Leaves, Lighthouses, and Liberty

It's taken the better part of a week, but the Colonel has just about fully recovered from his latest "vacation."

On the comely and kind-hearted Miss Brenda's, and the Colonel's, bucket list was a trip to Maine and New Hampshire in the early fall to look at leaves and lighthouses.  A flight to Boston from Memphis (the nearest airport to the Colonel's vast holdings here at the shallow northern end of deep southern nowhere) got them deep enough into enemy territory to be able to claim operational long-range reconnaissance patrol status, and before the leaf peeping and lighthouse looking could commence in earnest, a walking tour of Beantown was in order. 

Eleven point oh one miles later (not gonna make the Colonel a liar over one one-hundredth of a mile) the Colonel and his bride proclaimed, "Check!", and headed for Portland.

Maine, that is.

"Lobsta."

Lighthouses.

Long, circuitous drives in search of said lighthouses.

Long, excruciatingly stays at the site of each lighthouse while the comely and kind-hearted Miss Brenda photographed each from every conceivable angle save that of a drowning sailor.

Wait, you want to know why the Colonel didn't talk about what he saw in Boston?  You probably think the Colonel's love of history would have made a walking-tour immersion into mid-18th Century colonial unrest over a distant and tyrannical government's high taxation and restriction of self-governance the highlight of the entire week-long trip.

Meh.  Experiencing enough of that here early in the 21st Century.

In fact, Colonial Americans enjoyed far lower taxation and far greater local political freedom than do 21st Century Americans...  but, that's grist for another post. 

The comely and kind-hearted Miss Brenda did get her picture taken in Cheers, so the Boston death march was not a total waste.

With the lighthouses of coastal Maine in the rear-view mirror, the Colonel and his best friend drove west into the White Mountains -- the Colonel wonders how long that appellation will withstand the incessant encroachment of political correctness on freedom and common sense -- and settled in for a few days of taking pictures of every single orange leaf, covered bridge, and waterfall in the entire region of central New Hampshire.

The White Mountains are quite picturesque in the fall -- no doubt about it.  The comely and kind-hearted Miss Brenda has extensive photographic evidence. 

The highlight of the trip -- for the Colonel, anyway -- was a visit to Lexington and Concord on the exfil leg of the patrol.  

The Colonel is pleased to report that his movement from Concord back to Boston went a lot more smoothly than it did for the red-coated regulars on the 19th of April in 1775.   He tried to imagine, at various stops on the route, the terror and frustration felt by the King's soldiers as they were ambushed and harried by a swelling horde of farmers armed with firearms that in many cases were superior to their own.  "Aren't these folks British, too?" they must have wondered.  "How dare they defy the King's authority!"

The Colonel also tried to imagine what motivated thousands of farmers from across middle Massachusetts to converge on the Redcoat column that day.  Why did the man, whose farm and family outside of Bedford were not really threatened by the British regulars' occupation of Boston, answer the call to arms against the King's troops?  What motivated him?  Was he afraid that the Redcoats would expand their occupation of Boston to farms and villages of the interior?  Wouldn't his, and his fellows', act of violent rebellion on the 19th of April make expansion of regular army activity outside of Boston more possible? 

The Colonel doesn't believe that the man from Bedford was animated by some grand notion of American independence or a philosophical principle regarding the inherent rights of man.  No, it is far more likely that the man from Bedford grabbed his firearm and joined his neighbors and friends because they were his neighbors and friends. He wasn't going to be the man to say, "No, son, I wasn't there.  I didn't go when my friends went.  It wasn't my fight."

The Colonel believes -- without a doubt in his military mind, and, without a qualm about the contradiction -- that what really motivates men to acts of righteous violence is love.  Men dress it up in manly terminology -- comradeship..., loyalty..., honor -- but the motivator is love.

And love is local. 

When the next revolution comes -- and it will come, it always does -- the spark may be a single man's action, or a single bureaucrat's over-reach.  But, the fuel for the fire will be the bonds between neighbors and friends.

So it was in the spring of 1775.  The farmers who chased the regulars back into Boston, and who then formed the thousands occupying the heights around Boston, had far more pressing personal requirements.  They had planting to do.  But, the majority stayed on the heights.  Not for American independence -- that notion was still a year away from Jefferson's illumination and the Continental Congress' grudging declaration.  

