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His Sergeant in Vietnam Became His Hero. He Never Forgot It.

John Magnarelli — Fri, 12 Jan 2024 17:37:50 +0000

Willie Johnson was a 35-year-old African American from South Carolina with a wife and six kids. What did I, a 20-year-old single white kid from Quincy, Mass., have in common with him, other than being stationed in Vietnam with the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment? Well, living with someone in an Armored Cavalry Assault Vehicle (ACAV) for five months will make for close relationships.

Willie was a career soldier, our first sergeant, a leader, advisor, confessor, and friend. He was firm but fair and full of life. He taught me to play pinochle, a card game I never played before and have never played since. I never called him Willie, but always “Top.” He was killed by a rocket propelled grenade (RPG) a few feet from me.

Near the Cambodian Border

On March 5, 1970, we moved from a location near the Cambodian border to a place just four or five miles away. The rolling terrain was a challenge for our 12-ton armored vehicles. We arrived at our night defensive position just before dusk and deployed our 20 ACAVs similar to how covered wagons would circle in Western movies. The track commander was Capt. Max Bailey, who sat on top of our vehicle behind a .50-caliber machine gun. The driver was Don, whose last name I forget. Top and I were the rear gunners behind M60 machine guns. I dismounted our track, set up trip flares covering our part of the perimeter, and positioned Claymore mines in front of our vehicle.

We had been in constant contact with the enemy for months and were always prepared for battle. Our enemy was not the Viet Cong but the North Vietnamese Army (NVA), and we never knew where or when they would hit us. I was still awake at probably around 10:00 p.m. when I heard the distinctive thump of a mortar tube being fired. Seconds later the first rounds hit in and around our perimeter. This was followed immediately by a barrage of enemy AK-47 and RPG fire.

We responded with volleys of machine gun and tank cannon fire. With 20 vehicles firing at once, the sound was deafening and the smell of cordite filled the air. Ground and aerial flares lit the night sky. Claymore mines exploded all around as the enemy closed in. The enemy attack died down after about 20 or 30 minutes. Bailey dismounted our vehicle and walked the perimeter to check on damage and wounded. Top, Don, and I pulled up more ammunition for our weapons.

The Fateful Call

Top received a call from Bailey that some enemy wounded had been spotted in a bomb crater a few ACAVs down from us. We had a directive from our headquarters’ G-2 Intelligence that if possible we should take prisoners for interrogation. Top would never order someone to do something he wouldn’t do himself. So he jumped off our vehicle and told Don and me to follow him to get more information. Bailey confirmed there were two or three NVA wounded about 20-40 meters from our perimeter.

Without blinking, Top said: “Let’s go get them.” So Top, Don, Bailey, and I lined up about five meters apart and headed for the bomb crater.

We made it about halfway to the crater when a figure jumped up with an RPG and fired at us. The rocket landed between Top and Don who were at the end of our line. We received more mortar and RPG rounds, followed by small-arms fire. I hit the dirt and returned fire at the shadowy figure. I lost sight of the other three as bullets whistled above me. I was caught about 20 meters outside our perimeter.

Bad News

Just as concerned about friendly fire from behind as enemy fire in front, I crawled back to our perimeter. I looked for Top, Don, and Bailey but couldn’t find them. As the battle raged, I returned to my ACAV, took my position and continued to return fire. When the other three hadn’t returned, I assumed they jumped on other ACAVs to continue the battle. Eventually things quieted down. This time we were sure the enemy had retreated.

Some time later, Bailey returned to our vehicle and told me that Top was killed by the RPG round and Don was wounded. Bailey was also wounded but continued to lead the battle and was awarded the Silver Star for his efforts. I was stunned. I had been in country for 10 months and through a lot. Although other men in my unit had paid the ultimate sacrifice, this was different.

Because I was so close to Top, it hit me hard. What made it worse was having to stay alert and man my vehicle in case of another attack. There was nothing I could do except live with the thoughts going through my head. You don’t plan for someone to get killed so you don’t know how to react.

At first light I went over to the medical area and saw Top’s body on the ground covered with a rubber poncho. I can’t remember if I cried, but I was in a state of disbelief. Here was a person I truly respected, confided in, told stories with, and a few short hours earlier had been laughing and joking with, and now he was gone.

A Step Closer to Closure

At my computer about 33 years later, I went to the 11th Armored Cavalry website and scrolled to Top’s name on a list of 700 troopers killed in Vietnam. Over the years I’ve thought about him many times and wondered about the family he left behind.

I saw a message that made me freeze. It was signed by a Ricky Johnson who wanted to hear from anyone who had served with his dad. I summoned the courage to give Ricky a call. It was extremely emotional. Ricky was 11 years old when his father was killed, and the Army never told the family how he died.

It was difficult for me to recount the events, but it was a step closer to the closure that neither of us will probably ever achieve. Memories fade with time but for the rest of my life I will remember my friend Willie and all that he taught me. To all the Willie Johnsons who never came home, may you always be remembered.

Adapted from the author’s book, 11B10: Memories of a Light Weapons Infantryman in Vietnam.

This story appeared in the 2024 Winter issue of Vietnam magazine.

How Did World Media View the War in Vietnam?

Zita Ballinger Fletcher — Thu, 28 Dec 2023 16:33:14 +0000

This formerly classified analysis of media coverage on the Vietnam War was prepared by famed journalist and war correspondent Edward R. Murrow for U.S. National Security Advisor McGeorge “Mac” Bundy in 1963.

In the document, Murrow arrived at the conclusion that major media in most other countries around the world displayed virtually no support or sympathy for the government of Ngo Dinh Diem, with the exception of the staunchly anti-communist South Korea, the Philippines, and to a lesser extent Thailand. Bundy served as a presidential advisor until retiring from the role in 1966.

Formerly classified analysis of media coverage on the Vietnam War was prepared by famed journalist and war correspondent Edward R. Murrow for U.S.

This story appeared in the 2024 Winter issue of Vietnam magazine.

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Meet the Norwegian Warrior Who Fought in Vietnam

Zita Ballinger Fletcher — Tue, 26 Dec 2023 21:25:46 +0000

In one of the most outstanding memoirs that this reviewer has had the privilege of reading, retired U.S. Army Col. Henrik “Hank” Lunde gives a detailed account of his life experiences and strug-gles during the Vietnam War and beyond. Lunde served three tours in Vietnam, first commanding a rifle company with the 1st Brigade, 101st Airborne Division before going on to serve as Brigade S-3 and battalion executive officer for the 9th Division, becoming a deputy operations adviser to II ARVN Corps and eventually commanding a Special Forces battalion from 1972-73. He was Chief of Negotiations for the U.S. delegation to the Four Party Joint Military Team (FPJMT), negotiating with North Vietnam to account for dead and missing. He also went on to serve as Director of National and International Security Studies for Europe at the U.S. Army War College.

this article first appeared in vietnam magazine

Leaving Norway

Lunde was born in Norway in 1936 and emigrated to the U.S. as a teenager. The early part of his memoir provides a fascinating and poignant glimpse of his hardscrabble beginnings in Norway and his family’s experiences. Living on the small island of Risoy in western Norway, he watched dogfights between British and German planes overhead and once had a dangerous encounter with German officers searching his family home during World War II. As a boy he was enthusiastic about stories involving military history and leadership, reading the Old Norse Kings Sagas by Snorre Sturlason, playing military-oriented games, crafting bows and arrows, and even (without his parents knowing) experimenting with gunpowder.

After moving to the U.S., Lunde had difficulty adapting to his new home, struggling with English and experiencing bullying. He overcame these challenges and eventually settled on pursuing a military career, as he “felt the best way to repay my new country’s opportunities was to serve the nation in some capacity.”

Insights Into Warfare

Lunde’s memoir has many merits. His writing is packed with detail. His style is concise but informative, enlightening the reader in crisp but illuminating sentences. In addition to possessing great personal courage, Lunde has great analytical powers that come across throughout the book. He demonstrates a far-reaching ability to evaluate all manner of problems and situations from various angles. Lunde’s personality comes alive in his book. He is highly organized, professional, firm, patient, self-controlled, and also extremely humble and conscientious. There are plenty of war stories in the book which will interest readers not only because of events described but because of how Lunde analyzes factors within each situation.

Henrik O. Lunde, left, receives the Legion of Merit from Brig. Gen. Robert L. Schweitzer at SHAPE on June 15, 1979.

Perhaps what stands out most of all in his autobiography is Lunde’s wisdom about warfare and human nature. Writing on human emotions in war, he says: “The emotion of hate has no place on the battlefield, despite what Hollywood movies portray. It interferes with a soldier’s logical reasoning process, leads to loss of self-control, self-respect and pride in the unit. Hate is ruinous to discipline and morale.” Lunde acknowledges that while elements of hate or malice “are practically impossible to eliminate in an environment where friends are killed or maimed…I am proud to say that these elements were kept on a tight rein by a group of exceptionally fine NCOs and officers.” He states, “I told my troops to fight like tigers but conduct themselves with honor.”

There is much military wisdom to be gleaned from Lunde’s writings and this makes his autobiography a must-have for any military historian. It is also a wonderful read for anyone simply seeking to read about and appreciate the life and experiences of a very fine soldier. “If I were ever again to find myself in a tight and dangerous combat situation, Hank Lunde is the one man that I would most desire to have at my side,” wrote the late Lt. Gen. Henry Emerson of his comrade. Emerson also praised Lunde as an “effective and brave combat leader” and a “magnificent soldier.” This reviewer heartily concurs.

Immigrant Warrior: A Challenging Life in War and Peace

By Henrik O. Lunde. Casemate Publishers, 2023, $52.95

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This review appeared in the 2024 Winter issue of Vietnam magazine.

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Our 9 best-selling history titles feature in-depth storytelling and iconic imagery to engage and inform on the people, the wars, and the events that shaped America and the world.

‘Weary of So Much Suffering’: Letters from the Sheridan Field Hospital

Jonathan A. Noyalas — Thu, 21 Dec 2023 14:09:00 +0000

A gloomy and tragic scene—one with which the inhabitants of the oft-contested city of Winchester, Va., were unfortunately all too familiar—unfolded throughout the night of September 19, 1864, as thousands of casualties from the Third Battle of Winchester were brought to makeshift hospitals throughout the community. “All the wounded,” reported Surgeon James T. Ghiselin, the Army of the Shenandoah’s medical director, were taken to “churches, public buildings, and such private dwellings as were suitable.”

It did not take long for Ghiselin to realize that the 40 structures transformed into ersatz hospitals would be insufficient to handle the army’s casualties, which exceeded 4,000 troops. Ghiselin also understood these spaces would be further strained with additional casualties as Maj. Gen. Philip H. Sheridan’s Army of the Shenandoah pursued Lt. Gen. Jubal Early’s Confederates south toward Fisher’s Hill. Sheridan’s medical director quickly realized that the time had come to implement a plan, developed several weeks earlier, to transport hundreds of tents to Winchester and construct what would be known as the Sheridan Field Hospital—the largest hospital of its kind constructed during the Civil War.

Surgeon John Brinton first began practicing medicine in Philadelphia in 1854. He had an active Civil War career, and even served on Ulysses S. Grant’s staff for a time. Brinton developed a reputation as a man who could fix things, and was often made responsible for organizing Army hospitals. He continued in practice after the war, and became the first curator of the National Museum of Health and Medicine. Brinton died in 1907.

The day after the battle Surgeon General Joseph K. Barnes ordered Surgeon John Brinton “to proceed without delay to Winchester” and supervise the construction of “a large tent hospital…to be of a capacity of four to five thousand beds.” The following night Brinton arrived in Winchester. While erecting “500 tents…was no slight matter,” as Brinton asserted, the task of erecting the Sheridan Field Hospital was completed on September 29, 1864, with the support of approximately 500 troops from Colonel Oliver Edwards’ brigade. After the hospital’s construction, and in the ensuing weeks, a bevy of civilians, including relief agents from the U.S. Christian Commission and nurses arrived to aid in caring for the wounded. Among them was Jane Boswell Moore.

Moore, a native of Baltimore, Md., who at the war’s outset aided wounded and sick Union soldiers brought to the city, believed that by the late summer of 1862 her talents could be put to better use in the field. After the conflict’s bloodiest day at Antietam, Moore ventured from Baltimore to Sharpsburg. From that moment until the war’s end, she cared for wounded soldiers in the aftermath of the some of the conflict’s fiercest engagements in the East, including Chancellorsville, Gettysburg, and Petersburg.

In the autumn of 1864, Moore came to Winchester. During that time Moore aided wounded soldiers in various hospitals throughout the town, including the Sheridan Field Hospital. As had been the case throughout her service, Moore took a special interest in particular soldiers and decided to share their stories and her experiences by sending letters to “a number of religious and secular periodicals.” Moore hoped that publication of these letters would encourage donations of supplies. While difficult to quantify the amount of donations Moore secured, a Congressional report noted decades after the conflict that her published letters prompted “great quantities of donations.”

During Moore’s stint in Winchester, two of her letters appeared in the Advocate and Family Guardian—a biweekly newspaper published by the American Female Guardian Society in New York City. These letters, printed in early 1865, reveal much about a nurse’s experiences caring for soldiers wounded during Phil Sheridan’s 1864 Shenandoah Campaign, illuminate the sufferings of the wounded, and serve as a powerful reminder of war’s devastating and tragic consequences.

Colonel Oliver Edwards’ brigade of Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island regiments built the Winchester hospital. Edwards was a sturdy commander who was in the thick of many Eastern Theater battles.

Moore’s first letter, published on January 16, 1865, includes an account of her encounter with Sophronia Loder, a mother who ventured to Winchester from Indiana when she learned that her son, Sergeant Adam Loder, 18th Indiana Infantry, had been wounded at the Battle of Fisher’s Hill on September 22. Unfortunately, the wounds Sergeant Loder received to his left lung and left arm proved mortal. He died on October 7, 1864, prior to his mother’s arrival. In addition, Moore recounts the difficulties experienced by Private Walter F. Reed, shot in the jaw at the Battle of Cedar Creek, and Corporal Isaac Price, 15th West Virginia Infantry, who lost both arms in the skirmish near Hupp’s Hill, south of Cedar Creek, on October 13, 1864.

Advocate and Family Guardian
January 16, 1865
I rose from a rude bed on the floor of a house in Braddock Street, in the old town of Winchester, Va., where we have spent seven weeks ministering to the wounded in the last great battle [Cedar Creek]….At eight o’clock daily, an ambulance reports for duty… we, away from the home, and standing in the stead of kindred, dedicate this day, by an act of respect, to the dead, who sleep in Virginia soil….On this bright morning, we pluck a sprig of evergreen to send to the loved ones far away from the grave in which their son and brother is sleeping, and our hearts are saddened to think how these mounds are filling loving hearts with anguish and desolation….Every one of these small shingle-boards, with its miserable and almost illegible penciling, has its history, and that of some is heartrending. Shall I briefly allude to those whose names were carved by same hand?

In this corner lies Sergt. Loder, from Indiana; seven weeks ago, in the ambulance in which we rode from Martinsburg here, we met his mother, and to know her was to love her. In the pages of memory the record of those pleasant hours and interesting conversation will remain, when years have passed away. It is not often you can know the heart of a stranger, yet sometimes, in our journey through life, we meet a gentle, loving spirit whose sympathies with our own, and whose transparency and simplicity of character are as rare as charming. Sad, indeed, was the result that widowed mother’s journey, for ere she left home her son was laid in this burial spot. She waited long, in hopes of taking him to his wife and child, but this, owing to the manner of his burial, was not accomplished; and she returned, leaving us to mark the spot; and on the very day I performed this duty, I received from her one of those warm, affectionate letters that proved ours to be more than common acquaintanceship….Our sad task over, we load the ambulance with soft crackers, pickles, wine, condensed milk, tobacco (needed in the terribly offensive state of wounds), tomatoes, jelly, butter, and eggs, (when they can be obtained). Bay rum, soap, canned fruits, stationery, clothing, &c., and drive over a rough road, up the hill to Sheridan’s field hospital, where snowy tents loom up against the exquisite hue of the peaks of the distant Blue Ridge—tents alas! so full of misery. Here, Wards, three, four, five, six, seven, ten, twelve, fifteen, sixteen, nineteen, eighteen, twenty, twenty-six and seven, and the gangrene tents claim our special attention.

Let us hurriedly glance at some of the more interesting cases. In ward three Walter F. Weed, of the 114th N.Y.V., has long been a candidate for soft food, his mouth and jaw being terribly broken by a minie ball. At first he could not speak, and we brought him fresh milk; but now he is able to tell his wants, chew a little, and is going home. His can of peaches we find he has been saving to eat on the way, so we add other articles, and smile at his provident forethought….Isaac Price of the 15th loyal Va., looks dispirited, as he sits with both arms gone. Perhaps he is thinking of the wife, mother, and nine children at home on whom as well as himself this heavy trial has fallen…

Well, reader, no doubt you are weary of so much suffering, and so also are we, so we hurry home at half-past twelve, making a very plain and hasty dinner of crackers, beef and as it is Thanksgiving, some canned tomatoes…and then drive to the “front,” with dried fruits, condensed milk, crackers, stationery, needle-bags, little books and papers. We have paid constant attention to other regiments and to-day we will remember Maryland. It is quite disappointing to find the members of the 6th mostly on picket, but amongst those left in camp our stock is decidedly unpopular…

We pay a visit to the poor soldiers in Camp Convalescent, and they look so sadly into the ambulance, it makes one’s heart ache. After tea, a sick New Yorker sends for something he can eat; so we put crackers, butter, a lemon, loaf sugar and calves-foot jelly on a tin plate, and send to him. At night there are letters to write for the sick, and a head-board to carve for the dead—sad, yet needless duties; and, as I look to remember that not to me has the day passed without bringing its own sad memories.

One month after Moore’s first letter appeared in the Advocate and Family Guardian, the paper published a second. In addition to describing the grisly scenes that followed the Battle of Cedar Creek, Moore shared the experiences of Private George Hill, 13th West Virginia, who lost his right leg at Cedar Creek, and his interactions with Carrie Fahnestock, the seven-year-old daughter of Gettysburg, Pa., merchant Edward Fahenstock, who sent a brief note and housewife to the U.S. Christian Commission to hopefully brighten the spirits of a wounded Union soldier. In addition to including the text of Fahnestock’s letter, Moore also sent Hill’s response to it. Hill survived his wound but perished 14 years later at the age of 32. Whether Hill’s war wound contributed to his death is unknown.

Advocate and Family Guardian
February 16, 1865
On the twenty-first of October, after the last great battle in the valley, Dr. [James H.] Manown, the kind-hearted surgeon of the fourteenth West Virginia, told me that towards evening a number of wagons would arrive from the “front,” with wounded, on their way to Martinsburg, twenty-two miles further. My orderly was sent to borrow pails, and we were soon busily employed making milk punch. Just about dark, an immense double train of rough army wagons arrived, blocking up the streets, and belonging to the Sixth, Eighth, and Nineteenth Corps, each freighted with mangled, bleeding, yet precious burdens, among whom our work commenced. It was a strange, warlike scene—dark night settling over Virginia roads, mud, cavalry, and wagons, whilst with flaming candles (lanterns were not be to procured) we supplied the wounded in the different wagons, giving to each half a tin cup full, and to others hot tea. The night was raw and chilly, and both then and on the next, our duties being the same, many suffered from the cold, especially the rebels whose clothes were ragged and thread-bare, many having old quilts and spreads around their shivering forms. They were mostly from North and South Carolina, Louisiana, Virginia, Georgia, &c., ours from West Va., N.Y., Mass., Ohio, Ind., Pa., &c, &c. Many had to be lifted up to drink, and two were beyond the reach of all earthly pain. Two whose legs had been amputated, one from N.Y. the other from Pa. implored me to have them left in Winchester, they being unable to endure the rough ride over stony roads, in lumbering wagons, and Dr. Manown had them taken out, with others, for whom a further ride would have been impracticable. Among them was Georgie Hill, who was fearful of being moved lest the stump of his right leg should be jarred, so Dr. M. lifted him tenderly in his arms, and carried him into his own hospital, in the Southern Methodist Church, on Braddock Street, two doors from our quarters…lying in front of the pulpit, I found him. He did not look more than twelve years old, his skin was fair as a girl’s, his hair dark, and his great black eyes, just about as large and full of mischief as any I ever saw. Though I had a great many serious cases in Sheridan Hospital, who were not nearly so well cared for, I generally managed at noon to get a minute to take a can of peaches or cherries, or some other delicacy to the dear little fellow, whose bright eyes sparkled with pleasure…

An August 1863 view of Gettysburg’s Camp Letterman, named for Army of the Potomac Medical Director, Dr. Jonathan Letterman. This image gives an idea of the appearance of the Sheridan Field Hospital, large well-spaced wall tents organized into streets.

One day I thought of a present for Georgie, sent by a little girl in Gettysburg to the Christian Commission, and entrusted to me. It was a needle-book or housewife, made of pretty red, white, and blue merino, or soft flannel, with pins, black-thread, a nice letter, some little bits of candy wrapped in paper, and a sweet carte-de-visite of a dear little girl. So I told Georgie about it, and his face lighted up as he said, “Bring it right in, so that I can see it.” Some days elapsed before I found time to do so, receiving at length a gentle reminder that, “that though promised three days before, he had not seen it yet.” So at noon I hurried into the church, and stooping on the floor, showed Georgie the wonderful contents of the needle-book, and read to him little Carrie’s letter. “Isn’t she a little one!” he exclaimed, his eyes expanding to their utmost capacity. This is Carrie’s letter:

Gettysburg, February 25th [1864]
Dear Soldier,—I can’t do much for you, as I am a very little girl—but I think of you, and pray for you too. I hope you are good, and pray for yourself. When we had the battle here, I saw how you had to suffer, and I pity you. I carried things to sick soldiers, and if you were here would do it for you. I send you my picture that you may see how small I am.
Good-by. Carrie Fahnestock.

A few days after, I went in to give eggnog to the wounded, and was sorry to see Georgie about to be taken in an ambulance from the church to Sheridan field-hospital. His few worldly possessions lay on his stretcher, and he looked sorry to leave, for it was one of the coldest days we had had. I tried to comfort him, telling him I daily visited Sheridan hospital, and all he had to do in case we did not find him among so many was to let us know the number of his tent. “How can I let you know?” was his doubtful reply. But late in the afternoon, I sent James with some little article for poor Jones, in whom I took a deep interest, and sure enough in “Ward Seven” lay Georgie…

The next day was intensely cold. The sky was strangely covered with bright, shifting clouds, looking like grotesquely-shaped precipices, the exquisitely-tinted hills of the Blue Ridge forming a framework or border to the picture of the hillside, with its orchard of ruined fruit-trees, through which numberless teams and wagons wended their way to the closely-gathered tents of Sheridan, covering so many suffering and dying souls… I sought out Georgie, and wrote in answer to Carrie’s letter:

Sheridan Hospital, Ward 7
Nov. 5th 1864 Winchester, VA
Dear Little Carrie,—I am quite a little boy, and my name is Georgie Hill, Co. K, 13th West Va. Regiment. I have been a little soldier boy fourteen months, and was wounded in the leg on the nineteenth of October near Cedar Creek, Va., with a minnie ball. I was carried to Newtown and lay in a tent, and on the twentieth the doctor took my right leg off. My father is dead, but I have a mother, three brothers and one sister, and my home is in Mason County, Va. Three of my brothers are dead, all soldiers, one died in the Mexican war, one at the siege of Vicksburg, and one in the hospital in Gallipolis, Ohio….Miss Moore gave me your dear little picture and present. She told me I must keep it as long as I live to remember the time I lay on the church floor in Winchester, after the battle; and I will. Yesterday they brought me to this field- hospital, where all the sick are in tents, and I find mine very cold this windy day. I don’t like it as well as a house, and if I could have stayed, would not have left the warm church [Southern Methodist Church on Braddock Street]. Miss Moore found me to-day right in her ward—she brought me a little puzzle-box, with seven pieces of wood, and if you know how, you can make squares and funny figures. At first I could not put them all back in the box. I am going to play with it when I go home, before I get my wooden leg and am able to run around. I have not been home for fourteen months, and I don’t know when I shall get there. I have not had a letter for two months either, my mother does not get my letters, or I don’t get hers, I don’t know which. I am going to eat candy after dinner, (this arrangement was not made with difficulty) I have had some pudding, brought in by a Winchester lady, but it has lemon in it, and I don’t like lemon, so I keep looking at the candy. Miss Moore asks if there is anything else I want to say, but I never wrote to you before, so you must excuse me. Good-by, Carrie.
Your little friend, Georgie Hill

Sketch artist James Taylor drew General Philip Sheridan attending the November 24, 1864, Thanksgiving flag raising at his namesake hospital. The general is just to the right of the flagpole. Taylor recalled, “As the trooper hauled Old Glory aloft amid the strains of ‘The Star-Spangled Banner,’ by headquarter’s band, Little Phil arose….” The artist also remembered the presence of “maimed veterans, one of whom had but two stumps and another with both arms off” among the wounded men at the ceremony.

The Sheridan Field Hospital officially closed on January 4, 1865. Whether Moore departed Winchester before or after that date is unclear. Evidence indicates Moore was with Union forces in Richmond at war’s end. Four years of nursing wounded soldiers in hospital and on the battlefield exacted a physical toll on Moore. In 1888, suffering from “extremely poor health, caused by her army service,” the Federal Government awarded Moore a monthly pension of $50.

After the conflict Moore, who married Jacob Bristor, a veteran of the 12th West Virginia Infantry in 1867, committed herself to aiding the less fortunate at home and abroad. At the time of her death in 1916 The Baltimore Sun reported she contributed “about $150,000 to the foreign and domestic missionary societies of the Presbyterian Church, most of these gifts having been made in the form of property and ground rents in Baltimore.”

this article first appeared in civil war times magazine

Jonathan A. Noyalas is director of Shenandoah University’s McCormick Civil War Institute and the author or editor of 15 books.

No Rules For Generals in Vietnam?

James Vaughn — Mon, 18 Dec 2023 15:04:30 +0000

In autumn 1969, I was stationed in a bunker on the radio. I was to communicate with the perimeter guards and helicopters if in trouble. If we were attacked, I was the one that blew the sirens. The infantry would scream on the radio, “Rockets in the air!” That was my cue to blow sirens. This particular month we changed our radio call sign from Roadrunner to False Minder. The operating manual was sent to all stations on my network. Our orders were not to answer someone using the wrong call signs.

Hawk 6

Evidently generals do not have to read these manuals each month. One day the commanding general of the 1st Aviation Brigade was flying to my base. He was known as Hawk 6 on the radio. So he called on the radio, “Roadrunner, Roadrunner. Hawk 6.” He was not using the right call sign, so I did not answer.

