A Dog Named "Heck"

The Colonel's father, the quiet and straight-shooting Mister Vernon, sat nursing a cup of hot black coffee (Gregory men don't drink iced or polluted coffee) and watching his bird-brained son's cloud of thirsty hummingbirds milling buzzily around a feeder just out of arm's reach.  For long, still minutes, broken only by the hum and chatter of the ruby-throats, the Gregory patriarch and his heir apparent (with no hair apparent) sat in the oak shade relishing the slightest of breezes blowing away the growing heat of a July morning.

"Almost comfortable out here this morning," the old man finally offered to the sparse conversation.

"Yessir."  

"Could use some rain."

The Colonel thumbed open the weather app on his phone.  "Nothing in the forecast for at least a week."

"Hmmmph. Whaddatheyknow."

"Well, it is July in Mississippi, Dad.  Ain't never much chance of rain in July."

Buzzing and chattering filled the warm air between them, again.  Sometimes bird chatter is preferable to the human kind.  But, as quiet as Gregory men can be on occasion, the urge to talk is often irresistible, and stray synapses fire to spark stories. 

"Inherited a weird dog, once."

"Sir?"

"His name was Heck.  Weird dog.  He belonged to my cousin, Al.  When Al went off to the Army, ole Heck took up with me."

"What kind of dog was he?"

"German shepherd.  Big ole scruffy, German shepherd.  Weird dog."

"What was weird about him?"

"Well, for starters, ole Heck had a broke tail.  He would follow me to Lee High School and run alongside my bike.  Got his tail stuck in my spokes once and broke a crook in it."

"Did that break him from following you to school."

"Naw. He just kept his distance."

"Ha! I bet he did."

"Weird dog.  Had a big chunk of brick that he chewed on like a bone."

"A chunk of brick?"

"Yeah, a big ole chunk of brick.  Ole Heck could hardly get his jaws around it.  He'd just chew and slobber, and roll his eyes like he was having a fit.  That brick bat had been kinda square, but Heck had the thing pretty well rounded off.  I tried to take it away from him a couple of times, but I could never pry it out of his jaws."

The patriarch looked off into the middle distance.  The birds buzzed and chattered.  The Colonel waited for the next story synapses to fire.

"Ole Heck carried that brick to school one day and one of the teachers saw him sitting on the front steps with that big ole brick bat in his mouth, eyes rolled back in his head.  She felt sorry for Heck, 'poor puppy has a brick wedged in his jaws!'  She knelt down and tried and tried to get the brick out of Heck's jaws.  She couldn't budge it.  Ole Heck just laid there with his eyes rolled back in his head, slobberin'."

"She stood up and asked, 'whose dog is this?'.   I just shrugged my shoulders.  I wasn't gonna claim that weird dog."

"Ole Heck got up and walked over to me, dropped the brick at my feet and turned and grinned at that teacher.  She glared at me for a moment and then stormed up the steps."

"Ole Heck went missing a few weeks later and my mother sent me out to look for him.  I didn't look too hard." 

 

 

Armistice Day Salute

The Colonel never really knew his maternal grandfather.    Eubanks McCrary was not much more than a name, a few faded photographs, and a handful of anecdotes -- the Colonel was a mere toddler when the man died.

The one thing about the man that had always been intriguing was the fact that he had served in the First World War.  Shame on the Colonel, but only of late has he begun to research the history of his grandfather's service. 

A few years ago, the Colonel's mother granted him custody of a small clutch of her father's documents.  When she handed them to him in a legal envelope, it felt to the Colonel like being entrusted with a most fragile fragment of our family history.  Of no inherent value in and of itself, but, to this increasingly sentimental soul, a treasure trove of not-so-trivial trivia about a man with whom the Colonel wishes for all the world to have spent acknowlegeable time.    

On the Colonel's desk this morning rests the contents of that envelope: a photograph of Grandmother and Grandfather McCrary taken several years before his death; a copy of their marriage license (married on Christmas Day, 1923); and a non-descript, paper-thin leather envelope with the faint embossing of an eagle and the words "Honorable Discharge from the U.S. Service." 

Protected within that folded leather is a two-sided document.  On the front above the seal of the United States (appropriate to this day that the eagle's talons grasp both the arrows of war and the olive branch of peace -- our nation's enemies still have a choice) are the words, "Honorable Discharge from the United States Army."   On the reverse, a summary of Private McCrary's service under the words, "Enlistment Record."
 
There are terse, handwritten blank-fillers to the right of line headings such as Name:..., Grade:...; Date and Place of Enlistment:...; etc..., but from them a quick snapshot of the man can be gleaned.
 
Eubanks McCrary, from Columbus, Mississippi, was inducted into the United States Army on May the 27th, 1918.  He was 22, single, and by vocation, a farmer.  Upon his discharge a year later he was described as in "Good" physical condition and of "Excellent" character.

Near the bottom of his Enlistment Record are four tight lines available for "Remarks." Into that small space the practiced hand of a military professional entered a shorthand account of Private McCrary's service to his nation in the Great War:

No A.W.O.L.  No absence under G.O. 45 WD 1914
Co. D. 4th Tr. Reg Camp Pike, Ark5/27/18 to 7/10/18.  Co L C.P. July ARD 7/10/18 to 9/22/18.
Co. B. 161st Inf. 9/22/18 to 10/7/18. Co. B. 137th INf 10/7/18 to 5/6/19. Cas Det 4th Rc Bn 162nd DB
5/6/19 to date of discharge.  Served in France.  Sailed for France 7/18/18. Arrived U.S. 4/28/19 Entitled to travel pay to Columbus, Miss.  

Immediately following his induction into the Army, Private McCrary reported to Camp Pike, outside of Little Rock, Arkansas and was assigned to Company D, 4th Training Regiment until his completion of basic training on July 10, 1918.  Within the next week he traveled by troop train for the East Coast, from which he sailed aboard a troop ship to France on the 18th of July, 1918. 

From what was known about the casualty rates of the horrific meat-grinder that had gone on in France since 1914, he likely never expected to see home again. 

Upon arrival in France, Private McCrary was assigned to Company B of the 161st Infantry Regiment.  That regiment, in the 81st Infantry Brigade of the 41st Division, had been one of the first units to go to France with the American Expeditionary Force in the fall of 1917.  Upon arrival in France, the 41st Division was designated a "Replacement Division" and its men were subsequently distributed as replacements to other divisions when their ranks were depleted during fighting.  The 41st Division then assumed the role of training new arrivals to France prior to their assignment to the front.
   
The Colonel's grandfather arrived in France just as the great Allied Meuse-Argonne Offensive of the war against Germany was kicking off.  One of the divisions at the forefront of that offensive -- the 35th Division -- had been in the attack for four days when, short of food and ammunition and its fighting strength sapped by heavy casualties, it was counterattacked by the better part of four of the best-trained divisions in the German army.  The 35th Division ceased to exist, for all practical purposes, as a fighting force and its remnants were withdrawn from the line.

