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Buried Ammo. So far, the Minutemen have attracted mostly middle-class people with an average age of about 30. Some saw duty as Army Rangers or in the O.S.S.; a handful are on active military service now. Although some Minutemen belong to the way-right John Birch Society, the two organizations do not see eye to eye. Leader DePugh talked with Birch Founder Robert Welch, now recalls: "I did not find him impressive. He didn't think much of our program either. He doesn't even think the Russians have atomic weapons."
One problem of the Minutemen is that different units have different ideas about the organization's reason for being. DePugh sees the Minutemen as a combat group. He sanctions such operations as last week's Illinois exercise, where everything from land mines to 20 mm. antitank guns were made available by a Collinsville, Ill. member who, as an ordnance expert, is licensed to buy and sell weapons under the National Firearms Act. But others, like the San Diego Minutemen, stress survival. Says San Diego Photographer William F. Colley, 39, under whose leadership 2,900 California Minutemen have buried medicine, supplies and 10,000 rounds of ammunition up and down the state: "We hope we never have to use that gear up in the mountains. But it's not hurting us to put it there. And if we ever do need it, we'll be better off than those folks buried under radioactive ash in their concrete coffins."