Radio operators’ standing orders are to obey proper radio procedures, one of which is to only answer proper call signs. That is a security standard. It prevents the enemy who could be monitoring our network from identifying all the units calling on a network. The general must have thought he was out of range, so a few minutes later I heard, “Roadrunner, Roadrunner! This is Hawk 6.”

This is when I did the bravest thing I did in Vietnam. I did not answer. Despite the orders not to answer someone using the wrong call signs, I was scared. I knew I would pay a price for this. I heard the anger in his voice when he came back with, “Anyone on this net know where Roadrunner is?” The response came in, “I don’t know, sir.” In two sentences all sorts of security violations occurred. One, by a general. The other referring to him as “sir.”

Enter The Captain

He was only calling for a ride. Let him walk like everyone else, I thought. I can only imagine what the door gunners and crew chiefs thought when they saw a general walking.

this article first appeared in vietnam magazine

The next person I saw was my captain. He came running into the bunker. His face was as red as Santa Claus’s suit. He was screaming, “Did you hear Hawk 6 on that radio?” I said, “Yes, sir.” That shocked him. There were only two ways I would not hear him: I was not there (AWOL) or asleep (dereliction of duty). Both were court-martial events.

“Why didn’t you answer him?” demanded the captain. I replied, “He was using the wrong call signs.” For a moment he did not know what to say. Then he said, “I don’t care if he calls you ‘Asshole’! You answer Hawk 6!”If I were truly brave, I would have asked for that order in writing, but I was a 20-year-old kid and he was as angry as any man I ever saw and had a .45 on his hip. I thought he might shoot me. And I had June 15, 1970 [the day I would leave Vietnam] on my mind.

I was sure there was a court-martial in my future, but if my defense was going to be that the general was using the wrong call signs, no one was going to embarrass a three-star general. I wondered where the list was of orders that you are not supposed to follow. I also wondered if my captain, when he reported back to the general, had the moxie to tell him that he was using the wrong call signs.

Good Decisions?

In November we changed our call sign to Roadrunner. When I left Vietnam in June, we were still Roadrunner. Apparently not troubling a general was more important than radio security.

I Googled the general years later because I wanted to see who he was. It was Allen Burdett Jr. When I read about him, it said he loved to be known as Hawk 6, so I knew I had the right guy. The other thing I read about him [from the Army Aviation Association of America] was that “in a subsequent Vietnam tour, he commanded the 1st Aviation Brigade during 1968-1970, tough and demanding years in the Vietnam War, where, as Hawk 6, he was known throughout Vietnam for his astute planning and tactical acumen.”

Acumen means the ability to make good judgments and quick decisions. To me making good judgments means reading your operating manuals and using the correct call signs. Compare this story to Adm. McCraven’s writings on duty.

After leaving Vietnam in 1970, James Vaughn became a CPA and ran his own tax practice.

This story appeared in the 2024 Winter issue of Vietnam magazine.

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World War I Enemies Played Football During A Christmas Truce–Except Maybe They Didn’t

Andrew Hamilton — Thu, 14 Dec 2023 15:52:52 +0000

Over the Christmas period in 1914, fraternization took place in No Man’s Land between British and German soldiers at St. Yvon in Belgium. Memorials in the Belgian villages of St. Yvon and Messines commemorate a football game played between the British and the Germans during the Truce. Whenever this author mentions that his grandfather Robert Hamilton, a captain in the 1st Battalion of the British Army’s Royal Warwickshire Regiment, was involved in the Christmas Truce at St. Yvon, he is invariably asked whether Hamilton played in a game of football against the Germans.

It is a fair question given that it is now widely accepted that there was an ‘international’ match there. However, evidence from accounts by those who took part in the Truce casts doubt over whether such a game took place at all and calls into question the justification for the installation of the three memorials, one on the edge of Ploegsteert Wood and two in Messines.

Where Did the Story Come From?

One of the most compelling accounts of the Christmas Truce and the warfare that preceded it, is to be found in Hamilton’s diary which he kept throughout his five months on the Western Front. It offers a graphic and harrowing account of mobile fighting before the onset of attritional trench warfare.

He vividly described the rain, mud, dangers and discomforts of life in the trenches and the daily fight for survival against shelling and sniping. His descriptions of life behind the lines, billets, estaminets and local hospitality are detailed and perceptive. His record of the humor and comradeship of his fellow soldiers is also heartwarming and entertaining.

This artistic interpretation of the Christmas Truce of 1914 depicts German and British troops mingling on the battlefield to exchange tokens of goodwill.

At the war’s outbreak in 1914, Hamilton was 37 years old. He had been brought up in Tiddington, a village near Shakespeare’s Stratford-on-Avon in Warwickshire, England and was educated at Glenalmond College in Scotland, after which he became a regular in the British Army. He joined the Norfolk Regiment with whom he fought as a 2nd lieutenant in the Boer War 1899-1902.

By 1914 he had been transferred to the 1st Battalion of the Royal Warwickshire Regiment, whose men were commonly known as the Royal Warwicks. It is clear from his diary entries that he was a good friend of Bernard Law Montgomery, the future Field Marshal and architect of notable victories over Germany in World War II. On Aug. 8, 1914, Hamilton recorded when at Shorncliffe in Kent waiting to cross the Channel to France that, “Bernard and I walked down to get our valises, which they refused to let us fetch. This was the first major piece of red tape rot, which Bernard and I quite made up our minds must cease.”

Thirty-mile marches and ducking German shells exacted a toll on the Royal Warwicks. Hamilton complained on Sept. 12 that, “This is the hell,” and on Sept. 19 that, “I am sure I look fifty, I feel seventy.” Hamilton was promoted to the rank of captain after his superior, Charles Bentley, was court martialled for constant drunkenness, much to his and Montgomery’s relief.

On Oct. 13, 1914, in one of their first major actions of the war, the Royal Warwicks fought in the battle of Meteren, losing 42 men killed and 85 wounded. The battle ended Montgomery’s front line action when he was hit in the lung and knee. He was hospitalized in St. Omer and returned to Southampton, England via Boulogne on Oct. 18 to recover.

Andrew Edwards’ famous sculpture called “All Together Now” at the garden of St. Luke’s Church (the bombed-out church) in Liverpool.

Prior to the Christmas Truce, Hamilton and the Royal Warwicks were based in trenches on the edge of Ploegsteert Wood which on Nov. 22 were, he wrote, “in a shocking way. Dead bodies everywhere and the stink awful.” On Dec. 11, he wrote: “It rained all night and the whole of today. When I went round the sentries, I found them quite resigned to another flood. They were amused. One Private Carter said “it will lay the dust, sir, won’t it?” at which I laughed heartily and so did they. But poor fellows were on their last legs for this trench trip.”

Christmas at St. Yvon

In November, Hamilton had been delighted that Bruce Bairnsfather, a family friend from prewar days in Stratford-on-Avon, had arrived at the front. Bairnsfather would become celebrated for his cartoons of life in the trenches published in The Bystander magazine, especially his British “Tommy” characters Alf, Bert and most famously “Old Bill.” Bairnsfather captured life in the trenches in an inimitable style—for example, a Tommy caught in the light of a German star shell having drunk a whole jar of rum, the meeting of a British and a German officer in No Man’s Land, and the spectacle of a Birmingham barber cutting the locks of a long-suffering private of the Royal Warwicks with the warning, “Keep yer ’ead still or I’ll have yer blinkin’ ear off.”

At 6.30 p.m. on Christmas Eve 1914, Hamilton’s A Company of the 1st Battalion Royal Warwicks set off from their billets at La Crèche in France to relieve the Royal Dublin Fusiliers in the trenches at St. Yvon over the border in Belgium. Over 100 years later, if one follows in their footsteps from the magnificent Ploegsteert Memorial along Mud Lane to Prowse Point Military Cemetery, one will find the memorial unveiled in December 2014 by French football star and administrator Michel Platini, which has since been swamped by football shirts and scarves and surrounded by footballs. Behind the original German front line at Messines the main football-inspired memorial is a replica of a memorial first unveiled in 2014 in Liverpool outside St. Luke’s Church.

A wealth of accounts of what happened over the Christmas period at St. Yvon shed a different light on what actually transpired there. These accounts include firsthand British reports by four officers including Hamilton, three NCOs, nine privates and an account by a German officer, Leutnant Kurt Zehmisch of the 134th Saxon Regiment.

Of the many truces that took place on the Western Front in 1914, this one is unquestionably the best documented. Using this material, it is possible to paint a comprehensive and detailed picture of what happened during the fraternisation in that sector of the Western Front—including about whether the legendary football match ever took place.

Despite the doubt about whether men on opposing sides played football together, the football has become a symbol of the Christmas Truce and features in several memorials, including Flanders, Belgium.

Most of the British soldiers who had been at the Front since August 1914 were “regulars”—professional soldiers—rather than the thousands of volunteers who answered Horatio Herbert, 1st Earl Kitchener’s call to arms. Assured the war would be “over by Christmas” they found themselves tired and homesick after four months of tough combat.

Unsurprisingly they were, according to Hamilton’s diary, “a little sad at spending Christmas Day” in the trenches when they set off for them at 6.30 p.m. When the men approached their trenches, it was clear something was amiss. Hamilton recalled that, “Crossing the well worn danger zone to our consternation not a shot was fired at us.’ After much shouting to and fro across No Man’s Land, Private Gregory, was given permission by Hamilton to go and parley with the Saxons “at your own risk”. On his return, he informed his officer that, “they [the Germans] wanted me to meet their officer and after a great deal of shouting across I said I would meet him at dawn, unarmed.”

Meeting the Germans

For the Royal Warwicks who had suffered several weeks of wind, rain, flooded trenches, shelling and sniping, the interaction with the 134th Saxons on Christmas Eve was extraordinary and unexpected. Carols were sung by both sides. Leutnant Zehmisch ordered Christmas trees to be lit with candles along the trenches.

Lt. Cave recalled that “they had their Christmas trees blazing all night” and Pvt. Day wrote that on Christmas Day at “about 1 o’clock they struck up with a band of concertinas and a cornet; they played ‘Home Sweet Home’ first, then a lot of other tunes finishing up with “God save the King.” Pvt. Charlie Pratt was in awe that “the Germans sent up a star shell which lit up the place lovely and then for the first time we saw friend and foe.” Pvt. Walter Cooke considered that “the band sounded great, much better than hearing shells whistle overhead” while Pvt. Langton recalled that “we would sing a carol first and they would sing one. I tell you they can harmonize alright.”

It was inevitable that fraternization would take place on Christmas morning. Hamilton wrote he “went out and found a Saxon officer of the 134th Saxon Corps, who was fully armed. I pointed to his revolver and pouch. He smiled and said, seeing I was unarmed, ‘Alright now.’ We shook hands, and said what we could in double Dutch, arranged a local armistice for 48 hours, and returned to our trenches. This was the signal for the respective soldiers to come out. As far as I can make out this effort of ours extended itself on either side for some considerable distance. The soldiers on both sides met in their hundreds and exchanged greetings and gifts. We buried many Germans, and they did the same to ours.”

In the evening a number of officers enjoyed a concert in ‘D’ Company’s dugout until midnight. It was, according to Hamilton, “a very merry Xmas and a most extraordinary one.” There was nonetheless a feeling that the enemy could not be trusted, so Hamilton “doubled the sentries after midnight.”

Exchanging gifts

Hundreds of soldiers swapped postcards, photos, pipes, mufflers, tobacco, cakes, buttons, tins of bully beef and cap badges. The most popular exchanges were, as Day noted “cigarettes for cigars, a gift from the Kaiser.” He also received “some of their postcards which they signed and addressed.” Pvt. Layton was impressed with the Germans’ language skills: “There were a good many amongst them who could speak broken English alright and they said ‘You make it no shoot, we make it no shoot.’” For William Tapp, it was “a strange sight, unbelievable that we were all mixed up together.”

A Christmas Truce memorial located at the National Memorial Arboretum in Staffordshire, England.

The armistice meant that an important job could be carried out. The Brigade War Diary recorded that ‘men of the Somerset Light Infantry, 134th Saxons, Hampshires, a Prussian and an Uhlan were all buried. The Germans helped in the digging with the 1st Battalion of the Royal Warwicks supplied the “tools” since the Germans stated they had none. Burial of the dead was a convenient excuse for the Brigade commanders to play down the enormity of what had happened.

At the time when British soldiers were fraternizing with the enemy in No Man’s Land, their superiors, Generals John French, Douglas Haig and Horace Smith-Dorrien were lunching in St. Omer. They were furious to hear reports of what had taken place. On Boxing Day, Smith-Dorrien sought details of officers and units who had taken part in the Christmas Truce “with a view to disciplinary action.”

Fraternizing with the Enemy

He wrote in his memorandum of Dec. 27: “This is only illustrative of the apathetic state we are gradually sinking in to… to finish this war quickly we must keep up the fighting spirit and do all we can to discourage friendly intercourse.” For the author of the 1/ Royal Warwicks War Diary, Christmas Eve was “a quiet day. Relieved the Royal Dublin Fusiliers in the trenches in the evening.”

There was no mention of what had taken place. The Brigade War Diary also played down the event and observed a positive opportunity for intelligence gathering: “A quiet day. No firing. The Germans appear to think that an armistice exists for Christmas Day. An informal interchange of courtesies took place between troops in the fire trenches of both belligerents. Some valuable information was gleaned during the intercourse. The trenches seem fairly strongly held, the enemy cheerful and well fed.”

Fraternizing with the enemy during a war was unacceptable and unheard of, so concerns about potential sanctions were expressed. Hamilton was told that “the General and staff are furious but powerless to stop it.” William Tapp feared the worst: “I don’t know what our General would say if he knew about this.” Pvt. Harry Morgan wondered that “if all the troops along the line had refused to fight on both sides, would the War have ended there and then?” In the event no one was reprimanded.

Hamilton returned home on leave in early January, recording in his diary on Jan. 12 that “All’s well that ends well.” He had suffered throughout the campaign with troublesome ears and visited an Army doctor in London who spared him further active combat. His diary then chronicles the “battles” he fought with Conscientious Objectors’ and “red tape” as Commandant of the Hereford Military Detention Barracks, a role he detested but which was arguably a small price to pay for avoiding further involvement on the Western Front and the huge losses suffered by the Royal Warwicks in April 1915 during the 2nd Battle of Ypres when the Germans used poisonous chlorine gas for the first time.

What About The Football?

So was a game of football played during this particular Christmas armistice? Although the many accounts contain numerous details about the truce, no evidence exists whatsoever to justify the creation of the three memorials to an “international” football match. Zehmisch wrote that “a couple of English brought a football out of their trench and a vigorous match began.” Pvt. Smith commented that the “Germans were interested spectators” of the kickabout. Zehmisch recorded that towards evening the English officers asked whether a big football match could be held on the following day, but he was unable to agree to a match as his company would be returning to their billets. Hamilton’s diary entry corroborates Zehmisch’s account: ‘’A’ Coy would have played the 134th Saxon Corps tomorrow only that the company was relieved.” Pvt. Walter Cooke was disappointed that “the Germans wanted to play at football but that fell through” and Tapp, a Birmingham City supporter, was upset that a game could not be arranged.

There can be no doubt that if a game of football had taken place, Bairnsfather would have captured the event in a cartoon with his characters Alf, Bert and ‘Old Bill’ flooring their opponents with crunching tackles, no doubt breaking legs and sending Saxon pickelhaubes flying to all parts of No Man’s Land. Bairnsfather limited himself to describing the football as just “a kickabout amongst the Royal Warwicks” (not with the Germans) and later in 1929 concluded in The American Magazine that “there had not been an atom of hate shown by either side. It was a punctuation mark on all the combatants’ lives of cold and humid hate.” A contemporary photograph of No Man’s land at St. Yvon shows it pitted with shell holes and extremely uneven—conditions hardly conducive for a football match.

For those who participated in the Truce at St. Yvon, it was a truly memorable event that would have been beyond their wildest dreams. Words that appear frequently in their accounts are “astounding,” “extraordinary,” “strange,” “unbelievable,” and “unique.” Morgan was impressed that “there were no guns, no bullets, no voices.” Zehmisch felt it had been “marvelous and strange” and his opposing officer Hamilton, admittedly resorting to hyperbole, started his diary entry for Christmas Day 1914: “A Day Unique in the World’s History.” For Tapp, “it was like a clock that had stopped ticking… it was very different to the other Christmas days I had spent, especially the one in 1910 when I stood under the mistletoe with the girl I later married.” Tapp was later killed during the German gas attack on April 25, 1915 and his name is, along with nearly 500 other Royal Warwicks with no known grave, recorded on the Menin Gate Memorial in Ypres.

Flimsy Evidence of a Match

The Truce at St. Yvon was similar to many held along as much as two thirds of the British-held trenches along the Western Front. This Christmastide there will be the usual references to games of football in the media and social media…but how many actually took place?

In the most comprehensive work on the Christmas Truce, Malcolm Brown and Shirley Seaton are skeptical about the numbers, stressing that the ground in No Man’s Land was too pockmarked and uneven for there to have been many matches. They do however assert that “there are a sufficient number of references to games which allegedly took place for it to be difficult to believe that this is all smoke without fire.”

Yet in most cases the evidence is flimsy to say the least. The most likely game to have taken place may have been across the border at Frelinghien in France where Leutnant Johannes Niemann of the 133rd Saxon regiment recorded that a soldier in the Scottish 2nd Battalion of the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders produced a football and “now there developed a proper game of football with caps put down as goalposts. Quite a happening on that frozen field.” He concludes that “the game ended 3-2 to Fritz.” The Germans were much amused that the Scots were not wearing underpants beneath their kilts: “This delighted us hugely …” Unfortunately, Niemann’s evidence is not confirmed by any British accounts.

One thing we can be certain about is that a football match at St. Yvon is a myth and that the three memorials do no more than promote a legend. But at Christmas time why be Scrooge-like about this and let the truth get in the way of a marvelous story of peace and reconciliation—even if it was for only a day or two before the bitter war resumed in the New Year?

this article first appeared in military history quarterly

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Observations on the Carnage of a Dreadful Day at Sharpsburg

Robert Lee Hodge — Mon, 11 Dec 2023 14:00:00 +0000

In 1866 Private Alexander Hunter, formerly of the 17th Virginia Infantry’s famed “Alexandria Riflemen,” wrote an illuminating personal account of his Civil War experiences, “Four Years in the Ranks.” That account was later used for Hunter’s popular “novel” Johnny Reb and Billy Yank, published in 1905, and was the source of the article “Crossing the Rubicon” in America’s Civil War’s September 2021 issue, which recounted the experiences of the cocky, daring “High Private” at Second Manassas, Ox Hill (Chantilly), and during the Army of Northern Virginia’s march to Sharpsburg, Md., in August–September 1862.

The date this postwar photo of Alexander Hunter was taken is unknown. It appeared in his 1908 book, “The Huntsman in the South.”

The pages from Hunter’s 1866 manuscript on his time with the Alexandria Riflemen (Company A) are mostly missing for the Battle of Antietam (known better to Southerners as the Battle of Sharpsburg). Possibly the relevant pages were taken out to be used, and then misplaced, for Hunter’s articles in the Southern Historical Society Papers in 1882-83 (“A High Private’s Sketch of Sharpsburg,” Volumes 10–11) and later a shorter version, titled “The Battle of Antietam,” in SHSP for 1903’s Volume 31. His colorful writings of the Army of Northern Virginia’s attempted liberation of Maryland from Federal control ranged from humorous to horrific.

As with many veterans, story details could change over the years. Hunter was no exception, as he wrote in the decades following the war mildly conflicting accounts about the combat south of Sharpsburg late on September 17. Published below is an assortment of Hunter’s writings of that period, with paragraph breaks added in places to help readability.

The night of September 14, 1862, in the wake of a bloody day of fighting at South Mountain, the worn-out and famished Alexander Hunter could do little more than collapse at an old sawmill on the side of the Sharpsburg Road. He would be awakened the following morning by his 17th Virginia comrades, marching to the west from Boonsboro. The 17th had become a shell of itself: just 46 muskets and nine officers from a regiment that only a year earlier had boasted 880 men. These enduring veterans were part of James Longstreet’s old “First Brigade,” now commanded by Brig. Gen. James Kemper—a brigade, Hunter would write, whose strength had fallen to merely 320 effectives from 2,800 or so men four months earlier.

[T]he brigade marched toward Sharpsburg. Squads from the different companies obtained permission to forage for themselves and comrades. Being the only private left in my company, I joined two expert foragers of Company H….

On our way across the field we stopped at a fine looking mansion… [and] knocked at the door—there was no response, and then after waiting awhile…we walked in…to our astonishment [it] was entirely deserted….Not a thing had been taken away, the parlor door was open, and all the elegancies of the drawing room were scattered about, and not a soul near[.]

[I]f I had been skeptical before of an early battle, this hasty abandonment would have convinced me of that fact….[T]here sat the cat on the window-sill; indeed the home-life had been so recent within the house that it was difficult to realize that our hostess’s step would not at any moment sound upon the stairs and her voice be heard in greeting.

We had no time to linger, the warning notes of the cannon reverberating in our ears while we were in search of something to eat. The cupboard, like that of an ancient miser, was empty; so was the kitchen, hence we went to the spring and filled our canteens with ice-cold water, glad to get it if nothing more substantial….

I went to the dairy, inside was…several buckets and cans of milk, over which the rich yellow cream had already risen…that had been placed there in the morning. Up in the loft were ranged barrels of cider and Brandy—having about half a dozen canteens with me I filled them equally with the three fluids, after drinking as much as I could….An animated discussion took place. The whole squad, except the sergeant, wanted to carry the barrel and leave everything else behind….

The discussion waxed high, and to end the matter the sergeant stove in the head of the barrel with the butt of his musket, and the precious liquid that would have made glad for a time at least, the whole brigade, poured in a useless stream upon the floor….[I] pursued my course onward considerably stimulated. I could not help wondering, what in the world made those persons leave so suddenly. I looked around, no enemy in sight, and they certainly weren’t leaving on our account, for we had had possession of this part of the country for the last three days. Anyhow I felt deeply grateful for there [sic] leaving their Brandy & milk, to say nothing of the luscious grapes, which hung in clusters from their vines, and I hereby thank them—be they Yank, or Reb….

Long and lovingly were many lips glued to the mouths of those canteens, and honestly the owner’s health was drunk [to], not asking or even caring whether he was friend or foe; our Colonel [Montgomery] Corse blessed us as he took a long, lover-like kiss from the mouth of my canteen, I intended saving some in case I was wounded in the coming battle, but when the vessel was returned to me there was not a drop left.

Recalled Brig. Gen. David Rumph Jones, Hunter’s division commander: “[O]n the morning of the 15th….My command took possession of the heights in front of [facing east] and to the right [south side of the Boonsboro Pike] of the town being the extreme right of our whole line…my entire command of six brigades comprised only 2,430 men.”

Brig. Gen. David R. Jones, the 17th Virginia’s division commander, was part of West Point’s famed Class of 1846. He died of heart disease four months after Sharpsburg.

Late in the evening the column halted near Sharpsburg, a little village nestling at the bottom of the hills, a simple country hamlet that none outside, save perhaps the postmaster, ever heard of before, and yet which in one day awoke to find itself famous, and the hills around it historic. This tiny town was a quiet, cool, still place—like the locality where Rip Van Winkle lived his days….

The hamlet was deserted now…not a soul was to be seen, the setting sun tinged the windows with its glowing rays, and made more vivid the dark background of the high hills beyond…ah, many eyes, all unconscious, looked their last upon the glowing incandescence as they stood on the crest watching the bright luminary go down.

Jones’ brigades commanded by Kemper and Brig. Gen. Thomas F. Drayton moved into the vicinity where Jacob Avey’s farm sat, on the southeast edge of town. The 80-acre Avey Farm had an orchard of more than 30 trees, pastureland, and to the west a cornfield (about 100 yards wide and 300 yards long) that was on high ground near the Harpers Ferry Road.

The Avey residence was the only home on the south side of Sharpsburg’s southernmost street. The Avey home sits on the west side of the Rohrersville Road; the thoroughfare that runs out of town through a slight valley to the southeast to Burnside Bridge—the modern-day road has been altered substantially from the original roadbed.

Running somewhat perpendicularly from, and generally south out of the ravine to higher ground, was a long fence, roughly 300 yards of stone. As the ridge crested southward, the fence changed to post-and-rail, continuing another 200 yards. Drayton’s Brigade was positioned behind the stone portion of the Avey Farm fence, and to its right Kemper’s Brigade had the post-and-rail section.

The 17th of September was a bright & beautiful, sweet, morning,…the sun arose in cloudless brilliancy, and all nature appeared to have donned her gaudiest colors, so rich…in the autumn robing…its beauties were soon lost on us though, for as the morning advanced, and as we felt our limp haversacks, the sole absorbing thought crossed each man’s mind of where is our breakfast coming from? …Had we been well fed, and with nothing to do, there were none that could not have lain at ease, and enjoyed the fine view—with the fair garden country spreading out all around, looking at its best.

But sentiment could find no place in a man who had nothing but the memory of what he had eaten to fill his stomach…a painful fact that unless something was done at once, we would all have to fight on empty stomachs. The men began to grumble…and a long line of famine-drawn faces and gaunt figures sat there in the ranks, chewing straws merely to keep their jaws from rusting and stiffening entirely.

The storm so long gathering was about to burst, but the men having become callous and indifferent from extreme hunger, thought that only in case of a victory they would find plenty of the enemy’s haversacks to satisfy the cravings….

At last as our patience was becoming rapidly exhausted, and the animal in our nature was becoming fearfully developed….Just about this time a cow—a foolish, innocent, confiding animal…with a pathetic look in her big eyes…—not knowing soldiers’ ways, came grazing up to our lines; a dozen bullets crashed through her skull, and a score of knives were soon at work….Everything was eaten, even her tail, that was but an hour ago calmly and easily switching the flies from her back. Some soldier skinned it, burnt it over the fire, and picked it clean in a few minutes….

The Yankees were preparing for their battle. On the heights, some two thousand yards away, fresh batteries would take their position and open; ours would reply, and so, as the hours of the forenoon wore on, the war clamor grew greater, and soon on our left the splashes of musketry, and then the steady, rattling discharges showed the battle was fairly joined.

Though the ground appears peaceful in this post-battle photo, this section of the Antietam battlefield near the Dunker Church witnessed some of the morning clash’s bloodiest fighting.

The order was given to “Fall in” and our skeleton brigade took up their position on top of a high hill behind a post-and-rail fence…we slept like logs, though the fight at the Dunker Church on our left was raging in all its fury.

We moved several times in the course of the day, but at noon the final position was selected behind a post-and-rail fence near where we first stopped.

