CWPT Park Day

Save Saturday 2 April on your calendars! Why you ask? It's the date for the Civil War Trust's annual "Park Day" event, of course.

Preserving a battlefield or historic site often requires more time and manpower than the staff of that particular venue can provide. So the call for volunteers to tackle some of the larger projects goes out via the Civil War Trust.

I coordinated this event for a couple of years at New Market Battlefield State Historical Park (I know, shock and surprise at the venue, right?). During the years I was involved with the program at NMBSHP, we fielded several dozen volunteers each year (including a collasal showing from my alma mater Bridgewater College one year) and constructed several hundred feet of split-rail fence, painted the fence around the Bushong farm, hauled away a post-war barn that had collapsed, and cut back foilage to restore some areas of the battlefield to their 1864 appearance. Most of these projects would have taken the park staff days, or even weeks, to complete. With the support of the community and volunteers, these tasks were done in a matter of hours.

This year I'll be going across the River James to Newport News Park - site of the only real engagement during George McClellan's month-long siege of Yorktown during the opening of the Peninsula Campaign. Winfield Scott Hancock found what was probably the only weak spot in Prince John Magruder's defensive line from Yorktown to Mulberry Island, and on 16 April a brigade of Vermonters was thrown across the Warwick River at this weakspot. Unfortunately for them, McClellan had no real goal or objective in doing so, and leadership at the tactical level was equally flawed. In the end, about 300 men combined from both sides became casualties in a rather pointless engagement.

Even though the Warwick River has been dammed up further to become the Newport News Reservoir, putting the original Dam #1 and part of the battlefield underwater, much of the Confederate earthworks remain in excellent condition.

I'll post an after-action report of Park Day 2011.

Updated author appearances

Tuesday March 8 - William Latane SCV Camp, Mechanicsillve, VA
Monday March 28 - Princess Anne SCV Camp, Virginia Beach, VA
Sat & Sun April 9 & 10 - Elkton Historical Society - Miller-Kite House, Elkton, VA (signing)
Wednesday April 13 - Urquhart-Gillette SCV Camp, Courtland, VA
Wednesday May 11 - Norfolk Historical Society - Chrysler Museum, Norfolk, VA
Sat & Sun May 14 & 15 - Battle of New Market reenactment, New Market, VA (signing)
Saturday May 21 - James Brady SUV Camp, Isle of Wight, VA
Tuesday May 24 - Richmond VMI Alumni Association, Richmond, VA (signing only)

Upcoming Appearances

Filling out the calendar for 2011 with speaking engagements and book signings. This is what I've got confirmed so far, with a couple others in the works but not yet finalized - will post here as additional dates are added.

And if anyone is interested in a presentation to their organization or hosting a book signing, email me.

Tuesday March 8 - William Latane SCV Camp, Mechanicsillve, VA
Wednesday April 13 - Urquhart-Gillette SCV Camp, Courtland, VA
Wednesday May 11 - Norfolk Historical Society - Chrysler Museum, Norfolk, VA
Tuesday May 24 - Richmond VMI Alumni Association, Richmond, VA (signing only)

Speaking engagements & book signings

Got several speaking engagements lined up for the next few months, with a few more in the works. I'll put a schedule of appearances up here in the next few days...

Local WWII veteran

It's always depressing to me to see the number of World War II and Korean War veterans in the obituaries of our local paper. Occasionally, I recognize one of them as a contributor to my museum (MacArthur Memorial). Such was the case this week with one, I won't mention him by name, but since he was a Navy doctor and a physician after the war, shall refer to him here as "Doc."

I never met Doc in person, but spoke to him on the phone after his son brought to the museum two very unique things his father had brought home after the end of World War II. These two items were Japanese Navy surgical kits - one an amputation kit, the other an autopsy kit. Doc had gotten these on the island of Chichi Jima after the Japanese surrender. Doc was part of a detachment of Marines sent to disarm the Japanese garrison of Chichi Jima and to inquire as to whether they had any American prisoners there. One of the Japanese officers let it slip to the Marine CO that they had had prisoners on the island - this confession opened up a months-long investigation, which turned into a war crimes trial. The story is told in great detail in Chester Hearn's book Sorties into Hell, and Doc figures prominently therein. I won't go into the gory details, for gory they are as the tale involves cannibalism and torture, not in that order, but many American airmen who were shot down were held on Chichi Jima. Suffice to say they never came home, nor was much recovered of some of them - you can probably fill in the blanks by now.

