Civil War

Monumental (Part Three)

 

The image of Confederate General Robert E. Lee astride his white charger could bring his men to tears. Filled with pride and the knowledge that he was there helped the men to fight harder and longer than should have been possible. The men loved Lee as a father and they would follow him to the end of the world.

His monument at Gettysburg, officially the monument of Virginia, shows Lee in all his glory staring stoically out across the open field, surveying the Union lines on the third day of battle. The third day, the day that would not only seal the loss of the battle for Lee, but would be the death kneel of the Confederacy.

This was the day that lee sent General Pickett and his troops across the field, over a mile in the open to try to smash their way through the center of the Union line. A line that had been beaten and bashed for two days. Against the advice of his right hand General Longstreet, Lee knew in his heart he had made the right decision.

The attack got off slow. The bombardment that was to soften the defenses fell short, lack of ammunition kept the fire rate lower than expected. When the time came though Picket and his men advanced. The story of Pickett’s charge is one for another time. Regardless of whose side you sympathize with the bravery and sheer will power that the Confederate soldiers showed as they reached the Union line is beyond measure.

Yet they failed. Crushed by Union artillery. Raked by a withering flanking fire that decimated them as they closed in. Fences, fences that the men had to stop and climb over as rifle and cannon fire tore gaping holes in their lines. They failed and those that could crawled, ran, walked, shuffled back to the stating point of their attack. And there when they arrived was Lee. Tears in his eyes as he realized he had made a mistake and hundreds of men paid the price.

His monument sits at the very spot where he solemnly greeted those that survived the attack. A stone face stares out at the fields of what had to have been worst day of the war for him. The high point of the rebellion had come and gone, and Lee will forever bear witness to that failed attack.

Modern

The Gulf War Revisited

A10

While I have plenty of pictures of the A-10’s, affectionately known as the Warthog, this picture of a unit patch from a flight suit deserves special notice.  The Gulf War was not that long ago, a little more than twenty years, but for many of my generation it our first real experience of our country being at war. Growing up in the shadow of Vietnam, the Gulf War almost seemed like  shot at redemption. Since this week has had a sort of “remembrance” theme, I thought it would be a good time to look back at the Gulf War and that patch is a great reminder of a different time and a different war.

The Western World’s dependence on oil has kept the Persian Gulf a strategic theater for the US for a very long time. Like South America the US has always had this vested interest and has taken steps to insure that “friendly” leaders we in place to keep the oil flowing. This particular strategy did not pan out so well in Iran. In fact we did such a poor job of trying to keep Iran friendly that in the end we had to prop up their neighbor and help them fight a long drawn out and bloody war against them. That neighbor was Iraq, lead by Saddam Hussein, who with our help was able to keep Iran in check. Unfortunately, as often happens with us, the lesser of two evils grew beyond our control and decided to invade a neighbor, in this case Kuwait. This lead to the first Gulf War.

In the Gulf War the United States was able to gather a large multi-national coalition to face off against Saddam and remove his army from Kuwait. Most impressively the coalition contained several Muslim nations, something important to keeping the conflict from become a West vs Middle East conflict. This alone was a great start to what would be a historic campaign. For the US this was an attempt to wash the lingering taste of the Vietnam era out of its collective mouth. For the first time since WWII the US faced a black and white conflict without the shades of grey that were cast over South East Asia. This war was going to be different.

Different it was. The Gulf War was carefully planned and had clearly defined goals, the idea being to bring as much military force to bear against the enemy as possible. The air campaign that opened the war was surgical in the way it destroyed the enemy’s ability to fight. By the time the ground war started and the famous “left hook” was employed the Iraqi army was not only driven out of Kuwait, but stood substantially weaker. The coalition was a success, but even in the glow of victory came the seeds of another war. Saddam would be left in power and allowed to rebuild.

The US after the war stayed active in the region with mixed results. Promising help and support to the native Kurds and those opposed to Saddam, we stood by and watched as at least one attempted coup was put down. We did enforce no fly zones and supported the UN in trying to keep the Iraqi stockpile of chemical and biological from growing. This led to almost a decade of air strikes and economic sanctions designed to keep Saddam under control, which failed. All the time this was happening, Iran came back to world stage in attempting to obtain and build nuclear weapons, an effort that was helped tremendously by the first Gulf War and the flood of Iraqi material and minds that fled the country.
Militarily the strategy was almost perfect and highly effective. The enemy military was defeated, casualties were low and the objectives were met. The peace was not planned for  and we ended up in another war where many, many more people on both sides died and the results of which we are still waiting to see if it was worth it. Politically the strategy is still up in the air and its effectiveness is up for debate. Even though we maintain talking relationships with many of the Persian Gulf countries, the effects of 9/11 undid much of what the Gulf War accomplished.

