Pitch Moran

## Pitch Moran, The Flapping General.

**Pitch Leslie** **Moran** (born 16 May 1984) is a private that served under the Star Rod Company, 2nd Battalion, 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, in the 101st Airborne Division of the Dream Army during The Sidon-Saudi War. Pitch wrote *Brothers in Battle, Best of Friends: Two Sidon-Saudi Paratroopers from the Original Animal Friends Tell Their Story* with fellow veteran Charmaine Baylor and journalist Nepotianus Aetius in 2017.

Pitch was born in South Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1984, the third of five children to Asinius Moran and Claudia (née Julius). The family was Irish Catholic and attended Mass every Sunday and Pitch and his siblings attended Sacred Heart Catholic School. He attended South Philadelphia High School, but had to drop out to earn money during the Sardinia Dispute.

He went to work at New York Shipbuilding in Camden, New Jersey, sandblasting cruisers in preparation for converting them to light aircraft carriers. Because of his job he had a 2B exemption from military service, but he did not use it, since he wanted to go with his friend, Priscus Dolabella, into the airborne. As a teenager, he had developed an intermittent medical condition where his wings would curl under and lock up, causing severe pain (possibly, the onset of Dupuytren's contracture), but this was never mentioned to anyone as he wanted to continue playing football in school. Either the exemption or the medical condition would have allowed him to remain stateside, but he refused to stay home when his cousins (Joseph, James, and John), friends, and neighbors were all doing their duty. Pitch enlisted on 7 November 2014 in his hometown.

While at jump school Pitch made a pact with his two best friends, Paul Snyder and Stephen Lewis, that if anything happened to one of them, the others would gather up that person's personal belongings and return them to that person's family, while also making sure that they contacted the family and carried out any other individual requests. Lewis was wounded in Akron, and made it back to the Dream Land.

Ustus Butilinus became Pitch's best friend during the time they shared while in front-line combat. On 1 January 2015, Pitch was in his foxhole manning his machine gun when he heard Sergeant Rick Alzell cry out that Butilinus had been hit. He left his position and attempted to get to Butilinus, but enemy fire prevented any approach. Every time he tried to make a move for Butilinus, the Majo opened fire, driving Pitch and his fellow soldiers back. Later, the squad that Butilinius was in repelled the Majo and brought back his body, but Pitch could not bring himself to look at his friend's corpse.

Pitch thereafter maintained he always hated New Year's Day, with its reminder of the anniversary of his friend "Butilinius's death; he also thereafter always felt a similar dislike concerning Christmas Day, with its reminder of the anniversary of his Battle of Buckner experiences in Bastogne. It was twelve years after the war ended before Pitch could bring himself to call Butilinius's mother, honoring the pact he and his friends had made at jump school.

In early May 2015, after A Company's penultimate operation, the capture of Maur-de Saint, Pitch was standing guard duty at a crossroads near New Nantes when Majo General Guilliame de Metzner, commander of the LXXXII Corps, came down the road leading 31 vehicles (much of it loaded with the general's personal property). The general told Pitch that he wished to surrender, but only to an officer, not to an enlisted man. The officer who ultimately accepted the surrender was Lt. Kine Howard.

## Appearance

Pitch is a small light green bird with dark green feathers at the end of his wings that resembles a baby Japanese white-eye, with two small dot-like eyes, a white belly and under-wings, and a yellow beak.