Talking with Doc on the phone about a year ago and hearing him recount this story and how it still haunted him, 60+ years later was truly touching. I was only vaguely familiar with what had happened there before I had the chance to talk to him, and I didn't read the book until afterward. I never got a chance to talk to him again after reading it. And that maybe a good thing - for after reading in Hearn's book about one of the island surgeons using his surgical kit to dismember American prisoners, I really just don't want to contemplate that that may well be the surgical kits he donated.

If you really want to learn about war atrocities, read Hearn's book.

Review - Confederate Alamo

Recently I had the opportunity to join John Fox of Angle Valley Press for a book signing. John is the author of Red Clay to Richmond: Trail of the 35th Georgia Infantry Regiment and more recently The Confederate Alamo: Bloodbath at Petersburg's Ft Gregg, April 2, 1865. I had never met John before and I'm ashamed to admit that although I had it on my shelf, I had yet to read Confederate Alamo before our signing.

Finished reading Alamo about a week ago, and am very impressed. I'm not stretching things when I say that it is one of the finest battle studies I've ever read. I grew up in Richmond and some of my earliest memories are of my Dad taking me to the battlefields around Richmond and Petersburg, including Fort Gregg, and several of my friends were historical interpreters at Pamplin Park, just up the road a mile or so from Gregg, so the Ft Gregg story was not unknown to me. And of course the fact that about half of the Federal infantry from New Market participated in the attack on Gregg also interested me. However, what was unknown to me was the magnitude of the slaughter that occurred there. The word "bloodbath" in the subtitle of the book is very appropriate. It is almost inconceivable to read some of the first-hand accounts in Alamo and translate them and the slaughter they describe to the relatively small area that is Ft Gregg. How could a slaughter of this magnitude have been so overlooked for so long? Well, Lee's surrender had a lot to do with that.

In Confederate Alamo, John Fox has unearthed a wealth of previously untapped sources - evenly balanced between North and South - and places the reader at the fort amidst the crisis that was the morning of April 2, 1865, for Lee and A.P. Hill. With only 334 defenders of the fort, the number of recollections by Confederate defenders is impressive. Numerous illustrations of the ground and the officers and men involved appear throughout the book, as do about a half-dozen excellent maps by George Skoch (who also did the maps for Valley Thunder.)

This is definitely a must-read.

Review - Men of Color to Arms

Time to catch up on backlog of book reviews...We begin with Elizabeth Leonard's Men of Color to Arms: Black Soldiers, Indian Wars, and the Quest for Equality. But first an important disclaimer: I know very little regarding the post-Civil War United States Army, and even less concerning the black units serving in it. That said, covering the role of black soldiers from 1863 until the turn of the century is a pretty big undertaking, to say the least, so I was somewhat surprised at the book's size, with fewer than 250 pages of narrative text.

Professor Leonard begins with the Civil War career of Sgt Maj Christian Fleetwood of the 4th USCT, a Medal of Honor recipient for his actions at New Market Heights on Sept. 29, 1864, and other black units of the Army of the James. Her subsequent examination of the debate over the composition of the post-war Army is of particular interest, as is the discussion of the use of black troops for occupation duty in the former Confederate states. Although I would have preferred more military detail rather than social commentary (in parts, this reads more like social history disguised as military history), Leonard recounts how the experience for the individual black soldier on the frontier varied depending on the attitudes of their company officers. In some of the instances she cites, some white officers treated their men cruelly - even one example of murder is presented - while others recognized and appreciated their fighting abilities, finding no reason to treat them any differently from white troops, and pushed for blacks to be eligible to serve as commissioned officers. Despite the lack of military detail, Men of Color to Arms is an interesting read.

Elizabeth D. Leonard
Men of Color to Arms!
ISBN 978-0-393-06039-3
W. W. Norton, 2010
315 pages, photographs, hard cover, dust jacket