Modern

A Typical Day

 

This schedule is posted at the National Infantry Museum and is there to show what a typical day in boot cam would look for a member of the US Army. Nowadays though it is called Basic Combat Training. A ten week course that is designed to take men and women that walk in off the street and turn them into soldiers.

Over the course of the training the individual learns how to work like a team and think like a soldier, which sometimes requires a lot of adjustments on their part. Not everyone is cut out for it, but those that succeed embark on a career that is frankly thankless and dangerous.

The ten weeks are divided up into three phases.

Red Phase: The focus is on learning teamwork. This phase comes after their initial reception and starts teaching them the basics of training and field work.

White Phase: Among other skills marksmanship and rappelling are taught in this phase. Recruits are exposed to many new skills and abilities that will serve them during their career.

Blue Phase: Building on everything that has come before the recruits are exposed to more advanced weapons and push themselves to their physical limits.

Passing through all these phases and they have learned the skills needed to be effective in and out of combat.  With such a harrowing schedule as laid out above it is amazing that anyone makes it out.  But with almost 1.5 million men and women serving in the US military, at least that many have found a way. Just for fun one day why don’t you try to follow the schedule and see how you do?

 

 

 

Interwar Years, WWII

CV-1 USS Langley First of Her Kind

USS Langley

CV-1 USS Langley First of Her Kind

The above is commemorative print of the USS Langley or as the picture shows, the U.S. Aeroplane Carrier. Yep, the Langley was our first official aircraft carrier.

In 1920 she was converted from the USS Jupiter, a collier and was one of several planned conversions. These took a different path as the Washington Naval Treaty (Hey! Didn’t we talk about that?) lead to several partial constructed battle cruisers becoming carriers instead, the Lexington and the Saratoga.

She had a carrier pigeon-house built on her stern. While this was not highly unusual as pigeons were used by seaplanes at the time. Of course things did not go as planned. If the pigeons were released one or two at a time, they would always come back as they were supposed to, but once the entire flock was released they went home to Norfolk and never came back to the ship. The coop was eventually turned into the Executive Officers quarters. (Please commence jokes now.)

Early on in WWII she ferried airplanes around the Southeast Asia theater and served as part of anti-submarine patrols.  She was not going to be able to avoid danger forever though. In February 27, 1942 the Japanese had their way with her, causing so much damage that she had to be scuttled. A twenty-two year career and she went out with a bang.

In a tragic foot note, after being scuttled most of her surviving crew was put aboard the USS Pecos for the trip back to Australia. Unfortunately the ship sunk on the journey back.

 

 

 

Book Reviews, Pre-Revolution

Book Review: The Thirteen Colonies

The Thirteen Colonies

 

The Thirteen Colonies

The colonies that would go on to become the United States of America were different and diverse societies among themselves. The idea that these separate entities would one day come together to form a nation is quite simply a miracle. In this book, The Thirteen Colonies, the origin and founding of these colonies is brought to splendid life by the author.
Starting with the discovery of the New World and the initial struggles that put all the major players on the field, each region and colony gets a its own treatment as we learn about the people who risked everything to create this new world. From their early struggles against nature and natives, to their simmering disagreements and differences among themselves, the story of the societies that made up these colonies is brought to life.
Special consideration should be given for the way that it deals with the French & Indian War (Seven Years War). This is topic that has spawned thousands of books on its own. The coverage of it here in this book is done well enough to serve as a primary for further study, it does not bog you down in the nitty-gritty, but does well enough to provide for the entire experience and the contribution of the colonies during this major world war. This portion alone is worth it.
One word of warning in regards to this book though. It is dry and written much more as an academic exercise than as any sort of adventure or novelization. Because of that many people not already engaged with the subject may find it boring and perhaps even a little hard to get though. Stick with it. Definitely worth the purchase.
American Revolution, Book Reviews

