The Republic of Texas Marine Corps Fighter Attack Squadron 112, the Cowboys never was simply a fighter squadron after the Second Great Depression. The Tarrant County Sheriff deputized the unit, and he or one of his representatives was on station to help swear in every new member of the Cowboys in the centuries that followed. The War expanded on this. The Peloran picked the Cowboys as their primary point of contact with America, and gave them access to everything in their bag of technological tricks. They helped the Cowboys design new upgrades for their fighters and turned over entire fabricator nodes to build hundreds of the most advanced fighters the galaxy had ever seen. The Peloran took a reserve fighter unit filled with children from many of the Great Families of Earth, granted deputized powers of law enforcement by one of the premier Texas counties, and made them the most powerful fighter unit in the known galaxy. Trust me when I say that this was no accident.
The public face of the Republic of Texas Marine Corps Fighter Attack Squadron 112, the Cowboys, has always been the fighter squadron. But the Cowboys are also a loophole in the laws that have been updated to say that Marines cannot be deputized into law enforcement anymore. The Tarrant County Sheriff deputized the entire unit during the Second Great Depression, and has never rescinded it, and grandfather clauses being what they are, the entire unit is still included in his posse. Which happened to include a large number of non-fighter pilots, air and spacecraft, and even a respectable ground combat or military police element. The exact organizational chart covering the Cowboys was suitably complex and esoteric, even before The War. It has become far more interesting since then. This is a feature, not a bug, per the wishes of both the Tarrant County Sheriff and the Cowboys.
The Tarrant County Sheriff needed a larger posse during the Second Great Depression, so he called on the Marines in his county. The law and Constitution did not specifically say they could not be peace officers, but the Cowboys were a fighter squadron, not a ground combat unit. Yes, technically, “every Marine is a rifleman,” but some riflemen are better than other riflemen. And a posse did not necessarily need riflemen at all. The sheriff wanted military police on his side, so when the local Army military police battalion decided they all harbored a secret desire to be Marines, he was there to swear each of them in. And then he ordered them to go out and do posse business protecting the county.
The Republic of Texas Marine Corps Fighter Attack Squadron 112, the Cowboys, became far more than just a fighter squadron during the Second Great Depression. They were a workaround for a Constitutional and legal issue that the Tarrant County Sheriff used when his county was under assault by gangs, mobs, and even Federal agents. He needed more posse members to protect his county, but the Army, Navy, and Air Force servicemen could not be recruited. But the Marines had never been addressed in the law. They were a loophole that the sheriff drove a truck through, used to smack the rioters and anarchists down, and then kept in his back pocket over the centuries that followed. He was a careful man, you see. Best sheriff Tarrant County as ever had according to the polls.
The Tarrant County sheriff deputized the Republic of Texas Marine Corps Fighter Attack Squadron 112, the Cowboys, back during the Second Great Depression. This was to protect the county from the various gangs and other forces that wanted to burn or destroy the place. Few people realized that the sheriff did not release them after the emergency ended. He wished to keep them in reserve, and since they were a reserve unit to begin with, it worked well for all parties. He called them to duty from time to time as the years passed on into decades, usually to help after some natural disaster. And as the decades became centuries, they remained Tarrant County deputies.
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