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April
April
1, 1866: This
date is April Fool’s Day – it is coincidence; not
intention – for April Fool’s day does figure into this
sad story. There
is a saying that “some guys have all the luck,” but
sometimes just the opposite is true.
Sometimes a guy can’t beg, borrow or steal even
an ounce of needed good luck.
Also, it was a fact that everyday life on the
frontier could be fraught with danger.
Such a combination was the case for Private Stephen
T. Hallock, who was serving in the army at out-of-the-way
Fort Klamath, Oregon Territory.
Garrison duty there was boring, and leave to visit
distant Rogue River settlements were few.
Yet, Hallock was one of six lucky soldiers who
received such a leave.
That visit, however, was where his luck ran out.
The soldiers were due back at Fort Klamath by March
1, and when they met to leave for the fort, Hallock
wasn’t there. With
weather setting in, the others set off expecting Hallock,
to catch up. Hallock
was considered a responsible soldier, and they knew that
if they set a “normal” pace, he would eventually
overtake them somewhere along the 100-mile trail.
He didn’t, and upon their return to the fort,
Hallock was listed as AWOL.
On this date, one of Hallock’s five comrades left
Fort Klamath to try fishing on a near-by creek.
Dangling from a pole bridge spanning the creek, he
found Hallock half in and half out of the icy water.
Blue and swollen, his muddy clothes frozen to his
body, he was unconscious and barely alive.
Shouting for help brought other soldiers and they
carried Hallock to the fort.
It was too late.
Despite every effort to treat frostbite, Hallock
died the next day. Distraught
over the sad fate of their friend, the five soldiers
backtracked to unravel the story.
Hallock had left the settlements a full day after
they departed. He
had then been caught in a heavy rainstorm that both soaked
him and turned the trail’s hard snow into slush.
Finding no evidence of fires, they determined that
in wet clothes with wet blankets, he had suffered little
to no protection from the cold.
Constantly fighting a losing battle against the
elements and hypothermia, they found he had often stumbled
and fell, and at one point he had even wandered off and
then back onto the trail.
They found black powder on the snow where with
shaking hands he had desperately attempted to reload his
pistol. Hallock
had tried in vain to fire signal shots, but only one
chamber fired -- all the percussion caps on the other
chambers had been snapped without discharge – wet
powder, wet percussion caps or both.
At that point Hallock’s friends realized how very
tragic the end had been.
The bridge where Hallock was found was within sight
of the fort. The
one signal shot he had managed to fire had indeed been
heard, for one of the five had been on guard duty on April
1st. He
had heard the single shot, but as it was April Fool’s
Day, he had simply believed someone was pulling a prank.
April
15, 1892: Today
in The Creede Candle, the Creede, Colorado
newspaper, the following is reported:
“J.J. Dore was out prospecting Saturday and
struck a find that will bring him more gold and silver
than half the claims located in the camp…of a stone
shaped like a man’s foot protruding from a bank of soil.
There was evidence of a recent slide…, which
brought the foot to view.
His curiosity aroused, Dore used his pick and
shovel and revealed enough of the body to convince him
that he had found the body of a man turned to stone.”
Promptly named “Colonel Stone,” the petrified
man was transported into Creede by wagon: “probable that
this is the most perfect and interesting, petrification
ever found.” Soon
“Colonel Stone,
the Amazing Petrified Man,” was on display at the
Vaughn Hotel for twenty-five cents a pop.
Observing all of this, and realizing its
moneymaking potential, was one of the West’s great con
men, Soapy Smith.
He negotiated the purchase of Colonel Stone for
$3000. However,
the newspaper further reported: “it required some lively
discussion with fists and guns to get away with it.”
Colonel Stone was laid out on a straw mattress in
Soapy’s Orleans House Saloon.
In the soft, eerie light of flickering kerosene
lamps, throngs of curiosity seekers paid their quarters
and listened to Soapy’s colorful lectures about how
Colonel Stone’s was the only body of its kind in the
entire world born right there in Creede’s own good mud.
