Indian War Veterans in the US Army of WW I

Bundy, Scott, Pershing

Dickman, Howze, Ligget

The US Army modernized in 1903 when the last Commanding General was succeeded by the first Chief of Staff. However the soldiers of the Old Army remained in service well into the 20th century, many veterans of the Indian wars serving in the US Army of World War I. A few are listed below.

Omar Bundy: 3rd Infantry 1884-1890. Indian Wars-Montana 1887. WW I-Commanded 2nd Division, VI Corps and VIII Corps 1917-1918.

Hugh L. Scott: 7th Cavalry 1876-1895. Indian Wars-Nez Perce, Pine Ridge. WW I-Chief of Staff US Army 1914-1917, Root Mission to Moscow, 1917.

John J. Pershing: 6th Cavalry 1886-1892. Indian Wars-Apaches and Pine Ridge. WW I-Commander in Chief, American Expeditionary Force.

Joseph T. Dickman: 3rd Cavalry 1881-1890: Indian Wars-Arizona 1882. WW I-3rd Division, IV Corps, I Corps, 1917-1918.

Robert Lee Howze: 6th Cavalry 1888-1896. Indian Wars-Pine Ridge (Medal of Honor). WW I-38th Divion, 3rd Division, 1917-1918.

Hunter Ligget: 5th Infantry 1879-1897. Indian Wars-Montana 1879-1887. WW I-41st Division, I Corps, 1st Army, 1917-1918.

Officers of high rank are easily documented but hundreds or thousands of veterans of the Plains Wars and the Southwest Desert were still in service with the AEF.

The French saluted members of their forces who were recipents of the Legion of Honor, symbolized by a red ribbon. So many Americans showed up in France wearing the red ribbon of the Indian Wars Campaign that there was much consternation regarding etiquette. The US War Department added two black stripes to the ribbon to avoid embarassment to our French Allies.

Major James B. Ronan II is a Fellow of the Company of Military Historians.

United States Cavalry Served on the Western Front

2nd Cavalry: Coat of Arms, Troopers in 1917, Distinctive Unit Insignia

In 1917 the United States Army had 25 regiments of cavalry. Due to conditions on the Western Front, regiments 18 through 25 were converted to artillery. Most cavalry  remained in the United States patrolling the border with Mexico. However, the 2nd, 3rd,  6th  and 16th Cavalry served in Europe. They performed remount, courier and other duties. 

In August 1918 a provisional squadron the the 2nd was organized for field service, operating with 1st, 42nd and 89th Divisions and during the Meuse-Argonne Offensive; the only U. S. Cavalry to fight on the Western Front. 

The shield of the regiment’s coat of arms is orange, as it was organized in 1836 as the 2nd Dragoons. Troopers are shown wearing typical field uniforms in the U.S  in 1917. The distinctive insignia is worn on the uniform. The fleur-de-lis represents the regiment’s service in France. 

Major James B. Ronan II is a Fellow of the Company of Military Historians.

New England Connection-Three Regular CW Regiments

Coats of Arms: 14th, 16th and 17th Infantry

These regiments were raised when President Lincoln expanded the Regular Army in 1861. 

The 14th served with Sykes’ Division of Regulars (2nd Division, 5th Corps, Army of the Potomac). Its depot was at Fort Trumbull, New London Connecticut.  CW service is commemorated by the white cross (the badge of the division) on the shield. 

The 16th was formed from the 11th Infantry in 1866. The depot of the 11th was Fort Independence, Boston, Massachusetts. Civil War service of the 11th is commemorated on the 16th’s coat of arms by the sheaf of wheat and pitchfork on a white cross, representing the 11th’s fight in the Wheat Field and Devil’s Den at Gettysburg. 

The 17th had its depot at Fort Preble, Portland, Maine. Civil war service is remembered by the white cross and the wall representing the Stone Wall at Fredericksburg. The 17th is the only US regular infantry regiment to have captured a rebel commerce raider. Company C, 2nd Battalion, of the regiment captured the commerce raider, Archer, in Portland Harbor on 27 June, 1863. Most of the new recruits for the 17th were from maine and throughout the Civil War the 17th was known as the “Maine Regulars”.

 Major James B. Ronan II is a Fellow of the Company of Miltary Historians http://www.military-historians.org/

The Siberian Expedition

Coats of Arms: 27th Infantry, 31st Infantry

US Forces were also sent to Siberia on 8 August 1918 and included the U.S. Regular Army’s  27th and 31st Infantry Regiment (then assigned to the 8th Infantry Division). They landed in Vladivostock. The political and tactical situation was exteremly confusing and frustrating. US forces were withdrawn on 1 April 1920. 165 Americans were killed. 