The reports of the cannon were incessant and deafening: at times it seemed as if a hundred guns would explode simultaneously, and then run off at intervals into splendid file firing. No language can describe its awful grandeur. The thousand continuous volleys of musketry mingle in a grand roar of a great cataract, and together merging, seemed as if the earth was being destroyed by violence, the canopy of the battle’s fume, from this vast burning of gunpowder, rising above the battle-field in such thick clouds, that the sun looked down gloomy red in the sky, while the dust raised by the mass of men floated to the clouds…it seemed as if Hades had broken loose….

The 17th Virginia was positioned in view of Brig. Gen. Robert Toombs’ defense of the Rohrbach Bridge over Antietam Creek, which Maj. Gen. Ambrose Burnside’s 9th Corps finally broke through about 1 p.m.

Toombs’ brigade came rushing back, its lines broken, but its spirit and morale all right. The enemy are silent, but it is the calm that is but a prefix to a hurricane.

We made ready and expected to see the victorious Yankees following hard upon the heels of the retreating Rebels, but to our astonishment an hour or two of absolute inaction followed; no advance nor demonstrations were made in our front, but on the left the battle was raging as fiercely as ever. What could it mean, we asked each other, but none could solve the question….

It was now getting late in the afternoon, and the men were becoming cramped from lying in their constrained position; some were moving up and down, some stretching themselves, for there was a cessation of firing in our front—an interval of quiet. It was but a short time, for the guarded, stern, nervous voice of our commanding officer, calling, “Quick men, back to your posts!” sent every soldier into line. And then, as we waited, each man looked along the line—the slight, thin, frail line—stretched out beyond that crest to withstand the onset of solid ranks of blue, and felt his heart sink within him. Yet who could but not feel pride in such soldiers as these….They had kept up in this campaign solely by an unquenchable pride and indomitable will. As dirty, as gaunt, as tattered as they looked, they were “gentlemen.”

My! my! What a set of ragamuffins….It seemed as if every cornfield in Maryland had been robbed of its scarecrows and propped up against that fence. None had any underclothing. My costume consisted of a ragged pair of trousers, a stained, dirty jacket; an old slouch hat, the brim pinned up with a thorn; a begrimed blanket over my shoulder, a grease-smeared cotton haversack full of apples and corn, a cartridge box full and a musket. I was barefooted and had a stonebruise on each foot…but there was no one there who would not have been “run in” by the police had he appeared on the streets of any populous city, and would have been fined next day for undue exposure. Yet those grimy, sweaty, lean, ragged men were the flower of Lee’s army. Those tattered, starving, unkempt fellows were the pride of their sections….

All at once, an eight gun battery, detecting our position, tried to shell us out, preparatory to their infantry advance, and the air around was filled by the bursting iron.

This article first appeared in America’s Civil War magazine

Our battery [Captain James S. Brown’s Virginia “Wise Artillery” of four 6-pounders] took its place about twenty steps on our right; for our right flank was totally undefended. [The 7th and 24th Virginia Infantry were to Hunter’s right, but apparently out of his sight.]

Oh those long minutes that we lay with closed eyes, expecting mutilation and a shock of the plunging iron, with every breath we drew—would it never end? But it kept up for fully fifteen minutes, and the men clenched their jaws tight and never moved; a line of corpses could not have been more stirless.

The shells begin to sail over us as we close behind the fence, shrieking its wild song, a canzonet of carnage and death. These missiles howled like demons, and made us cower in the smallest possible space….But what is that infernal noise that makes the bravest duck their heads? That is a “Hotchkiss” shell….It is no more destructive than some other projectile, but there is a great deal in mere sound to work on men’s fears, and the moral effect of the Hotchkiss is powerful.

…a shell burst not ten feet above where [we] lay…and literally tore poor Appich, of Company E, to pieces, shattering his body terribly, and causing blood to spatter over many who lay around him. A quiver of the form, and then it remained still. Another Hotchkiss came screeching where we lay, and exploded, two more men were borne to the rear; still the line never moved or muttered a sound. The shells split all around, and knocked up dust until it sprinkled us so, that if it intended to keep the thing up, it threatened to bury the command alive.

At last! at last! the firing totally ceases, then the battery with us [Brown’s] limbered up and moved away, because, as they said, their ammunition was exhausted; but murmurs and curses loud and deep were heard from the brigade, who openly charged the battery with deserting them in the coming ordeal.

At 3 p.m., 8,500 Federals deploy in lines over three-quarters of a mile wide. On Hunter’s front are 940 troops from Colonel Harrison Fairchild’s New York brigade.

An ominous silence followed premonitory of the deluge….the infantrymen, who had lain there face downward, exposed to the iron hail, now arose….[Their] faces are pale, their features set, their hearts throbbing, their muscles strung like steel.

Soon came the singing of the minnies overhead. There is a peculiar tuneful pitch to the flight of these little leaden balls; a musical ear can study the different tones as they skin through space. A comrade lying next to me, an amateur musician of no mean merit spoke of this. Said he, “I caught the pitch of that minnie that just passed. It was a swell from E flat to F, and as it retrograded in the distance receded to D—a very pretty change.”

The hill in our front shut out all view, but the advancing enemy were close on us, they were coming up the hill, the loud tones of their officers, the clanking of their equipments, and the steady tramp of the approaching host was easily distinguishable….We could hear the rat-a-plan of their drums…

Montgomery D. Corse, who first gained fame during the Gold Rush of 1849, served with the Army of Northern Virginia the entire war.

Then our Colonel [Corse] said in a quiet calm tone that was heard by all, “Steady lads, steady! They are coming. Ready!”

The warning click of the hammers raised as the guns are cocked, ran down the lines, a monetary solemn sound—for when you hear that the supreme moment has come.

We heard the commanding officer of the unseen foe give the order “Forward, march! Dress to the colors! Double-quick!”

Each man sighted his rifle about two feet above the crest, and then, with his finger on the trigger, waited until an advancing form came between the bead and the clear sky behind.

As we lay there with our eyes ranging along the musket barrels…we saw was the gilt eagle surmounted the pole, then the top of the flag, next the flutter of the Stars and Stripes itself slowly mounting—up it rose; then the tops of their blue caps in sight; still rising, the faces emerged; next a range of curious eyes appeared, then such a hurrah as only the Yankee troops could give broke the stillness, and they surged toward us. It was the only battle in which I ever engaged where the forms and faces of the foe were plainly visible.

“Keep cool, men—don’t fire yet,” shouted Colonel Corse; and such was their perfect discipline that not a gun replied. “Don’t fire men until give the word,”

Less brave, less seasoned [Federal] troops would have faltered before the array of deadly tubes leveled at them, and at the recumbent line, silent, motionless and terrible, but if there was any giving away we did not see it….Not until they were well up in view did Colonel Corse break the silence, and his voice was a shriek as he ordered: “Fire!”

[T]he forty-six muskets exploded at once, and sent a leaden shower full in the breasts of the attacking force, not over sixty yards distant. It staggered them—it was a murderous fire—and many fell; some of them struck for the rear, but the majority sent a stunning volley at us, and but for that fence there would have been hardly a man left alive.

The rails, the posts, were shattered by the balls; but still it was a deadly one—fully one-half of the Seventeenth lay in their tracks; the balance that is left load and fire again and again, and for about ten minutes the unequal struggle is kept up….

Every man in our line began to load his musket with frenzied haste…and lay silent and expectant; we could easily hear the [Federal] officers expostulating and urging the men to reform, and they made a rush a second time, but it was without heart, and when we poured in a close fire, they broke in panic and disappeared, officers and men, over the brow of the hill. We had no time to feel jubilant, for the rattling of drums in our front, the measured tread, the clanking of accouterments showed that the Yankee reserves were coming up. We braced ourselves for the shock, and every man looked backward, hoping to see reinforcements, but not a soul could be seen between us and the village….

We had barely loaded and capped the muskets when the blue line came with a rush….

Before we could load a third time[,] the two lines of battle of the Federals, now comingled as one solid bank of men, poured a volley into us that settled the matter….

I can never forget that moment; it was photographed indelibly on my mind; the sun glanced and gleamed on the level barrels, and the black tubes of the muzzles, not over twenty feet away, turned on us with deadly meaning. I crouched to the ground, and fortunately I was behind a post instead of a rail; I shut my eyes; a second of silence, then a stunning volley, the crash of splintered wood, a purple smoke, smell of sulphur, the spat and spud of the bullet, and the Seventeenth Virginia was wiped out….Our Colonel falls wounded; every officer except five of the Seventeenth is shot down; of the forty-six muskets thirty-five are dead, dying or struck….

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Fairchild’s Federals suffer heavy casualties during the engagement, too, with total losses reaching nearly 50 percent. Also of note was the capture of the 103th New York’s regimental flag by a 17th Virginia lieutenant—reportedly the only Union flag captured at Sharpsburg.

Just as the bluecoats were climbing the fence I threw down my musket and raised my hand in token of surrender….Two of them stopped…the rest of their line hurried towards the village. As we turned to leave we saw our whole brigade striking for the rear…and the enemy swept on triumphantly, with nothing to bar his progress…

There was but one of our regiment who was taken prisoner besides myself, [Charles A.] Gunnell [of D]….Two of our victors…kindly allowed us to walk up our line to see who was killed. It was a sad, sad sight; Colonel Corse lay at full length on his face, motionless and still; I thought at the time he was dead; I stepped across the dead body of our brave color-sergeant [color-corporal Washington Harper], and near him with a bullet through his forehead, lay that gallant, handsome soldier, Lieut. Littleton, of the Loudoun Guards….

My guard said to me: “It’s all up with you Johnnie; look there.” I turned and gazed on the scene. Long lines of blue were coming like the surging billows of the ocean. The bluecoats were wild with excitement, and their measured hurrah, so different from our piercing yell, rose above the thunder of their batteries beyond the bridge. I thought the guard was right, that it was all up with us, and our whole army would be captured…. it seemed to us as if Sharpsburg was to be our Waterloo.

A Union soldier, sitting atop a tree stump, views Antietam Creek through binoculars from General McClellan’s headquarters, in an Alexander Gardner photo dated September 18. One of Andrew Humphreys’ batteries rests in a nearby field at left.

The sudden arrival of Maj. Gen. A.P. Hill’s Light Division completely changes the narrative. Hill and his men had left Harpers Ferry early that morning and had traversed roughly 17 miles to reach the endangered Confederate right flank beginning about 2:30 p.m.

We, Yank and Reb, were sitting down taking a sociable smoke when all at once we were startled as if touched by an electric shock…a change takes place in this panorama; a marvelous change, before our very eyes…we saw emerging from a cornfield a long line of gray, musket barrels scintillating in the rays of the declining sun and the Southern battle flags gleaming redly against the dark background. They seemed to have struck the Federal advance on the flank.

It appeared to us as if all the demons of hell had been unloosed—all the dogs of war unleashed to prey upon and rend each other; long volleys of musketry vomited their furious discharges of pestilential lead; the atmosphere was crowded by the exploding shells; baleful fires gleamed through the foliage…while the concussion of the cannon seemed to make the hills tremble and totter.

The disordered ranks of blue come rushing back in disorder, while the Rebels followed fast, and then bullet-hitting around us caused guards and prisoners to decamp.

“What does this mean?” we asked.

At last a prisoner, a wounded Rebel officer, was being supported back to the rear, and we asked him, and the reply came back: “…those troops fighting the Yankees now are A.P. Hill’s division.” How the Southerner’s face glowed as he told us this; what a light leaped into his eyes, wounded as he was.

Still forward came the wave of gray, still backward receded the billows of blue, heralded by warning hiss of the bullets, the sparkling of the rifle flashes, the purplish vapor settling like a veil over the lines, the mingled hurrahs and wild yells, and the base accompaniment over on our left of the hoarse cannonading. Back we went, stopping on…every rise of the ground to watch the battle….We were thinking of that line of motionless comrades lying on the crest of the hill down beside the fence; and wondering if the sun was lighting up their pallid faces.

Night came at last, stopping the carnage of the dreadful day, and the tender, pitiful stars shone in the vast dome above and looked down upon the scene of desolation and death.

Robert Lee Hodge writes from Old Hickory, Tenn. He can be reached via robertleehodge.com

This Signal Operator Witnessed Nixon’s Withdrawals from Vietnam. What He Saw Convinced Him it Wasn’t Working.

David L. Anderson — Wed, 25 Oct 2023 17:32:41 +0000

On June 8, 1969, U.S. President Richard Nixon and Republic of Vietnam (RVN) President Nguyen Van Thieu stood side-by-side at Midway Island and formally launched Vietnamization. The goal was to allow U.S. operational combat forces to depart South Vietnam as quickly as possible before the next U.S. presidential election, leaving South Vietnam able to defend itself. Seven months after this announcement, I arrived in Cam Ranh Bay as a replacement headed for the U.S. Army’s 1st Signal Brigade. I was about to have a front row seat on Vietnamization in practice as a quality assurance NCO. Communication technology is an essential combat support function, which Gen. Creighton Abrams, U.S. commander in South Vietnam, had identified from the beginning as critical if South Vietnam’s Armed Forces were to defend their country on their own.

The short time projected for Vietnamization was inadequate for the South to build an effective national defense force with sufficient training to wage modern warfare effectively. Such a project can require years—especially when the local government’s social, economic, and political foundations have been stunted by a century of colonialism and nearly two decades of violent internal turmoil. From my vantage point in South Vietnam throughout most of 1970, these obstacles to rapid Vietnamization appeared insurmountable.

Insurmountable Obstacles

I reported for induction on Oct. 14, 1968, went through basic training at Fort Bliss, Texas, and received orders for advanced training at the Electronic Warfare School at Fort Huachuca, Ariz. Completing the high frequency radio operator course (MOS 05B) in five weeks, I remained at Fort Huachuca as an instructor. With controversy over the war growing, the Army was having trouble getting junior NCOs to reenlist. Instructors were needed. On Nov. 14, 1969, after only 13 months in service, I was promoted to Sergeant E-5. Near the end of November, the training company’s first sergeant called me into the orderly room, looked across his desk, and said, “Congratulations, Sgt. Anderson, you’re going to Vietnam.”

this article first appeared in vietnam magazine

I landed at Cam Ranh Bay on Jan. 6, 1970, with orders to report to Company C, 43rd Signal Battalion at An Khe in the Central Highlands. The 1st Signal Brigade’s clerk at the 22nd Replacement Battalion, a buck sergeant like me, modified the original orders. I literally went up the hill from the replacement center to the 361st Signal Battalion. I could not believe my luck. Cam Ranh was a large and secure combat base. In the evenings off duty, we wore civilian clothes, and there were a lot of creature comforts with barracks, hot showers, mess halls, snack bars, clubs, a big PX, and a beach just over the hill.

There was a problem, however. My MOS was 05B4H: high frequency radio operator, NCO, instructor. My personnel folder also listed college graduate, high-speed code intercept operator, French linguist (based upon Army testing and six semesters of college French), and a secret-cryptology clearance from my work at Fort Huachuca. The 361st operated tropospheric scatter microwave facilities, and the Table of Organization and Equipment (TOE) of this high technology installation that could transmit almost 200 miles did not include any slots for high-frequency radio operators.

Nixon (left) shakes hands with South Vietnam’s President Nguyen Van Thieu at El Toro Marine Corps Air Station in California in 1973. Nixon’s plan to rapidly decrease the U.S. presence in Vietnam also decreased the training time for the handover to ARVN troops.

The operations sergeant was on his third straight tour in Vietnam, all at the same job. We called him “Grandpa” behind his back, which was a term of respect because it sure looked like he ran the whole battalion. I knew virtually nothing about tropospheric scatter communication, but Grandpa was pleased to have me, mainly because I was a college graduate who could type and compose a complete sentence. I soon discovered that everyone in the office except the sarge were college graduates. He immediately put me to work as the author of various monthly and quarterly reports but soon realized that I had a more valuable skill—French language ability.

Vietnamization had created an urgent need for a linguist. The operations officer was a signal corps major with an ARVN signal captain as a counterpart. The ARVN officer was in the battalion to learn to manage this integrated wideband communication site. The American officer had studied Portuguese at West Point and didn’t know any Vietnamese. The South Vietnamese captain spoke French but little English. With no training as an interpreter and only basic conversational French, it became my job to help the two officers communicate.

In the 361st Signal Battalion, Vietnamization in 1970 hinged on an American officer mentoring an ARVN officer to take command of a highly technical facility through the hand gestures and college French of a sergeant whose expertise was tactical, not long-range communication, and whose French was better suited to translating Molière than to conveying military technology. The mentoring process was slow and not, I am sure, what Washington envisioned Vietnamization to be. As bad as the situation was for efforts to Vietnamize the 361st Signal Battalion across a serious language divide, the ad hoc process received a further setback with my sudden transfer out with no apparent way to bridge the language gap. The commander of the 1st Signal Brigade later acknowledged in his lessons-learned study that the language barrier hampered training.

A Daunting Task

Brigade headquarters at Long Binh refused to issue permanent orders assigning me to the 361st because my MOS was not authorized for that type of unit. It transferred me to 12th Signal Group at Phu Bai for assignment somewhere in I Corps, the five northern provinces of the Republic of Vietnam. On Feb. 9, I got off a C-130 at Phu Bai airport. I waited in the transient hooch at Headquarters, Headquarters Detachment, 12th Signal Group with my duffle bag packed. I could be off to any of the radio telephone/teletype sites the brigade operated in support of the 101st Airborne Division (Airmobile); 1st Brigade, 5th Infantry Division (Mechanized); III Marine Amphibious Force (MAF); 1st ARVN Division; 2nd ARVN Division; or Republic of Korea Marine Brigade. I could expect to spend the next seven months at a division or battalion headquarters, if I was lucky, or a small remote site if I was less fortunate.

As it turned out, I soon learned that I was going to be the group’s quality assurance NCO in charge of a small team of three or four currently being assembled. Col. D.W. Ogden Jr., the group commander, had created the team and its “communication evaluation” mission because, I was told, he was tired of complaints from the combat commanders (termed “customers”) about the quality of signal support from 1st Signal Brigade. The combat commands had their own signal assets, but depended on the 12th Signal Group to link their tactical networks to others in the corps tactical zone and from there to the Integrated Communication System [ICS], Southeast Asia and to worldwide networks operated by the Strategic Communications Command at Fort Huachuca. The technology of this vast system—sometimes referred to as the AT&T of Southeast Asia—was powerful. Through tropospheric scatter, line-of-sight microwave, cable, and other electronic assets, a commander could connect securely by voice, teletype, or data from a combat bunker to anywhere in the world as long as 1st Signal Brigade units in the field kept the complex system up and working.

It was a daunting task for well-educated and thoroughly trained signal soldiers with access to reliable equipment. Would the ARVN be able to manage this critical military infrastructure on its own, especially in the short time that Washington had allowed to accomplish Vietnamization? A new brigade regulation had created Buddies Together (Cung Than-Thien) to train Republic of Vietnam Armed Forces signalmen in highly technical communications skills. Units like ours were also expected to conduct surveys by special teams in each corps tactical zone to determine where American operators could turn over equipment and operations to the South Vietnamese.

My team consisted of an electric generator mechanic (another sergeant), a radio operator (one of my students at Fort Huachuca), and a draftsman. The latter two were SP4s and served as drivers or guards or were assigned other tasks. We usually traveled with the group’s engineering officer and the sergeant major from his office. The colonel had wanted a sergeant first class (E-7) to be the NCO, but senior NCOs were in short supply. He settled for me because of my education and instructor experience, and my rank was at least a hard stripe NCO. There were fewer than 10 E-5 and E-6 NCOs in the group headquarters. The team’s sergeant major (E-9) traveled with us primarily to back me up if the issues at the site turned out to be related to command or personnel problems.

Inexperienced Operations

The U.S. Army history of military communications in Vietnam describes the urgency of the task at hand. The recently completed Automatic Digital Network (AUTODIN) could transmit an average of 1,500 words per minute, but the tactical teletype circuits to which it was connected passed traffic at 60 to 100 words per minute. Signal operators experienced continuous maintenance problems with their overextended machines. In the summer of 1970, the Da Nang tape relay received 20 flash messages (highest precedence) in a 20-minute period from the AUTODIN. This signal company had to relay these messages to the tactical units on its circuits at 100 words per minute, which required about 20 minutes per message. This volume of traffic overheated the recipients’ equipment, requiring transmission to be slowed to 60 words per minute. As the official history records, “Besides such technical problems, tactical operators lacking special training on the operation of the new Automatic Digital Network were bewildered by its formats and procedures. The 1st Signal Brigade had to keep troubleshooting teams constantly on the road to help inexperienced operators.”

Author David L. Anderson stands next to a Bell OH-58 Kiowa helicopter used for light observation at the Phu Bai helipad as Vietnamization was underway. The quality assurance team usually flew to sites in a UH-1 Huey, but occasionally the author flew alone with the engineering officer or sergeant major in a light observation helicopter.

The group’s Operational Report-Lessons Learned (ORLL) for July and October 1970 recorded major emphasis on improved communications through quality assurance inspections. Working seven days a week, we were responsible for maintaining the efficient and effective performance of installations operated by 17 units in 5 provinces. The QA team conducted 57 site inspections in six months to improve equipment maintenance, operator efficiency, site operating procedures, and customer satisfaction. According to the ORLLs, “Partly due to the effort of the Quality Assurance team the high standards of customer service provided by units of the 12th Signal Group were maintained or bettered.”

The smallest detail could become significant when dealing with modern electronics. In northern I Corps the soil was red clay (red mud in the rainy season and red dust other times), which made it extremely difficult to establish a working electrical ground for the system. In some cases, poor signal quality or even interrupted transmission was owing to where and how deep the metal grounding rods were installed. Without this basic setup at a tactical location, all the immense technical power to connect the corps level and global system was of no use. It was a variation on the “for want of a nail” adage. In this case, for want of a ground, the message was lost; for want of a message, the battle was lost.

My job took me to signal sites from the DMZ southward to the Batangan Peninsula. Traveling usually by UH-1 Huey helicopters, we went to Camp Carroll (the 1st ARVN Division’s forward command post just south of the DMZ), Quang Tri, Dong Ha, Tan My, Hai Van Pass, Da Nang, Hoi An, Tam Ky, Chu Lai, Duc Pho, and Quang Ngai. Our work also included small fire bases and landing zones: Hawk Hill (5 miles northwest of Tam Ky), LZ Sharon (between Quang Tri and Dong Ha), and FB Birmingham (southwest of Camp Eagle, headquarters of the 101st Airborne, about 5 miles from Phu Bai). We went by road to sites in Phu Bai, Hue, and Camp Eagle.

The 63rd Signal Battalion operated this line-of-sight microwave relay at Phu Bai.

The Phu Bai combat base was spartan in terms of clubs and post exchange services, but its gate sign proclaimed it “all right” with two L’s for emphasis.

We tried to get into and out of a site (especially remote ones) in one day without having to stay overnight. On one occasion, because helicopters were unavailable and a signal problem at III MAF needed urgent attention, I went from Phu Bai to Da Nang in an open jeep along Route 1 over Hai Van Pass with only one other soldier to ride shotgun. That we could make that drive at all indicated that by 1970 the level of enemy activity along this key road had declined significantly. My sense was that the enemy was not deterred by the growing size of the ARVN but was waiting for U.S. troop withdrawals to continue. Unknown to me was the CIA’s Special National Intelligence Estimate of Feb. 5 that “Hanoi may be waiting until more US units have departed, in the expectation that this will provide better opportunities with lesser risks, and that Communist forces will be better prepared to strike.”

Phu Bai was a large and relatively secure base. It was not Cam Ranh Bay, but there was a sign at the front gate proclaiming, “Phu Bai is Allright.” It received periodic mortar and rocket bombardment, especially aimed at runways, helipads, and signal towers. Signalmen are soldier-communicators who provide specialized skills and defend their installations against enemy attack. Our detachment had responsibility for about five perimeter bunkers and had a quick reaction team in the event of an assault on the base. With the shortage of junior NCOs in the detachment, I drew the duty as sergeant of the guard, reserve force NCO, or staff duty NCO at least one night a week.

Vietnamization

Most nights were uneventful, but occasionally I was NCOIC during probes of the perimeter or other imminent threats. One occurred during my last month in Vietnam. Perhaps Charlie knew I was short, because enemy bombardments and ground probes of Camp Eagle, nearby Camp Evans, and Phu Bai increased markedly in July and August 1970. Actually, the enemy was testing the progress of Vietnamization and not targeting me specifically.

There were ARVN troops at many of our bases, but most of them provided perimeter security, manned artillery pieces, or handled supplies—not operating signal equipment. Similar to what I had witnessed at the 361st Signal Battalion, there were a few ARVN officers and NCOs shadowing American counterparts, but I observed little interaction or hands-on communication activity by Vietnamese.

Aware of Vietnamization goals, I wrote to my parents: “The Vietnamization program is really going on in earnest over here.… Even 12th Sig. Gp. is getting in on the ARVN training program. We have about 20 ARVN at various sites in the Group receiving on-the-job training on a buddy system basis.” In retrospect, my estimate of 20 ARVN signalmen over a five-province area suggests that the number being trained was woefully small. With the exception of Camp Carroll, an ARVN command post, I seldom heard Vietnamese spoken at signal facilities.

An exception came when my team worked at a line-of-sight microwave installation near Chu Lai. A group of American military and civilian officials appeared. There were ARVN signal soldiers at the site. A high-ranking U.S. officer asked the American signal officer escorting them how long it would be before the Vietnamese would be ready to assume operation of this station on their own. After a long pause, he reasonably estimated about eight years. Enlisted ARVN signalmen had an approximately sixth-grade education. It required two years or more of hands-on experience for American soldiers with high school diplomas to develop the technical knowledge and problem-solving skills needed for this military occupation. The Nixon administration’s timetable for Vietnamization and turning over the defense of the RVN to its own military was measured in months—not years.

Lt. Gen. Walter Kerwin, a senior U.S. adviser, had estimated in 1969 that it would take five years for the ARVN to be self-sufficient. Washington’s goal was to have Vietnamization completed by January 1973. My former unit, the 361st Signal Battalion, had been designated as a test of 1st Signal Brigade’s buddy effort to turn over the fixed communication system to the South Vietnamese Signal Directorate. That initiative explains the presence of the ARVN captain in the battalion S-3 while I was there. That unit’s 1969 ORLLs assessed that South Vietnam’s armed forces lacked the “broad scientific and technical education base…to allow takeover of the ICS in [a] short time frame.” This study projected a minimum of four years for the South Vietnamese to take control and more realistically eight to 10 years.

The 1st Signal Brigade trained ARVN soldiers at the RVN signal school at Vung Tau and through the Buddies Together program. Language barriers and education gaps meant that ARVN soldiers required longer training periods than Vietnamization made available.

As Vietnamization ramped up, so did U.S. efforts to provide more training to ARVN troops. Despite the prolonged U.S. presence in Vietnam, some ARVN troops showed dependency on U.S. forces. In this 1969 photo, a U.S. adviser assists a local soldier in adjusting his M-16 rifle front sight.

