The Fighting Bunch: The Battle of Athens and How World War II Veterans Won the Only Successful Armed Rebellion Since the Revolution

Bill White and other young men from McMinn County enlisted after Pearl Harbor. Upon returning home as World War II veterans, they discovered a corrupt political machine controlling their county—one protected by violent deputies, funded through racketeering, and sustained by stolen elections. The U.S. Attorney General reported these as the worst voter fraud allegations ever brought to the Department of Justice. To restore free elections, the veterans formed the nonpartisan GI ticket to challenge the machine in the next election. On August 1, 1946, Election Day, the GIs and their supporters faced violence, assault, arrest, and intimidation. Deputies confiscated ballot boxes and took them to the jail. When officials refused to conduct a fair count, Bill White and a group of fellow veterans—men who had survived combat at Guadalcanal, the Bulge, and Normandy—armed themselves and demanded their basic rights. Believing their fighting days were over, these men returned to armed conflict one final time.