Both the 27th and 31st have long Asian service but the the 31st is known as “America’s Foreign Legion”. The regiment was raised in the Phillipines in 1916 and in addition to Siberian service was surrendered  to the Japanese in 1942, was reorganized in Korea in 1946 and never set foot on U.S. soil until 1958. 

Both regiments commemorate their Siberian service with the images of polar bears on their coats of arms.

The Other Regulars

James Madison Robertson

During the the 19th century, about 25 percent of  officers in the regular army were appointed from civil life or commissioned from the ranks. 

James Madison Robertson was born in New Hampshire and enlisted in 1838. He served in the 2nd Artillery as private, corporal and quartermaster sergeant and was commissioned in the 2nd in 1848 after serving in the Mexican War. He continued to serve in the 2nd Artillery and was promoted to captain in 1861.

He commanded composite Battery B & L, 2nd Artillery during the Peninsula Campaign and was brevetted major for Gaines Mill, lt. col. for Gettysburg, colonel for Cold Harbor and brig. Gen. for meritorious service while Chief of Horse Artillery in the Army of the Potomac. 

Because the five regiment artillery structure of the regular army artillery branch in the 1860s did not provide for higher rank, as did the infantry and cavalry, Madison commanded a brigade of horse artillery in his brevet rank from 1863. At war’s end his lineal rank was still captain. 

Madison was promoted to major in 1874 and transferred to the 3rd Artillery, retiring in 1879. He died in 1891. 

Major James B. Ronan II is a fellow of the Company of Military Historians http://www.military-historians.org/

US Forces in North Russia

American Expeditionary Force, North Russia

Based on orders from President Woodrow Wilson, General John Pershing disptched a force to the city of Archangel in North Russia on 27 August 1918. These forces consisted of the 339th Infantry, the 310th Engineers, the 337th Field Hospital and the 337th Ambulance Company (about 4500 officers and men). These men were draftees originally assigned to the 85th Division and entered service from Michigan and Wisconsin. They saw much hard fighting suffering about 400 killed and wounded and were not withdrawn until 1919. 

Major James B. Ronan II is a fellow of the Company of Military Historians http://www.military-historians.org/

US Units that Served on the Western Front

The 371st Infantry Regt., Military Police, 78th Infantry Division, US Army uniforms, 1914-1918.

The 371st Infantry Regiment was a National Army unit made up of draftees. Although assigned to the US 93rd Division, it served as an independent unit of the French 13th Corps. The Red hand was the original insignia of the 93rd but was not adopted. The 371st’s colors were decorated with the French Croix de Guerre with Palm for action in the Meuse-Argonne Campaign. 

Over 15,000 officers and men served as Military Police during the war, directing and handling traffic, preventing straggling and maintaining order. 

The 78th Division was also a National Army unit. The French described it as a “bolt of lightning that left the field red with enemy blood”, hence the division’s shoulder sleeve insignia. The 78th spent 40 days on the line and suffered over 7,000 casualties.

 The blue dress uniform of the US Army was not issued to enlisted men after 1917 and officers never wore them. Seen in service uniform are a lieut. of infantry, a corporal of artillery and an enlisted man of infantry wearing the rainbow insignia of the 42nd Infantry Division. The divison was a National Guard formation; its units came from all over the United States. Douglas MacArthur commanded a brigade of the 42nd (and later the division). Also serving in the 42nd was Col. William J. (Wild Bill) Donovan of the 165th Infantry, later head of the OSS in WW II. 

Major James B. Ronan II is a Fellow of the Company of Military Historians http://www.military-historians.org/

Two United States Regiments That Served in the American Revolution

5th Artillery, 182nd Infantry

The oldest regiment in the U.S. Regular Army is 5th Artillery. The Headquarters Battery of the Regiment’s 1st Battalion  was organized in 1776 as the New York Provisional Company of Artillery and has been in continual service ever since. This unit  served in the Continental Army as Captain John Doughty’s Battery of Lamb’s Artillery Regiment and as the 2nd Battery, 2nd Continental Light Artillery. It was engaged at Long Island; Trenton; Princeton; Brandywine; Germantown; Monmouth; Yorktown; New Jersey 1776; New Jersey 1777; New Jersey 1780; and New York 1776. In 1783, when the Continental Army was disbanded, this unit was the only portion of it retained in United States service. Service in the Revolution is commemorated by the Liberty Bell on the shield and by the crest, taken from the arms of the family of Alexander Hamilton, one of the original officers. It is the only unit of the Regular Army with service in the Revolution. 