As my return to the United States neared, entire U.S. combat units were leaving the RVN. The 1st Signal Brigade’s primary mission of support for U.S. forces was narrowing. Gen. Abrams had wanted to keep a residual U.S. combat support element to bolster Vietnamization, but the Pentagon mandated sweeping reductions.

I left Vietnam on Sept. 8, after 1 year, 10 months, and 26 days active duty and 8 months and 5 days in Vietnam. The 12th Signal Group soon afterward relocated to Da Nang, as U.S. commanders consolidated their remaining strength and transferred their signal assets to the ARVN. American aid paid private contractors to operate the network as a stopgap to meet the South’s military communication requirements, but the days were almost gone when the U.S. Congress and public would pay the bill.

In my two assignments as an impromptu interpreter and as a quality assurance NCO, I experienced some of the problems with Vietnamization. Studies of combat support at the time and soon after the war frequently referenced what I personally witnessed—limitations on the effectiveness of Vietnamization because of language hurdles and lack of expertise on the part of the South Vietnamese to support modern combat operations. In an otherwise upbeat report on Vietnamization at the end of 1969, Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird singled out the challenge posed by specialized training as a “serious concern.” “More English language instructors and more trained technicians to man military and civil communications systems are required,” he admitted. He added that there “were simply not enough qualified persons in the Vietnamese manpower pool to fill all the demands for technical skills.”

ARVN perimeter guards stand at the Hoi An signal site in May 1970. As the author prepared to return to the U.S., whole U.S. combat units were leaving Vietnam in accord with demands from Washington, D.C. Responsibility for the South’s military communication network shifted from the U.S. government to private contractors.

The bravery of the ARVN soldiers and their ability to shoot straight were necessary but not sufficient for battlefield success, as Gen. Abrams had perceived when first receiving his marching orders from Washington. As a nation-state, the Republic of Vietnam had major structural weaknesses to overcome before it could field a modern military establishment.

Anderson went directly from Vietnam in September 1970 to a classroom at the University of Virginia, where he later received a Ph.D. in history. After 45 years of teaching American foreign policy, he is now professor of history emeritus at California State University, Monterey Bay, and a former senior lecturer of national security affairs at the Naval Postgraduate School. His twelfth book was Vietnamization: Politics, Strategy, Legacy, published in 2019 by Rowman and Littlefield.

This story appeared in the 2023 Autumn issue of Vietnam magazine.

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When a Vietnamese Ally Was Wounded, Two American Soldiers Had to Choose Obedience or Compassion

John B. Haseman and John M. Harris — Mon, 16 Oct 2023 14:49:33 +0000

John Haseman was a captain assigned as a Deputy District Senior Adviser (DDSA) in Mo Cay District, Kien Hoa Province, in the Mekong Delta. He had arrived at Advisory Team 88 in July 1971 and was DDSA in Ham Long District for 10 months before being reassigned to Mo Cay in May 1972.

Nov. 20, 1972, began as an ordinary day, at least at the start. My boss, the Mo Cay District Senior Adviser (DSA), had departed about a week earlier for much-deserved home leave that included several days of hospital care. He was seriously wounded during a major battle in July 1972 with an NVA regiment in which the Mo Cay District Chief had been killed in action. I was introduced to the new District Chief, Maj. Manh, before my superior departed for the U.S. At that time there were no main force Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) units stationed in the province; except for provincial and district level officers, the soldiers were all locally recruited Regional Force and Popular Force (RF/PF).

My first operational meeting with Maj. Manh had taken place several days earlier. A small convoy that included the newly assigned Province Intelligence (S-2) officer was ambushed just a few kilometers south of Mo Cay town. Manh hurried off with a small security force without telling me.

When told of the incident by Mo Cay’s communications officer, I quickly followed with my interpreter. When I arrived at the ambush scene, Manh’s first words to me were: “I did not tell you because I did not think you would go out to a dangerous area.” Apparently, he had experienced less-than-good relations with advisers during his previous duty in the 7th ARVN Division.

“Sir,” I responded, “I am your adviser while the DSA is away. You know much more about fighting this war than I do, but there are a lot of things I can do to help you. I want to go with you on all operations, dangerous or not. Please don’t leave me behind.”

Taken somewhat aback, he answered that he was glad to know it and would not leave me behind again.

The Explosion

On Nov. 20, I prepared to accompany Manh on my first combat operation with him—a two-company RF sweep through a contested part of western Mo Cay District. The operation line of march was centered on a seldom-used rural road. A company-sized unit would be about 200 meters out on each flank. The troops were well-spaced and well-led. There had been no enemy contact. My interpreter and I were with the command group, which included Manh, his radio operator, his personal bodyguard and security staff, and a platoon of RF soldiers to provide close-in security. I carried the advisory team’s PRC-25 radio—I always carried it on tactical operations. The Vietnamese commander and the advisory team interpreter always offered to carry it instead, but I did not want to wonder where the radio was if we had contact with the enemy.

The road led northwest and then west. The trail was muddy and very rocky and was lined sporadically with young palm trees and open-terrain rice paddies to the north, with the trees of a dense coconut forest parallel to the line of march. Terrain on the south was mixed rice paddies and fruit orchards.

We advanced roughly 3,500 meters when a loud explosion came at the edge of the tree line on the right flank. A report came in that a soldier had hit a booby trap that blew off his foot and inflicted head wounds from shrapnel. Manh stopped forward movement and ordered the casualty to be brought to his location on the road. It was obvious that this soldier was critically wounded.

At this stage of the war, a fairly new official Military Assistance Command, Vietnam (MACV) policy required that all medical evacuations (medevacs) of Vietnamese casualties had to be done by Vietnamese Air Force (VNAF) helicopters only. American helicopters were only supposed to evacuate American casualties. The policy was designed to force the Vietnamese to be more responsive to their ground force casualties. I disagreed with the policy because, in my view, it ignored the fact that the extremely cautious Vietnamese pilots were not nearly as responsive to the ARVN ground troops as U.S. helicopter pilots were.

Haseman was Deputy District Senior Adviser (DDSA) in Mo Cay District on Nov. 20, 1972, when he accompanied an ARVN combat operation. This photo was taken directly before a land mine took off the foot of a South Vietnamese soldier, forcing Haseman to decide between official Army policy and his desire to save the life of a badly wounded comrade.

Manh and I knelt on the road with his radio operator while he called the ARVN side of the joint VN-US Tactical Operations Center (TOC) in the provincial capital of Ben Tre to request a medevac flight. He was told that no VNAF helicopters were available. Visibly upset at the rejection, he turned to me and asked, “Can you help?”

A Life or Death Dilemma

I knew at once that this was a test from Manh. Was his adviser truly willing and able to help him when help was really needed? I was fully aware of the MACV policy on medevac for Vietnamese casualties. Yet, in an important and very favorable coincidence, I also knew that a U.S. Army UH-1 (Huey) helicopter was on the ground at adjacent Huong My District. This helicopter was detailed to transport the MACV Inspector-General (IG) team on inspection missions.

I believed the wounded Vietnamese soldier would die if he did not get prompt medical attention. I refused to remain silent and let this man die for lack of a Vietnamese medevac. I used my radio to call the American side of the TOC. The duty officer, a captain, matter-of-factly disapproved my request, saying, “You know what the policy is on medevacs.” I argued that this was a life-or-death situation for one of “our” soldiers and that it was critical to have a medevac if he were to survive. I reminded him of the IG team helicopter on the ground less than 10 minutes away and strongly urged that we needed the medevac. He repeated his refusal.

Unknown to me at the time, the duty officer had passed the radio to the newly arrived Advisory Team 88 Operations (S-3) adviser—a major who outranked me. I was angry and frustrated. I outright demanded that the nearby helicopter be requested to fly this medevac. In my sense of urgency over the badly wounded soldier lying just a few feet away from me, my open anger was coming very close to insubordination.

Fortunately, the Huong My DSA broke into the contentious radio transmission at that point and told us to calm down while he asked the pilots if they would be willing to fly the medevac. A few minutes later, he called back to report that the crew had agreed to fly the mission for us and were on their way to take off, with my frequency and call sign, and would contact me after take-off.

this article first appeared in vietnam magazine

The pilot soon radioed me and asked me to confirm our location and asked about the security situation at the landing zone (LZ). Manh’s security platoon quickly organized an LZ on the road where no palm trees could obstruct the landing. I remained on the radio, confirmed to the pilot that the LZ was secure, and described the area. Meanwhile the casualty was prepared for evacuation.

Moments later we all heard the familiar “whup whup whup” sound of the approaching Huey, which came into sight flying over the road. I asked Manh for a soldier to “pop smoke” to show wind direction and the exact spot where we wanted the helicopter to land.

I stepped to the center of the road and raised my rifle with both hands over my head to guide the pilot. Soon the helicopter was on the ground. Soldiers quickly loaded the casualty onboard. Two soldiers—one of them an RF medic—got in to accompany the wounded soldier to the hospital. I stepped onto the helicopter’s left skid and thanked the command pilot for being willing to help with the medevac.

Haseman received the Vietnamese Cross of Gallantry with Bronze Star in Ham Long in early November 1972, just before returning to Mo Cay as DDSA.

I could not clearly see either the pilot or copilot and did not get their names. I was very grateful that they had come to help when we needed it so badly. I recommended they take off to the north over the rice paddies and definitely not to fly over the distant tree mass until they had gotten high enough to avoid potential enemy ground fire. With that, I stepped back and saluted the crew. The pilot lifted off and the Huey was gone. The entire time from confirmation of the flight to take off with the casualty was only about 15 minutes. Manh quickly got the troops back into formation and the operation continued for the rest of the day. We had no contact with the enemy, and no additional casualties.

Why Deny Treatment to An Ally?

This was an extremely important event for me for many reasons. First and foremost, the medevac was crucial to get the wounded RF soldier to a hospital and hopefully save his life. I was told several weeks later that he had survived but had needed major surgery to amputate his foot and ankle. I was outraged by the unspoken but very real medevac policy corollary: that MACV was willing to deny a medevac to an allied soldier—in this case, a man who would probably have died from severe injuries—just to attempt to make the Vietnamese air force do their job better.

I knew well that, as an adviser, I did not command the RF/PF soldiers fighting alongside me. Nevertheless, I thought of them all as “my” soldiers—my brothers-in-arms. We laughed together, cried together, talked together, fought the common enemy together. I trusted them to be good soldiers and to protect me as best they could. I would do everything I possibly could to keep them alive. Therefore, I was especially grateful to the flight crew who willingly agreed to conduct this medevac. I have the highest regard for, and am very thankful for, all U.S. Army aviators, whose skill and responsiveness helped my counterparts and me countless times during my 18 months as a district adviser. They always came when called, regardless of the tactical situation on the ground and the time of day (or night).

Their courage was limitless and deeply respected by us ground soldiers—Americans and Vietnamese alike.

Second, this had been a definitive test by the Vietnamese district chief to determine his adviser’s responsiveness and reliability when assistance was needed. There was no way I could explain that over the radio to the American TOC personnel. Manh trusted me to be there when he needed help, and I had passed his test. No adviser can succeed without establishing trust. Our relationship for the remaining months of my assignment was close, professional, and worked well for both of us in the challenges we would face.

Third, I knew I was in trouble with my advisory team senior officers in Ben Tre. Full of emotion and adrenaline in the dire circumstances, I had openly challenged U.S. policy on handling medevacs for Vietnamese casualties. Perhaps more significantly, I had been intemperate on the radio and was nearly insubordinate to the Province S-3 adviser. Senior officers do not take kindly to junior officers demanding anything.

Fourth, in retrospect, the incident provided the district chief the opportunity to demonstrate his own sense of responsibility and trust in me—and by important extension, to the other members of the Mo Cay advisory team. Several days later I accompanied Manh to the monthly District Chief/DSA meeting in Ben Tre. I was nervous, anticipating perhaps difficult meetings with the Province Senior Adviser (PSA) and the major I had argued with on the radio. As the meeting convened, the Vietnamese Province Chief asked me to stand up. He thanked me for what I had done on behalf of his soldier and commended the outstanding counterpart relationship in Mo Cay District. Manh had told the Province Chief the details of the event, knowing I was probably in trouble with the senior officers on the advisory team. I knew from then on that I could trust Manh to be an outstanding counterpart. His willingness to intercede on my behalf increased my own trust and confidence in him.

“I Would Do It Again”

The PSA thanked me in public—but in private he told me not to do it again. Later that day I met for the first time the major with whom I had argued on the radio. He took me aside and quietly but firmly told me I needed to work on my communications with senior officers. He was correct. I had been intemperate and disrespectful on the radio. During his first tour of duty in Vietnam he was wounded in action during an airmobile assault into the A Shau Valley, and he had earned the right to criticize me.

“Sir,” I said, “I apologize for being disrespectful on the radio. It was a tense moment for me, and an important test imposed on me by my counterpart.” I also told him the restriction on using American helicopters to evacuate Vietnamese casualties was a lousy policy, and I would do it again if I had to. He was a true gentleman. “John,” he replied, “you’re my kind of officer. You are doing a great job. Just work on your communications.” We had a mutually respectful relationship from then on.

John Harris was a young Army Aviator in 1972 when he and his Huey’s crew were called upon by Haseman to fly the humanitarian rescue mission. Harris didn’t hesitate, and helped direct the chopper’s pilot to a hospital.

I never forgot that particular medical evacuation among the many I requested for RF/PF casualties during my 18 months as a district adviser in Kien Hoa Province. The event always stood out in my memory.

A little over two months later, in February 1973, my assignment as a district adviser ended when the Paris Agreement mandated the end of the American advisory effort in Vietnam. I spent the final years of my career in Foreign Area Officer (FAO) assignments in Thailand, Indonesia, and Burma, with short stays in the U.S. for language school courses and assignments at Fort Leavenworth and on the Army staff. On Jan. 31, 1995, I retired to my home in western Colorado and embarked on more than 25 years of writing, lecturing, and traveling as often as I could.

In early March 2023 I was a panelist at the annual conference at the Vietnam Center, Texas Tech University. That year the conference dealt with Vietnam in 1973 and the topic assigned to me was my experiences as a district adviser at the end of the U.S. tactical commitment in the war. Just before our panel was to begin, several other attendees were gathered in front of our table and the conversation turned to the topic of helicopter and tactical air support for advisers in the last months of the war. I expressed my thanks to them “for being there when we needed them.” I began to describe the circumstances of that event I had faced long ago, on Nov. 20, 1972, when obtaining a U.S. medevac for a seriously wounded Vietnamese soldier.

One of the men paid particular attention, his eyes getting bigger and bigger as I went along, and then he burst out saying, “I flew that mission!” And thus, on March 3, 2023, I met Chief Warrant Officer-5 (Retired) John M. Harris, more than 50 years after he flew as copilot on that mission, during which he and I had shared a few minutes on the ground on a muddy, rocky road in Mo Cay District in our efforts to save the life of a soldier.

The Rescue Pilot

John Harris flew that humanitarian tactical medevac mission more than 50 years ago. He had been voluntarily activated the previous August as a novice 20-year-old WO1 Army Aviator from an Army Reserve troop unit, specifically for duty in Vietnam. He was later advised that he was the last USAR soldier mobilized for Vietnam.

Before reporting to Vietnam, I had attended the AH-1G Cobra qualification course. As a new Cobra pilot, it was intended that I would be employed in Vietnam as an attack helicopter pilot, most likely in an air cavalry troop. I was eager to get into the fight and see some action. However, soon after I arrived in Saigon I was told that due to recent losses, the immediate needs of the Army trumped my specific training, rank, and orders. I was instead ordered to perform duties as a Huey pilot. On Nov. 8, 1972, I was assigned to the 18th Aviation Company, 164th Combat Aviation Group, 1st Aviation Brigade, based in Can Tho, the capital of Military Region (MR) IV. Our unit’s mission was to provide aviation support to the remaining U.S. advisers who were located in all 16 MR IV provinces; the 7th, 9th, and 21st ARVN divisions; and the 44th Special Tactical Zone (STZ), located along the Cambodian border.

Each day, we would usually put up a dozen UH-1 Hueys whose mission would often be simply stated as, “Upon arrival, fly as directed by the Province Senior Adviser.” These missions included aerial resupply, visual reconnaissance for both tactical air and B-52 strikes, personnel transport, payroll distribution, offshore naval gunfire support, and much more. We were advised that while the medevac of any ARVN soldiers was to be primarily performed by the VNAF, if a PSA should ask us to medevac an ARVN casualty in a time-critical combat situation, the final decision would be up to the U.S. helicopter crew.

On Nov. 20, 1972, I was eagerly performing the duties of a UH-1H Huey copilot, often referred to in Vietnam as a “Peter pilot” or newbie. Our initial mission was to fly as directed for Kien Hoa Province for the first half of the day, followed by support in the afternoon for the 44th STZ, located near Chi Lang. This was my 10th mission in Vietnam. I was trying to learn as much as possible from the aircraft commander with whom I was paired. He was a very experienced captain with two tours in Vietnam under his belt as a pilot. We commenced our support that day by flying a MACV Inspector General (IG) team to various district headquarters. We were on the ground at Huong My District and relaxed in the advisers’ team house as the inspection team went about their work.

A U.S. helicopter lands to medevac a wounded South Vietnamese soldier in November 1965. By 1972, the U.S. Army had instituted a policy forbidding American medevac missions of ARVN soldiers in an effort to force the South Vietnamese air force to be more responsive to the needs of its own.

Suddenly we received a call requesting an urgent medevac for a gravely wounded Vietnamese soldier in the adjacent district of Mo Cay. My aircraft commander first asked me, then the crew chief and door gunner, if we were willing to carry out such a mission. Being new and very “gung-ho,” I was frankly surprised that he had even posed such a question. I said we absolutely had to go to the aid of an allied soldier. Both the crew chief and door gunner agreed and off we went.

Approaching the casualty site, we established radio contact with the U.S. adviser, who had his troops pop smoke and identified the LZ as secure. Then we set down following his guidance; he was waving an M16 over his head. During the loading process, I distinctly recall that although the wounded soldier’s leg, which was missing his foot, was covered in bloody bandages, the expression on his face was rather detached from reality. I guessed he had been heavily sedated with multiple doses of morphine to help him cope with extreme pain.

Preparing for Takeoff

As we prepared to take off, the aircraft commander began to direct me to fly to the nearest ARVN aid station. If it had been my first or second mission, I most likely would have simply followed his instructions without comment. But fortunately, while flying a mission a few days earlier for advisers in nearby Vinh Long Province, one of them had pointed out the existence of an ARVN hospital in Ben Tre.

Being rather outgoing, I hastily told the aircraft commander about this hospital and expressed my strong opinion that we should fly there instead of the aid station. I said it would take only a few minutes longer for us to reach it. I then added, “If I get shot down in the future, have my foot amputated and a VNAF helicopter comes to perform my medevac, I certainly hope that he does the right thing and flies me to a fully functioning hospital, versus a simple aid station, which may save my life!”

The aircraft commander acquiesced and allowed me to fly directly to the hospital. We dropped the patient off and I certainly felt good for having asserted myself that day. Once I eventually became an aircraft commander and in charge of my own Huey, I always told the story of this medevac to my new “Peter pilots” and recommended to them that if a similar situation should ever arise, they too should assert themselves and be sure to do the “right thing.”

When reflecting back on my rather abbreviated Vietnam tour, I have always been proudest of asserting myself that day to fly that wounded soldier to a place with a higher level of care. I performed a few more minor medevacs for Vietnamese soldiers during my tour but none of them involved any life-threatening injuries. After the Paris ceasefire took effect, I remained behind for two months and continued to fly as an aircraft commander in unarmed Hueys, conducting peace-keeping missions for the International Commission of Control and Supervision (ICCS), which was composed of military representatives from Canada, Poland, Hungary, and Indonesia. When I finally left Saigon on March 28, 1973, there were only about 500 U.S. troops remaining. They all departed the following day.

An Unlikely Reunion

I remained on continuous flying status as an Army aviator for over four more decades, serving as both a Huey and Cobra instructor pilot/tactical operations officer in multiple assault helicopter companies, attack helicopter companies, air cavalry troops, and other positions. I served for a year in South Korea and deployed for “contingency operations” with U.S. military forces to areas including Somalia, Bosnia, Kosovo, Uzbekistan, Jordan, and Qatar. While in the U.S. Army Reserve, I flew search-and-rescue, medevac, and firefighting helicopters for multiple agencies including the U.S. Forest Service and Kern County Fire Department.

I retired from Kern County in late 2021 after receiving the Federal Aviation Administration’s Wright Brothers Master Pilot Award for safe flight operations for over 50 years. I like to think that after performing that medevac flight in Vietnam, I was forever motivated to perform to the best of my ability in all subsequent urgent missions, both military and civil, to which I was called.

In early 2023, I heard from the Vietnam Helicopter Pilots Association (of which I am a Life Member) that the Vietnam Center & Sam Johnson Vietnam Archive at Texas Tech University in Lubbock, Texas, was hosting a conference focused on the 1973 Paris Peace Accords and the withdrawal from South Vietnam. I was invited to participate on a panel session focusing on the air war in 1973.

A 2023 chance meeting at a conference at Texas Tech University’s Vietnam Center reunited Haseman (right) and Harris (left), who met for the first time since their shared mission more than 50 years ago.

On March 3, the day before my panel was scheduled to meet, I happened to notice there was to be a panel on the “Last Phase of U.S. Advisory Efforts” at the end of the war. As I had flown for numerous U.S. advisers during my tour of duty, I was particularly drawn to that topic. I had a feeling that perhaps one of the advisers at the conference might have been aboard my aircraft during one of our support missions. When I read that one of the presenters, Col. John B. Haseman, had been a district adviser in the Mekong Delta at the same time and in the same area I regularly flew in, I became even more optimistic that our paths may have crossed.

I introduced myself and Haseman began to express his gratitude for both the tactical air support and helicopter assistance he had often received. He then told me the story of one particular mission in which he desperately attempted to get a U.S. medevac for a critically wounded Vietnamese soldier on a patrol with him. As he related the details, the hair on the back of my neck literally began to stand up. I thought, “What could be the chances that he was describing the same medevac mission that I had played a role in?”

When he confirmed that the wounded soldier had lost a foot due to a land mine, I knew it was the same mission. During my planning to attend the conference, I never dreamed I would relive a most emotional mission over 50 years later with the same person I had worked together with to “push the envelope” on the rules and to do the right thing when it came to trying to save a wounded soldier’s life.

John Haseman has authored more than 250 articles and book reviews about Southeast Asia political-military affairs, as well as many book chapters on the subject. He is the author or co-author of five books, the most recent of which, In the Mouth of the Dragon: Memoir of a District Advisor in the Mekong Delta, 1971-1973 (McFarland, 2022), describes his experiences as a tactical adviser at the district level in Vietnam’s Mekong Delta.

John Harris retired from the U.S. Army Reserve in October 2013 as a CW5 with over 44 1/2 continuous years of Army service. He was the last U.S. military aviator from any branch of service who had flown combat missions in Vietnam to have retired while still on military flying status.

This story appeared in the 2023 Autumn issue of Vietnam magazine.

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How Wheat’s Tigers’ Opening Gambit at First Manassas Turned to Legend

Richard H. Holloway — Mon, 18 Sep 2023 13:05:00 +0000

William S. Love of the 1st Special Battalion of Louisiana Infantry had little time to revel in his army’s victory at the First Battle of Manassas. For nearly three weeks, the Confederate surgeon from New Orleans found himself “constantly employed” treating wounded from both sides at the Carter House, a Manassas hillside homestead now serving as a field hospital. Finally, on August 9, 1861, Love fired off a quick note to his father, apologizing that it had taken him so long to do so. “I have had charge of some thirty or forty wounded prisoners,” he professed. “I got rid of them two or three days ago and have now here only [Captain] George McCausland who had gotten into a conflict wounded in a duel [and] is not in a condition yet to be moved.”

The Civil War’s first major battle on July 21, 1861, had sent a shockwave across both sides of the fractured country. As the clash on the plains of Manassas, Va., teetered on the edge of an expected Union victory that many believed would quell the Southern states’ burgeoning rebellion, fate played its hand, allowing the combined armies of Confederate Generals P.G.T. Beauregard and Joseph E. Johnston to storm back and claim a victory.

Hand-picked to win it all, Union Brig. Gen. Irvin McDowell attempted a bold advance that morning against the Southern forces assembled both on Matthews Hill and along the Warrenton Turnpike. Buckling under intense pressure on Matthews Hill, Love’s Louisiana Tigers—along with their beleaguered comrades from South Carolina and Virginia cobbled together in Colonel Nathan “Shanks” Evans’ 7th Brigade—withdrew in disarray toward Henry Hill, where the Southern commanders settled into a defensive posture.

Flush with grandiose visions of victory, McDowell ordered his troops to “press the Confederates.” At midday, astride his horse, he galloped along his lines shouting, “Victory! Victory! We have done it! We have done it!” The Union commander’s euphoric cries, however, produced ill-advised inaction among many of his troops—and soon a Herculean effort by their Confederate counterparts.

Patiently awaiting the Union advance behind a slope near Henry Hill were an unassuming former Virginia Military Institute professor named Thomas Jonathan Jackson and his contingent of Virginia infantry. The subsequent stand by the Old Dominion native would become immortal, of course, as was the Confederates’ remarkable rally on the field, which by evening had the Union troops and hordes of resident bystanders scampering back to Washington, D.C., as fast as the roads would allow.

The Southerners had indeed grasped victory from the hands of defeat.

A Duel… and a Prince

The letters Love finally sent to his father, parts of which are published here for the first time, were heartfelt and in places detailed, particularly his descriptions of the incident involving Captain George McCausland and a visit to the battlefield by Prince Napoleon, the cousin of French Emperor Napoleon III.

Joining Wheat’s Tigers in Colonel Evans’ Brigade at Manassas were the 4th South Carolina; the 30th Virginia Cavalry, Troops A and I; and a section of the Lynchburg (Va.) Artillery. Poor McCausland, a volunteer aide-de-camp on Evans’ staff, had gotten into an altercation with Captain Alexander White, commander of the 1st Special Battalion’s Company B. Only 24, McCausland was a native Louisianan—considered “a strikingly handsome man,” but a little unwise perhaps. White was a notorious character, having once been convicted of murder during a poker game. When McCausland made insulting remarks about the Tigers in the wake of the victory, White was outraged. To satisfy his honor, he challenged the youngster to a duel.

The Carter (Pittsylvania) House on Matthews Hill, where Love maintained his field hospital after the battle. By the Second Battle of Manassas in August 1862, it had burned down.

McCausland accepted the challenge, and on July 24 the two squared off near their camp with Mississippi Rifles at “short-range.” White fired first, sending a .54-caliber bullet through both of McCausland’s hips. McCausland, who had fired but missed, languished with the wound in Love’s hospital for more than a month and ultimately perished “in great agony” of pneumonia on September 17. His body was returned to New Orleans for burial at his home in West Feliciana Parish.