Private McCrary was among the soldiers, newly arrived in France, who replenished the ranks of one of the 35th's four infantry regiments, the 137th Infantry.  The 35th Division was sent to the relatively quiet Somme Dieu sector on the southeastern end of the Allied front.  There, it went into defensive trenchworks and so remained until the Armistice went into effect and the guns fell silent...

... one hundred and three years ago, today.

For two decades, Americans celebrated the 11th of November as Armistice Day, in remembrance of the victory over Germany and the American fighting men who helped bring an end to "the war to end all wars."

Only, that war didn't do any such thing.

American men in uniform knew little peace during those next two decades.  Combat in defense of American interests in Latin America and even in Russia (grist for a future post) kept a sharp edge on the small cadre of American warriors who would form the backbone and animating spirit of the mighty force called on to defeat the Axis Powers during WWII.

So, after that war, and the one that followed, America began to focus it's remembrances on the 11th of November not so much on the end of what had become known by then as the First World War, but on the living men and women who had honorably served our nation in uniform. 

Armistice Day became Veterans Day.

Eubanks McCrary arrived back in the United States on the 23rd of April, 1919, less than eleven months after joining the United States Army and reporting for training at Camp Pike. Less than two weeks later he was honorably discharged and back on the farm.

He is buried in the small cemetery at Mt. Vernon Baptist Church on the eastern outskirts of Columbus, Mississippi.  Not far from his farm, now a subdivision.

A simple marker reads:

B. Eubanks McCrary

Mississippi 

Pvt Co B 137 Inf

World War I

4 Mar 1896 – 9 Oct 1958

The Colonel knows that the three dozen of you who regularly waste valuable rod and cone time perusing posts hereon may indeed be remembering that one of the Colonel's pet peeves is the aggravating and undisciplined habit of a majority of Americans to mix up the meanings and observances of Memorial Day (initially known as Decoration Day, and first celebrated by the fair ladies of Columbus, Mississippi at the conclusion of the War for Southern Independence), Veterans Day, and Armed Forces Day.

For the record: Memorial Day is reserved solely for the solemn remembrance of those who died in battle in our nation's wars, Veterans Day is reserved solely for the recognition of living veterans of the United States military, and Armed Forces Day is reserved solely for the recognition of those currently serving in the armed forces of these re-United States.  Period.  No room for discussion or latitude for mix-matching.

So, the three dozen of you who regularly waste rod and cone perusing posts hereon may mistakenly believe that you have caught the Colonel in a rare mistake  -- recognizing a deceased veteran on Veterans Day.

The operative word in the sentence above is "mistakenly."

The Colonel, sole arbiter of said (and unsaid) matters both in posts hereon and actions hereabout his vast holdings here at the shallow northern end of deep southern nowhere, is exercising the rights vested in him, by him, to declare today Armistice Day, here aboard Eegeebeegee, capital of the Tallahatchie Republic; and, therefore, takes this opportunity to come to the correct position of attention and execute a hand salute to the memory of his grand progenitor.

The REAL Volunteer State

Some of the Colonel's early Mississippi ancestors settled in a corner of what is now Chickasaw County, over 150 years ago.  The now-unincorporated community is called Buena Vista.  And, it is just about as remote as any like spot in the Magnolia State.  

The Colonel's knows a bit about remote.  He's been to some pretty far- flung and isolated corners of this big blue marble.  His own vast holdings here at the shallow northern end of deep southern nowhere vie for inclusion on that list.

But, that's not even remotely germane to the topic of this post.

What is important, and is the record-correcting nature of this missive, is the fact that one particular state, which will go un-named (but whose name is spelled with a collection of double consonants and replicated vowels) lays claim to the moniker "Volunteer State" as if it's the best or only example of crisis volunteerism.

The Colonel would like to propose that another state whose name is spelled with a collection of double consonants and replicated vowels is in fact just as, if not more, deserving of recognition for its historic volunteers.

(For the LSU and Bama grads struggling to keep up, the Colonel's paragraphs above refer to the states: Tennessee and Mississippi.)  

And now, the history lesson:

In 1836, Texas won its independence from Mexico after a sharp little fight on the banks of the San Jacinto River.  Over the next decade, the Mexican government continued to contest the boundary separating their country and Texas.  Once Texas was admitted to the Union, the United States claimed the Rio Grande River as the international boundary; Mexico claimed the Nueces River further to the north and east as the limit to their territory.

By 1846, the disagreement over the international boundary had degenerated into a series of escalating military clashes between the U.S. and Mexico.  President Polk -- in the Colonel's not so humble estimation, the greatest U.S. President of the 19th Century (don't take his word for it; look up Polk's accomplishments, in just one term, and decide for yourself) -- stationed half of the U.S. Army's regular troops, some 3,600 men, on the Rio Grande to defend the U.S. claim.  Mexico answered this provocation with force, killing American soldiers in a couple of forays north of the Rio Grande.  

The die was cast.

President Polk asked congress to declare war with Mexico and requested that 50,000 volunteers be called into service for a twelve-month enlistment to augment the small regular army for what was expected to be a quick defeat of the Mexican army in order to force Mexico's acceptance of the Rio Grande border.  

When the call went out for Mississippi volunteers, 17000 (seventeen thousand!) men descended on the Mississippi River port of Vicksburg to enlist.  To put that number in perspective, the free male population of Mississippi at the time was less than 100,000.  In other words, one in every six men in Mississippi volunteered to fight for the United States against Mexico. Factor out the older and physically unable and the ratio is nearer to one out of every three.  

Great.  The rest of you states can send your young men home.  Mississippi will lick Mexico all by itself.

But, the U.S. War Department said that Mississippi was limited to only one 1000-man regiment.  So, a competition of sorts was held in Vicksburg for a couple of weeks, at the end of which one of the finest bodies of American volunteers to ever assemble for combat stood up as the Mississippi Rifles -- so named because they were primarily armed with highly accurate rifled weapons vice the regular Army's and other volunteer state regiments' smooth bore muskets.

According to the custom of the day, most militia's and volunteer units chose their own officers by ballot.  West Point graduate and Mississippi congressman Jefferson Davis was elected commanding officer of the Mississippi regiment.  Davis had been reluctant to vote for war with Mexico, but when he went to war at the head of the Mississippi Rifles he did so without hesitation.

General Zachary Taylor, previously in command of the 3600 regular troops in the area between the Nueces and the Rio Grande, saw his force swell by 3X with the arrival of the volunteer regiments, and he was particularly pleased with the addition of the Mississippi Rifles (commanded by his son-in-law, Davis) to his command.  Once Taylor's force was assembled and equipped to his satisfaction, he marched south into Mexico intending to strike deep and bring the bulk of the Mexican army to a climatic battle.

