Dennis Barrett, in camouflage fatigues and walrus mustache, is telling about the first man he killed. "He was running toward me and I got him with 18 bullets right in the chest, brrrrrrrt! So I go over to where he went down, and he's not there. I finally find his body 50 ft. away. Now it seems medically impossible he could have crawled that far with his heart and lungs tore clean out like that. But one thing you have to learn is that people don't die the way they do in John Wayne movies. It's disheartening."
Barrett, now 30 and a policeman, learned that lesson a decade ago in Viet Nam. This morning he is passing it on to about 50 men and women assembled in a rude, tin-roofed shed behind a convincing replica of George Washington's Mount Vernon home, only 20% larger. Barrett is ripe with other combat wisdom: "If you bring [an enemy] down, don't run up to him so he can shoot you back. Give him time to die ... When things break down there's going to be an initial surge of people from the cities. They'll kill you for a can of sardines ... You should band together with a few other families, because you're going to need all the firepower you can get. If you have a nine-or ten-year-old kid, teach him how to shoot ... Get yourself a good guard dog. And if worse comes to worst and you run out of food, you can eat him."
Barrett is teaching a class in "Special Weapons and Tactics," one of the several dozen survival-related courses offered at this fall's Freedom Festival. The weekend gathering is sponsored by the Christian-Patriots Defense League at its 55-acre headquarters on the outskirts of rural Louisville, Ill. (pop. 1,000), four hours and a million rows of corn south of Chicago. The festival has drawn 1,500 men, wom en and children from as far away as Mexico and Oregon. Clad in overalls, pedal pushers, business suits and military uniforms, they seem to represent every age group, income bracket, occupation—but only one race. "You're welcome to join us, as long as you're white," John R. Harrell, founder of the league, said over the phone a few days earlier. "We work with all races, but we don't believe in mixing them. We feel that almost 50% of the world's problems are caused by the mixing of races, which we believe to be totally against the natural makeup of man.
This is a Caucasian meeting only. We'll get together with other races elsewhere."
Harrell, 57, is a white-haired former millionaire (mausoleums, real estate) with a radio preacher's voice and the affable manner of a small-town politician. He founded the league's progenitor, the Christian Conservative Churches of America, two decades ago, between a bout with lymph cancer (he won) and his 1960 campaign to be one of Illinois' U.S. Senators (he lost). Shortly after he built this ersatz Mount Vernon—as a tribute to his beloved George Washington and a home for his family of nine—federal agents battered down the gate with an armored personnel carrier, and arrested him for harboring an alleged Marine deserter.
Harrell spent four years in prison, was cited for failing to file income tax returns since 1953 and says he still owes the Government more than $500,000.