Corporal Robert Gracey was among the captured Federals for whom Love also cared at his field hospital. As Gracey later conveyed to a New York newspaper, his two-week stay at the Carter House had been pleasant enough. He revealed that after being wounded he was taken to the hospital “in one of our own ambulances, captured at Bull Run,” and had been “placed…under [the] guard of Lt. Thomas Adrian and his command of Tiger Rifles, of Louisiana.”

The kindly Confederates, Gracey recalled, furnished him with “more condiments, luxuries and personal attentions than were bestowed upon their own sick. Lt. Adrian frequently and jocularly remarked, as an excuse for this, that his object was a selfish one. He wanted to take [him] to the South, and exhibit him, a la [Phineas T.] Barnum, as a fine specimen of the living Yankee who couldn’t be killed.”

France’s Prince Napoleon would later tour the battlefield with P.G.T. Beauregard. Affectionately called “Plon Plon,” he enjoyed the grand treatment afforded him by the South while visiting the divided country.

As for Prince Napoleon, he did visit the Manassas area in the days following the battle and shared a carriage with Beauregard, escorted by more than 100 cavalrymen under that flamboyant Virginian, Colonel J.E.B. Stuart. According to one unidentified observer, Beauregard and his guest disembarked at the now-famous Stone Bridge and strolled about before returning to their carriage and arriving “on the bare plateau rising above the Bull Run, at the very center of the action, amidst corpses, dead horses and freshly-dug graves.”

The battlefield excursion would end at 11 a.m.

Winter in Virginia

Desperate for news from home to distract him from his exhaustive duties, Love implored his father to direct any letters to him “at Manassas, Wheat’s Battalion. The letters all go addressed to it into our box are taken out and sent as directed.”

“I hope to join the Battalion soon,” he divulged. “[I]t is encamped at Bull Run, where the Battle of the 18th alto [Blackburn’s Ford] was fought. I hear that we are to be kept to the sea, but I hope not.” Love also informed his father that he had sent him “by the Southern Express Company fifty dollars some days ago. I now enclose you the receipt for it lest you might have trouble getting it. I would have sent it long since….[but] the Post Office is at Manassas some eight miles from here and I could not get them to mail a letter….”

By the end of November, Love wrote his father again about the “very cold” weather where he was staying at Camp Florida, outside Centreville, Va. It was something to which the Louisiana native was certainly not accustomed. “I would have obtained a furlough ’ere this to have gone to Richmond probably to New Orleans,” he explained, “but that being in daily expectation of a grand battle with [George] McClellan’s whole Yankee army, I did not like to be absent from the company.”

By mid-December, Wheat’s Tigers were still recuperating their strength. Now camped east of Manassas Junction, they stored their flimsy canvas tents and built more substantial log cabins to weather the increasing winter temperatures. It had been less than a year since they had arrived in Virginia.

Although, as Love noted, offensive actions in the area had halted for the most part as winter approached, he elaborated: “Our scouts report the Yankees to be advancing in immense force. The battle is expected to take place in two days. Whole brigades of our army are sent out on picket duty and daily are capturing bodies of Yankee scouts and foraging parties. We are all sanguine and entertain no apprehensions as to the result. From all accounts it will be a bloody battle. But pray God will give us victory.”

The only “grand” battle of any consequence nearby would be known as the Bog Wallow Ambush, occurring December 4. Tired of Confederates capturing their men, the Yankees began probing enemy positions and finally launched a trap that produced a narrow victory, with five Confederate and four Federal casualties.

Eager for a Fight

The group that had first organized six months earlier at Camp Moore in southeast Louisiana proved a raucous assortment of men. Recruited from the alleyways and docks in the seedier side of New Orleans, they were at least experienced fighters, just not disciplined. While at Camp Moore, a young private from another company, John F. Charlton, wrote in his diary: “Our excitement in camp with the Tiger Rifles was our first experience being often aroused during the night by cries of ‘fall in fall in’ expecting to be attacked by the Tigers. They never liked us because we often accused them of Stealing.”

Camp Moore was the Confederate Army’s major camp of instruction in Louisiana. Clara Solomon was among the enthusiastic visitors to socialize with soldiers training at the camp.

Initially they were all adorned with regular-issue Confederate uniforms, but they did wear distinctive wide-brimmed hats with slogans painted on the bands such as “Lincoln’s Life or a Tiger’s Death” and “Tiger in Search of Abe.” A rich benefactor, Alexander Keene Richards, admired them and purchased one company (the “Tiger Rifles”) wildly colored Zouave-style uniforms consisting of a red fez and shirt, a dark blue jacket trimmed in red, baggy blue-and-white-striped pants, and white gaiters to fit over most of their blue-and-white-striped socks. They were armed with .54-caliber Mississippi rifled muskets and had huge Bowie knives strapped to their waists. Stitched on their flag, ironically, were the words “As Gentle As” adjacent to a resting lamb in the center.

A Virginia native, Chatham Roberdeau Wheat was a veteran of many wars, and during the fighting in Mexico in 1846-48 received particular praise from General Zachary Taylor, who described him as “the best natural soldier he had ever seen.” He followed that up with military forays in Cuba, Mexico, Nicaragua, and Italy.

In addition to being a born leader, Wheat was a physically imposing figure, standing 6-feet-4 and weighing nearly 275 pounds. He demanded respect from the soldiers serving under him and was stout enough to earn it. At one point, Wheat was overheard screaming at his men, “If you don’t get to your places, and behave as soldiers should, I will cut your hands off with this sword!” It was widely acknowledged that his men feared him and that he was the only person able to control them.

Despite his rough exterior, Wheat interacted gentlemanly with the ladies of New Orleans. One Crescent City girl, 16-year-old Clara Solomon, was highly impressed with the major and was a family friend of one of his company commanders, Captain Obed P. Miller. Before the Tigers were scheduled to head off to war on June 15, 1861, Solomon traveled to Camp Moore in a desperate attempt to see “Maj. Wheat’s first special battalion.”

The giddy teen jotted in her journal:

“But hush! we are nearing Tangipahoa [where Camp Moore was situated]! The whistle is sounding! we are at the depot! ‘What hope, what joy our bosom’s swell!!’ Quickly my head is thrust out the window in search of one familiar, well beloved form [Battalion Adjutant Allen C. Dickinson]. The report! It is seen!! A moment more and we are with it. Our fears are ended. They have not gone! But one received the ‘kiss salute.’ How tantalizing!! He [Dickinson] was glad to see us! Sufficient! We slowly wind our way to the Hotel. We remain there a few moments and then proceed to the seat of action, ‘The Camp,’ accompanied by Capt. White and his wife.”

An imposing figure, Major Chatham Roberdeau Wheat wielded an iron hand to keep his ill-disciplined men in line. In Mexico, General Zachary Taylor, the future U.S. president, called him “the best natural soldier he had ever seen.”

Unexpectedly, the unit’s departure to Virginia was delayed until the following Thursday. The soldiers were eager for a fight and seemed somewhat blue because of the delay. As Solomon would recall, “When we arrived at our quarters, the first object that attracted our attention was our ‘handsome Major [Wheat],’” who, she wrote, “greeted them very cordially.” Lamenting that Wheat was without a female companion, she offered to be his escort for the evening activities and later chided the major for not relaying his “proper” goodbyes to her at night’s end.

Once Wheat and his men finally departed on trains to Virginia, they found themselves packed tightly in the rail cars, much like sardines in a can. The companies comprising the battalion consisted of the Walker Guards (Robert A. Harris, commander); Tiger Rifles (Alexander White); Delta Rangers (Henry C. Gardner); Catahoula Guerrillas (Jonathan W. Buhoup); and Old Dominion Guards (Obed Miller). It was a plodding, uncomfortable ride, but it allowed for overnight stops. Local crowds cheered them on and often convinced the train to stop so they could pass out goodies to the Louisianans. One gift was a big cake made especially for Wheat.

The trip, though, was not entirely pleasant. During a stop at Opelika, Ala., Wheat’s men left the train and seized control of a hotel, including the bar inside. Unable to clear the troublesome men out of the building, the local authorities sought assistance from the major, who at the point was fast asleep on the train. Wakened, Wheat rushed to the scene, pistol drawn, and immediately ordered the belligerents to disperse and return to their railcars. But for a few men, all obeyed the order. Of those continuing to resist, two ruffians were clearly identified as the ringleaders. A witness, Colonel William C. Oates of future Gettysburg fame, later disclosed: “Wheat shot both of them dead. He told me the only way to control his men was to shoot down those who disobeyed or defied him, yet they loved him with the fidelity of dogs.”

Upon the battalion’s arrival in the Old Dominion, the men made an impression on the soldiers of the 18th Virginia Infantry, one of whom recalled witnessing “one freight car…pretty nearly full of Louisiana ‘Tigers’ under arrest for disorderly conduct, drunkenness, etc., most of which were bucked and gag[ged].”

At Lynchburg, former bookstore-clerk-turned-Catahoula Guerrilla Lieutenant William D. Foley wrote: “Our destination is ‘Manassas Gap’. We will have the gratification to participate on the ‘Big Fight’ on Virginia’s soil, the first of Louisiana’s troops. The enemy outnumber us, but we are all prepared, and more than anxious for the Conflict. Troops from Richmond are being sent to the Gap. Tiz a place we must and will hold. The God of battles being with us.”

Before they could reach Manassas, however, the battalion clashed with Federal soldiers at Seneca Dam on the Potomac River.

“Our blood was on fire”

Many of the Tigers were immigrants—a large number from Ireland who had fled that country’s potato famine. As the New Orleans Daily Delta noted, “As for our Irish citizens—whew!—they are ‘spiling’ for a fight.”

It wouldn’t take long for them to get their wish. After McDowell’s forces were rebuffed attempting to cross Bull Run Creek at Blackburn’s Ford on July 18, the Union general was convinced it was too heavily defended and began looking for another point along the Confederate lines to assault. He moved his forces upstream and on the morning of July 21 put his renewed attack plan in place.

Just before daybreak, Southern pickets near the Stone Bridge heard a large movement of troops approaching their position. Colonel Evans deployed one of Wheat’s companies and some of his South Carolinians as skirmishers by the bridge, while the rest of his brigade took position on the nearby hills overlooking the bridge and the Warrenton Turnpike. The Union threat at the Stone Bridge, however, was merely a demonstration. The bulk of McDowell’s force was intending to cross 2½ miles north at Sudley Ford.

Soon, a Confederate signal station in Manassas—manned by future Confederate luminary Edward P. Alexander—alerted Evans that a large Union force was moving to turn his left flank. Evans and Wheat agreed they had to shift their lines to meet this new enemy front, hoping reinforcements would hastily arrive. With no desire to abandon such an important position entirely, the commanders left Lieutenant Adrian and a contingent of Tigers guarding the Stone Bridge.

Confusion among the Louisiana and South Carolina troops proved a problem, as the latter unwittingly fired on their Pelican State comrades while navigating a wooded area, and the Louisianans returned the fire. Wheat rushed to the scene to stop the shooting, but not before two of his men lay mortally wounded.

At about 9:45 a.m., Union Colonel Ambrose Burnside’s men advanced with bayonets fixed through a heavily wooded area into a clearing and found themselves flushing out the Catahoula Guerrillas, then hiding in the tall brush. Relayed Guerrilla Sergeant Robert Richie: “[T]he enemy opened on us, and we had the honor of opening the ball, receiving and returning the first volley that was fired on that day….After pouring a volley, we rushed upon the enemy and forced them back under cover.”

In this drawing from the New York Illustrated News of August 5, 1861, Burnside’s troops attack Leftwich’s Battery. The Southerners held their ground, helping turn the battle’s tide.

The Guerrillas’ advance at the double-quick forced Burnside’s startled men back into the cover of the forest. The Union colonel, however, had six cannons total, and some were lined up to repulse the Southerners. Guerrilla Drury Gibson remembered the deadly fire, writing, “The balls came as thick as hail [and] grape, bomb and canister would sweep our ranks every minute.”

Some of the Tiger Rifles and Catahoula Guerrillas dropped their Mississippi Rifles, which were bereft of lugs to hold bayonets, and unsheathed their Bowie knives before charging the Federals with ferocity. In later describing the conflict, one Alabama soldier called the Louisianans “the most desperate men on earth,” crowing that when they threw their knives at the enemy, they “scarcely ever [missed] their aim.” Worse for the Yankees, those large knives had strings attached, allowing them to be retrieved after they plunged into an enemy soldier’s body.

Vividly portraying the attack’s desperate moments, Ritchie crowed: “Our blood was on fire. Life was valueless. They boys fired one volley then rushed upon the foe with clubbed rifles beating down their guard; then they closed upon them with their knives. I had been in battles several times before, but such fighting was never done, I do not believe as was done for the next half hour[;] it did not seem as though men were fighting, it was devils mingling in the conflict, cursing, yelling, cutting, shrieking.”

One Tiger’s account of the battle found its way into a Richmond newspaper:

“As we were crossing a field in an exposed situation, we were fired upon (through mistake) by a body of South Carolinians, and at once the enemy let loose as if all hell had been left loose. Flat upon our faces we received their shower of balls; a moment’s pause, and we rose, closed in upon them with a fierce yell, clubbing our rifles and using our long knives. This hand-to-hand fight lasted until fresh reinforcements drove us back beyond our original position, we carrying our wounded with us. Major Wheat was here shot from his horse; Captain White’s horse was shot under him, our First Lieutenant [Thomas Adrian] was wounded in the thigh, Dick Hawkins shot through the breast and wrist, and any number of killed and wounded were strewn about.

“The New York Fire Zouaves, seeing our momentary confusion, gave three cheers and started for us, but it was the last shout that most of them ever gave. We covered the ground with their dead and dying, and had driven them beyond their first position, when just then we heard three cheers for the Tigers and Louisiana. The struggle was decided. The gallant Seventh [Louisiana Infantry] had ‘double quicked’ it for nine miles, and came rushing into the fight. They fired as they came within point blank range, and charged with fixed bayonets. The enemy broke and fled panic-stricken, with our men in full pursuit.

“When the fight and pursuit were over, we were drawn up in line and received the thanks of Gen. Johnston for what he termed our ‘extraordinary and desperate stand.’ Gen. Beauregard sent word to Major Wheat, ‘you, and your battalion, for this day’s work, shall never be forgotten, whether you live or die.’”

The Shreveport Daily News described the battalion as “a specimen of the toughest and most ferocious set of men on earth,” and an account that ran in the Wilmington [N.C.] Journal provided input by Tiger Lieutenant Allen C. Dickinson, who had been shot in the thigh by a Minié ball. “[O]ut of 400 which constituted that command, there were not more than 100 that escaped death and wounds. Maj. Wheat was shot through the body, and was surviving on Wednesday, although his case is exceedingly critical.” According to Dickinson, Captain Buhoup and his Guerrillas “fought with desperation.”

Dickinson, a Virginia native who had been living in New Orleans for several years, had been the one to draw Clara Solomon’s interest back at Camp Moore. When news of the battle reached New Orleans, she lamented, “No news about our Lieut. Dickinson.” Informed of Wheat’s fate, she wrote: “Just think the two persons, for whom we care most in the war, we should hear, in the very first battle, of one being seriously wounded, and nothing of the other.”

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A contributor to the Richmond Dispatch, writing under the pseudonym “Louisiana,” tried to clear things up, including the status of the battalion’s leader. “The gallant Colonel Wheat is not dead,” he wrote. “I have just got[ten] a letter from Capt. Geo. McCausland, Aid[e] to Gen. Evans, written on behalf of Major Wheat, to a relative of Allen C. Dickinson, Adjutant of Wheat’s Battalion.”

The contributor went on to describe Dickinson’s injury in detail: “The wound is in his leg, and although not dangerous….His horse having been killed under him, he was on foot with sword in one hand and revolver in the other, about fifty yards from the enemy, when a Minie ball struck him. He fell and lay over an hour, when fortunately, Gen. Beauregard and staff, and Capt. McCausland, passed. The generous McCausland dismounted and placed Dickinson on his horse. Lieut. D. is doing well and is enjoying the kind care and hospitality of Mr. Waggoner and family, on Clay Street, in this city.”

The Shreveport Weekly News published the lyrics of a song written expressly about the battalion’s exploits. Borrowing its tune from the song, “Wait for the Wagons,” it had three stanzas praising the Louisianans at First Manassas—the song’s title aptly changed to “Abe’s Wagons.”

We met them at Manassas, all formed in bold array,
And the battle was not ended when they all ran away.
Some left their guns and knapsack, in their legs they did confide,
We overhauled Scott’s carriage, and his epaulets besides.
[Chorus]
Louisiana’s Tiger Rifles, they rushed in for their lines,
And the way they slayed the Yankees, with their long Bowie knives.
They laid there by the hundreds, as it next day did appear,
With a countenance quite open, that gaped from ear to ear.
[Chorus]
The battle being ended, and Patterson sent back,
Because he did not fight us, for courage he did lack.
Abe Lincoln he got so very mad, when his army took a slide,
And we jumped into his wagons, and we all took a ride.

A British reporter recalled a peculiar tactic practiced by the Louisianans, writing, “[T]hey would maintain a death-like silence until the foe was not more than 50 paces off; then delivering a withering volley, they would dash forward with unearthly yells and [when] they drew their knives and rushed to close quarters, the Yankees screamed with horror.”

Lieutenant Adrian rejoined the battalion with his scant force, and after being wounded in the thigh fell to the ground. When he noticed some of the Tigers falling back, he propped himself up on one elbow and shouted at the top of his lungs, “Tigers, go in once more. Go in my sons, I’ll be great gloriously God damned if the sons of bitches can ever whip the Tigers!”

First-person reports were published in New Orleans’ Daily True Delta after the unnamed “vivandier of the Tiger Rifles” strode into their offices with letters from some Tigers to their friends back home. The newspaper cited:

“These letters give a detailed history of the Tigers’ sayings and doings since their departure hence, and especially their participation in the battles of…Manassas. The loss among them, we are pleased to say, is much less than has been reported. They have twenty-six of their seventy-six, wholly uninjured, and several more who are but slightly wounded. That they fought like real tigers everybody admits and Gen. Johnston, it is said, complimented them especially on the brave and desperate daring which they had exhibited.

“[Lieutenant] Ned Hewitt reported here as having been killed, did not receive the slightest wound. Moreover, none of the officers of the Company were killed. Two of the Tigers who had been missing for several days after the fight, made their way to Manassas on Thursday last, one being slightly and other pretty badly wounded. The kindness of the Virginia ladies to the wounded soldiers is said to be beyond all praise—like that of a mother to a child or a wife to a husband. Soldiers so nursed and attended can never be anything else than heroes and conquerors.”

Having defied death—and skeptical doctors—when gravely wounded at First Manassas, Wheat would not be so lucky when shot in the head 11 months later at the Battle of Gaines’ Mill, the third of the Seven Days’ Battles on June 27, 1862. His purported final words—“Bury me on the field, boys!”—were to open a poem in his honor. Wheat had been the only one to truly rein in the rambunctious battalion, which formally disbanded on August 15, 1862. Fortunately, their legend survives.

This article first appeared in America’s Civil War magazine

A frequent contributor, Richard H. Holloway is a member of America’s Civil War’s editorial advisory board. He thanks Glen Cangelosi for his help in preparing this article.

The Real Story Behind 58 Confederate Bodies Tossed in a Well

Steven R. Stotelmyer — Thu, 14 Sep 2023 13:38:28 +0000

On September 14, 1862, fighting broke out on South Mountain, Md., as portions of the Army of the Potomac clashed with Army of Northern Virginia troops holding passes over the mountain. On the 15th, the day after particularly heavy fighting at Fox’s Gap, Ohio troops were assigned to a burial detail on that contested cleft. As it was a task they did not particularly like, they sought a shortcut by dumping a number of Confederate bodies down a well in front of a cabin.

The cabin and well belonged to an old farmer named Daniel Wise. Realizing his well was ruined and being a shrewd codger, Wise made the most of a bad situation by contracting with 9th Corps commander Maj. Gen. Ambrose E. Burnside to continue the process for $1 a body. After depositing several more bodies, Wise sealed the well, earning himself a tidy sum.

Or so goes the legend.

Some versions of the tale claim that no damage was done because the well was dry or abandoned. Others claim farmer Wise was caught and made to put things right by removing the dead Confederates and giving them a decent burial. All accounts agree, at least, that Wise was paid for his troubles.

Most modern authors of books on the battle use the same source when relating the tale: History of the Twenty-First Massachusetts Volunteers. It was authored 20 years after the Battle of South Mountain by Charles F. Walcott, a member of the 21st. Since Captain Walcott was at Fox’s Gap on September 14 and 15, some historians presume that he witnessed the event. It is from the following account that most authors have based their narratives concerning Wise:

“The burial of a portion of the rebel dead was peculiar enough to call for special mention. Some Ohio troops had been detailed to bury them, but not relishing the task, and finding the ground hard to dig, soon removed the covering of a deep well connected with Wise’s house on the summit, and lightened their toil by throwing a few bodies into the well. Mr. Wise soon discovered what they were about, and had it stopped: and then the Ohioans went away, leaving their work unfinished. Poor Mr. Wise, anxious to get rid of the bodies, finally made an agreement with General Burnside to bury them for a dollar apiece. As long as his well had been already spoiled, he concluded to realize on the rest of its capacity, and put in fifty-eight more rebel bodies, which filled it to the surface of the ground.”

So now, let’s establish some facts.

The Fight at Fox’s Gap

Daniel Wise was a real person. He was born in Brunswick, Md., in 1802. On June 24, 1824, he married Mary Milly and together the couple had at least three children, a son named John, and two daughters named Matilda and Christiana. The census records for 1860 lists Daniel, Matilda, and John as residents of a modest, 1½-story whitewashed log cabin that stood at the intersection of the Old Sharpsburg Road (modern Reno Monument Road) and two mountain roads that more or less followed the mountain crest in a north-south direction.

Daniel’s wife seems to have perished (she was not listed in the 1850 census) and Christiana married and moved to start a family of her own. Among Christiana’s children was one of Daniel’s grandchildren, 5-year-old Anne Cecilia. Christiana often returned to visit and brought her children with her. At the time of the battle, Daniel Wise was 60 years old.

It seems that neither Wise nor his children were especially well off. In addition to farming, both Daniel and John eked out a living as day laborers and for a time as potters. Daniel Wise also earned a living as a “root doctor,” a local expert in folk medicine. According to the family’s oral history, on the morning of the battle the Wise family fled their cabin to seek safety elsewhere.

The fight at Fox’s Gap resulted in horrendous slaughter. The section of the Old Sharpsburg Road that passed over the ridge crest near Wise’s cabin would come to be known to the veterans as the Sunken Road. Regarding Confederate casualties, square foot per square foot, the Sunken Road at Fox’s Gap is proportionately every bit as bloody as its famous counterpart at Antietam.

A carriage heading north stops at the end of the Ridge Road, next to Wise’s cabin. The Old Sharpsburg Road runs past the cabin. In the left foreground can be seen the terminus of the Wood Road. Today, a portion of the Appalachian Trail follows the Wood Road trace.

One of the battle’s Confederate combatants, 1st Lt. Peter McGlashen of the 50th Georgia Infantry, later wrote: “When ordered to retreat I could scarce extricate myself from the dead and wounded around me. A Man could have walked from the head of our line to the foot on their bodies.”

This is borne out by a New York veteran of the battle. Remembered William Todd, the regimental historian of the 79th New York Infantry:

“Morning of the 15th dawned at last, and on such a sight as none of us ever wish to look upon again. Behind and in front of us, but especially in the angles of the stone walls, the dead bodies of the enemy lay thick; near the gaps in the fences they were piled on top of each other like cord-wood dumped from a cart. The living had retreated during the night and none but the dead and severely wounded remained….About noon we moved off the field, and on our way saw many more evidences of the battle. At one angle of the stone walls fourteen bodies of the enemy were counted lying in a heap, just as they had fallen, apparently. We referred to that spot as ‘Dead Man’s Corner.’”

The Wood Road, which ran southerly from Turner’s Gap to Fox’s Gap, was bordered on the east by a “stone and rider” fence near the intersection with the Old Sharpsburg Road. This type of fence consisted of a combination of stone wall with split rail fence over the top. William Todd may have referenced the intersection as “Dead Man’s Corner” as he was one of many who noticed a dead Confederate soldier hung up on the fence. “A curious sight presented itself in the body of a rebel straddling a stone wall,” wrote Todd, “he must have been killed while in the act of climbing over, for with a leg on either side, the body was thrown slightly forward stiff in death.”

Captain James Wren of the 48th Pennsylvania Infantry had some time to view the battlefield on September 15 before his regiment headed for Sharpsburg. He not only noticed the dead Confederate on the fence, but another truly horrific sight. The following is from his personal diary:

“Just to the right of my skirmish line of yesterday were two Cross roads…and on our front there was a stone fence & behind that fence & in this cross road the enemy lay very thick. One rebel, in crossing the fence was Killed in the act & his Clothing Caught & he was hanging on the fence….At this place being the top of South Mountain, the Hospital was an awful sight, being a little house, by its self, & in the yard there was 3 or 4 Large tables in it & as the soldiers was put on it (that was wounded), the surgical Core Came along & the head of the Core had in his hand a piece of white Chalk & he marked the place where the Limb was to be Cut off & right behind him was the line of surgeons with their instruments & they proceeded to amputate & in Looking around in the yard, I saw a Beautiful, plump arm Laying, which drew my attention & in looking a Little at it, and seeing another of the same Kind, I picked them up & Laid them together & found that they are right & one a Left Arm, which Convinced me that they war off the one man & you Could see many legs Laying in the yard with the shoes & stocking on.”

Burial details began their gruesome work. Because Burnside’s 9th Corps occupied Fox’s Gap, the Union dead were buried first. By the end of the 15th, most of Burnside’s troops were off the mountain. Very few dead Confederates, if any at all, were buried on that day and, consequently, the bulk of the dead Southerners still lay above ground.

Burying the Dead

Many of the survivors of the fight at Fox’s Gap took the opportunity to tour the field, and many of the local citizenry came by to watch and collect curios. The Wise family’s well was located between Wise’s cabin and the Old Sharpsburg Road in plain sight of everyone using the road.

It is not unreasonable, then, to presume that had a 60-year-old man been occupied dumping dead Confederates down his family’s well, there would have been someone around to take notice. The truth is, no bodies were thrown down the well on September 15, 1862. That would instead happen on September 16, and farmer Daniel Wise had nothing to do with it.

Dead Confederates sketched on the Wise Farm. Overall, there were 2,685 Southern casualties at the September 14 battle.