The Mexican army had other plans.

Astride Taylor's route of march south lay the city of Monterrey with a formidable citadel commanding its approach.  Taylor did not have the resources to mount a lengthy siege, so he endeavored to weaken and reduce the defense of Monterrey through a series of attacks too complicated to tell here.  But, the garrison of Monterrey eventually surrendered the town -- the Mississippi Rifles playing key roles in many of the Monterrey engagements.

Remember, the town of Buena Vista, Mississippi the Colonel mentioned earlier? Well, it wasn't called Buena Vista when it was first incorporated.  In fact, news of Taylor's victory at Monterrey (the first capture of a major foreign city in U.S. history to that point) and the Mississippi Rifle's heroics arrived back home coincident with the incorporation of the little town in remote Chickasaw County and the founders named their new town Monterrey in commemoration.

Key to the surrender of Monterrey was General Taylor's offer of a two month armistice in return.  This allowed the Mexican defenders to evacuate Monterrey relatively intact and to join with a larger Mexican force assembling to the south.  President Polk was not happy with Taylor's decision, told him to hold at Monterrey, and sent a force under General Winfield Scott to land on the central Mexican coast at Vera Cruz and advance west on Mexico City.

In the meantime, Santa Anna (who had recently been allowed to return to Mexico under the pretense that he would help negotiate a settlement of the boundary dispute) prepared to retake Monterrey.  By the middle of February, 1847 he had assembled a force of nearly 20,000 men, albeit not as well armed and equipped as the much smaller American force.  That the date on which Santa Anna began his attack coincided with George Washington's birthday became a point around which the Americans took offense and they rallied in defense of their positions south of Monterrey at a narrow pass near the hacienda Buena Vista.  The fight that followed was a desperate one for the Americans.  Outnumbered and on several occasions outflanked by the Mexican troops, several volunteer elements of Taylor's force melted away under the onslaught.  Into one particularly dangerous breach in his lines, Taylor committed his reserve -- the Mississippi Rifles.  Colonel Davis's exhortation to his regiment, "Stand fast, Mississippians!," remains to this day the motto of the U.S. Army National Guard's 155th Regiment, of which the Mississippi Rifles was the forerunner.    

The Mississippians stood fast.  Taylor held Monterrey.  Winfield Scott later took Mexico City.  The rest is history for another blog post.

Remember the newly incorporated town of Monterrey, Mississippi?  When news of the Mississippi Rifles' stand at Buena Vista reached home, Monterrey, Mississippi was shortly thereafter renamed...

Buena Vista, Mississippi.  

The Colonel's great grandfather, Methodist minister, and namesake, Thomas Edwin Gregory, was born in Buena Vista, Mississippi 35 years later.

The Colonel wonders whether the Reverend ever knew the significance of his birthplace's name.   

The Colonel also wonders why Mississippi is not the "Volunteer State."                                        

Without a Clue

The Colonel is one Mississippian who is glad that the Union was saved.

He is an American, a citizen of the United States, and proud of it. 

But, more than pride, the Colonel feels an overwhelming sense of gratitude and privilege that he was born in the greatest, most free nation the world has ever seen.

He can make that judgement and feel that way about it because he has seen the rest of the world up close and personal.  We Americans take for granted the freedoms and opportunities about which the vast majority of the rest of humanity can only dream and for which they yearn wistfully.

The Colonel knows in his heart and head that if the Confederacy had won their independence 150 years ago, there today would almost certainly be no American superpower.  The world would be a far different one without the great nation that emerged from the crucible of civil war cleansed and re-united.  The dark ages that followed the fall of the Western Roman Empire would have have looked down-right bright and cheery compared to the darkness of a 20th Century without the United States.        

In the early days of his adulthood (and he self-refers as an adult with respect to age alone), the Colonel swore an oath of allegiance and defense to the Constitution of that Union — one to which he is bound until death. He likes to think that he would have remained loyal to that oath had he been a commissioned officer in the US Army in the spring of 1861. 

Had the Colonel been a student at Ole Miss then, he would almost certainly have joined the University Greys and gone to war as a Confederate -- almost every student did.  And, here’s the thing — he wouldn’t have had a clue about what he was really doing. Most young men don’t get a clue until late in their twenties. 

In distant retrospect, historians casually ascribe noble social and political motivations to the boys who go off to war.  The grim, nasty, horrible, stinking battlefield truth is young men don't go to war for some politician's agenda. They join, and remain in, the ranks, not out of any sense of higher purpose -- except for one... 

Each other.  

Their letters from camp are filled with yearning for home and lots of reference to the the nobility of their "cause," to be sure.  The Colonel knows, because he has penned hundreds of letters home, that what a soldier writes home is most often what he believes those at home want to hear.  But, what they don't put in writing is the one thing they find the hardest to put in words -- their love of their comrades in arms.

It is for each other, that young men fight.  Trust the Colonel on this.   

In the early years of the last century, as the American South crawled out from under a heavy blanket of bitterness and defeat to join the new day of American exceptionalism, the one over-riding emotion remained a great sorrow for the boys without a clue who had marched off to the stirring tunes of "Dixie" and the "Bonnie Blue Flag" and disappeared forever.  Southern boys without a clue  fell on battlefields and died in diseased camps far from family and loved ones who waited and watched in vain for their return.  

A southern boy without a clue who died on the battlefields of Shiloh, Antietam, or Gettysburg was often left on the field where he fell as his surviving comrades yielded the field to northern boys without a clue.      

Northern boys fell too, of course.  But, in victory, their remains were far more often buried and marked honorably.

A southern boy's grave was often a mass interment without any identifying markings.

When someone without a clue looks at a war memorial -- from any war -- what they often default to is their bias regarding the righteousness of that war.  But a war memorial is not a celebration of the war or its "causes."  A war memorial immortalizes the names of the mortal boys without a clue who advanced into the blazing guns -- not in response to a politician's speech, but in loving response to his comrade's simple "let's go."  

A vocal minority of the current crop of children -- young men and women without a clue -- matriculating at Ole Miss, stirred up by self-appointed social justice priests masquerading as teachers -- who themselves have not the first clue regarding what it means to serve in the ranks -- are agitating for the removal of the war memorial that stands prominently at the center of the campus.  

These same self-appointed social justice priests masquerading as teachers have been at the forefront of a decades-long insurgent campaign to strip the University of Mississippi of any reference to the history of the school that they deem -- in their infinitely tyrannical socialist, politically correct wisdom -- not progressive. 

Mascots, flags, and songs have fallen to their zeal to rid the world of anything they feel -- emphasis on the unlearned concept of "feeling" -- is offensive.  

Now, they find a memorial to southern boys who died in a war they didn't start offensive.  