The man from Bedford stayed on the heights because his friends and neighbors stayed.  

Liberty springs from local love.                              
          

Bears and Rainbows

A trip to the local Walmart the other day provided the comely and kind-hearted Miss Brenda -- and her manly-man, the Colonel -- with more than enough laughs for the week.  

The Colonel's vast holdings here at the shallow northern end of deep southern nowhere lie a few miles north of the center of the southern cultural universe: Oxford, Mississippi.  Oxford would be just another unremarkable southern town, were it not for the presence of its raison d'etre -- a rather remarkable university whose nickname is tattooed on the hearts of its alumni...  

Ole Miss

Home of the Rebels...

Former home of Colonel Rebel...

Former home of Rebel Black Bear...

Current (and temporary) home of Tony the Landshark...

Future home of some other spineless attempt to appease a tyrannically unappeasable minority with a politically acceptable mascot.  Heck, at the current pace of the administration's race toward the event horizon of the soul-sucking black hole of political correctness, a lump of mud will eventually be entertained as mascot material... and be found wanting by some progressive (the most incorrectly used word in the current cultural zeitgeist) social justice whiner for its passive aggressive retro-reference to a by-product of a culturally appropriated geologic process.   

But, the Colonel digresses... 

There is a remarkable love-hate relationship between Oxford and Ole Miss. The town loves their money, but hates the students -- particularly their rich daddy-bought SUV-causing traffic that congests a local road infrastructure designed for half as many vehicles as travel the streets when school is in session.  (And, don't get the Colonel started on the choking carmageddon of an SEC home football game.)

To drive down one of Oxford's main thoroughfares during rush hour is to invite collision with either, a rich daddy-bought SUV driven by a coed dividing her attention roughly 90/10 in favor of the latest OMG text over the vector and velocity of her minimally-guided wheeled missile; or a rich daddy-bought monster pick-up driven by a testosterone-overdosed frat-rat dividing his attention roughly 90/10 in favor of the OMG-texting coed over the lyrics of the latest rapine rap (for the LSU fans following along, that leaves zero percent of attention to the velocity and vector of the rich daddy-bought monster pick-up). 

If one survives the death-race on Jackson Avenue, one still must negotiate store parking lots through which race coeds and frat-rats at very nearly the same velocity and errant vectors achieved on surface streets. 

So... the Colonel and his best friend limit their trips to town to coincide with the ebb of the daily traffic tide (settle down, Bama fans -- this is an rtr-free zone) and minimize their trips to town by maximizing the errand-running and resupply efficiency of each trip.  The SOP (Standing Operating Procedure for the meager civilian readership of this egregious waste of precious rod and cone time -- not to be confused with Standard Operating Procedure which would imply universal use of the Colonel's and the comely and kind-hearted Miss Brenda's unique spouse squad procedure) employed by the Colonel and Miss Brenda upon safe arrival at a store front is a sacrosanct routine born of years of shopping survival success.  

Step 1. The Colonel vigilantly escorts the comely and kind-hearted Miss Brenda across the parking lot and through the store's front door.  Great care is exercised to ensure that a minimum 5-yard buffer zone is maintained surrounding the Colonel's bride to prevent inadvertent jostling of the most precious of the Colonel's possessions (yes, he used the word possession to describe the comely and kind-hearted Miss Brenda -- deal with it). 

Step 2. The spouse squad member whose personal shopping list contains the least number of items located in the least disparate aisles of said store procures a shopping cart.  Great care is exercised in the selection and preparation of the shopping cart to ensure it is clean and serviceable.  

Step 3. The spouse squad member whose shopping list contains the least number of items is responsible for security, navigation, and efficient loading and organization of the shopping cart.  Ordinarily, particularly when shopping at Kroger, the Colonel has cart duty.  This does not preclude, however, the comely and kind-hearted Miss Brenda from taking temporary custody of the cart and sending the Colonel back to a previously navigated aisle to procure a missed item.  At Walmart, on the other hand, the Colonel normally has the most items on his list and the comely and kind-hearted Miss Brenda navigates the cart on her slow meander, while the Colonel ranges throughout the store finding his items on disparate aisles and rendezvousing frequently to deposit said items in the cart.