It seems there was a witness to the event, Private Samuel Compton of the 12th Ohio Infantry, who wrote:

“On the morning of the 16th I strolled out to see them bury the Confederate dead. I saw but I never want to another sight. The squad I saw were armed with a pick & a canteen full of whiskey. The whiskey the most necessary of the two. The bodies had become so offensive that men could only endure it by being staggering drunk. To see men stagger up to corpses and strike four or five times before they could get a hold, a right hold being one above the belt. Then staggering, as the very drunk will, they dragged the corpses to a 60 foot well and tumbling them in. What a sepulcher and what a burial! You don’t wonder I had no appetite for supper.”

Obviously, conditions at Fox’s Gap on September 16 were much different from what they had been the day before. The area was definitely less crowded. One of the soldiers on burial detail was Private Michael Deady of the 23rd Ohio Infantry, who recalled that there were 75 men on burial detail at Fox’s Gap, a mixture of soldiers from several different regiments. It certainly seems that the Ohio men had a hand in dumping the bodies down the well.

If Private Deady’s veracity is trustworthy, the numbers of Confederates requiring burial was tremendous. After helping to bury 33 Union troops on September 15, Deady noted on the next day, “Buried 200 rebs, they lay pretty thick.” On September 17, he was till at the grim work, “bury 250 today.” Remarkably, the burial details at Fox’s Gap were still at it as late as September 18. As Deady noted: “Same old work awful smell to work by. To day finish and glad of it.” On the same day, Private John McNutty Clugston of the 23rd Ohio noted, “Finished the burying of the dead at 4 P.M. and proceeded to Boonsboro and camped in a barn.”

The burial details at Fox’s Gap spent three days, apparently on their own with little supervision, burying more than 450 dead Confederates. Many of the soldiers were using alcohol to numb their senses. These unfortunate Union soldiers rejoined their regiments at Antietam just as the burial details of that momentous battle began the grisly task of burying the dead in the fields around Sharpsburg.

58 Bodies

As far as the well is concerned, the intoxicated men may have simply viewed the well as a convenient receptacle. Or, it may have started by someone dumping amputated limbs into the well on September 15, and then naturally continuing with whole bodies the next day. For the burial details it would have seemed that the well was already ruined and therefore it was only natural to continue. This brings up another aspect of the legend, that the well was not ruined because it was abandoned and dry. Once again there is evidence in the family history that indeed the well was dry, not because it was abandoned, but because as Anne Cecilia (Daniel’s granddaughter) remembered, it was under construction at the time.

Whatever the spark of origin, or condition of the well at the time, at least 58 dead bodies ended up in Wise’s Well on September 16. Samuel Compton’s account was verified in both a remarkable and roundabout manner by someone else associated with the 12th Ohio Infantry. Eliza Otis, the wife of 2nd Lt. Harrison G. Otis. Eliza noted the incident in her journal. It was occasioned by the visit in June 1863 of some fellow officers that served with her husband. In the course of the evening’s conversation, some incidents and “personal observations” of previous battles were discussed:

“In one place, near South Mountain, I think, they said it was, sixty dead bodies were thrown into a deep old well– that was their only sepulcher– they were those of the rebel soldiers, and were placed there by our men who were three days in burying the dead, and time and their various duties gave them no opportunity to afford the fallen foe a better mausoleum.”

It is appropriate at this juncture to clarify that Captain Charles F. Walcott, whose account of the incident became the basis in popular Civil War history, was not there when the incident happened, because he marched off the mountain with his regiment on September 15. Walcott received his information second-hand, and footnoted his account by saying that the story as he described it was told originally to a member of the Sanitary Commission by Daniel Wise:

“This account of the burial of the rebels was given by Mr. Wise himself, a few weeks after the act. to a gentleman connected with the Sanitary Commission, who noticed that the well had been filled up, and asked him how a man’s hand came to be projecting through the sunken earth, with which it had been covered.”

The Sanitary Commission was a civilian organization whose basic object was to better the living conditions of the Union Army. Walcott did not name the source, only that it was a “gentleman” connected with the commission, but his anonymous second-hand account in his 1882 regimental history has been accepted over others written by those who observed first-hand what actually transpired at Wise’s farm.

It must have been a very frustrating couple of days for the Wise family. Not only were they unable to immediately get back into their home because it was being used as a field hospital, but they most likely had to wait several more days until the burial details had finished their work. According to the Wise family history, “there were bodies in the well when they came back.”

Bowie’s List

Sometime around 1869, Moses Poffenberger and Aaron Good were employed by the state of Maryland to inventory Confederate burial places and visited Fox’s Gap. Although most of the Union soldiers who perished in Maryland had already been re-interred at the Antietam National Cemetery by then, the Confederates mostly remained buried on the battlefields. Both Poffenberger and Good visited, identified, and cataloged every trench and grave they could find. Under the auspices of Governor Oden Bowie, their list was published with the title: A Descriptive List of the Burial Places of the Remains of Confederate Soldiers, Who Fell in the Battles of Antietam, South Mountain, Monocacy, and other Points in Washington and Frederick Counties in the State of Maryland. Today it is simply known as “Bowie’s List.”

Poffenberger and Good listed 47 unknown “In Wise’s lot on east side of house and lot on top of South Mountain.” They also listed 23 unknown “In Wise’s lot on west side of house and stable on top of South Mountain.” On page 51 of Bowie’s List is the succinct entry, “58 unknown, In Wise’s Well on South Mountain.”

In 1874, 12 years after the Battle of South Mountain, the Confederate dead were finally removed and re-interred at the Washington Confederate Cemetery in Hagerstown, Md. Incredibly, for 12 years the Wise family lived with the graves of 128 unknown Confederate soldiers in the immediate vicinity of their home. The work of removing the Confederate dead was contracted to Mr. Henry C. Mumma of Sharpsburg. He was paid $1.65 “per head.” As noted in the local Hagerstown Mail, June 26, 1874:

An 1868 sketch of Daniel Wise and his son at the simple marker that marked the spot where Union Maj. Gen. Jesse Reno was mortally wounded. Battle scars remain on the tree adjacent to the marker.

“Mumma has been most successful in his work and is at this time continuing its prosecution with vigor…Some of these bodies we have heretofore noticed as having been taken from the historical well on South Mountain battle-field, where they were thrown by Gen. Reno’s command.”

General Burnside’s 9th Corps was commanded by Maj. Gen. Jesse Lee Reno, who was mortally wounded at the close of battle and perished within hours. What is germane to debunking the accepted narrative of the well is to note that the Hagerstown newspaper attributed the act to “Reno’s command,” not Daniel Wise.

In 1876, six years before the publication of Walcott’s regimental history, Daniel Wise died. He never knew of the legend that grew from Walcott’s storytelling, published in 1882. John Wise sold the property in 1878, two years after his father’s death, and moved to West Virginia. When Walcott’s book was published, the Wise family had left Fox’s Gap.

Excavation and Discovery

In the early 2000s, the National Park Service purchased the site of Wise’s well for incorporation into the Appalachian Trail. During the summer of 2002, a collaboration of archaeologists, historians, and trail volunteers explored the site and accomplished some meaningful archeology for the first time. They discovered a rectangular brick and mortar shaft feature in the vicinity of the suspected cabin site. A visual examination of the interior revealed a half dome-shaped concrete vault structure under the shaft. It was interpreted to be the top of a concrete cistern, that is, an underground tank for holding water. This was consistent with conversations of former residents who insisted there was no well, but a cistern instead, perhaps constructed by later residents as an alternate water source.

Author Steven Stotelmyer during the 2002 excavation of the site where Wise’s well was found. Stotelmyer discovered his great nephew is Daniel Wise’s sixth great-grandchild. That has helped motivate him to set the record straight.

That theory, however, was debunked. Upon further excavation the bell-shaped concrete vault was found to be sitting on at least four courses of dry laid stone that undoubtedly surrounded an open shaft that was consistent with a hand-dug stone-lined 19th-century well or cistern. The feature was filled with debris, most of which looked to be from the mid- to late-20th century. No other stone-line underground structure that could have been used as a well or cistern was found near the cabin site that summer. Although not entirely conclusive, it does appear that the archaeologists found Wise’s famous historical well. It also appears that it was later used for a time as a functioning cistern.

Setting the historical record straight is often condemned as “revisionism.” The story of Daniel Wise’s well has become cemented as fact in the history of the Maryland Campaign and, unfortunately, much of it is legend. The campaign has more than ample drama and human interest that is well documented and so its history should not include incidents that have no basis in the historical record.

To “revise,” by definition, implies correction and improvement. I have attempted to correct the Wise’s well story; not demolish it. The intent has always been to exonerate Daniel Wise from blame for an onerous act he never committed. Without doubt the well became a mass grave for at least 58 dead Confederate soldiers. What I have done is merely correct the narrative behind how they got there and, in the process, expose some of the true horror of warfare.

The 58 unfortunate Southerners were not put in the well on September 15, but rather the next day, September 16. Daniel Wise did not put them there, a drunken Union burial detail did; and there is no evidence that Wise, or any member of his family, got $1 per body, or any compensation for damages done.

this article first appeared in civil war times magazine

Steven R. Stotelmyer writes from Hagerstown, Md., and is the author of The Bivouacs of the Dead: The Story of Those Who Died at Antietam and South Mountain and Too Useful To Sacrifice, Reconsidering George B. McClellan’s Generalship in the Maryland Campaign. He is a National Park Service Volunteer as well as a Certified Antietam Battlefield and South Mountain Tour Guide.

‘Oh! my soul—what a sight presented itself!’: A Witness to the July 1863 New York Draft Riots

Jonathan W. White — Thu, 14 Sep 2023 12:31:00 +0000

In her day, Elizabeth Oakes Smith was a national figure. Born in Maine in 1806, she and her family moved to New York City in the late 1830s, where she joined literary circles and emerged as a prominent feminist essayist, lecturer, and poet. By the 1850s, she was living with her family on Long Island. The forces of the Civil War, however, led to her downfall. In 1861, her favorite son, Appleton Oaksmith, was arrested for outfitting old whaling ships for the slave trade. After spending several weeks imprisoned at Fort Lafayette in New York and Fort Warren in Boston, Oaksmith was transferred over to civil authorities and convicted in the federal court in Boston in the summer of 1862. Before he could be sentenced, though, he escaped from jail and exiled himself in Havana, Cuba, where he became a Confederate blockade-runner.

Elizabeth Oakes Smith spent the war years seeking a presidential pardon for her son. She wrote to Abraham Lincoln and met with Secretary of State William H. Seward, but nothing ever came of her efforts. As the war continued, she became increasingly embittered toward the Union and believed that Appleton was the victim of a malevolent administration in Washington, D.C. Although she had shown sympathy for African Americans and abolitionism before the war, her Democratic politics became increasingly evident in her diary by the midpoint of the war. She grew to especially hate Seward.

Elizabeth Oakes Smith spent much of the prewar years championing women’s rights, and was sympathetic to abolitionism. But when her son was arrested for slave trading and she could not obtain his release, she grew increasingly bitter toward the Lincoln administration.

In the summer of 1863, Oakes Smith experienced one of the greatest terrors of her life—the New York City Draft Riots. For several days in mid-July, working-class men, women, and children—mostly Irish Democrats—lashed out against Lincoln’s conscription and emancipation policies. At least 105 people died during the five days of rioting, many of whom were African Americans who were viciously targeted by the mob. During this ordeal, Oakes Smith saw a dense crowd standing around a lamppost, upon which hung the body of Colonel Henry O’Brien, the Irish commander of the 11th New York Volunteers, who had ordered his troops to fire above the crowd the previous day in order to disperse them.

Sadly, O’Brien’s men had killed a mother and her 2-year-old child in the process. Now the rioters would exact their revenge. She also encountered Jeremiah G. Hamilton, a 56-year-old African American millionaire on Wall Street. Her diary, which is held with her papers at the Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library at the University of Virginia, is one of the most remarkable accounts of this period. The following excerpts trace her reaction to the Gettysburg Campaign and then the horrific events that transpired in New York City shortly afterward.

June 17
The whole country is in a ferment because of the movement of General Lee north—Harrisburg is threatened—the Govenor [sic] of New York has been called upon for troops by the Govenor of Pennsylvania. The people have responded generously to the State call, but desired guarantees of the Govenor that they shall go only on short service—to defend the north—not fight the South—they will not trust the authorities at Washington.

June 18th
The excitement still continues. The people call for Gen. McLellon [McClellan] to head the army of the Potomac. We are now reaping the bitter fruits of the imbecility, and treachery of this Administration. I sometimes wonder how the historian will deal with this period. The Abolitionists have anticipated time by publishing their own version of events, called a History of the Rebellion by [John S.C.] Abbott, which suppresses facts and misrepresents them.

I am startled and distressed at events, and find how little I have understood the world—how far off the ideal seems now—that once was so near: but to one thing I still cling, the intrinsic worthiness of our humanity—the wholesomeness, and upwardness of its attributes—and then comes the question whence comes all this distortion?….

June 19
….Noon. The papers have come—and the panic is subsiding—it seems that Lee is on the retreat. I do not think all this demonstration is for nothing—I believe he designs to attack Washington, and dictate a peace from the Capital….

June 24th
A day of heavy work—found myself worn in body and spirit—cross and miserable.

The country is in a state of ferment, and yet it is suppressed—no faith in our rulers—I see the Govenor of New Jersey has directed the Malitia which was collected for the defense of Pennsylvania, to be disbanded, judging that there will be no occasion for their service. They refused to serve under the Administration….

Lee’s army within 18 miles of Pittsburg. 10 o’clock P.M. Going to bed—dissatisfied with myself—oppressed with a terrible sense of weariness and despondency. I am indeed cast from my moorings, drifting—drifting—whither?

June 25
The Confederates in large force in Pennsylvania—the papers contain some terrible records of savage cruelty and atrocious crime perpetrated by the Black soldiers. The negro in our cities and villages also has started upon a career of crime unparrallelled in our history. We are threatened with a war of races, in which the poor Negro must and will be the great sufferer….

June 27
[Discussion of Lee’s invasion and Confederate privateers omitted.]

I believe this treacherous Administration designs to allow the Confederates to take Washington—having no capacity to manage our national affairs—finding themselves hopelessly involved, they design to let matters take very much their own way, and then under plea of necessity, acknowledge the Southern Confederacy:—then will come the contest for northern supremacy, when the wily Seward hopes to ride into the Presidency of the North….

June 30th
….The Confederates are within four miles of Harrisburg. Gen. Meade has been called to the command of the army of the Potomac—Gen. Hooker relieved probably because of his interference. This is bad, people say, in the face of the enemy—but the Administration will not care to give battle—they wish for a general disruption in public affairs. They have inaugurated the reign of falsehood.

July 1st
….The Confederates are within ten miles of Washington—they do not seem inclined to battle—with a grim wit they say they have come North to hold Peace meetings. So disgusted have the people become with the present Administration that they seem rather disposed to receive, than repel the invaders. Many say openly that the prospect of restoring the Constitution would be better under Jefferson Davis, than under Abraham Lincoln. Immense Peace Meetings prevail through the country, and resistance to the enrollment is the common sentiment….

July 3d
Great anxiety about the expected battle—I am by no means sure that our arms are successful against Vicksburg. The repulse of our troops at Port Hudson was a shocking, and bloody disaster….

July 6th
A terrible battle has been fought at Gettysburg. The Union army is said to be triumphant, with a loss of twenty thousand men—Good God! what horrible carnage—I am sick at the record—my whole soul revolts at this sanguinary conflict. Such a victory is as ruinous as defeat. There must be a compromise—for neither party will yield, and each seems an equal to the other in point of courage and persistency….

July 20th
The past week has been one replete with anxiety and not without incident. On Monday 13th inst. I took the early train for the City, where the most appalling scenes awaited me. Our fool-hardy, despotic rulers in spite of the warning of observant men, and the indication of the masses, that revolt would come, have persisted in enforcing the Conscription Act. On Saturday the action of Draft created no disturbance, although much jeering and derision followed. The City was greatly excited through Sunday—On Monday I went to the City, and what I now describe, I saw myself. I had occasion to visit the offices of several lawyers upon business—as I passed along the streets large bodies of people thronged the corners—a great crowd was about the Tribune Office, and the white faces of the workmen within, with their little paper caps upon their heads now and then appeared at the windows—but retreated at a sort of growl from the crowd which beset them.

I was obliged to call upon places in this vicinity, and was not unwilling to learn by my own observation the exact spirit of the crowd. I saw a respectable working-woman threading her way through the living mass, as I was doing myself, and found it convenient to use her and her basket as an entering wedge. Sometimes it would cross my mind, that if paving stones should take wing my position would be a dangerous one—but I had little anxiety for myself—indeed! let me confess it: own to the truth.

I was intoxicated—drunk with excitement. I said of myself—“Oh thou drunk, but not with wine.” I had seen the people submit to so many arbitrary measures—seen them go like sheep to the slaughter in this stupidly managed war—seen them die without a word for measures repugnant to them—seen the encroachments upon our liberties made daily by this corrupt Administration, and yet the people were silent—bitter—cursing deep, not loud, and I began to lose all hope—I wished I could do…something to rouse them—but nothing seemed able to do this—the people tamely cowered under oppression—the radical Editors lied and deceived them as did the rulers at Washington, and I despaired for American freedom. I knew the draft was repugnant to the genius of the country—I knew that the…burden of the war fell upon our working men, and the clause of exempting those who were able to pay the $300 threw all the burden upon the poor men, still it seemed as if the people would submit—

More on the Draft

But now there was a recoil—five thousand men were up in arms—there was a perfect howl of rage and indignation from the masses. I said to my pioneer of the basket—“what is the matter? what are the people about?”

She gave me a fierce look—“They wont be carried off to the war—that’s what is the matter.”

“Well, would you have your husband carried off in this way?”

“If they do, they ve got to fight me first,” was the prompt reply. She went on with a hard sneering laugh—“Eh! you ladies can pay the $300 and keep your men to home.”

I said no more—passing into Broadway the shops were nearly all closed—the stages had been stopped or converted into conveyances for the insurgents—I walked up to the University building where I found Dr. Elliott, and Edward, on my way I passed several police men, haggard, dusty—exhausted—I said to myself—the mischief works—these insolent ruffians, who have lately fairly trod upon the people—knocking them down, firing upon them in mere wantonness, will now find a check—I grew ruthless in my indignation—for their insolence and cruelty had become a public cry.

About three o clock P.M. Capt Ellott invited us to a dinner at Delmonico in 5th Avenue: scarcely were we seated when the waiters rushed in barring the doors and closing the windows, and there came that great sound as of the sea—the tumult of the people. The rioters had burned down the colored orphan asylum and several other buildings—they paused and for a brief space it was doubtful whether they would not force the building. Soon there was a cry—“there goes a n—–,” and the cruel, remorseless multitude, three thousand strong were in pursuit of the unhappy fugitive. He was without doubt torn in pieces. As we made our way up to 36th street, all was dire confusion—mad uproar—police men, Military, citizens and rioters, in one vast conclave. I was shocked and ashamed to hear these well to do and luxurious people—the denizens of that vicinity urge the fire of the military—there was no expression of pity—no sympathy for the poor laborer, who in his mad vengeance sought a sort of justice—a wild revenge one most true.

Rioters, many depicted as stereotypical Irish, jeer at a lynched African American on Clarkson Street, by the Hudson River docks. Violence against Blacks was a hallmark of the Draft Riots, and many African American families left Manhattan in the wake of the upheaval.

Early on tuesday morning I was obliged to go to Wall Street. Before noon the outbreak had assumed such proportions that all business was suspended—stages and cars could not run, and the frequent discharges of the military told that hot work was in progress. I tried to make my way up town—I could not get across the City to take the train for home—nearly exhausted I was struggling onward when a carriage stopped in front of me, and J.G. Hamilton Esqr asked me to ride home with him—I did so and remained long enough to rest, and obtained information that struck me to the heart, and which I inwardly resolved to impart to the people.

While resting in the Hamilton parlors, which opened upon 29th st. down which masses of people were constantly passing with the debris of the insurgents, I observed a demonstration which was quite touching. I ought to say that Mr Hamilton is I think an eastern Indian—his complexion is darker than that of a mulatto, but his features are Caucassian [sic]—and he is a highly cultivated man—his children also are dark, but with fine black eyes, and long hair in ringlets—not at all [illegible word]. Two of these stepped out upon the balcony as they probably have always been in a habit of doing to watch the passers by in the street. Mr H. sprang from his chair—took them in and closed the window—He understood the hazard growing out of their dark complexions. I shall never forget the expression of anguish upon his face.

Soon after I took my leave, and my Host advised me to get at once into Lexington Avenue as a safer retreat from the crowd. I followed his advice—but made a circuit which brought me into the midst of the insurgents. Oh! my soul—what a sight presented itself! Masses of infuriated women, tossing their arms wildly—weeping women and children, and pale desperate men—pools of blood—broken furniture burning ruins. In a low calm voice I began to talk with the people—I told them what I had just heard that five thousand men would reach the City in the five o’clock train, and they had orders to march at once to this Avenue [2nd] and rake the whole length of it with grape shot—no warning given—the first round would be this iron hail. I went from group to group and told this and urged them to go to their houses. A poor, lank boy of thirteen kept close to me—at length I said to him, “My poor boy—go home—keep out of these dreadful scenes.”

The child burst into a perfect paroxysm of tears and sobbed out—“I have’nt got any home”—a woman explained that his Mother had been for some time dead—the father had been killed in the army—and the child lived upon the kindness of others. Observing a pale desperate looking man leaning against a wall I assayed a word with him—“Madam, (he said in good accent) it may be easy to tell us what to do—but I will not obey this draft. I may as well be shot here as anywhere. Look here—(pointing to blood upon the walk)—the soldiers fired upon us—not a word—no warning—and I took a child up—shot through the head—covered with blood—I looked at him—it was my own child—I will have revenge.”

Colonel Henry F. O’Brien commanded the 11th New York Volunteers, which skirmished with the rioters. Discovered by a mob in a drugstore, he was dragged out, beaten, hanged, and tortured to death. Oakes Smith’s remonstrances on his behalf were rebuffed.

Colonel Henry F. O’Brien

At length a great burly fellow eyed me with a savage frown—and muttered between his teeth—“I know what you are—you are one of them aristocrats from the fifth Avenue—you’re a Spy”—looking round upon his followers—“she’s a Spy—sent here from the Black Republicans!” I saw I was in some danger—but I did not flinch—I do not think I turned pale—I repelled the charge in a calm, firm voice, and went on—he following and muttering—but I did not fear—a superhuman strength seemed mine. I knew better than to leave them—so I kept on talking in [a] low calm manner, advising them as seemed best. I had now reached 33d street, the disorder rather increasing. A short distance from me was a dense mass surrounding a lamp post, upon which the infuriated multitude had suspended the body of Col O Brine, an Irish officer, who had commanded his troops to fire into the crowd. It was a sickening sight—for four hours they tortured the unhappy man—prolonging his sufferings with a fiendish fury. I expressed compassion for him—but they justified their conduct on the ground that he was a traitor to his countrymen—

The deep shadows began to overspre[a]d the neighborhood—and waving my hand I turned up fourth street, quite a group following me and thanking me for what I had done.

The people everywhere repelled the imputation that their object was plunder. It was only opposition to the Draft, they said, and disgust at that clause in the act by which the rich man could exempt himself by paying $300 while the poor man was compelled to go.

It is not generally known what gave the first impetus to the Riot against the draft. I was told several times by the people with whom I talked, the Rioters—and they all told the same story.

It seems that somewhere in the vicinity was a widow woman—Irish, who had six sons. Of course the six were enrolled for the Draft, and by a singular fatality—the whole six were drafted—the young men were aghast—a crowd followed them to the Mother’s door; when the announcement was made to the Mother—she uttered a wild cry—“a yell,” the people called it, and rushed shrieking into the street, tearing her hair and tossing her arms above her head. The effect was electrical—and the fierce passions of the people broke out at once, sweeping all before them.

Like a moth to a flame, Oakes Smith ventured into Manhattan during the riots. Some of the locations she noted are numbered here: 1. New York Tribune offices; 2. Delmonico’s; 3. The Colored Orphan Asylum; 4. 36th Street, which she recalled was full of “police men, Military, citizens, and rioters”; 5. After briefly visiting with Jeremiah G. Hamilton on Wall Street, she headed to his home at 68 E. 29th Street; 6. Near this corner, a mob first attacked Colonel Henry O’Brien of the 11th New York Volunteers.

I returned home on wednesday morning. In the cars I found Mr Hamilton—looking haggard and internally excited, but outwardly calm, and determined. I said at once go home with me. He remained nearly a week….Oh how anxiously we waited returns from the great City.

The Radicals have done their utmost to exasperate all classes—in order to have martial law proclaimed in the City. God save us from such calamity—the streets of New York would run blood—and the prisons be filled with men and women suffered to be obnoxious to the powers that be.

this article first appeared in civil war times magazine

Jonathan W. White is professor of American Studies at Christopher Newport University. In August 2023 he published a biography of Appleton Oaksmith titled Shipwrecked: A True Civil War Story of Mutinies, Jailbreaks, Blockade-Running, and the Slave Trade with Rowman and Littlefield.

A Desperate Quest for a Shower Soon Turned Into a Comedy of Errors for this Soldier in Vietnam

James Vaughn — Tue, 22 Aug 2023 11:30:00 +0000

During Vietnam’s dry season there is not a lot of water. It is rationed. As the dry season progressed our water turned yellow. In the communications center we had a five-gallon plastic jug. We used to fill it for our drinking water. We would take a pillowcase and fold it in quarters and put it under the opening of the five-gallon jug. We used it to filter out sand. One of the things that was down on the list when it came to rationing was showers. It might have been at least a week since I had taken a shower. You can imagine the odor of the average guy when we did not shower for a week and the temperature was over 100 degrees.

One day someone came to the communications center and announced the water was on in the enlisted men’s shower. I asked the captain if I could go and shower. His response was, “Please do.” That told me I was pretty ripe. I went to my hooch and got my soap and towel, then headed for the shower. Once I was all lathered up, the water ran out. I dried off, but sure did feel uncomfortable. I felt all sticky after I got dressed. The temperature was 100 degrees, so I was sweating. Specialist 4 Woburn heard me complaining and asked, “Do you want to take a bath?” I thought he had lost his mind or was goofing on me. I asked, “How is that going to happen?”

this article first appeared in vietnam magazine

He told me to be outside my hooch that night with flipflops and a towel. I was desperate enough so I was there and waiting. He showed up with a towel and flipflops himself. We went to the motor pool and snuck past the guard.

Soon we got to the “water buffalo.” The water buffalo is a GI slang term used for a 250-gallon water tank mounted on a two-wheeled trailer. The trailer is small enough to be dragged by a jeep or a three-quarter-ton utility truck. Woburn told me if I squeezed my shoulders and crossed my arms, I could fit through the top of the water buffalo’s manhole. I did as he said and in I went. He followed me in. It felt great. We soaked in the water. It was cool and I got all the soap rinsed off.

