BEND, OREGON — Oregon First Militia Private Corporal Master Chief Grant Ryan was already the highest decorated member of the militia that spent roughly one month occupying a bird observatory on federally-protected land in Bend, Oregon, and this week he earned yet another commendation from his battalion.
“For bravery, gallantry, honor, and burying the rest of his platoons’ feces,” a press release from the Oregon militia reads, “Oregon First Militia Private Corporal Master Chief Grant Ryan has been awarded the Iron Shovel. We are forever indebted to Private Corporal Master Chief Ryan for his service in this time of great need.” The press release said that Ryan is the “only remaining member of the militia that has not been arrested” and so the “honor fell to him to bury the feces left behind by his squad.”
As reported earlier this week by several outlets, when the FBI and local law enforcement began cleaning up the site where the militia had made their base camp, they found lots of guns and ammunition, as well as gobs and gobs of human feces, in a trench. Master Chief Ryan would later tell the press he felt it was his “God given duty to clean up the patriotic doody left behind” by his squad.
“Was it not Patrick Henry who said, ‘Give me liberty, or give me death, but also give me a shovel for which I can clean up my friends’ shit!’,” Ryan asked reporters rhetorically. He answered his own question, “Yes it was, and I have a whole lot of other founder quotes that I’m pretty sure are accurate because a right-wing website told me they are.”
Ryan said the job wasn’t easy or pleasant, but he was trained to do whatever the militia needed, and at that moment cleaning up everyone else’s poop was the duty bestowed upon him.
“I could be mad, I could be upset, sure,” Ryan said, “but I just got a free, month-long vacation in Oregon! I got to make my guns go ‘pew-pew!’ and I got to eat lots of yummy snacks. If that means it falls on me to clean up a few metric tonnes of my battalion’s shit, then that’s the duty that falls on me. And I don’t run from duty. I take on duty head-on. I’m the king of duty, around here, that’s for damn sure. Captain Duty they liked to call me.”
Master Chief Ryan says that the Iron Shovel award is “nice” but not at all why he cleaned up the feces.
“I just believe in doing my job and fulfilling my duty, no matter what the odds,” Ryan told us, “and if that means cleaning up poop because they were too lazy to use either the outhouses or the bathroom in the building we were occupying by force, then that’s the duty I am charged to carry out, and carry it out I shall.”
First Militia Private Corporal Master Chief Grant Ryan returned home to his wife and six kids, all under the age of nine, two days after completing Operation Bury All the Shit. He was greeted with divorce papers and a court summons as his soon-to-be-ex wife is suing him for custody for “abandoning us all to go play GI Joe in the woods.” This story will be updated as it develops.