They have crossed a line on the other side of which stands one infuriated United States Marine Colonel. 

They claim that the "cause" for which they marched and died was not just, demonstrating in their self-righteous, virtue-signally fervor that they have not the first clue about justice.  

The Colonel denounces them with every fiber of his being.  Were he still prone to the profanity that marked his former lack of self-discipline and resistance to the fruit of the Holy Spirit, the Colonel would easily make this post one that would make Patton's ghost blush.  

The statue on the campus of Ole Miss makes no claim as to any righteousness of the cause for which the Mississippi boys marched to war. It simply memorializes those who died and are mostly buried in unmarked (sometimes mass) graves far from home. 

The statue on the Ole Miss campus was paid for and erected, not by politicians, but by mothers and sisters whose last sight of their boys was their butternut blending into the ranks of their brothers.  Those mothers and sisters had no marked grave to visit.  We today have only this memorial to remind us, not of the cause, but of the effect of war.     

Leave the memorial alone — remember boys without a clue.

Stranger in a Familiar Land

Mississippi Counties in 1845

In the Fall of 1974, the Colonel left home and began his matriculation at the University of Mississippi in Oxford, Mississippi.  Over the next four years, he spent an inordinate amount of time (compared to the amount of time spent studying and attending class) exploring the kudzu-clad, stream-cut, clay hills of North Mississippi.  Although he was a stranger -- having lived elsewhere as an Air force brat for the first 18 years of his life -- the land of the Chickasaw, Faulkner, cypress bottoms and loblolly pine hills inexplicably felt like home.  

When he graduated from Ole Miss in 1978, the Colonel's travels spun an ever-widening web, but Mississippi was always in the close knit center of his heart.  Admittedly, he felt guilty every time someone would ask where the Colonel was from and he answered with "Mississippi" -- he really wasn't from anywhere.  But the farther he traveled -- sailing every sea and walking on every continent save Antarctica -- the tighter the elastic band connecting his heart to the shallow valley of the Little Tallahatchie River stretched until its inevitable rebound drew him back; a stranger in a familiar land.   

There had to be a reason for it, and the Colonel searched for that reason in the only place that ever made any sense to him -- history books.  Here's what he found, and in the finding, found himself:

Sometime very early in the 18th Century, the Colonel's great (x 8) paternal grandfather -- John Gregory -- left his ancestral home in Wirksworth, Derbyshire, England and immigrated to America.  

The Colonel wishes he could be more precise about the date on which his great (x 8) grand progenitor landed in the New World -- the best he's been able to nail down through research is the latter part of the first decade of that momentous century.  And that timing is deduced from records showing that his son, James, was born in the now extinct tidewater community of Nansemond, Virginia in 1707 or 1708.

Suffolk, Virginia stands where Nansemond was first established.  Nansemond, and old John, are all but erased from memory, thanks to a courthouse fire that destroyed most of the records genealogists use to establish family history and pedigree.  All that remains (at least that the Colonel can find) is conjecture and a date and place of death for John Gregory -- 1760, Nansemond.  

In fact, the link between John and his (supposed) son James is itself forged in fragile conjecture.  But, even if old John ain't the Colonel's "great x 8", the evidence is pretty solid that the paternal line of James Thomas Gregory extends now 12 generations, through the Colonel, and to his grandsons (aka the Hope of 21st Century Civilization), with the name "Thomas" recurring like a generational stepping stone.    

As best as the Colonel can determine, James lived his entire life farming in and around Nansemond.  He doesn't seem to have been struck with the wanderlust that infected his progeny.  His son, Thomas Bry Gregory, on the other hand, headed west as soon as he reached majority.

Thomas Bry Gregory was born in Nansemond around 1730 and sometime shortly before 1750, close on the heels of earlier piedmont pioneers, moved into north-central North Carolina -- specifically, the area around Hillsborough.  The original county encompassing the area, Orange, was later reduced at its edges to form other smaller counties and Thomas Bry's home county, in which he earned a living as a farmer, became Chatham.  

Thomas Bry married Susannah Benton coincident with immigrating to the Hillsborough District and fathered seven children.  Thomas Bry was an active participant in the colonial rebellion against the British Crown, serving in the Chatham County militia and fighting in the pivotal battle of King's Mountain in 1780.  Evidently a relatively learned and well-respected man, Thomas Bry served as a justice in Chatham County in 1781.  Sometime around 1795, Thomas Bry (about 65 years old) sold his land in Chatham County and, along with several of his grown children and their families, headed further west.

In the run-up to, and during, the war for American Independence, so-called "long-hunters" and pioneers in disobedience of the King's prohibition began exploring the territory west of the Appalachian Mountains.  In American folklore, Daniel Boone's leadership of early settlers from western Virginia northwestward through the Cumberland Gap (a pass through the Cumberland range of the western Appalachians) into Kentucky garners the lion's share of historical attention.  But as important as was the opening of Kentucky and southern Ohio via the Wilderness Road through and beyond the Cumberland Gap, the opening of a cross-mountain route into north central Tennessee (along the Cumberland River valley) was just as important to the growth of the new nation, if not so well known.  

At the conclusion of the Revolutionary War in 1783, the newly independent states struggled to pay veterans for their service.  States like Virginia and North Carolina, with borders stretching beyond the Appalachians all the way to the Mississippi River, granted parcels of land in that "unsettled" territory in lieu of monetary compensation.  North Carolina's problem was that while it had lots of land on the map to grant to its soldiers, it had no way to get them there.  In 1787, the state of North Carolina commissioned a road to run from the vicinity of modern day Kingsport to modern day Nashville, and detailed detachments of soldiers to provide security for parties of settlers heading west.  

For the first few years, the new "road" was little more than a barely discernible trail following "blazes" marked on trees.  By the mid 1790's the road was widened to allow wagons, but much of the roadway was all but impassable... and, it was Indian Territory. Throughout the early part of the decade, attacks by Cherokee war parties on traveling settlers and settlements along the road made immigrating to Tennessee the most dangerous of all pioneer endeavors at the time. 

Thomas Bry's oldest son, and the Colonel's direct paternal ancestor, Harden Harley Gregory, had also served in the North Carolina "patriot" militia.  A few, scant records indicate that Harden Harley's first wife, Hannah Curtis, died early in their marriage and he then married Lucretia Cox, by whom he had two sons and two daughters.  He was about 45 when he and his family, including three children under the age of 10 (the youngest, at five, being John Benton Gregory -- the next in the Colonel's direct paternal line), crossed the Clinch River and headed toward the new settlements near Nashborough (Nashville) 300 miles away through the wilderness.  