(Actually, Colonel Stone was a six-foot cement man
that had been discovered in a Denver warehouse, hauled to
Creede in a box, and then hidden in a hillside pending
“discovery.”) Eventually
Soapy was run out of town.
NOTE:
This is the very same Soapy Smith (actually James
Randolph Smith II) that “took over” Skagway with his
con-man tough guys and on July 8, 1898 was killed in a
shootout – both his and the shooter’s tombstones can
be seen in the cemetery there.
April
26, 1805:
Only two weeks after leaving winter quarters at Fort
Mandan on the Missouri River in today’s North Dakota,
Captain Meriwether Lewis, sights the mouth of the
Yellowstone River. Lewis
had left the rest of The Corps of Discovery to proceed on
foot making scientific observations.
Captain William Clark followed with the boats and a
majority of the men. Lewis’
journal, written in his own hand, reads, “I
ascended the hills from whence I had a most pleasing view
of the country, particularly of the wide and fertile
vallies formed by the missoui and the yellowstone
rivers…The whole face of the country was covered with
herds of Buffalo, Elk, & Antelopes; deer are also
abundant.” The
next day Clark measured the mouth of the Yellowstone
finding it 858 yards wide, with 297 yards of that being
the river itself.
May
May
1, 1892 (Approximate): Many
towns in the American West sprouted up before there was
any formal law and were therefore often “run” by some
tough element until the “good guys” took over.
An example can be found in the wild mining town of
Creede, Colorado. The
power in town was the confidence man and gambler, Soapy
Smith. One
day in late spring, a tough gambler known as The New
Orleans Kid landed in town and established a shell game on
a folding table right in front of Soapy’s Orleans Club
saloon. The
city boss stepped to the door of his establishment and
shouted, “I want this outfit moved and d----d quick!”
Without any law in town to act, The Kid saw no
reason to move from such a profitable location. That
set things in motion and a gang of thugs appeared forcing
him away. The
Kid then made it known that if Soapy or any of his bunch
got in his way again, he would ventilate the problem with
his pistol. That
night, as Joe Palmer, one of Soapy’s men, stepped out of
the Orleans Club, someone hiding across the street shot
off his thumb. Palmer
jumped behind cover, bandaged his hand, and returned fire.
All through the night, with loud oaths, gunshots,
and cries of pain, Palmer and his adversary chased each
other through the streets of Creede.
The next morning The New Orleans Kid was seen
limping out of town.
May
8, 1945: This
day is remembered as VE Day,
which stands for Victory in Europe
Day. It is the
date when the Allies formally celebrated the defeat of Nazi Germany
and the end of Adolf
Hitler's Third Reich.
When doing research for one of his books, American
historian and author Stephen Ambrose was having a beer and
bull session with some veterans of the European war, and
one un-named vet had a particularly interesting take on
what World War II meant.
The following is what he said:
Imagine
this. In the
spring of 1945, around the world, the sight of a
twelve-man squad of teenage boys, armed and in uniform,
brought terror into people’s hearts.
Whether it was a Red Army squad in Berlin, Lipzig,
or Warsaw, or a German squad in Holland, or a Japanese
squad in Manila, Seoul, or Beijing, that squad meant rape,
pillage, looting, wanton destruction, senseless killing.
But, there was one exception: a squad of [American}
GI’s, a sight that brought the biggest smiles you ever
saw to people’s lips, and joy to their hearts.
Around the world this was true, even in Germany,
even after September 1945 – in Japan.
This was because GI’s meant candy, cigarettes,
C-rations, and freedom.
America had sent the best of her young men around
the world, not to conquer but to liberate, not to
terrorize but to help.”
What was true in 1945, is still true today.
May
30, 1838: In the
1830’s encounters between Anglo-Americans and Comanches
in Texas were just beginning.
Neither people had yet a clear idea of the other.
Yet, even in this early mix, the “cultural
pollution” of the white man’s tools, utensils and
weapons was changing the world of the Comanche.
The following comment is typical: “One day when I
was home, in walked a big buck Indian.
I had just made a successful bake of bread and was
exceedingly proud of it…the big scamp sized up
everything, spied my bread, picked it up and walked off
with it…” Clearly
this white woman did not feel particularly threatened, but
that would certainly change in time.
