Memorial Day: Two headstones on a batttlefield

Two headstones sit off to the front side of the small cemetery beside Willis United Methodist Church.  The cemetery and church, while not part of the national battlefield park, are part of the Glendale battlefield.

The 69th Pennsylvania Infantry marched past the church to fill a gap in the Federal lines, just a half mile northeast, during a critical phase of the June 30, 1862 battle.  One of the Confederate formation engaged was Brigadier General James Kemper’s brigade.  In his official report, Kemper wrote:

A more impetuous and desperate charge was never made than that of my small command against the sheltered and greatly superior forces of the enemy.  The ground which they gained from the enemy is marked by the graves of some of my veterans, who were buried where they fell; and those graves marked with the names of the occupants, situated at and near the position of the enemy, show the points at which they dashed against the strongholds of the retreating foe.

One of Kemper’s veterans was Captain Joel Blackard, of Company D, 7th Virginia Infantry.

Service records show Blackard hailed from Smyth County, in southwest Virginia.  He’d only months before been elected captain of the company.  Kemper singled out Blackard for special mention in his report, but offered no other details of the captain’s death.  Still his headstone marks, as Kemper said in that July 1862 report, the advance of the regiment.

Next to Blackard’s headstone is that of another fallen warrior.

Staff Sergeant John H. Park served as the flight engineer on a B-26 bomber in the 552nd Bomber Squadron, 386th Bombardment Group based in England in the summer of 1943.   On September 8, 1943, his plane, nicknamed “Margie”, took part in a raid on the Lille-Vendeville airfield in occupied France.  Over the target, “Margie” took a hit from anti-aircraft fire.  Lieutenant Romney J. Spencer, piloting “Margie,” managed to nurse the plane on one engine to within five miles of the Cliffs of Dover.  Losing altitude, Spencer ditched the bomber in the English Channel.  During the crash, Park fell into the bomber’s nose.  Park was either killed by the impact or otherwise unable to escape from the rapidly sinking plane.  He was the only member of the crew to go down with the bomber. (a very detailed account of the mission was written by Chester Klier, historian for the 386th Bomb Group, for the B-26 Crewmembers Website.)

Park’s name appears on a tablet of missing aircrews at the Cambridge American Cemtery and Memorial, Cambridge, England.  And an additional memorial headstone stands next to that of Captain Joel Blackard in the Willis Church Cemetery.

Two headstones that link wars and battles fought a half a world and decades apart.

Richmonding for a Day

Yesterday the aide-de-camp and I took up roads south and traversed around Richmond.  In recent years (after my relocation here to Northern Virginia), I’ve visited sections of the Seven Days Battlefields.  But, as I realized yesterday, I’ve not traversed the whole in one tour since my teen years.

One of the themes I’ve picked on of late is how our understanding of an event is formed, for better or worse, by the content at first exposure.  That might be markers at Shiloh… or in this case the visitor center at Richmond.

I remember a day in 1982 when the family piled out of that old red Ford.  This was our entry-way, our portal, into Richmond and the story of the Seven Days Battles. After the obligatory orientation film (the NPS kept those under fifteen minutes back then… imagine you have fifteen minutes to cover the entire story of wartime Richmond?), we stepped out to the back.  From there, we viewed “Richmond,” taking note of the interpretive signs with key points of interest to the Civil War tourist.

On that summer day, the words in the many books I’d read on the Peninsula Campaign were indelibly merged with personal views of the battlefields.  The landscape with rich greens replaced the black-and-white photos from the history books.  Folds in the ground improved upon non-topographical maps.  All of which improved my understanding.

But that experience also imprinted some subjective leans.  Although my father often slowed down to read the historical markers, in places heavy traffic prevented full reading.   Battle sites with confusing or congested roads were recalled as “confusing” battles which needed more study.  Or in the case of Seven Pines, a battlefield not worth much study as the field is paved over.  At least that was my formative assessment back then.  Of course now days my assessment is a bit more mature.  But remains tainted by that first experience, only seeing the site from the back of a car on a hot July day.

Yesterday, the ADC and I “walked” as much of those battlefields as we could.  He and I walked trails, explored earthworks (out of the way earthworks mind you!), pulled off at waysides, and strolled on the sidewalks of residential streets where once were open fields and open battles.  Yes, we did “walk” Seven Pines.  Walked it as best one can.

Of course, he’s in typical pre-teen boy mode.  He wants to know where soldiers were, framing the questions with “good guys” and “bad guys.”  At that age, events must be black-and-white, good-or-bad, right-or-wrong.  The shades of gray come with maturity of understanding.  Or at least that’s how I understand it.

Still I wonder how his understanding will evolve over the years that follow.  His portal to Richmond is, indelibly so, the new visitor center at the old Tredegar factory complex. Different starting points for journeys  across the same ground.  How much will our understanding differ?

Grant and his Generals

How many of the generals in this painting can you name, without using references?*

The painting hangs in the National Portrait Gallery. The photo does not do the work justice. But the location, hanging over one of the stairways, allows visitors perspective from several good angles. Artist Ole Peter Hansen Balling put motion in this painting, implying if not imparting progress towards the end of a long, bloody war.

When I view the painting, an observation offered by a former commander comes to mind. “Battles, campaigns, and wars,” he would say, “are not won by a single man, even he be a commander. Rather they are won by a team unified by a leader.”

* According to the interpretation offered with the painting, the generals are, from left to right: Thomas C. Devin, George A. Custer, Hugh J. Kilpatrick, William H. Emory, Philip H. Sheridan, James B. McPherson, George Crook, Wesley Merritt, George H. Thomas, Gouverneur K. Warren, George G. Meade, John G. Parke, William T. Sherman, John A. Logan, Ulysses S. Grant, Ambrose E. Burnside, Joseph Hooker, Winfield Scott Hancock, John A. Rawlins, Edward O.C. Ord, Francis Preston Blair, Alfred H. Terry, Henry W. Slocum, Jefferson C. Davis, Oliver O. Howard, John M. Schofield, Joseph A. Mower.