The next morning I went to the motor pool to dispatch a truck for the communications center. When I got there, I was alarmed to see that the sergeant from the motor pool was filling his coffee pot from the water buffalo. I said, “Hey, that says ‘Non-Potable’ (i.e. not for drinking water) on the outside of the water buffalo.”

“It is okay,” he replied. “I fill the tank myself from the water tower.”

“Yeah, but you don’t know what was in the tank before you filled it,” I answered.

He was not concerned. “I have been filling the water buffalo for months, so I know the water is clean,” he assured me. “Come on in and have a cup of coffee.”

I declined his offer.

After leaving Vietnam in 1970, James Vaughn became a CPA and ran his own tax practice.

This story appeared in the 2023 Autumn issue of Vietnam magazine.

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A Vietnam Medal of Honor Recipient Shares Leadership Lessons

Zita Ballinger Fletcher — Tue, 15 Aug 2023 15:44:13 +0000

Lt. Gen. Robert F. Foley has led a distinguished career in the U.S. Army. Graduating from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, he served as a company commander in Vietnam with the 27th Infantry Regiment, famed as the “Wolfhounds,” and received the Medal of Honor for his actions during Operation Attleboro in November 1966. Foley subsequently rose to become a battalion and brigade commander with the 3rd Infantry Division in Germany, served as West Point commandant of cadets, and was commanding general of the Fifth U.S. Army.

In his autobiographical book Standing Tall: Leadership Lessons in the Life of a Soldier, Foley offers us an in-depth view of his life and military career. The book contains a detailed account of Foley’s life, including his family background, career milestones, interactions with comrades, his marriage, faith, and experiences with mentors. It is a very personal book and there is a lot of material to sink into. Readers of Vietnam magazine will likely be most interested in Foley’s overall observations about the Vietnam War and the details of his experiences as an infantryman “in country,” especially during Operation Attleboro.

Views on Vietnam

Foley is a battle-tested Wolfhound and it is with justifiable pride that he frequently alludes to the prowess of his regiment, organized in 1901 and fighting under the motto, Nec aspera terrent, meaning “No fear on earth.” Fearless in combat, Foley also shows himself to be fearless in sharing his overall views about the Vietnam War itself. Some soldiers are leery of wading into politics, but Foley makes some controversial observations which merit further reflection.

Foley, second from left, is pictured at Cu Chi, South Vietnam in 1966.

Foley’s criticism of the war is not reactionary; he is well-read on the Vietnam War in addition to having experienced it himself, and he cites a variety of firsthand sources as a foundation for his criticisms. Foley alludes with regret to a failed opportunity for the United States to form a working alliance with North Vietnamese leaders, describing how Ho Chi Minh’s life was saved by U.S. Office of Strategic Services (OSS) officers in August 1945. “After the OSS dissolution on October 1, 1945, its solidarity with the Viet Minh vanished in the wake of the American and Allies’ pursuit of a new world order,” Foley writes. He also cites the words of Col. Harry Summers, founding editor of Vietnam magazine, from the latter’s work On Strategy: “Every military operation should be directed towards a clearly defined, decisive and attainable objective.”

Foley is plainly skeptical of the Eisenhower administration’s policies based on an abstract “domino theory.” He argues that the Vietnam War “had no clearly defined objective” and that “conditions for declaring war against North Vietnam did not meet the criteria for a national security interest.”

The Wolfhounds

On Aug. 5, 1966, Foley became the commanding officer of Alpha Company, 2nd Battalion, 27th Infantry (Wolfhounds) while serving in Vietnam. His descriptions of the actions he took in the war zone demonstrate his competent leadership. For example, his “cure” for VD among his troops was depriving the stricken misbehavers of bed rest and ordering them instead to participate in all regular combat duties, regardless of their physical discomfort springing off helicopters and shuffling through leech-filled rice paddies. The rate of infections quickly dropped to zero.

“We lived with our soldiers 24 hours a day—we knew them and they knew us,” writes Foley. He allowed his subordinates leeway to devise deceptive methods to counteract communist forces attempting to infiltrate their base camp in night attacks. Foley also shares humorous anecdotes about his encounter with a bamboo viper and an occasion when he toppled into a well, only to be serenaded by his grinning men later with a new take on an old nursery rhyme: “Ding Dong Dell, there’s a captain in the well!”

“Angry As Hell”

Foley describes Nov. 5, 1966, as “the most difficult and devastating day” for his company in Vietnam. During Operation Attleboro, Foley was ordered to break into an enemy bunker system to create a corridor through which trapped comrades could escape back to friendly lines. He and his men were facing NVA regulars, and because the surrounded Americans were so close to enemy bunkers, his options were limited. “I couldn’t employ artillery, close air support or gunships,” according to Foley. As his group got stalled in dense underbrush and his men fell down shot all around him, Foley got “angry as hell” and took matters into his own hands. Accompanied by Pvt. First Class Charles Dean, who carried ammunition belts for him plus a grenade launcher, Foley swooped up an M-60 machine gun and led a charge against the NVA.

The NVA fled the battlefield taking heavy losses and Foley succeeded in rescuing the hemmed-in U.S. troops. He was wounded by shrapnel from a grenade. Foley was awarded the Silver Star and later received the Medal of Honor for his actions, but above all credits his fellow Wolfhounds who followed him into the fray, saying that their “indomitable spirit…made all the difference.”

Courage to Say No

True to its title, the book chronicles the evolution of a young soldier into an effective and capable military leader. Foley shares wise observations about leadership of soldiers that have withstood the test of time throughout military history, such as: “Good leaders make it a habit to get out of the command bunker, walk around the unit area, and be accessible—in the chow line, on the rifle range, in the mess hall, or in the barracks.”

Anyone familiar with the history of war will know that military science is not the science of agreement or passivity; the edifice of war history is etched with instances in which commanders have not agreed with each other—this friction is beneficial. Foley shares insights about military leadership in difficult moments.

“Leaders must also have the courage to say no when the mission has unacceptable risk, when essential resources are not provided, or when following orders is simply not an option,” writes Foley. “A solid background in moral-ethical reasoning is essential for leaders to feel confident in asserting their beliefs.… They can’t walk by the red flags of ethical turmoil and then maintain, during damage recovery, that there were no indicators.”

Standing Tall

Leadership Lessons in the Life of a Soldier
by Robert F. Foley, Casemate Publishers, 2022

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A Raw Look at Confederate Soldiers at First Manassas

Harry Smeltzer — Tue, 11 Jul 2023 12:00:00 +0000

The opposing forces that met on the plains of Manassas, Va., on July 21, 1861, had much in common, particularly their lack of experience with the realities of armed conflict. While a few veterans of frontier, Mexican, and foreign conflicts were present, by and large these men were about to get their first glimpse of “The Elephant” of war. After the battle, many set their thoughts down on paper to share with friends and family at home. These fell on a spectrum from vague to specific, from caustic to introspective. Some focused on their immediate experience alone, some on that of their comrades, and some expanded to consideration of what it all meant in a moral or national sense. Following are four examples from inexperienced Confederates who fought on different areas of the field that day.

Union artillerymen of Captain James Ricketts’ battery flee from Henry Hill about 3 p.m., escaping the Confederate assault coming from the right. Ricketts was shot several times and captured, along with all of his cannons.

Green Berry Samuels

Private Green Berry Samuels was 21-year-old private in the Muhlenberg Rifles (10th Virginia Infantry, Company F). Part of a prominent family from the town of Woodstock in Shenandoah County—his father was a lawyer, judge, and former member of the U.S. Congress—he had been educated at the University of Virginia. At Manassas, his regiment was part of Arnold Elzey’s Brigade in the Army of the Shenandoah, fighting on Chinn Ridge. Five days later, he described his first battle experience in a letter to his sister from nearby Fairfax Station.

…Colonel Elzey’s brigade of which I have the honor of being a member left Piedmont on the Manassas cars early in the morning and after landing at the Junction we ran some 5 miles to the field of battle and arrived just in time to change defeat into a glorious victory. We sustained 5 volleys of musketry within the small loss of 6 killed and 14 wounded in our regiment. The ground sheltered us and connected with our throwing ourselves flat on the ground no doubt saved many a gallant soldier’s life. I cannot describe my feelings as I came into battle and heard the shrill singing of the rifle cannon shell and the whistling of the Minnie balls. I was not afraid and I am proud to say that I think none in the company were frightened although many a pulse beat faster at the sight of death and the sound of the death dealing balls….

The hardest trial to one’s nerves is the sight of the wounded and the dead; in many cases the agony of the wounded was awful and their pitying cries for water heart-rending. As for the dead, some had died with their hands folded across their breasts with their eyes wide open looking up to Heaven with a sweet smile upon the face, some had evidently died in awful agony, with distorted faces, glaring eyes and clenched hands. I will write no more of this awful scene; it makes me sick to think of it. Would to God, Lincoln could have seen the horrors of last Sunday; we would have peace today instead of war. Our county, I understand, has lost some 20 killed, which has carried mourning into many a now fatherless home. Poor Milton Moore was engaged to be married; what must be the feelings of the young lady?…

…I will send you a photograph of Colonel Ellsworth taken on the field of battle, please keep it safely as it will be a reminiscence for me in my old age should I live. Do not fail to keep it safely….

Samuels was captured twice during the war, and rose to a lieutenancy. For a time he served as an aide to Brig. Gen. Raleigh Colston. After the war he was a lawyer, and died in the soldier’s home in Richmond in 1901.

Charles Woodward Hutson

Private Charles Woodward Hutson of the Washington Light Infantry, Company A (Hampton’s Legion) was 20 years old at the time of the battle. He was from McPhersonville, S.C., and educated at what today is the University of South Carolina. His father, William Ferguson Hutson, helped draft the South Carolina Ordinance of Secession. The day after the battle, he wrote to his parents, from the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, where he was recovering from his wound. Hutson’s letter also gives his impression of how his companions behaved in action, and great detail of his wounding.

The elaborate swallowtail coat at right was worn by militiaman William Muckenfuss, a comrade of Hutson’s in the Washington Light Infantry.

…Never have I conceived of such a continuous, rushing hailstorm of shot, shell & musketry as fell around & among us for hours together. We, who escaped, are constantly wondering how we could possibly have come out of the action alive. The words I used just now; “we, who escaped”, have a sad, sad sound to us; for we know not yet who are to be included in that category, & are filled with terrible anxieties as to the fate of dear friends. I must trace now to you my own course through the action, which I can or ought to do clearly enough, since, I was cool & confident from first to last, knowing where my trust was placed, that no real harm could befal me & that there was a duty before me which I must perform at every hazard. All of our men behaved gallantly, though few were free from excitement….I entreated the Captain to let me advance alone near enough to the ranks of those who were firing upon us to ascertain whether they were Federals or Confederate. But the Captain would not consent, & wished to go himself; this, however, Col. Hampton would not permit. Seeing, I could do nothing there, I attempted to persuade our men not to dodge, satisfied that we could never keep orderly ranks as long as the men persisted in dodging. But all my efforts in this line were unavailing; the men were fearless, & advanced undauntedly enough; but, I suppose, they thought dodging was a “help”, anyhow, to escape from the balls. Iredell Jones, & the officers kept erect; & neither they nor I were any the worse for it….I was the first who fell. I had put on my spectacles, taken good aim & fired my first shot. As I was in the act of re-loading, a rifle-ball struck me in the head, a little above the forehead; & the violence of the concussion felled me to the earth immediately. I drew off my spectacles & flung them aside; & not believing my wound a bad one, as it was not painful, I attempted to reload. But the blood was gushing over my face & blinding my eyes; & I found it impossible to do so. I knew pretty well the extent of my wound, as I had probed it with my finger as I fell; & as the gash seemed to be a deep one, I feared faintness would ensue from loss of blood, especially as there was a large puddle of it where I first lay. So, I put aside my gun for a while, & put my white handkerchief inside my hat upon the wound & tied my silk one around the hat. By the time I had finished these precautions, the company were in retreat; & with Jones & a few others I made my way to the clump of trees, whence we had advanced. Here protected by the trees & squatted down, these few detached from the company continued the fire. Jones having given me some water from his canteen, & my eye being by this time wiped pretty dry of the blood, I again attempted to re-load. But before I could do so, a ball from the enemy shattered my rifle to pieces. I now made the best of my way to the shelter of the house on the hill, the shell & shot of the enemy ploughing up the ground at every step I took, & the musketry rattling like hail around me. I lay behind the house quite exhausted, & much pained by the sight of some of my comrades badly wounded. Dr. Taylor examined my wound here, & charged me to use all my strength to reach the Hospital…

Hutson led a remarkable postwar life. He was admitted to the bar, but eschewing the practice he taught throughout the South, including at the University of Mississippi, Louisiana State University, and Texas A&M. His subjects included Greek, metaphysics, moral philosophy, history, and modern languages. He also authored numerous books on civilization and languages. After his teaching career ended, he settled in New Orleans and took up painting. Though his trained artist daughter offered to teach him the basics, he insisted on an amateur’s approach. In 1917, at the age of 77, his works were first shown publicly, in New York City. His first one-man show came in 1931, at 91. He gained a solid national reputation, though his landscape artwork is hard to categorize. He lived to be 95.

John Pelham

The son of an Alabama physician/planter, John Pelham resigned from the U.S. Military Academy on April 22, 1861, just two weeks before his pending graduation. The 22-year-old lieutenant arrived at Manassas with elements of Joe Johnston’s Army of the Shenandoah the night before the battle, and found himself in command of four six-pounder guns of the Wise Artillery due to the absence of its captain. Two days after the battle, he wrestled with his conflicting emotions, shared his surprising introspection, and rationalized the necessity of his actions in a letter to his father at home in Alabama, which was published in the August 8 edition of the Jacksonville Republican.

I just write to let you know that we have had one of the most desperate battles ever fought on American soil. It was the most desperate—the enemy fought long and well, but victory is ours, it was a splendid victory too. Jeff Davis made his appearance on the field, just as the last of the Yankees were in full retreat. I was under a heavy fire of musketry and cannon for about seven hours, how I escaped or why I was spared a just God only knows. Rifle balls fell like hail around me. Shells bursted and scattered their fragments through my Battery—my horse was shot under me, but did not give out till the fight was almost over. I was compelled to take one of my Sergeant’s horses and ride through. At one time I dismounted and directed the guns—one of the gunners asked me to dismount and shoot the Federals flag down. I did so—you ought to have heard the cheers they gave me. I directed all my guns three or four times apiece. My men were cool and brave and made terrible havoc on the enemy. They fought better than I expected they would. The highest praise is due them….I was complimented several times on the field of battle by general officers and a great many times after the battle was over by other officers, you may want to know my feelings—I felt as cool and deliberate under the shower of lead and iron as if I had been at home by our fireside—I did not feel fear at any moment; I can’t see how I escaped—a merciful Providence must have been watching over us and our cause.…

John Pelham grew up in Alabama, enjoying the prosperous life of an enslaver’s son. From his youth, he exhibited a rough and tumble personality. He attended West Point, but left after the firing on Fort Sumter. On one of his last days at West Point, he confided to a fellow cadet, “I shall be in two or three fights and then be killed.”

I have seen what Romancers call glorious war. I have seen it in all its phases. I have heard the booming booming of cannon, and the more deadly rattle of musketry at a distance—I have heard it all near by and have been under its destructive showers. I have seen men and horses fall thick and fast around me. I have seen our own men bloody and frightened flying before the enemy—I have seen them bravely charge the enemy’s lines and heard the shout of triumph as they carried the position, I have heard the agonizing shrieks of the wounded and dying—I have passed over the battle field and seen the mangled forms of men and horses in frightful abundance—men without heads, without arms, and others without legs. All this I have witnessed and more, till my heart sickens; and war is not glorious as novelists would have us believe. It is only when we are in the heat and flush of battle that it is fascinating and interesting. It is only then that we enjoy it. When we forget ourselves and revel in the destruction we are dealing around us. I am now ashamed of the feelings I had in those hours of danger. The whistling of bullets and shells was music to me, I gloried in it—it delighted and fascinated me—I feared not death in any form; but when the battle was won and I visited the field a change came over me, I see the horrors of war, but it is necessary. We are battling for our rights and our homes. Ours is a just war, a holy cause. The invader must meet the fate he deserves and we must meet him as becomes us, as becomes men. As President Davis said, several months ago, “a small mound of earth marks the place where the invader fell.”

After First Manassas, John Pelham rose to fame as the commander of J.E.B. Stuart’s horse artillery. He was mortally wounded at the Battle of Kelly’s Ford on St. Patrick’s Day, 1863, and died the next day.

The soldiers quoted in this article fought across the Manassas battlefield. Close to 5,000 men became casualties on this ground in 1861—some 3,000 Union troops and roughly 1,750 Confederates. In 1862, the same fields hosted more bloodshed.

Melvin Dwinell

Melvin Dwinell was born in Vermont in 1825, but in 1853 he made his way south to Georgia. Three years later, he became editor and owner of a paper that by 1861 was known as the Rome Tri-Weekly Courier, At the time of the First Battle of Manassas, he was a 36-year-old lieutenant of the 8th Georgia Infantry’s Company A, known as the Rome Light Guards. The regiment was involved in heavy fighting on Matthews Hill during the opening phase of the battle and, by Dwinell’s count, 38 percent of its 543 men engaged in the fight were killed, wounded, or captured. He corresponded regularly with his paper throughout the war. The following, written on August 13, 1861, from Camp Bartow near the battlefield, appeared in the paper 11 days later, and is exceptional in its length and its focus almost solely on Dwinell’s feelings while under fire and his reaction to the attendant carnage.

As everything in the way of news, incidents, accidents, &c., pertaining to the great battle of the 21st, is eagerly sought for by all who have relatives or friends in the Confederate Army, and as this includes nearly every family member in the country, the writer of this is so presumptuous as to undertake “a description of one’s feelings in the battle of Manassas–it being his first experience.”

More Firsthand Accounts

Though at different times and places our Regiment had been, some six or eight times, drawn up in line of battle, and we had gone through all the little heart sinkings, trepidations and fearful apprehensions, which most men experience, upon the eve of entering the life and death contest, yet, when we knew that a great battle was about to be commenced, yet there was such a deep and thrilling earnestness in the cannon’s first booming, as convinced us of the certainty of the fearful work about to be done, and a deep seated apprehension of danger—though not generally shown by palid cheeks or trembling limbs—was experienced. The certainty of danger became still more apparent, when coming near the range of one of the enemy’s batteries, we heard the whizzing of the death dealing missiles, as they passed with a horrid significance of what we might expect from better aim.

The “pomp and circumstance of glorious war” suddenly dwindled down to the severest kind of plain, common sense, and it very soon became apparent, that common sense rules must be the basis of all discreet actions. At the first sight of the enemy, all the bug bear delusions that may have existed in the fancy of any one, as to their appearance, were suddenly dispelled, and they looked at the distance of three hundred or four hundred yards, precisely like so many of our men.

Quite different from all my fancies of great battles; this was not fought in a broad open field, where the two grand armies could be drawn up in long, unbroken lines, and approach each other in heavy columns. There is no considerable extent of right level ground on this memorable field, but is completely broken with hills and dales, meandering branches and protecting groves. And in extent, the hottest part of the battle field was about one miles by three quarters in width. On such a field, of course, the awful grandeur of appearance of the approaching armies was lost. Then when the firing commenced, that wonderful, indefinite and superhuman grandeur of movements, that my imagination had painted, all faded out, and in its place I had an ugly, dusty, fatiguing and laborious realization of the actual in battle. I experienced most fear when the first cannon ball passed over, with a tremendous whizzing, about twenty yards off; and felt the most dread apprehension, when ordered immediately after, to take a position on a little eminence, in fearful proximity to the place the ball had just passed. After our Regiment had moved forward some 200 or 300 yards, we again came both in range and sight of Sherman’s celebrated Battery, about three-fourths of a mile from us. Their shell and balls came fearfully near, and as one passed through an apple tree just over my head, a cold chill ran over me, and I suffered from agonizing fear, for probably, three or four seconds, but after this, during the entire battle, though I was in almost constant expectation of being killed, yet there was no painful realization of fear, such as would make one hesitate to go wherever duty called, or prevented a full and free exercise of all the faculties of body and mind. As the dangers really increased, and friends were seen falling thick upon either side, the apprehension, or rather the fear, of them became strangely less, and without feeling secure there was a sort of forced resignation to calmly abide whatever consequences should come.

Union Brig. Gen. Ambrose Burnside’s regiments, foreground, battle Colonel Nathan “Shanks” Evans’ troops on Matthews Hill in the morning phase of the engagement. Evans delayed Burnside’s advance on Henry Hill long enough for Southern reinforcements to arrive. The afternoon portion of the fight shifted in the Confederates’ favor.

At no time did I experience any feeling of anger, or discover any exhibition of it in others. A stern determination and inflexible purpose, was the predominant expression of countenance of all, so far as my observation extended, and any sudden exhibition of passion would have seemed ridiculous.

One of the most remarkable mental phenomena, was the sudden and strange drying up of sympathetic feeling for the suffering of the wounded and dying. I could never before look upon even small operations, or persons in extreme pain from any cause, especially when blood was freely flowing, without intense pain and generally more or less faintness. But on this occasion I beheld the most terrible mutilations, the most horrid and ghastly expression of men in the death struggle, men with one arm or a leg, shot off, others with the face horribly mutilated, heads shot through and brains lying about, bodies half torn into, and at the hospital, some 50 men with legs or arms jut amputated and a half cord of legs and arms, and men in all degrees of pain, from the slight flesh wound to those producing death in a few moments, and viewed all this with far less feeling that I would ordinarily have seen brutes thus mutilated. This obduracy I am truly glad, was only temporary. Only two days after the battle I caught myself avoiding the amputation of an arm.

I have written thus much of my own feelings, not because they were peculiar, but according to my best knowledge and belief, were nearly the same as those shared by a great majority of all those who were in the heat of battle, for the first time, on the “glorious 21st.”

Melvin Dwinell was wounded at Gettysburg on July 2, 1863. He remained on wounded furlough until his resignation in November 1863. He represented Rome in the Georgia Legislature until the end of the war and continued to publish the Courier until selling it in 1885. He died two years later, at 62. His wartime correspondence with the Rome Tri-Weekly Courier can be found in “Dear Courier”: The Civil War Correspondence of Editor Melvin Dwinell, edited by Ford Risley.

The above are fairly representative of surviving letters so far as the writers’ self-reported composure under fire and the horrific nature of combat. In the case of their composure, the self-serving nature of letters home renders it difficult to determine if what they wrote is an accurate reflection. Those who felt less than cool or detached or unafraid may have been reluctant to record their lack of equipoise, either out of consideration for themselves or for the concerns of those at home. Some few recollections are less “heroic”: one Virginian recalled, “Not being a warrior but a plain citizen, I saw nothing especially entertaining in such a hubbub….We lay as flat as flounders.”

These few hours of fighting, suffering, and surviving forever changed the men who fought at Manassas. The extent of that change is certainly a factor of the contrast between what they experienced there and the relatively peaceful antebellum lives they led. How their world views would continue to change over the next four years, only time would tell.

These and hundreds of other letters, diaries, memoirs, testimonies, and reports associated with the First Battle of Manassas can be found at Harry Smeltzer’s website, www.bullrunnings.wordpress.com.

this article first appeared in civil war times magazine

Louisa May Alcott Wanted to Be a Nurse…Until She Realized It Required Bathing Soldiers

Louisa May Alcott — Wed, 05 Jul 2023 17:53:12 +0000

New England novelist Louisa May Alcott (1832-1888) is perhaps best known as the author of young adult fiction, including Little Women (1868), and Little Men (1871). However, Alcott put her writing talents to use in describing her Civil War experiences as a volunteer nurse in an autobiographical account called Hospital Sketches (1863).

The result was not what one might expect from a nurse’s narrative. Alcott’s account is unique because of its irreverence and her extremely dry sense of humor. Giving herself the literary nom de plume of “Tribulation Periwinkle,” she describes the ironies of being an Abolitionist wanting to get in on the “excitement” of the war but finding herself in over her head. Alcott contracted typhoid fever during her Civil War service, for which she was treated with mercury; scholars have speculated that the health problems she suffered later on throughout her life were related to her exposure to mercury.

Here Alcott describes her interactions with wounded soldiers from the December 1862 Battle of Fredericksburg in Virginia, Robert E. Lee’s one-sided Confederate victory over Maj. Gen. Ambrose Burnside’s Army of the Potomac in which the 12,000 Union casualties were over twice those of Lee’s rebels.It gives us a perspective of what was on Union soldiers’ minds after the battle; rather than being preoccupied with the overall military situation or their cause, they were focused on matters at hand and their lives at home.

Alcott manages to give a general sense of each soldier’s personality in describing her brief interactions with them. It is interesting to think that each of these soldiers, otherwise lost to history, achieved some form of immortality in the following narrative.

Eager To Help

…Having a taste for “ghastliness,” I had rather longed for the wounded to arrive, for rheumatism wasn’t heroic, neither was liver complaint, or measles; even fever had lost its charms since “bathing burning brows” had been used up in romances, real and ideal; but when I peeped into the dusky street lined with what I at first had innocently called market carts, now unloading their sad freight at our door, I recalled sundry reminiscences I had heard from nurses of longer standing, my ardor experienced a sudden chill, and I indulged in a most unpatriotic wish that I was safe at home again…

Having been run over by three excited surgeons, bumped against by migratory coal-hods, water-pails, and small boys, nearly scalded by an avalanche of newly-filled teapots, and hopelessly entangled in a knot of colored sisters coming to wash, I progressed by slow stages upstairs and down, till the main hall was reached, and I paused to take breath and a survey. There they were! “our brave boys,” as the papers justly call them, for cowards could hardly have been so riddled with shot and shell, so torn and shattered, nor have borne suffering for which we have no name, with an uncomplaining fortitude, which made one glad to cherish each as a brother. In they came, some on stretchers, some in men’s arms, some feebly staggering along propped on rude crutches, and one lay stark and still with covered face, as a comrade gave his name to be recorded before they carried him away to the dead house…

ORders To Bathe Men

The sight of several stretchers, each with its legless, armless, or desperately wounded occupant, entering my ward, admonished me that I was there to work, not to wonder or weep; so I corked up my feelings, and returned to the path of duty, which was rather “a hard road to travel” just then…Round the great stove was gathered the dreariest group I ever saw—ragged, gaunt and pale, mud to the knees, with bloody bandages untouched since put on days before; many bundled up in blankets, coats being lost or useless; and all wearing that disheartened look which proclaimed defeat, more plainly than any telegram of the Burnside blunder. I pitied them so much, I dared not speak to them, though, remembering all they had been through since the rout at Fredericksburg, I yearned to serve the dreariest of them all.