On this date the following report of a visit by
Comanches to Texas president Sam Houston was reported in
the Houston
Telegraph and Texas Register:
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All
expected to meet a band of fierce, athletic warriors with
sinewy limbs and gigantic frames, but what was their
astonishment on arriving at the President’s House, to
behold paraded there about 25 diminutive, squalid,
half-naked, poverty stricken savages, armed with bows and
arrows, and mounted on wretched horses and mules!
Every feeling of admiration was dispelled at once,
and our citizens viewed them with mingled feelings of pity
and contempt…their squaws and children were scattered in
all directions through the city picking up old tin plates,
iron hoops, clippings of tin, glass bottles, and similar
rubbish which they appeared to consider extremely
valuable…
Setting
the description’s open racism of the times aside, the
white expectation of Last
of the Mohicans-like “dignified” Indians was
unfulfilled by stark reality.
By the supposed standards of the Anglo-Americans,
these native people were a disappointment: they were poor
to the point of scavenging, appeared dirty, physically
weak, and could hardly be considered any kind of a real
threat. Time
would prove this impression wrong, of course, as the
Comanche warrior was a superb horse-back fighter – a
member of what would eventually be called “the finest
light-cavalry in the world.”
June
June
7, 1944: Yesterday
was “The Longest Day” – the WW II D-Day invasion of
Hitler’s “Fortress Europe.”
Of the five Normandy beaches selected as invasion
landing zones, the American landing beach codenamed
“Omaha” proved to be the worst.
In every way it was a killing zone.
Today the popular Pulitzer Prize winning American
journalist, Ernie Pyle, files in part the following report
from Omaha Beach:
It
was a lovely day for strolling along the seashore.
Men were sleeping on the sand, some of them
sleeping forever. Men
were floating in the water, but they didn’t know they
were in the water, for they were dead.
For a mile out from the beach there were scores of
tanks and trucks and boats that were not visible, for they
were at the bottom of the water – swamped by overloading
or hit by shells, or sunk by mines.
On the beach itself, high and dry, were all sorts
of wrecked vehicles. There
were tanks that had only just made the beach before being
knocked out. There
were jeeps that had burned to a dull gray.
There were big derricks on caterpillar tracks that
didn’t quite make it.
But there was…more human litter.
There were socks and shoe polish, sewing kits,
diaries, Bibles, hand grenades.
There were the latest letters from home.
There were toothbrushes and razors, and snapshots
of families back home staring up at you from the sand.
There were pocketbooks, metal mirrors, extra
trousers, and bloody, abandoned shoes.
There were broken-handled shovels, and portable
radios smashed almost beyond recognition, and mine
detectors twisted and ruined…
Pyle
even wonderingly found a tennis racket.
Summing it up, he said that the items were “gear
that would never be needed again by those who fought and
died to give us our entrance into Europe.”
Note:
Ernie Pyle reported from both the European and
Pacific theaters of World War II, and like so many
soldiers about whom he reported, he too eventually paid
the ultimate price. On
April 18, 1945 Pyle was instantly killed by Japanese
machine gun fire during the invasion of Okinawa (actually
on a small island off-shore called Le Shima).
Today his remains are interred at the National
Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific at Honolulu.
The following is what historical novelist Jeff
Shaara says about Ernie Pyle:
…the
loss of Pyle would have a devastating effect on the men in
the ranks. Of
all the reporters who had accompanied the troops in all
theaters of the war, Pyle was by far the most beloved.
From North Africa to Europe and now to the Pacific,
the columns Pyle sent back home had humanized the troops
by telling their stories directly, experiences comical,
absurd, and tragic. He
gave the troops their own voice…everywhere he went, Pyle
obliged as many troops as he could, moving among the men
with his trademark typewriter slung over his shoulder,
offering good cheer and an eagerness to listen that the
average GI had found nowhere else.
Also
see the 1945 Hollywood film The
Story of GI Joe (actually entitled Ernie
Pyle’s Story of GI Joe) starring Robert Mitchum and
as Ernie Pyle, Burgess Meredith.