The oldest regiment in the U.S. Army is the 182nd Infantry of the Massachusetts National Guard. It has been in continous existence since 1636. It was called to active service on 19 April 1775 and served as Gardner’s Regiment, Bond’s Regiment, the 25th Continental Regiment and the 7th Massachusetts Regiment, Continental Line. It was engaged at Lexington, Boston, Quebec and New York 1778 and 1779. The regiment was mustered out of Continental service in 1783. 

Your state’s Adjutant General will have information on Revolutionary service by local units.

Major James B. Ronan II is a Fellow of the Company of Military Historians http://www.military-historians.org/

Three Book Reviews – Greece and Rome

Tacitus

Annals and Histories. Cornelius Tacitus. Alfred John Church and William Jackson Brodribb, trans. Alfred A. Knopf, NY, 2009. Hardcover; 850 pages, bibliog., maps, notes, index. $32.00. ISBN:978-0-307-26750-4.

This Everyman’s Library edition contains four of Tacitus’s works. Included are Annals, Histories, Agricola, and Germania. Tacitus is possibly the greatest Roman historiographer and every major work on the period of the early Empire refers to him. His writing is valuable because he chronicles an age when political correctness involved unseemly flattery to the rulers of Rome and Tacitus will have none of it. In the Annals he chronicles the period between the death of Augustus to the demise of Nero, an age of debauchery, political murder, and desperate suicides. Regrettably, much of the reign of Claudius and all of Caligula’s has been lost, but the sense of the work does not suffer. The chaos that ensued within and on the borders of the Empire prior to the establishment of the Flavian dynasty is described in the Histories. Tacitus praises the life of his father in law, Cnaeus Julius Agricola, the man who consolidated Roman rule in Britain and indirectly slaps down the less civic minded toadies who fawned on the successors of Augustus for their own profit and to the detriment of the state. Finally, in Germania, he exercises an already established ancient literary form, the ethnography, in describing the peoples of Germany in and out of the Empire.

Readers not familiar with ancient history can use the genealogical and chronological tables to sort out the appearance of the of the assorted relatives and successors of Augustus in the Annals (there are a number of people named Drusus, Nero, Caius, and Julia) and the maps help with ancient geography. For those who are interested, the website www.ancient.about.com presents a gazette of ancient and modern names. Similarly, the website www.forumancientcoins.com reproduces splendid maps of Roman Europe that are useful when reading Tacitus.

Cornelius Tacitus (c. AD 58-c.116) was a Roman provincial from what is now Provence who became a military tribune, senator, praetor and priest. He corresponded with Pliny and his rise to prominence is probably evidence of his learning.

The introduction (by a reader in Ancient History at Oxford) makes some nonsensical parallels to modern history and is to be regretted. However, the combination of four books in one volume is wonderful at such a low price and this book is highly recommended for students of ancient history

James B. Ronan II

Xenephon

 

The Landmark Xenophon’s Hellenika. Xenophon. ed. Robert B. Strassler; trans, John Maricola. Pantheon Books, New York. 2009. Hardcover,; 672 pp., illus, notes, annotations, app. index. $40.-375-432255-3.

The third addition to the Landmark series of classical Greek history, Hellenika concentrates on Athens and Sparta and the events transpiring between 411 and 362 B.C. This edition is designed to take its place in the series with Herodotus’s History and Thucydides’ Peloponnesian War. Diplomacy, politics, and warfare continue the saga of ancient Greece and its struggle with the Persians and with itself. The clash of Athens and Sparta and the attendant allies and the shifting alliances of the period contrast sharply with our school boy notions of the ancient Hellenes. Oligarchic Athens and militaristic Sparta belie the Golden Age and our view of Persia is changed by the its use diplomacy instead of armed force. Cyclopean walls and huge fleets, well equipped armies, and the huge amounts of money, (in weights – a talent equaled about 60 pounds of gold), raised and expended demonstrate the determination of the factions in Greece and Greater Greece to resist the “barbarians” and to gain hegemony over the Aegean. Hellenika ends the story of Greek versus Persian and precedes the appearance of Alexander.

The author is the famous Xenophon (430?-355? B. C.) of the Anabasis and thirteen other classical works. He was a soldier, Athenian exile, and a participant and observer of these events.