Presently, Miss Blank tore me from my refuge behind piles of one-sleeved shirts, odd socks, bandages and lint; put basin, sponge, towels, and a block of brown soap into my hands, with these appalling directions: “Come, my dear, begin to wash as fast as you can. Tell them to take off socks, coats and shirts, scrub them well, put on clean shirts, and the attendants will finish them off, and lay them in bed.”

Union soldiers convalesce in a military hospital during the Civil War. Alcott wrote that “contrasts of the tragic and comic” were everywhere around her. Her stories in “Hospital Sketches” became popular and received great acclaim.

If she had requested me to shave them all, or dance a hornpipe on the stove funnel, I should have been less staggered; but to scrub some dozen lords of creation at a moment’s notice, was really—really—However, there was no time for nonsense, and, having resolved when I came to do everything I was bid, I drowned my scruples in my wash-bowl, clutched my soap manfully, and, assuming a businesslike air, made a dab at the first dirty specimen I saw, bent on performing my task vi et armis [by force] if necessary.

The “Scrubees”

I chanced to light on a withered old Irishman, wounded in the head, which caused that portion of his frame to be tastefully laid out like a garden, the bandages being the walks, his hair the shrubbery. He was so overpowered by the honor of having a lady wash him, as he expressed it, that he did nothing but roll up his eyes, and bless me…so we laughed together, and when I knelt down to take off his shoes, he “flopped” also and wouldn’t hear of my touching “them dirty craters. May your bed above be aisy [may you be blessed in heaven] darlin,’ for the day’s work ye ar doon!—Whoosh! there ye are, and bedad, it’s hard tellin’ which is the dirtiest, the fut [foot] or the shoe.” It was; and if he hadn’t been to the fore, I should have gone on pulling, under the impression that the “fut” was a boot, for trousers, socks, shoes and legs were a mass of mud…

Some of them took the performance like sleepy children, leaning their tired heads against me as I worked, others looked grimly scandalized, and several of the roughest colored [blushed] like bashful girls…Another, with a gunshot wound through the cheek, asked for a looking-glass [mirror], and when I brought one, regarded his swollen face with a dolorous expression, as he muttered, “I vow to gosh, that’s too bad! I warn’t a bad looking chap before, and now I’m done for; won’t there be a thunderin’ scar? And what on earth will Josephine Skinner say?”

He looked up at me with his one eye so appealingly, that I controlled my risibles and assured him that if Josephine was a girl of sense, she would admire the honorable scar, as a lasting proof that he had faced the enemy, for all women thought a wound the best decoration a brave soldier could wear. I hope Miss Skinner verified the good opinion I so rashly expressed of her, but I shall never know.

The next scrubbee was a nice-looking lad, with a curly brown mane, and a budding trace of gingerbread over the lip, which he called his beard, and defended stoutly, when the barber jocosely suggested its immolation…

“I say, Mrs.!” called a voice behind me; and, turning, I saw a rough Michigander, with an arm blown off at the shoulder, and two or three bullets still in him—as he afterwards mentioned, as carelessly as if gentlemen were in the habit of carrying such trifles about with them.

“Don’t You Wash Him!”

I went to him, and, while administering a dose of soap and water, he whispered, irefully: “That red-headed devil, over yonder, is a reb [Confederate], damn him! … Don’t you wash him, nor feed him, but jest let him holler till he’s tired. It’s a blasted shame to fetch them fellers in here, alongside of us; and so I’ll tell the chap that bosses this concern; cuss me if I don’t.”

I regret to say that I did not deliver a moral sermon upon the duty of forgiving our enemies, and the sin of profanity, then and there; but, being a red-hot Abolitionist, stared fixedly at the tall rebel, who was a copperhead, in every sense of the word, and privately resolved to put soap in his eyes, rub his nose the wrong way, and excoriate his cuticle generally, if I had the washing of him.

My amiable intentions, however, were frustrated; for, when I approached, with as Christian an expression as my principles would allow, and asked the question, “Shall I try to make you more comfortable, sir?” all I got for my pains was a gruff, “No; I’ll do it myself.”

“Here’s your Southern chivalry, with a witness,” thought I, dumping the basin down before him, thereby quenching a strong desire to give him a summary baptism, in return for his ungraciousness; for my angry passions rose, at this rebuff, in a way that would have scandalized good Dr. Watts. He was a disappointment in all respects, (the rebel, not the blessed Doctor), for he was neither fiendish, romantic, pathetic, or anything interesting; but a long, fat man, with a head like a burning bush, and a perfectly expressionless face: so I could hate him without the slightest drawback, and ignored his existence from that day forth. One redeeming trait he certainly did possess, as the floor speedily testified; for his ablutions were so vigorously performed, that his bed soon stood like an isolated island, in a sea of soap-suds, and he resembled a dripping merman, suffering from the loss of a fin. If cleanliness is a near neighbor to godliness, then was the big rebel the godliest man in my ward that day.

Having done up our human wash, and laid it out to dry, the second syllable of our version of the word warfare was enacted with much success. Great trays of bread, meat, soup and coffee appeared…Very welcome seemed the generous meal, after a week of suffering, exposure, and short commons; soon the brown faces began to smile, as food, warmth, and rest, did their pleasant work; and the grateful “Thankee’s” were followed by more graphic accounts of the battle and retreat, than any paid reporter could have given us. Curious contrasts of the tragic and comic met one everywhere; and some touching as well as ludicrous episodes, might have been recorded that day.

this article first appeared in military history quarterly

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This Marine Used a Gunny Outhouse Without Permission. Then He Accidentally Burned It Down.

Jerry Dallape — Mon, 22 May 2023 12:00:00 +0000

Phu Bai was a raw, unpolished Marine Corps base. Many of the structures were only tents or dilapidated buildings. The airport could handle jets, but all the facilities were primitive. Our “home sweet home” was two or three rows of plywood and screened-in buildings with tin roofs. Each building had room for 15 cots. The living conditions were very poor, but it beat being in the field and sleeping on the ground. We didn’t have to worry much about being shot here. On the other side of the base, there was a PX that sold cases of soda and other necessities.

On Sept. 28, 1967, my friend Gordon “Gus” Gustafson and I decided we would walk the half-mile to the PX and buy some goodies. There wasn’t a road. We just walked over rolling hills dotted with various buildings and tents. The ground was dry and dusty with a distinctive red-colored dust.

Our mood was light as we walked and talked. It was nice to be out of the field and in the relative safety of the base…but everyone that spends time in the field has diarrhea at one time or another, and mine was calling now. When it calls, you go.

The Avenging Angel

We happened to be walking past a plywood bathroom. I saw a sign on its door that read: GUNNY JOHNSON ONLY. Well, that was too bad for Gunny Johnson—I had to go, whether his sign on the door “reserved” the place for him or not. So I did.

But once I opened the door, the avenging angel materialized—Gunnery Sergeant Johnson himself, standing there right outside, glowering at me. He yelled at me for using his bathroom and demanded that I pull out the catch tank and burn the contents. The way that these bathrooms worked is that there was a barrel under the seat which was removed after use, doused with diesel, and burned. The indignant Gunny wanted me to remove all traces of my presence.

I apologized to the Gunny and assured him I would take care of the matter. He still wasn’t a happy Marine. I began cleaning up—as the Gunny posted one of his sergeants nearby to watch me do the job. I had everything under control. I pulled the barrel out, poured on a large volume of diesel, and threw in a match.

The whole embarrassing situation was vanishing in a puff of black smoke when a helicopter came in for a landing, throwing red dust and dirt all over the place. The Gunny’s minion standing over me decided my job was done—or at least he did not like the dirt and dust, so he scurried back to his dingy little office.

A Short Respite

I decided I had had enough. The red dust was heavy and was getting into my eyes, and the fire had gone out. I pushed everything back in place and closed the outhouse door. My debt to Gunny Johnson was paid in full. That was the end of the matter—or at least it should have been.

I called the Gunny everything I could think of in both English and Vietnamese as Gustafson and I continued our stroll to the PX. But since Gus and I were out of the field we were determined to enjoy ourselves here, Gunny or no Gunny. The PX was a fun place to go. Rear echelon people thought it was terrible because there were so few items in the store from which to choose, but Gustafson and I had a great time shopping. It had been a month since we had drunk soda. After rummaging through candy, stacks of soda, and things we had little access to, we each bought a case of Pepsi and a few other items. Then we started back to our hooch.

We were happy and our conversation turned to our homes back in the States and what we planned to do when we first got back. Our minds were miles away. By this time I had almost forgotten about the outhouse mishap and the way that Gunny Johnson had lorded over his pathetic bathroom.

‘The Shock of My Life’

As we came over the crest of a small hill, I got the shock of my life. Gustafson stopped in his tracks. What had been a well-kept outhouse was now a smoldering pile of ashes. The outhouse had apparently caught fire and burned to the ground. I realized the barrel must have still been burning when I kicked it back in its place.

We just stared in stunned silence for a few seconds. Then Gustafson said: “Oh, my God! You burned down Gunny Johnson’s shitter!”

Suddenly I wanted to be back in the field. In an instant that seemed safer than being here. Still, the odds of escape were good—the Gunny had no idea who I was. He had never seen me before I used his bathroom and in his fit of outrage he had not bothered to ask me to identify myself. Also, thankfully he was nowhere in sight.

We took a very long route to avoid passing anywhere near the “fallen temple.” Once we returned to the safety of our hooch, we couldn’t stop laughing. If he could have found out who I was, he probably would have killed me.

The above is an edited excerpt derived from Jerry Dallape‘s book, Vietnam Guns and Fury. It appeared in the 2023 Summer issue of Vietnam magazine.

Abigail Adams Persevered Through Siege and Smallpox to Support the Revolution

Jon Mael — Tue, 02 May 2023 12:30:00 +0000

On June 17, 1775, a vicious battle rocked Bunker Hill in Charlestown, Mass. That first major engagement of the Revolution saw British Commander in Chief William Howe lead around 2,000 Regulars in what Howe expected to be a quick victory over 1,200 colonists commanded by Colonel William Prescott. Howe guessed wrong. The fierce, bloody fighting raged through the night. From a hillside miles away, Abigail Adams, 30, and son John Quincy, 7, watched with excitement and anxiety.

The Adams family lived in Braintree, a small coastal town 12 miles south of Boston. Abigail’s husband, John, a lawyer and key figure in the insurrection, had been gone since April, when he left on a meandering journey, eventually arriving in Philadelphia to attend the Second Continental Congress that convened May 10. John’s departure began a long separation that left Abigail Adams and their four children in one of the most dangerous places on earth—a city under siege—for nearly two years. She would have to run the family farm, keep her children safe, and husband the family’s finances. Abigail’s letters to John during this time, some of the most reliable accounts of significant early events in the Revolution, influenced decisions being made in Philadelphia that shaped the nation.

The Whites of Their Eyes. Colonel William Prescott, in red waistcoat, readies his patriot militia for approaching British troops during the Battle of Bunker Hill.

John Adams and Abigail Smith met in 1759. He was 25, living with his parents in Braintree; she was 15, also at living at home in Weymouth, just to the south. Writing was the easiest way to communicate, and when they began courting in 1764, the two established themselves as exuberant letter writers. Honest, poetic, tragic, joyful, and deeply thoughtful letters flew back and forth between the young romantics. He nicknamed her “Portia,” for the independent-minded heroine of The Merchant of Venice, and that was how she signed some letters. The couple married on October 25, 1764, when John was 29 and Abigail 19. They welcomed their first child, Abigail—nicknamed “Nabby”—the following year. By the time John left for Philadelphia in April 1775, John Quincy, Thomas, and Charles had arrived.

Like her husband, Abigail firmly believed in the American experiment and staunchly opposed slavery. She relished the Boston Tea Party. After Lexington and Concord in April 1775, she wrote to John and many friends and acquaintances, expressing joy and anxiety. In a letter to rebellious Plymouth playwright Mercy Otis Warren, Abigail described her emotions following the fighting. “What a scene has opened upon us since I had the favor of your last!” she wrote May 2. “Such a scene as we never before experienced, and could scarcely form an idea of. If we look back we are amazed at what is past, if we look forward we must shudder at the view.”

this article first appeared in American history magazine

Rebel Bostonians, having stepped collectively into the unknown, feared for their future. Abigail found a tonic for unease in her excitement at seeing the patriotism she had long advocated taking root and spreading. “Our only comfort lies in the justice of our cause,” she wrote. She urged Mercy not to leave Plymouth for relative safety inland, adding, with the characteristic vehemence that often outdid her husband’s: “Britain Britain how is thy glory vanished—how are thy annals stained with the Blood of thy children.”

As Abigail was writing to Mercy, John, now in Hartford, Conn., was writing to Abigail. He knew that in wartime even agrarian Braintree was bound to suffer. “Our hearts are bleeding for the poor People of Boston,” he wrote May 2. “What will, or can be done for them I can’t conceive. God preserve them.”

In that letter, John told Abigail he had purchased books on military strategy and said that if his brothers were interested, he’d be able to train them to be officers. “Pray [sic] write to me, and get all my friends to write and let me be informed of every thing that occurs,” he wrote.

Abigail took his request seriously. In a lengthy May 24 letter, she recounted an incident in Weymouth the previous Sunday morning. She awoke at 6:00 and learned the Weymouth bell had been ringing, that cannoneers there had fired three shots to sound an alarm, and that drums had been beating. Abigail hurried the three miles to her hometown and found everyone, even physician Cotton Tufts, “in confusion.” She described a wild scene, the result of four British boats anchoring within sight of Weymouth Harbor.

According to Abigail, a rumor had spread that 300 Redcoats had landed and were about to march through town. Residents began scrambling to fight or run. Abigail’s family fled. “My father’s family flying, the Dr. in great distress, as you may well imagine,” she wrote, “for my aunt had her bed thrown into a cart, into which she got herself, and ordered the boy to drive her off to Bridgewater which he did.”

Abigail was describing the “Grape Island Incident.” According to her letter, 2,000 local men gathered to fight, but the British never sent troops ashore. Instead, on Grape Island, a minor land mass in Boston Harbor, they stocked a barn with hay. The Weymouth men procured a small boat, intending to torch barn and contents. “We expect soon to be in continual alarms, till something decisive takes place,” Abigail wrote.

Though not decisive, Bunker Hill was a British victory, earned at great human cost and a boost to patriot morale because neophyte freedom fighters had stood their ground and were not overrun. The battle personally touched Abigail and John. Their good friend and physician Joseph Warren (no relation to Mercy) had died in action. “God is a refuge for us.—Charlestown is laid in ashes,” Abigail wrote to John on June 18. “The Battle began upon our intrenchments upon Bunkers [sic] Hill, a Saturday morning about 3 o’clock and has not ceased yet and tis now 3 o’clock Sabbeth [sic] afternoon.”

In a passage of the same letter written June 20, Abigail lamented her inability to gather quality intelligence for John about the battle. “I have been so much agitated that I have not been able to write since Sabbeth day,” she wrote. “When I say that ten thousand reports are passing vague and uncertain as the wind I believe I speak the Truth. I am not able to give you any authentic account of last Saturday, but you will not be destitute of intelligence.”

In reality, Abigail had a knack for threshing fact from fiction—over the years she heard many rumors of John’s death by all manners, including poisoning, but never believed any. Regarding Bunker Hill, she was able to assemble and recount a reasonably detailed narrative of events there, and she assured John that news of Warren’s death was true.

On the same day as the battle, George Washington was named commander in chief of the Continental Army. He rushed to Boston, intent on forcing the British to evacuate. Abigail first met him July 15, 1775, less than a month after Bunker Hill, with the city still under massive financial and military stress. The next day, she wrote that the appointments of Washington and General Charles Lee to positions of command had given locals “universal satisfaction,” but she also pointed out that the people would support leaders only as long as they were delivering “favorable events.” Washington displayed “dignity with ease, and complacency, the gentleman and soldier look agreeably blended in him,” Abigail wrote. “Modesty marks every line and feature of his face.” By the time that note would have reached John, he was going through a grave embarrassment—one threatening both his budding political career and worldwide geopolitics.

In the summer of 1775, many members of Congress believed war with Britain was still avoidable. On July 8, Congress signed the “Olive Branch Petition.” Written by John Dickinson, a Pennsylvania delegate, the document was a final reach for peace. That outcome was a long shot, but the British intercepted an inflammatory July 24 letter from John Adams to Colonel James Warren, Mercy’s husband. In that communique, Adams suggested to Warren that by now the colonists should have “completely modeled a constitution,” “raised a naval power and opened all our ports wide,” and “have arrested every friend to government on the continent and held them as hostages for the poor victims in Boston.”

Circulation by the enemy of these statements sank all hopes of diplomacy. After that episode, Abigail resumed signing letters “Portia.”

Through eight months of siege, Abigail’s updates became steadier and her commentary sharper. “Tis only in my night visions that I know anything about you,” she wrote October 21, needling John for his laggard epistolary ways but also reporting a wide range of goings-on around Boston. A wood shortage meant bakers would only be able to work for a fortnight. Biscuits had shrunk in size by half. The British were constructing a fort near the docks, and the Continental Army was short on provisions.

In that letter, Abigail also commented on Dr. Benjamin Church, a supposed patriot who had been caught passing coded information about the forces surrounding Boston to the British. Locked up by Washington’s men, Church had been dumped as the Continental Army’s “Director General” of medicine and was awaiting arraignment. “It is a matter of great speculation what will be [Church’s] punishment,” Abigail wrote. “The people are much enraged against him. If he is set at liberty, even after he has received a severe punishment I do not think he will be safe.”

Abigail was in mourning. Her mother, Elizabeth Quincy Smith, had died in Weymouth October 1. In his grief, Abigail’s father, Parson William Smith, had lost “as much flesh as if he had been sick,” she wrote, adding that her sister Betsy looked “broke and worn with grief.” She regretted John’s chronic absences, estimating that in 12 years of marriage, they had only actually been together six.

Washington’s troops quietly ringed Boston in a martial noose, placing cannons on high ground that forced the British to depart by sea at the end of March 1776. The warships and transports that carried the enemy away, Abigail wrote on March 17, amounted to the “largest fleet ever seen in America;” she likened the bristle of masts and billows of sails to a forest. Washington allowed Howe’s men to leave unmolested on the proviso that the Redcoats not burn the city. The foe was as good as his word, though some Britons looted like pirates on holiday. Dirty tactics notwithstanding, though, their exit thrilled locals, Loyalists excepted.

Abigail told John she felt the burden of the British presence merely to be changing location but admitted to being happy that Boston had not been totally destroyed. The city’s escape exhilarated John, a fiend for independence. On March 29, he wrote to Abigail about his joy at learning Boston was free, even as he moped that he knew few details and so awaited her accounts with “great impatience.” He wanted Boston Harbor made impregnable. Abigail had neither the ability nor the desire to command troops, but John often discussed strategic ideas with her and greatly valued her opinion of them.

Most of the time.

The most famous look into Abigail’s politics arose from Patriot celebrations of the British retreat. Abigail only reminded John that he “Remember the Ladies” after she had unleashed a condemnation of Virginia. “I have sometimes been ready to think that the passion for liberty cannot be equally strong in the breasts of those who have been accustomed to deprive their fellow creatures of theirs,” she wrote March 31, 1776. “Of this I am certain that it is not founded upon that generous and Christian principle of doing to others as we would that others should do unto us.”

The letter gained fame because in it Abigail forcefully characterizes women’s second-class status in the colonies. Law and custom barred women from owning property and assigned any wages they earned legally to their husbands. “All men would be tyrants if they could,” and if a Declaration of Independence was coming, it would be shrewd not to put all of the power in the hands of one sex, Abigail argued.

She dusted her broadside with drollery. “The ladies,” she said, were prepared “to mount a rebellion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any laws in which we have no voice, or representation.” The letter also conveyed notes of optimism, originating as it did in one finally assured she could plant seeds on her farm or go for a walk without hearing cannonades.

But that optimism evaporated. John dismissed his wife’s adjuration to “Remember the Ladies.” In an April 14 note, he pooh-poohed Abigail’s thoughts as “saucy”—implying that she was straying from her designated societal role and venturing into arenas she should eschew. John’s shrugging response irked his wife. She wrote to Mercy Otis Warren asking if they should compose another appeal to Congress. Frustrated with John’s lackadaisical mien, she and the family faced a stout new challenge just as the absent man of the house was taking on unprecedented responsibilities in Philadelphia.

Smallpox had been blistering indigenes and colonizers in disfiguring, deadly waves around North America since the Europeans first arrived. In 1775-76, British occupiers and Continental Army soldiers besieging them loosed a particularly severe outbreak. Abigail first mentioned the pox in her March 17, 1776, letter to John celebrating the city’s survival. As the British were withdrawing, the port was still battling the latest epidemic. Only the previously infected were even being allowed into town, a category that would have included John Adams, who in 1764 had undergone a controversial procedure—inoculation.

To inoculate against the pox, a doctor opened a small wound and into that cut or scrape inserted matter intentionally tainted with exudate from a person with smallpox. The idea was to trigger a mild case of pox from which the recipient emerged in a few weeks enjoying lifelong immunity, as occurred with survivors of full-on cases like George Washington. By summer 1776, inoculation had become en vogue. The “Spirit of Inoculation,” as Abigail labeled it, finally achieved such critical mass that city authorities legalized the procedure.

Writing on Sunday, July 7, Abigail invited John Thaxter, who was her cousin and John’s law clerk, to “come have the small pox with my family” that Thursday, July 12. As a clinical setting Abigail’s cousin Isaac Smith Sr. provided his sprawling Boston home. Abigail, Thaxter, the Adams children, and nearly 20 others, including Abigail’s sister Betsy Smith Cranch and her family, as well as strangers like Becky Peck, crammed the mansion to await inoculation by Dr. Thomas Bulfinch. The doctor was charging 18 shillings per week for what he estimated would be three weeks of sequestration while inoculation did its work. During that time those inoculated could expect to experience smallpox symptoms to a greater or lesser degree.

The next day, Abigail wrote her first letter to John since June 17. The children had undergone inoculation “manfully,” she reported. She wished John could have joined them, she wrote, but the opportunity had arisen on short notice, and most residences around Boston were at and beyond capacity. The group had been lucky to book a house.

That year’s hot summer would have had the city resonating around the clock with coughing and the house redolent of rotting flesh—two noxious and prominent smallpox symptoms. Abigail wrote that the children “puke every morning,” complaining to John that a maid she had hired was useless, the girl’s lone qualification being immunity conveyed by a case of the pox.

Owing to a leisurely postal system Abigail’s graphic letter about those events was not the means by which John learned his family had been inoculated. Letters reporting the coup from Isaac Smith Sr. and young Boston attorney Jonathan Mason reached Philadelphia first, stunning John. In a letter to Abigail dated July 16, beset by worry that colleagues would think him a cad for ignoring his loved ones in their hour of need, he poured out his heart. His feelings were “not possible for me to describe, nor for you to conceive my feelings upon this occasion.” He remained steadfast in his commitment to press on with the Congress. “I can do no more than wish and pray for your health, and that of the children,” he wrote. “Never—never in my whole Life, had I so many cares upon my Mind at once […] I am very anxious about supplying you with money. Spare for nothing, if you can get friends to lend it to you. I will repay with gratitude as well as interest, any sum that you may borrow.”

Abigail’s letter of July 13-14 arrived July 23. By then, the effects of inoculation had begun to take hold. Abigail experienced only one “eruption”—a pustule signaling infection. Nabby and John Quincy had gotten sick, but without eruptions. Thomas and Charles showed no symptoms, so she had them re-inoculated. Around this time, she got her first intimate look at the real disease. On July 29, she wrote, fellow inoculant and temporary housemate Becky Peck had symptoms of smallpox “to such a degree as to be blind with one eye, swelled prodigiously, I believe she has ten thousand [pustules]. She is really an object to look at.”

Lags between letters consigned John to anticipating past events. He wrote that Abigail’s accounts had convinced him that Charles had not yet taken the smallpox virus. By the time that news reached Abigail, she had had Charles inoculated a third time, and Nabby a second. Hundreds of pea-sized pustules covered almost all of Nabby’s body. In one letter, John referred to her as his “speckled beauty.” Abigail’s ordeal ground on until September 4, 1776, when she and Charles returned to Braintree. A treatment advertised as lasting three weeks had stretched into seven.

During her siege by inoculation, Abigail occasionally slipped away briefly. She left the family lodgings on July 18 to attend the first public reading of the Declaration of Independence. She stood in a large crowd below the balcony of the Massachusetts State House on Boston’s King Street to listen to the words her husband and his committee had helped draft. Writing to John she described a scene of great joy punctuated by church bells and celebratory gunfire. She, however, attended the fete in a state of disappointment.

In her July 14 letter, Abigail had reacted sourly to a rendering of the finished declaration that John, copying it himself, had sent. “I cannot but feel sorry that some of the most manly sentiments in the Declaration are expunged from the printed copy,” she wrote. “Perhaps wise reasons induced it.” She likely meant an earlier draft Thomas Jefferson had written and shown to John. That version denounced slavery, a sentiment expunged from the version made public. It is reasonable to hypothesize that, reading the version in her husband’s handwriting, Abigail thought that John had composed the entire document and that he himself had eliminated the statement on slavery.

During the inoculation interlude, Abigail was on tenterhooks anticipating John’s return; he had asked her to direct a man with two horses to fetch him in Philadelphia. However, on June 12, John was named president of a new Committee on War and Ordinance, recasting him as a one-man defense department in charge of organizing a military, allocating that force’s finances, supplying Washington’s men, and more. Just as Abigail was preparing to return home to Braintree from the Smith house, John intuited that New York City was to be the war’s next battleground. He would have to stay in Philadelphia to nurse the infant country he had just helped found. Often in correspondence he fretted about his health.

In Braintree Abigail struggled. Farm workers were scarce. Most men had enlisted in the Army, taken up privateering, or, as Loyalists, had fled with fellow Tories. Tea, which soothed her headaches, was at least as scarce as farmhands; John did send a tin that the courier delivered to Elizabeth Adams, his second cousin Samuel’s wife.

In November 1776 John escaped the revolution’s gravitational pull and joined his family for their first significant reunion since April 1775. The children had survived. He and Abigail had gained the independence they had sought together for years. Abigail had been the keystone, communicating crucial information to the Congress, guiding the household through smallpox, and uplifting John through good times and bad. Always appreciative of his spouse’s integral part in his public life, he wrote of his feelings for her to a friend the day after he had signed the Declaration. “In times as turbulent as these, commend me to the ladies for historiographers,” John Adams wrote July 5, 1776. “The gentlemen are too much engaged in action. The ladies are cooler spectators….There is a lady at the foot of Penn’s Hill, who obliges me, from time to time with clearer and fuller intelligence, than I can get from a whole committee of gentlemen.”

Jon Mael is a high school teacher and author from Sharon, Mass. He has been fascinated by Abigail Adams for decades. Follow him on Twitter @jmael2010.

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