The film premiered two months after Pyle’s death
and received four Academy Award nominations including Best
Supporting Actor for Mitchum.
In the opinion of this Historical Footnote writer,
the aftermath scene of Mitchum’s death, is one of the
most touching in the entire “war-movie” genre.
June
17, 1915: Our local
paper has a daily item entitled “Today in History.”
The same little column appears in other papers too
and comes from a central source (HistoryOrb.com).
Anyway, on May 17, 2015, I noted an entry about a
major league baseball pitcher who set a still-standing
record for innings pitched in relief. I
sought further information on my computer and
lo-and-behold found that the correct date for this
pitching record was actually set one-month later: June 17
– thus the date of this Footnote.
George Washington “Zip” Zabel pitched for the
Chicago Cubs, and on this date he was sent into the game
as a relief pitcher after two outs in the very first
inning. Apparently
the starting pitcher, Burt Humphries, just couldn’t get
it in the groove. Zip
went on to pitch 18 1/3 innings winning the game 4 to 3
against the Brooklyn Robins (later to become the Brooklyn
Dodgers). Zip
Zabel’s 18 1/3 innings of successful relief pitching
still stands as a major league baseball record.
George Washington Zabel – named, in fact, after
the general/president – was born on February 18, 1891 in
Wetmore, Kansas and passed away at age 79 on May 31, 1970,
in Beloit, Wisconsin.
Zip was 24 when he set the record, but his best
year as a major league pitcher was actually the previous
year (1914) when he led the league in games finished and
had an ERA of 2.18 through 29 games.
Interestingly, Zip Zabel’s signature as a Chicago
Cub can still be purchased on eBay – not on an actual
baseball card - it is rather a plain 3 x 5 note card
bearing his signature.
Well, I suppose one could call that a “baseball
card” – after all, it is a card signed by a baseball
player.
June
25, 1876: At the
Battle of the Little Bighorn, George Custer divided his
forces. One of
the sections was led by Major Marcus Reno, who was ordered
to take three companies into the river valley and attack
the south end of the Indian village.
In this effort, Company G was commanded by 1st
Lieutenant Donald McIntosh.
Initially meeting light resistance, Reno ordered
his men to dismount and form a skirmish line, but as
warriors rallied to meet the threat, he retreated into
timber along the river to form a defensive perimeter.
The situation quickly unraveled, and when the
brains of his scout, Bloody Knife, were blown into his
face, Reno lost control.
They retreated back across the river with the
troopers of Company G being some of the last to leave the
timber. McIntosh
never made it. He
was pulled from his horse, killed and mutilated.
Two days later when the relief column came upon the
scene, the bodies in the valley, on Custer’s battle
site, and where Reno made his stand on the hill above the
river, were quickly – and not very completely –
“buried where they fell.”
In May 1877, Lt. General Philip Sheridan ordered
his brother, Lt. Col. Michael Sheridan to recover the
bodies of the officers.
He was escorted by Company I of the 7th
Cavalry, and in early July the detachment arrived on the
battlefield. Bones
scattered around the original individual burial sites were
gathered, reinterred, and marked with cedar stakes.
The bones of officers were placed in coffins: those
on Custer Hill on July 3rd, and those in the
valley and on Reno Hill on July 4th.
Only Lt. John J. Crittenden remained “buried
where he fell” as directed by his father.
The remains of McIntosh were re-interred at Fort
Leavenworth National Cemetery, but in 1909 they were again
disinterred and moved to Section I at Arlington National
Cemetery. On
May 12, 1910, his widow, Mary, joined him there.
Buried nearby is Francis M. Gibson; McIntosh’s
brother-in-law, who as a member of the defensive position
on Reno Hill survived the Little Big Horn.
In June 1995, a finger bone with a ring was
discovered in the Reno valley fight area near McIntosh’s
memorial stone. The
ring, which was inscribed with McIntosh’s initials,
those of his wife, and the date of their marriage was thus
identified as McIntosh’s wedding band.
Of course, the finger bone was also his.
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