But the other day, the Colonel had just a few items on his list and they were all in the pharmacy/over-the-counter meds section.  Sounds simple enough -- but, in reality, finding just the right personal medication and/or toiletries in Walmart is actually one of the most challenging acts of shopping the Colonel ever attempts.  Ranks right up there with finding trousers in the appropriate length and waist size.  The Colonel was taking, in the estimation of the comely and kind-hearted Miss Brenda, an inordinate amount of time, so she said, "Knucklehead, you find what you need and come find me.  I'll either be in housewares or mumbledemumble."  

The comely and kind-hearted Miss Brenda returned a few minutes later and dropped a couple of items in the cart.  The Colonel was bent over scanning the bottom row of a disheveled shelf looking for the second item on his list.  Miss Brenda spoke from behind him, "I just found the cutest mumbledemumble for mumbledemumble. I'll be in mumbledemumble or..."  The ringing in the Colonel's tinnitus-ravaged ears drowned out the rest.  The Colonel stood to face her and ask for a say-again.

She was gone.  

Poof.

The comely and kind-hearted Miss Brenda's super power is her ability to disappear in a store in the blink of an eye.  Turn your head on her and she'll beam up right there in the antihistamines and roll-ons, and back down instantaneously in the dairy and orange juice.    She can also unconsciously sense the direction in which the Colonel will begin his search pattern and adopt a diametrically opposed path.

The Colonel has learned not to panic in these situations.  If he doesn't find her in his first pass through the store, he heads for sporting goods and waits for the comely and kind-hearted Miss Brenda to come find him -- she knows that's where the Colonel always ends up.   

Ordinarily, the Colonel pushes his cart through Walmart with hardly a glance from fellow shoppers.  The coeds have their noses in their phones and the frat-rats have their noses in the coeds.  The adults are too busy trying to keep from being run over by coeds and frat-rats to notice the Colonel.

But..., something was different.

A few coeds smiled at the Colonel.  A frat-rat looked at the Colonel and snickered.  A man about the Colonel's age smiled and winked at him...

The Colonel quickly checked his fly.  Barn door all secure.

What was going on?!?

Then the Colonel looked down into his cart and his blood ran cold.

Perched at the back of the cart facing forward was a stuffed animal.  
A pink stuffed Care Bear.

A pink stuffed Care Bear with a huge rainbow across its chest.

The Colonel quickly reached down and pushed the pink, rainbow-bedecked stuffed Care Bear over on its stomach.

But it was too late... 

The Colonel looked around and found a circle of folks grinning at him and one particularly dapper gentleman smiling broadly at him.

The Colonel dug his phone out of his pocket and thumbed Miss Brenda's number.  She answered in the way she lovingly reserves for only the Colonel, "What, knucklehead?  Are you lost, again?  Just head over to sporting goods and I'll come get you."

The Colonel summoned his deepest and most manly command voice, "Brenda!  You need to find me right now and take this cart!" He raised his voice a score decibels higher so as to be clearly heard in a 100 yard radius, "Your pink, rainbow-bedecked, stuffed Care Bear is drawing way too much attention!"  

The comely and kind-hearted Miss Brenda was understanding and sympathetic as always, "C'mon, Knucklehead!  Thought you were secure enough in your manhood to handle something like that. It's just a pink stuffed animal."

The Colonel's voice climbed another 20 or 30 decibels, "With a huge rainbow on its chest!"

"I know, Knucklehead.  Isn't it cute?"

"Brenda!"  The Colonel's voice was drowning out the loudspeaker calling for clean up on aisle five.  "You left the Colonel to wander around alone in a store with a pink stuffed Care Bear that has a huge rainbow on its chest!"

"Ohhh... Hahahahahaha!!!

The Colonel didn't need the phone to hear his best friend's cackle.  Everybody else in Walmart heard it.

Everybody else in Walmart heard it for the next two minutes as she slowly made her way back to sporting goods.  

                      

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! 

More Mower

It has been a wetter than normal year so far here at the shallow northern end of deep southern nowhere and the vegetation growth across the breadth of the Colonel's vast holdings has been a small percentage of nitrate short of explosive.

The Colonel and his child bride -- the comely and kind-hearted Miss Brenda -- spend an inordinate amount of their retired time maintaining scores of acres of the Colonel's vast holdings in a state of manicured perfection the likes of which won "Yard of the Month" several times when they were stationed at Marine Corps Recruit Depot Parris Island.  