Although the Colonel has found no exact record of the date of this trip west, nor any recollection of the certain hardships along the way, he has been able to bracket the trip between a record of Thomas Bry's sale of his Chatham County land in 1795 and a record of the birth of the first Gregory in Tennessee -- Zinniah (daughter of Harden Harley and Lucretia), born in then-Sumner County, northeast of Nashboro in 1796.   

The Gregory's settled in Nixon Hollow on Peyton Creek, between the present day communities of Pleasant Shade and Carthage on the north side of the Cumberland River in what is now Smith County, Tennessee.  Harden Harley and his two sons -- Byrd and John, and their families -- stayed in Nixon Hollow for less than two decades before wanderlust struck again. 

The main impediment to settlement of the North American continent by Europeans had always been the fact that somebody else had already settled there.  Resistance to germs and steel proved futile in the long-run for the "native" peoples extant in the New World at the time of European arrival, but the archaeological record of the North American continent is replete with evidence that native populations themselves were rarely peaceful and sedentary from the beginning of their own arrival at the end of the last Ice Age.  The human processes of assimilation, genocide, and supplantation were in full force on the continent millenia before the arrival of Europeans whose vastly superior numbers and technology only served to accelerate those processes.  The Colonel makes no judgment, nor apology -- he simply observes and reports.

As the ever-increasing tide of European immigration flooded westward from the Eastern Seaboard in the 17th, 18th, and 19th Centuries, remnant Amerindian populations (those who survived the shock of germs and steel) were faced with three contained choices -- assimilate, resist, or move.  Many assimilated.  Some resisted -- winning a few battles, but losing every campaign. Most moved, or were removed.

As a result of land cession treaties signed between the U.S. government and the surviving Amerindian tribes (Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Creek, and Seminole) in the Southeast in the late 18th and early 19th Century, the vast majority of native populations were placed on "reservations" encompassing a small portion of their original claims or were "removed" to new lands west of the Mississippi River -- predominantly in what is now Oklahoma. 

Immediately on the heels of these cessions and removals, and with the threat of resistance all but eliminated, white settlers flooded in.  The Colonel's paternal ancestors in the late 1700s and early 1800s seem to have always been fairly close to the leading edge of the initial surge into new territories opened to white settlement.  Cherokee cessions in eastern Tennessee drew Thomas Bry and his sons into the Cumberland River valley in about 1795.  Chickasaw and Cherokee (whose "hunting ground" claims overlapped in the region) cessions in middle Tennessee, beginning in 1805, spurred those Gregorys to leave Nixon Hollow and move south. Records indicate that John Benton Gregory settled in what is now Giles County, Tennessee (on the Tennessee/Alabama line opposite Limestone County, Alabama) sometime shortly after 1810.  It was here, in Giles County, that John Benton married Sara Jane Brown in 1817.   (Sara Jane was from a quite extended family of Browns, many of whom immigrated to Tennessee from Brunswick, Virginia, and three of whom served as early governors of the state of Tennessee.)

The next Gregory in the Colonel's paternal line was John Benton's and Sara Jane's son, Brown Lee Gregory, whose birth records indicate was born in Limestone County, Alabama in December of 1819.  John Benton had been named for his paternal grandmother's maiden name (Benton) and he and Sara Jane named Brown Lee for her family name (Brown). (Incidentally, the Colonel's first son -- Joshua Lee -- carries his great x 4 grandfather's middle name.)  

The land which Limestone County currently encompasses was the scene of pitched battles between the Chickasaw and U.S. government troops on one side and "intruders" on the other.  The 1806 treaty with the Chickasaw had reserved the land west of a congressionally demarcated line running through present day Limestone County.  Intruders (a term which had been applied to white settlers as far back as early 17th Century who disobeyed government prohibitions from entering and settling on "Indian land") began squatting on land west of the demarcation line by 1808, and when conflict with the Chickasaw began to escalate, U.S. troops were sent in (in 1809) to "remove" the illegal immigrants.    

The Colonel has actually found a list of the families involved in this removal from Chickasaw lands and there is no Gregory on it. However, county histories indicate that the removal of the initial wave of "intruders" in 1809 was no real deterrent to hundreds of families who streamed into the area over the next half dozen years. The land west of the demarcation line was finally legally opened to white settlement following another Chickasaw cession in 1816 and by the end of the decade there were over ten thousand settlers in Limestone County.  

John Benton Gregory and his wife, Sara Jane, evidently moved from Giles County, Tennessee down into Limestone County during this flood of immigration into former Chickasaw lands.  Records indicate that all of their children, beginning with Brown Lee Gregory in 1819, were born in Limestone County.  Harden Harley, John Benton's father -- the patriarch who initially led the Gregory family out of the North Carolina Piedmont and into the Tennessee wilderness in 1795 -- died in Limestone County in 1830.  

The territory along the Tennessee River in north Alabama is a fine land, fertile and well-watered.  The Gregorys evidently prospered there -- John Benton and Sara Jane had eight children.  Many Gregorys from members of that family still live in Limestone County.  But, the Chickasaws were being pushed out of more and more land to the southwest and the Colonel's ancestors were soon on the move again, following the call of new land.

In 1832, the Treaty of Pontotoc Creek, signed near what is now the city of Pontotoc, Mississippi, ceded all remaining Chickasaw land to the United States in exchange for equal land west of the Mississippi in Oklahoma Territory.  Settlers poured into north Mississippi in the wake of this Chickasaw "removal."  At first, the entire northeast corner of the State of Mississippi was incorporated into one county named Monroe, after the fifth president of the United States.  As population grew, Monroe County was carved up into more than a dozen smaller counties.  

At some point in the decade or so following the final Chickasaw cession, John Benton and his family moved west from Limestone County over into the northeast corner of Mississippi.  The Colonel is still trying to document exactly when and where this move happened, but John Benton died in 1836 and is buried in present day Tippah County, Mississippi -- the first of five generations of the Colonel's family to be buried in Mississippi.  (The Colonel's father and he will make the sixth and seventh.)  When John Benton died, his wife, Sara Jane, moved back to her parents' (Brown) home in Giles County, Tennessee, where she died in 1840.    

"New" land and opportunity always lay further west for the Colonel's patrilineal ancestors, and each succeeding generation seemed to feel the pull to somewhere else.  John Benton Gregory's son, Brown Lee Gregory, left Tippah County shortly after his father's death and his mother's move back to Tennessee and struck out for Mississippi.  There he met and married Sarah Elizabeth Zinn, whose ancestors had immigrated from Germany in 1727.  Sarah Elizabeth's family had arrived in Mississippi by way of Philadelphia; Chatham County, North Carolina; Orangeburg, South Carolina; and Jasper County, Georgia.  Her family appears to have arrived in Pontotoc County shortly before 1840 -- her father Edwin Zinn is not listed in the 1837 Mississippi (Pontotoc County) Census, but is listed in the 1840 Census as a head of household in Pontotoc County.  