The Landmark series are wonderful books, geared to the reader who is not a classicist. They are filled with maps, timetables, and explanatory notes and appendices. It is virtually impossible not to understand what is going on and where and when these events transpired. Even the quixotic explanations of translation and accuracy are interesting and do not hamper enjoyment of this classic of Western literature.

This work is highly recommended.

James B. Ronan II

Scipiop Africanus

The Ghosts of Cannae, Hannibal and the Darkest Hour of the Roman Republic. Robert L. O’Connell. (NY: Random House, 2010). Hardcover; 310 pp., illus., maps, notes, biblio. $27.00. ISBN: 978-4000-6702-2.

Long the desired technique to win a battle, Cannae is either a goal to be attained in war fighting or a situation to be avoided in fighting a battle. Carthaginian Hannibal’s victory over the Romans in 216 B.C. has captured the imagination of western military thinkers since at least the 16th century. While the double envelopment that proved fatal to the Romans is widely known, less well known are the political and military factors that preceded and flowed from the battle. The Ghosts of Cannae captures the whole military situation during the Second Punic War in the Mediterranean Basin and the host of ancient players who struggled for mastery of the middle sea. That conflict was only tangentially between two city states. It really was a conflict the Spanish based, Carthaginian Barca family versus the Roman Republic. And it is a chronicle of Roman refusal to give up and Hannibal’s inability to force them to surrender. Replete with heroes and villains, the skillful and the blunderers and miscalculations on both sides, the world of the ancient Mediterranean, although complex, is made far more interesting. The reader will be stimulated in part because the text is interspersed with citations from ancient historiographers to back up the author’s assumptions. Regrettably they are all Roman. Apparently the Carthaginians were not writers. And the readers admiration for the resilience of the Romans will only increase.

The author is a career intelligence officer and lecturer at the Naval Post Graduate School. He has written four histories and a novel.Written in a breezy, anti-scholarly style (there are, for example, many references to “pachyderm panzers”) the subject matter is well researched and presented. In the reviewers opinion the ultimate victors of the Second Punic War should be and are an example for the United States of America This work is highly recommended.

James B. Ronan II

These reviews appeared in 2009-2010 in the Company Dispatch, the book review digest of the Company of Military Historians http://www.military-historians.org/

General John Pershing’s Outstanding Soldiers of the American Expeditionary Force

Woodfill, York, Whittlesley

In his memoirs, My Experiences in the World War, General John Pershing, Commander-in-Chief of the American Expeditionary Force, named three outstanding soldiers of the AEF. All distinguished themselves in October 1918 during the Meuse Argonne Offensive.

The Outstanding Regular was 1st Lieutenant Samuel Woodfill, 60th Infantry Regiment (5th Division). Woodfill was a regular soldier who had 18 years of service in 1917 and had reached the rank of sergeant. Woodfill was an outstanding marksman.He was commissioned in the infantry and while leading his unit near Cunel, France, Woodfill single handedly attacked and destroyed four German machine gun emplacements. He used his markman’s skills to estimate where the German machine gunner’s head would be over the machine gun’s muzzle flash and shot the gunners. After expending all his ammunition, Woodfill entered the last position and dispatched the enemy with a pick axe. He was awarded the Medal of Honor and after the war, returned to the ranks and retired from the Army. During WW II he was recalled and served as a major.

Alvin C. York was a blacksmith and noted marksman when drafted. Initially applying for concientious objector status, he changed his mind and was assigned to the 328th Infantry Regiment (82nd Division). When his patrol was surrounded by Germans near Chatel-Chenery, France, York captured a German unit, slaying 28 Germans and capturing 132 others, winning the Medal of Honor. Pershing named him the Outstanding Draftee of the AEF. He returned to civilian life. During WW II he attempted to re-enlist but was to old. Notwithstanding he was appointed a Colonel in the Tennesse State Guard and an honorary Colonel the Signal Corps giving inspirational addresses to soldiers.

 Charles Whittlesly, a lawyer, joined the Army in 1917 and became an officer in the 308th Infantry Regiment (77th Division). As major, he commanded the famous “Lost Battalion” near Charlevaux Mill in the Argonne Forest. For five days, surrounded by German troops, he held his unit together, fighting off attacks and resisiting all German offers to surrender until his unit was finally relieved. He typified the fighting qualities of the National Army (later the US Army Reserve). Also awarded the Medal of Honor, he disappeared at sea in 1921.

All three men were selected to participate in the ceremonies interring the US Army’s Unknown Soldier in 1921.

Major James B. Ronan II is a Fellow of the Company of Military Historians http://www.military-historians.org/