…art, music, and opinions from Lower Alabama
“It is well that war is so terrible, or we would grow too fond of it.”
Doing something different. In these times, it is politically incorrect to recall a certain class of Veterans, those who served for the Confederacy in the U.S. Civil War. This is my small remembrance of these men, who are a part of my heritage, regardless of how the political winds blow.
It’s Memorial Day. Remember all of them. In a lost and wrong-headed cause, they gave their all.
The first known casualty of the Korean War, on this day in 1950. A mostly forgotten man in a mostly forgotten war.
About 90 minutes after Task Force Smith began its withdrawal from the Battle of Osan, the 34th Infantry sent Shadrick as part of a small scouting force northward to the village of Sojong-ni, 5 miles (8.0 km) south of Osan.[3] The small force, under the command of Lieutenant Charles E. Payne and consisting mostly of bazooka teams and infantry, halted at a graveyard in the village,[13] where they spotted a North Korean T-34/85 tank on a road to the north. Shadrick and the other bazooka operators began firing on the tank from long-range concealed positions[3] at around 16:00.[14] With them was Sergeant Charles R. Turnbull, a US Army combat photographer.[15] Turnbull asked Shadrick to time a bazooka shot so its flash could be caught in Turnbull’s photograph, and Shadrick complied.[3][13] Shadrick made the shot and paused, then rose from his concealed position to see if he had successfully hit the tank, exposing himself. The T-34 returned fire with its machine gun, and two bullets struck Shadrick in the chest and arm. Shadrick died moments later.
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Subsequent publications have shed doubt on the accuracy of the claims of Shadrick’s distinction. Eyewitness accounts at the Battle of Osan point to the first death as a machine gunner in the 21st Infantry Regiment, who had been killed at around 08:30, eight hours before Shadrick’s death. This soldier was killed when a different T-34 tank was disabled at the battle and one of its crew members attacked nearby troops with a PPSh-41 “Burp Gun”. In the confusion of the battle, many of the wounded and dead troops were left behind by retreating American troops, and a large part of the force was also captured; consequently, the identity of this first combat fatality remains a mystery.
Either way, the carnage that began in Sarjevo in 1914 continued its long march through the Twentieth Century. We’re still not done with it today.
…the first Corvette rolled off the assembly line in Flint, Michigan.
On this day in 1914, a Serbian nationalist assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria-Hungary, setting in motion a series of events that led to a century of warfare and helped create the world we live in today. The Middle East, Soviet Russia, the Cold War, the hegemony of the United States- all these came from this one act of violence. The world has never been the same.
On this day in 1692 an earthquake devastated Port Royal, Jamaica, Captain Morgan’s pirate headquarters and widely regarded as the “most wicked city in the world”. The damage was so severe that it was never rebuilt, and the pirates’ army’s sway over the Caribbean was pretty much ended.
Check out the book Empire of Blue Water for the story.
Aaarh! indeed.
On this day in history in 1865 General Kirby Smith, Commander of the Confederate forces west of the Mississippi, surrendered, bringing about the traditional end of the American Civil War. Whether the War actually ended then or that the South actually lost are still undecided, considering current events…