Brown Lee and Sarah Elizabeth settled on land in the southeast corner of Lafayette County, Mississippi, in the vicinity of a now-extinct community called Dallas.  Their first, of ten, children, Sarah Agnes, was born in 1848.  Their next child, the Colonel's great (x 3) grandfather, was born in 1850 and was named James Edwin (evidently given his middle name for his maternal grandfather).

James Edwin married Elizabeth Mauldin of Pontotoc in 1877.  Their son, and the Colonel's paternal great grandfather, Thomas Edwin, was born on March 9, in 1881.

The 1900 Census for Pontotoc County lists Thomas Edwin (the Colonel's namesake) as a 19 year-old farm laborer.  As a young adult, Thomas Edwin surrendered to the call to preach the gospel and served as a pastor in the Mississippi Convention of the Methodist Church at churches across the northern half of Mississippi.   He married Janie S. Robison of Pontotoc County and fathered four children, the first of which was Arville Vernon Gregory (the Colonel's paternal grandfather), born on January 25th, 1902.   Each of Thomas Edwin's and Janie's children were born in a different city in North Mississippi -- the Methodist Church frequently reassigned Thomas Edwin to pastor different churches; their policy of pastoral itinerancy designed to keep the focus on Christ and not on any particular preacher/pastor.

The 1920 U.S. Census lists Arville Vernon Gregory as a "monument engineer" in Columbus, Mississippi (where his father was serving as a pastor).  Around 1930, working as a monument salesman in Pickensville, Alabama, he met and married Mary Stillman Pulliam.  They had two children -- the Colonel's father, Arvel Vernon; and his sister, Marilynn.  

Arvel Vernon was born on the 21st of June, 1932 in Tuscaloosa, Alabama.  The 1940 U.S. Census lists him, and his parents, as living in his grandfather's household in Tunica, Mississippi (where Thomas Edwin was serving as a pastor) -- it was the height of the Great Depression and multi-generational households were commonplace. 

The itinerant nature of the Colonel's direct Gregory line, beginning at Nansemond in the early 1700s and wandering westward, generation by generation, until arrival in north Mississippi in the late 1840s, seemed to attenuate for several generations thereafter.  Mississippi became the geographic anchor to which the Colonel's line was tethered.  The Colonel's great grandfather lived the first half of his adult life not unlike the Colonel and his father -- moving every two or three years on assignment.  Thomas Edwin's assignment authority was the Methodist Church -- the Colonel's and his father's was Uncle Sam.   But, Thomas Edwin never left Mississippi, and he was buried in Friendship Cemetery in Columbus, Mississippi following his death in 1950.

Thomas Edwin's son, Arville Vernon, spent the first decade of so of his adult life following the elusive prospects of gainful employment in the Depression-era South.  But, he finally settled in Columbus, Mississippi, and was buried in Friendship Cemetery in Columbus Mississippi following his death in 1981.  

The Colonel's father (and the man the Colonel once thought gave acting lessons to John Wayne) graduated from Stephen D. Lee High School in Columbus in 1950.  He married Gladys Elaine McCrary on September 13th, 1952.   He enlisted in the United States Air Force early in 1953 and thereafter the itinerant nature of the Gregorys re-intensified.  Over the next two decades, Vernon (a family tradition of calling oldest Gregory sons by their middle names had begun generations earlier) travelled the world with his family in tow (with the one exception of his year in the Republic of Vietnam).  Orlando -- Birmingham -- Orlando -- Morocco -- Little Rock -- Nha Trang -- Alexandria, LA -- Panama; by the time the world tour ended in 1974, the Colonel felt alien to any place on the map.

The Colonel's father retired from the Air Force the same summer -- 1974 -- that the Colonel graduated from high school, and his family moved from Panama (where they had been stationed for the past four and a half years) back to Columbus, Mississippi.  The Colonel was barely in Columbus long enough to figure out which side of town he lived on before he packed his bags and headed to Oxford. 

Mississippi that is.  

Warm beer; sorority girls. 

Four years later, the Colonel and his bride, the former Brenda Kay Cannon (known more popularly now as the comely and kind-hearted Miss Brenda) left Oxford and took off on their own Uncle Sam funded world tour: Virginia, North Carolina, the Philippines (without Miss Brenda), Virginia again, North Carolina again, Georgia, Alabama, Hawaii, Rhode Island, South Korea, and South Carolina.

When it came time to hang up the spurs, the Colonel and Miss Brenda (whose own father had taken his family on their own two-decade world tour) didn't know where to go.  They tried Florida, but it didn't feel like home.  Something kept drawing them back to north Mississippi, and they established their forever homeplace at the shallow northern end of deep southern nowhere in 2007.

In between the myriad chores and responsibilities of managing the Egeebeegee Wildlife and Timber Plantation, the Colonel began to dabble in genealogical research.  He really only knew the barest facts about his family going back only three generations.  The same with the comely and kind-hearted Miss Brenda's family.  The more he dug into their family histories, the more he began to understand.

North Mississippi was his ancestral home.  The comely and kind-hearted Miss Brenda's, too (more about her family's American journey in a later post).  The land he holds today is not but a day's walk from land his great (x 3) grandfather, Brown Lee Gregory, settled 170 years ago.  Same county.  Same former Chickasaw hunting grounds.

(Not to be outdone by his older sibling, the Colonel's brother himself traveled the world for twenty years on Uncle Sam's dime and now lives just across the James River (in Newport News) from the land settled by John Gregory over three centuries ago -- Nansemond (now Suffolk) Virginia.)

This place -- north central Mississippi -- is as much the Colonel's homeland as even the longest-lived families hereabout, and yet he remains a stranger in a familiar land.  

That's his lot.  But, his grandchildren are gonna be natives! 

Punctatus Park

The other day, the Colonel and his bride -- the comely and kind-hearted Miss Brenda -- took their evening stroll down to the dock on Lake Brenda to feed the fish.  As the Colonel watched his best friend ladle handfuls of fish food pellets into lazy catfish mouths, he was struck by a enormous inspiration...

"Owww!"

"What are you whining about now, knucklehead?" The comely and kind-hearted Miss Brenda is always closely and carefully attuned to the Colonel's health and welfare.

"The Colonel was just struck by an enormous inspiration!"

"Greeaat.  Another project.  You haven't finished the last forty-six projects you've started over the last ten years."

"What are you talking about?  The Colonel has mostly finished most of his projects.  Besides, if he completely finishes a project, you'll just start adding your projects to his list, and..."

"Watchit, there, Marine.  The things I ask you to do are not 'projects.'  They are requirements to keep the house from falling down around our ears."

"The Colonel would hardly call setting up your quilting frame a requirement related to the structural integrity of the Big House."

"Careful there, knucklehead...  And, why must you always refer to our modest abode as the 'Big House'."