Book Review: Boston 1775

Boston 1775 by Francis Russell
This book gives a brief accounting of the events that lead up the siege of Boston in 1775 and follows shortly after. When I say brief, that is exactly what I mean as it does not delve too deep any the subject only skimming the surface. It certainly does not get into any details of the many, many characters that made this particular time so volatile.
See, from he outbreak of the armed rebellion in April 1775 until the Declaration of Independence in July 1776 there was a huge question as to what the revolution was being fought for.  In that respect the book does not get into the politics, but presents everything coldly almost distant from the events.
It sounds like I didn’t like it , and that is the wrong impression.
This book is short roughly 103 “pages” on a kindle, so there was not room to get into every little detail. Where I see this book being very useful is for people who have just started picking up this subject or stating to dig into the early days of the American Revolution. This book provides a good solid base to build from.
If you are already knowledgeable of the subject, this book will not provide you much of anything new. In that respect will will be a quick read and will serve as a great refresher in the subject. The book is well written and the author did a good job getting his information across. Very much worth the download. (Though I would wait for it to be less than $9.99.)
Vietnam

The Face of War

In some of the posts were we have looked at the Vietnam War, it has been mostly through photos taken by a man who was engaged in that war. That is him above. Not the most flattering photo, but one of the few where he is not behind the camera. His name is William (Bill) Hatfield, and he is my father. These pictures that I share on this site are his and a part of our family legacy and I Thought it was time to share a little about the man.

Bill was a US Navy corpsmen during the war. He graduated High School and found himself in the Navy very soon after. After graduating boot camp he was assigned to submarines, with a decent sized land war going it seemed like the safest place for a young man to do his time. It did not take him long to decide that being shot at was a much better option than being in an actual submarine so he switched specialties. The Navy was short of Corpsmen so the encouraged it. He underwent six weeks of Corps school before being sent to Vietnam.

Why were they short of Corpsmen? It’s the navy, they stay on ships and do out to sea things. Right? Not those guys. See the Corpsmen server as the medics for the Marines, they go where the Marines go. So Bill spent a lot of times with the Marines in country. Medics and Corpsmen are usually called Doc, and for the longest time I really believed that was his name.

He survived the war and spent almost twenty-five years in the Navy before calling it a career. He never really talked much about the war. It weighed on him and had an effect on him, it is easy to see that now. Talking to family and his friends that knew him before and after, they all saw it.

These pictures, that he took and converted to slides (which are why some are reversed if you look close) were somewhat of a family legend. Every couple of years he would find them in a closet break out the project and screen (which I have now also) and take us for a tour, He remembered names and places, had stories for everything. He was not afraid to talk about it, just never saw much point. As he got older and we grew older the shows became fewer and fewer. When they did happen the names did not come so easily and the places all melded together.  Just a few years ago we decided we were going to scan in all the slides, and he would go through and write down everything he remembered about them. We never got the chance to finish the project. So most of the stories are second-hand, the names lost to time.

When I see pictures like the one above I have a hard time imagining myself doing what he did at that age. He did it though, he survived and he never let the war tear him down. Now all I can do is my best to keep that young man above alive, even if just as words on the page.

 

 

American Revolution

Monumental (Part 2)

This obelisk is the monument located at Kings Mountain. We have looked at a couple of the plaques at the base before and even talked about the battle some in a previous post. This monument is located at the top of the “mountain” and it is quite a sight to see. The battle and people who it memorialize though is an interesting story in and off itself.

At the time of the revolution that Southern colonies were a society that was fractured along many different lines. The planter class in the tidewater regions did not think much of the people in the interior, which led to political issues well before the first shots were fired.  The families in the back country tended to be more recent immigrants, many Scots, Scots-Irish and some German groups.  All of these groups tended to be clan based, family based and a lot of the times they did not necessary like their neighbors.

When the war broke out, the back country erupted into a true civil war as many of these clans took the chance to settle old scores with rivals and the opportunity to increase their own standing. For the most part, patriot or loyalist was more an issue of being on the side opposite your “enemy” so that whatever you dis to them could be justified as “for the cause”.  Some families simply jumped back and forth with their support depending on which army was closest and what they had to gain by it.

By the time that British troops had taken Charleston and started moving into the interior, there had been somewhat of a lull in the fighting as both sides found themselves fighting the Cherokee, Once that fight was done whoever they turned back to killing each other.

Kings Mountain stand out in the line of bloody conflict for one main reason, it was fought by the two sides with no regular troops. Every man engaged was militia and American, with the exception of Patrick Ferguson, the British commander. That fact made the battle unique. The victory also served as the pivot point for the war. From that point on, especially in the South, the number of loyalists willing to fight dwindled robbing the British army a source of badly needed manpower.

