prototype for the U.S.' Mk.II (Custer) barrel at the Barrel Works in Kansas. However due to military cutbacks instituted by the Socialist Upton Sinclair Administration in the early 1920s, he was forced to leave the Barrel Works and the production of the Custer barrel was delayed. Morrel spent 1924-26 at the General Staff in Philadelphia, but his strong views on the Armenian Genocide and Confederate involvment in the Mexican Civil War eventually angered too many powerful men. Morrell was exiled from Philadelphia to the US garrison in Kamloops, British Columbia. He stewed there from 1926 to 1933, frequently bemoaning the military cutbacks imposed by Socialists. Here, he again met with Lt-Col. Guderian, along with staff-sargent Adolf Hitler.

With Herbert Hoover in Powell House and the Pacific War with Japan underway, Morrell was returned to the Kansas Barrel Works and was finally able to build the prototype of the Custer barrel. However, he soon received another reassignment to Houston to help General Daniel MacArthur suppress pro-Confederate support, where his barrels were used as riot-control vehicles on the streets of Lubbock. Despite inflicting heavy losses to the CS agitators, violent resistence was a constant. He also patrolled the border for arms smugglers, but made little headway in stemming the flow of Confederate arms into the state. Morrell stayed in Houston until, under the terms of the Richmond Agreement, Houston returned to the CSA by plebiscite.

Morrell was in Ohio when CS president Jake Featherston initiated Operation Blackbeard, the invasion of the USA. At the beginning of the Second Great War, Colonel Morrell was reunited with General Abner Dowling in the unsuccessful defense against the C.S.' surpise attack. Morrell's counterattack efforts made him a target of the C.S. He survived an assassination attempt, but spent several months in a hospital. It was here that he was notified of his promotion to brigadier general. Ironically, the person who informed him was John Abell, Morrell's most persistant adversary in the General Staff.

Upon his discharge from the hospital, General Morrell commanded the successful counter-offensive against the C.S.' Operation Coalscuttle which had bogged down inside Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The fierce fighting that resulted from Featherston's refusal to retreat made the Battle of Pittsburgh one of the most important and memorable battles of the war, and, indeed, one of the most important military events in modern human history.

With C.S. forces broken at Pittsburgh, Morrell launched Operation Rosebud, and began retaking U.S. territory. During 1943, Morrell made spectacular gains, throwing the Confederacy out of Ohio, and striking through Kentucky and Tennessee into Georgia. By the end of the year, he had taken Chattanooga and was preparing to assault Atlanta, Georgia.

However, instead of repeating the Confederate mistake of bulling straight into the city, Morrell instead threatened the highways and railroads approaching Atlanta, sending light, heavily armed expeditions into central and eastern Georgia to sound out Confederate dispositions. Finding no significant opposition, these raids coalesced into a drive for the Atlantic with the aim of cutting the Confederacy in two. Its strategic significance dissipated, the Confederates abandoned Atlanta and withdrew into Alabama. Morrell pursued, systematically overrunning Birmingham.

Morrell was in Philidelphia when the Confederates detonated their superbomb. The actual detonation was far enough from the center of the city that he survived, although he was certainly exposed to fallout.

With the death of Jake Featherston, the Confederacy lost its last leg. On July 14, 1944, Morrell arrived in Pineville, North Carolina to accept the surrender of the Confederate States from President Don Partridge. After reading and discussing terms, Partridge signed the treaty and was taken into custoy. In short order, the U.S. moved into the former Confederacy to occupy it. Morrell was made military governor of the Atlantic Military District: Virginia, the Carolinas and Georgia.

As military governor, Morrell made it clear that any attempt to rebel against the United States would result in the use of force; in addition, any attempt to stir up mob action against returned black concentration camp survivors would also be met by force. Morrell supervised the production of a pamphlet, Equality, which stated the U.S. position of total legal equality between black and white ex-Confederates, including marriage if both parties wanted it. This pamphlet was distributed throughout the former Confederacy.