"To differentiate it from there other dwellings on the property, dear."

"What other dwellings?"

"Well, the cabin, for one."

"Cabin? What cabin?"

"The cabin the Colonel is gonna build down here next to the dock on Lake Brenda."

"Forty-seven."

"Huh?"

"That makes forty-seven projects." 

The Colonel paused for a minute, allowed his lower jaw to relax in the slack position favorable to mental calculations, and began counting his projects.

"Are you having a seizure, knucklehead?!?"

"No. Why do you ask?"

"Your pie hole was hanging open, your tongue was hanging out, and your eyes were rolled back in your head!  That's why!"  The comely and kind-hearted Miss Brenda was clearly concerned.  "You looked goofier than a Mississippi State fan with a traumatic brain injury from too much cowbell."

"The Colonel was counting..."

"Well stop!  It's getting dark and I don't want to be out here all night.  Besides, what was this great inspiration you were babbling about."

"Huh? Great insp...?  Oh! You mean the Colonel's enormous inspiration.  Well, it occurs to the Colonel that one of the things missing the most here at the shallow northern end of deep southern nowhere is a family oriented animal attraction theme park.  You know, with the price of gas and restaurant groceries climbing through the roof, folks hereabout just can't afford to drive all the way to Orlando to watch Shamu and his siblings and cousins leaping and splashing."

"Wrap up the preamble ramble, Marine.  The mosquitos are starting to bite."

"Well it occurs to the Colonel that we have the makings of a first class family oriented animal attraction theme park right here on the shores of Lake Brenda."

"Why must you persist in using my name in reference to this scummy mud puddle?"

The Colonel ignored the comely and kind-hearted Miss Brenda's shade thrown on what will soon become the central aquatic feature in the region's newest family oriented animal attraction theme park and held forth with his vision for economic development of his vast holdings at the shallow northern end of deep southern nowhere.   

"So, the Colonel is thinking it is about time these catfish start earning their keep around here.  We've been shoveling tons of fish food pellets down their lazy gullets, and..."

"Yeah, about that, knucklehead.  How much does this stuff cost?"

"You don't wanna know.  Anyway, the Colonel is thinking we've already got these fish trained to achieve vertical orientation in the water column, with mouths protruding above ALL..."

"A L L?"

"Above Lake Level.  We got 'em trained to do that to have food poured into their mouths.  Seems to the Colonel that we ought to next be able to train them to leap out of the water to get their food. Then we can train them to do flips and spins and tail walks..."

"They're catfish, knucklehead!  Nobody's ever trained a catfish to do that!  

"Exactly!  We're gonna be rich!"

"Not if the fish food bill gets out of hand, we won't.  Besides, isn't a catfish brain kinda small?  We aren't talking about dolphin or killer whale level intelligence here."

"Seems to the Colonel that's an advantage for us -- they won't know they are being exploited.  And, conditioned response is a much stronger stimulus than reasoned intelligence."

"You just made that last part up!  Your degree was in political science -- not psychology.  Besides, you didn't even go to college.  You went to Ole Miss, instead."

The Colonel ignored the rapidly darkening shade thrown and finished with a flourish, "We shall call it...  'Punctatus Park!"

"Punky what!?"

"Punctatus.  Ictalurus Punctatus -- the scientific name for the channel catfish." 

"You just made that up, too, didnya knucklehead?"

"Nope.  Look it up.

"Welp, knucklehead, if you don't get me back up to the big house before dark, you can look up the legal name for spousal abuse."

"Why, my dear, the Colonel would never lay a hand on you!"

"Yep. I know that, knucklehead.  But I am not so constrained."


The Colonel has an appointment Monday morning with a patent attorney -- this is gonna be huge!  

Big Critters

The Colonel's vast holdings at the shallow northern end of deep southern nowhere -- known to him and the comely and kind-hearted Miss Brenda as Egeebeegee -- ain't an easy place to find.  As the Colonel told a sub-contractor working on renovations to the big house who remarked about the location, "You've got to be wanting to come here.  You aren't going to just drive by this place."

Everyone who pulls off of the road through the middle of nowhere and up the long drive that curls around Lake Brenda, climbs out of their vehicle with nearly the same comment:

"Beautiful place you got here."

And then, "Any deer in these woods?"

The Colonel has taken to replying to that query with, "Nope.  The elk keep 'em run off."

The response is always a variation on the same theme,  "Elk?  Did you say you got elk out here?  Didn't know we had any elk in Mississippi.  Least wise I ain't never seen one."

 The Colonel twitches the lure enticingly, "Been watching a herd down by Lake Brenda all morning.  You musta drove right by 'em."

"Lake Brenda? Oh, you mean that there little pond between here and the road."  

"It's not a pond!  It's a lake!  Lake Brenda! 

"Uh, okay.  Whatever, mister.

"Colonel."

"Whut?"

"Not a mister.  Colonel.  Call me Colonel."

"Huh?  Oh.., heh, heh.  You mean like Colonel Reb.  I'm a State fan muhself.  Hayul State!"

"Figured as much, with your diesel pickup all painted up maroon and white..."

"Purdy ain't it.  Hayul State!"

"Musta been the diesel smoke that spooked the elk"

"Seriously?  Didn't see 'em."

The Colonel reels up the slack in the line and sets the hook, "My elk are really hard to spot.  Imported a special breed from Colorado a few years back.  Game ranch out there does gene splicing and crossed an especially elusive elk with a hyperactive chameleon..."

"They crossed a eyulk with one of them little fellas from the insurance commercial?

"Gecko."

"Tha's whut ah sayed.  Gecko insurance."

  

Or..., "Any fish in yore pond?"

"Lake.  It's a lake.  Ponds don't have names.  That's Lake Brenda."

"Uh..., okay, mister..."

"It's Colonel..."

"You mean like Colonel Reb?  I'm a 'Bama fan, muhself.  Roll tide!"

"Never would have guessed, what with the great big A on the hood of your pick-up..."

"Purdy ain't it?  Roll Tide!  Hunnert and fifty-two Nachnul Champ'ships!"

"You ever even been to Tuscaloosa?"

"Nope, but it's on muh buckit list!  Hey, you got enny fish in that there pond?  I'd like to bring the younguns out and let 'em fish..."

"No fish in Lake Brenda -- the gator ate 'em all."

"Gator!  You got a gator in yore pond?!?"

"Yep.  Big one.  Seen it pull an elk down..."

"A eyulk!  You got elk out here!"


Don't even get the Colonel started on the black panthers and sasquatches... 








        

Strange and Unlikely

May 14th, 1978 -- forty years ago, today -- the Colonel raised his right hand in a solemn oath and was commissioned a second lieutenant in the United States Marine Corps.

It was a significant, if unlikely, milestone in a strange journey.