Bloody and terrible Kings Mountain stand above many other battles in the South. Interesting enough, of the men that survived the fight about fourscore and seven years later their descendants would be involved in another war, this time mostly fighting on the same side this time around.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Civil War

Monumental (Part One)

Above we have the North Carolina monument at Gettysburg National Military Park. A monument to the bravery and tenacity of the men from North Carolina that fought in the field for the state and for the Confederacy.

The history of Confederate monuments is fascinating as for many years they were discouraged completely and it was not until much later that they started to appear. Hard feelings and lack of money kept many Southern states from being able to build the monuments. As such there are far more monuments to the Union troops than the Confederates, which makes sense because the battle was  a Union victory and occurred in the North.

The North Carolina monument was dedicated on July 3, 1929. (Interestingly enough the Texas monument was not dedicated until 1982.) To the side of the monument is erected a stone tablet with the following inscription:

1863
North Carolina
To the eternal glory of the North Carolina
soldiers. Who on this battlefield displayed
heroism unsurpassed sacrificing all in sup-
port of their cause. Their valorous deeds
will be enshrined in the hearts of men long
after these transient memorials have crum-
bled into dust.

Thirty two North Carolina regiments were in
action at Gettysburg July 1,2,3, 1863. One Con-
federate soldier in every four who fell here
was a North Carolinian.

This tablet erected by the North Carolina Division United Daughters of the Confederacy.

 

Over 14,000 men of North Carolina were a part of the Army of Northern Virginia, only Virginia provided more men. During the battle NC lost almost 6,000 men or almost 40% of those that took part in the battle. As stated on the tablet over one-quarter of all Confederate casualties these three days came from North Carolina.

We will look at some more of the monuments in the days to come.

 

 

 

American Revolution

Christmas Day 1776

No picture for this one, just a quick reminder of what happened on this day 238 years ago.

Coming up to December 1776 the American Revolution was teetering on the edge of dissolution. The thrill of the war and the realty had set in. The euphoria from victories earlier in the year were all but wiped out with the debacle in New York and the long retreat through New Jersey (stay tuned for more of these details at a later date).

General Washington knew that he had to take action or the cause would spin totally out of control. So he did what no one expected and planned an attack. From the Pennsylvania side of the Delaware River he would lead the remainder of the Continental Army in a daring and secret invasion of New Jersey, his target being the Hessian mercenary camp in Trenton.  The British were spread thin in New Jersey, but with winter howling around them figured the campaign season was over for the year, so felt being spread out was not that much of a risk and the letting the Germans man the front lines, meant the regular British troops would be stationed in the interior.

Washington planned a three prong invasion and had been in contact with several units of the New Jersey militia that would support his attacked. Undercover of a winter storm at 11pm on Christmas Day the invasion was launched. We have all seen the famous painting by Emanuel Leutze that depicts the noble Washington standing in a row-boat as the river was being breached. Not quite the reality, but not a bad way to remember it.

The Attack on Trenton was a rousing success. The Hessian’s lost 22 killed, 98 wounded and almost 1,000 captured. The Americans, three killed and six wounded. Not bad day’s work.

The victory at Trenton was an offensive win for the cause and reinvigorated the rebels, giving them the strength to continue the fight into 1777, a very important year in the Revolution. Sometimes though a couple of things get left behind in the telling of the story.

The victory at Trenton led immediately to a second battle at Princeton where Washington and his army successfully defeated the rear guard of the British reinforcements sent to Trenton under General Cornwallis. A second win in as many days not only invigorated the Americans, but it caused the British to rethink their strategy in the middle colonies. General Howe, the overall British commander was cautious, but after this he became almost leaden.

Remember when I said that Washington planned for three columns to take part in the assault? Well, two of them ended up late to the party and found themselves several days later in New Jersey with no orders. Rather than cross back over the river, they worked with local militias and made life so unbearable for the British using the guerrilla tactics of the frontier that eventually over the next several weeks the British were forced to shrink their defensive lines until the majority of New Jersey was free of occupation, at least by regular forces.

The war was far from over, but General Washington’s little Christmas trip kept the fight going. So if tonight about 11PM you feel like making a toast to the General, it would be well deserved. Have a Merry Christmas and a Happy Holiday.

 

People, Places and Things from US Military History

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