Everything about the Colonel's life to that point (and beyond) was strange and unlikely.  He is an eighth generation Mississippian, but lived in the state barely eighteen months out of his first eighteen years.  Following his career Air Force NCO father around the world, he touched bases in Orlando, Birmingham, Orlando again, then briefly in his parents' hometown -- Columbus, Mississippi, and then Morocco (that's in Africa, for the geographically challenged), Little Rock, Columbus again (while Dad went to fight the communists in Vietnam), Alexandria, Louisiana, and then the now-extinct Panama Canal Zone.

The Colonel's father retired from the Air Force the same summer (of 1974) the Colonel graduated from high school, and his family moved back to Columbus to start a different life.

Well, it might have been different for Mom and Dad -- they've been in Columbus ever since -- but for the Colonel and his brother it was more of the same for the better part of the next three decades.  Little Brother took the obvious path for a member of our family -- went to school at Mississippi State and then spent a twenty year career in the family business; retiring as a Major in the United States Air Force.

But, the Colonel has always been a rebel.

At the conclusion of a "rather lackluster" (actual quote from more than one interviewer) high school career, but armed with "surprisingly strong" (another actual quote) college entrance test scores, the Colonel applied for appointment at any and all U.S. military academies.  

A few weeks before the end of school, the Colonel received letters from all of the above thanking him for his interest in national security and declining his offer to be the anchor man in the Class of 1978.  It was a bit of a let-down; but, no real surprise -- "rather lackluster" high school record and all.

The Colonel had also applied for the relatively easier to obtain ROTC scholarships from the Air Force, Army, and Navy.  "Relatively easier" actually turned out to be "not-so easy" in the Colonel's case.  He received letters from the Air Force and Navy thanking him for his interest in national security and declining his offer to spend their money on a fool's errand.

The Army, on the other hand, saw the slightest glimmer of potential in the Colonel to become commissioned cannon fodder to replace the commissioned cannon fodder lost in the recent imbroglio in Southeast Asia as commissioned cannon fodder in the Fulda Gap (the likely Red Army invasion route into Western Europe if and when the Cold War went hot).  The Army first told the Colonel he was an "alternate" for a four-year ROTC scholarship.  Then, as hundreds above him on the list declined the honor of becoming commissioned cannon fodder in the Fulda Gap, the Army informed the Colonel that he was the recipient of a full-ride at the university of his choice (provided said university had Army ROTC and low enough entrance standards).

The Colonel was days away from signing an acceptance letter to become the next generation of commissioned cannon fodder in the Fulda Gap, when he received a call from the commanding officer of the Marine Barracks whose responsibility it was to provide security for the Navy facilities in and around the Panama Canal Zone.  This Marine officer had been tasked with contacting the Colonel and telling him that he had been accepted for a Marine Corps Option, Naval ROTC Scholarship.  It was obviously a task for which he was not overly thrilled.

"Good Morning, Mr. Gregory.  My name is Lieutenant Colonel Hardjaw McJarhead (not his real name).  Congratulations.  You are the recipient of a Naval ROTC (Marine Corps option) Scholarship."

"Excuse me, sir, I didn't apply for the Marine scholarship."

"What?!?  Why the h... errr... why not?"

"I dunno. Guess I didn't think Marines went to college."

After a long pause, "Well, young man, I have a letter with the signature of the Commandant of the Marine Corps on it saying that you can go free of charge to any school of your choice -- provided that school has an NROTC program and low enough entrance standards.  Do you want to be a Marine or not?"   

"Don't think I do.  The Army has offered me a scholarship and I think I'm gonna take it."

"The Army?!?"  McJarhead's (not his real name) disdainful tone of voice carried the clear implication that ARMY was not the only four letter word with which his vocabulary was armed. "Why would you want to be commissioned cannon fodder in the Fulda Gap when you can be a Marine?!?" 

The word "Marine" rolled off McJarhead's (not his real name) tongue as if he were reciting poetry -- that is, if Marines recited poetry... which they don't.  Limericks maybe.  Okay, maybe a line or two from Shakespeare's "Henry V" or Tennyson's "Charge of the Light Brigade," ... Look, Marines ain't real poetic... just sayin'.  But the way a Marine says the word "Marine" can best be described as a tonal mixture of pride and reverence..., with a side order of arrogance.

McJarhead's (not his real name) pronunciation of the word still rings in the Colonel's ears -- or maybe that's the caffeine-enhanced tinnitus.  Anyway, the Colonel, for the first -- certainly not the last -- time in the next four decades of his strange and unlikely journey, heard "Marine" spoken in a way that made his chest tighten and his pulse quicken.

As the Colonel pondered whether he wanted to be a Marine, McJarhead (not his real name) broke the silence with a barely concealed sneer, "Well, you probably ain't got what it takes to be a Marine..."


Four years later, following a "rather lackluster college career" (actual quote from an interviewer), the Colonel heard the following:

"To all who shall see these presents, greeting:

Know Ye that, reposing special trust and confidence in the patriotism, valor, fidelity and abilities of Thomas Edward Gregory, I do appoint him a Second Lieutenant in the United States Marine Corps to rank as such from the 14th day of May,1978. This Officer will therefore carefully and diligently discharge the duties of the office to which appointed by doing and performing all manner of things thereunto belonging.

And I do strictly charge and require those Officers and other personnel of lesser rank to render such obedience as is due an officer of this grade and position. And this Officer is to observe and follow such orders and directives, from time to time, as may be given by me, or the future President of the United States of America, or other Superior Officers acting in accordance with the laws of the United States of America.

This commission is to continue in force during the pleasure of the President of the United States of America for the time being, under the provisions of those Public Laws relating to Officers of the Armed Forces of the United States of America and the component thereof in which this appointment is made.

Done at the City of Washington, this 14th day of May in the year of our Lord Nineteen hundred and seventy-eight, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and second.

By the President"

Last Saturday evening, the Colonel had the great personal honor to serve as the Guest of Honor for the University of Mississippi NROTC Commissioning Ceremony at which seven graduating midshipmen had pinned to their shoulders the rank insignia of ensigns and second lieutenants.  The ceremony was long enough -- though appropriately so -- that the Colonel had opportunity to review the strange and unlikely forty years since his own commissioning ceremony.  

He thought back to the winding road that took him from Ole Miss on a journey that literally criss-crossed the globe.  He remembered the comrades in arms whose kinship transcends family ties.  He recounted the deployments, separations, scars, and tears.  

The Colonel felt again the tightening in his chest and the quickening of his pulse as he stood to the strains of the Marines' Hymn.  

And when he could scarcely stand another shot of pride and reminiscence, the Colonel looked down to the front row and locked eyes with the most unlikely of all of his blessings and caught her smile.

The comely and kind-hearted Miss Brenda was where she has always been since the Colonel was fifteen years old -- there..., quietly beaming her confidence and love.