The yard at Parris Island was less than an acre.

The Colonel has -- he kids thee not -- a veritable fleet of yard machines (in various states of repair and disrepair) and a bushog attachment for his tractor, Semper Field.  The Colonel has worn out his tractor and needs a new one, but the comely and kind-hearted Miss Brenda hasn't been convinced of that need just yet.  What she has been convinced of -- because she is the primary driver of them -- is the need for a new yard machine.  But, not just a new yard tractor...

She wanted something bigger.

She wanted something stronger.

She wanted a commercial grade machine that would cut grass quicker than the clippers cut recruits' hair at the Parris Island barber shop.

She wanted a machine that would mow a four foot swath of yard at velocities approaching the speed of stink at a chitterling cooking contest.  

She wanted a machine that would plow through the acreage surrounding the Big House here aboard Egeebeegee like Sherman through Jimmy Carter's home state.

She wanted a machine that she could strap on and fly. 

The Colonel and the comely and kind-hearted Miss Brenda will celebrate (with appropriate pomp and circumstance) forty-two years of wedded bliss on the last day of the current month.  The Colonel has expended considerable effort finding just the right gift to symbolize his appreciation for the unwavering faithfulness, indomitable patience, and indefatigable fighting spirit displayed by his bride over the last forty-two years.  

He got her a Husqvarna MZT52 zero turn mower pushed by a 23 horsepower Kohler engine (imagine the Colonel's best Tim the Toolman monosyllabic man grunt here).

The Colonel wonders what she'll get him.

Sleeping Beauty

For years -- forty-one years and eleven months, to be exact -- the comely and kind-hearted Miss Brenda has complained bitterly about the Colonel's snoring.

She's a very sensitive soul, so the Colonel never really took her seriously.

Besides, the Colonel never heard himself snoring.

A few years ago, the Colonel began to detect that the comely and kind-hearted Miss Brenda was becoming even more sensitive.  Her nocturnal activities were becoming more pronounced and increasingly directed at the Colonel.  

He was starting to lose sleep.

Where a gentle midnightly nudge had heretofore roused the Colonel from the depths of slumber just enough to cause him to adjust his sleep position to a supposedly snore-safe modified prone position, the comely and kind-hearted Miss Brenda was now resorting to an ever so-slightly increased physical pressure...

Whooomp! "Breath!!!"

"Wha..!  Sweetie!  Why did you just punch me in the chest?"

"You weren't breathing!"

"Whaddaya mean the Colonel wasn't breathing?  He'll die if he stops breathing!"

"I know!" The comely and kind-hearted Miss Brenda was clearly concerned with the Colonel's health and welfare.

"Look, Honey, the Colonel appreciates your clear concern for his health and welfare, but let him explain to you how respiration works.  Involuntary muscle contractions expand and compress the chest cavity, forcing air in and out of the lungs.  There's a slight pause between exhalation and inhalation -- that doesn't mean the Colonel has 'stopped breathing'."  

"I know how breathing works, knucklehead!  Remember, I'm the one in the family with the real education.  You had stopped breathing for a longer time than just a slight pause!"

"Dear, a business degree from Mississippi University for Women hardly qualifies you to make medical judgments." 

"Well, a Master of Science in Human Resource Management from Troy State doesn't make you a scientist!"  The comely and kind-hearted Miss Brenda was adding educational insult to sleep injury.

"Okay, Babe," the Colonel recognized that the comely and kind-hearted Miss Brenda was clearly not sleeping well and her mood was suffering as a result.

"The Colonel can tell that you aren't sleeping well and it's making you a bit cranky..."

"Cranky!  Why, you old goat!  You stop breathing for almost a minute and then you make this loud snort and gasp, and it wakes me up thinking the roof is collapsing!"

"Dear, you needn't fear for the structural integrity of the Big House..."

"Knucklehead, a BA in Poli Sci from Ole Miss hardly makes you qualified to make engineering judgments!"

The comely and kind-hearted Miss Brenda's sleep-deprivation driven agitation was elevating the animus in the room and making it hard for the Colonel to keep the discussion focused on the facts.  He switched to his tried and true method of marital conflict resolution.

"Yes, ma'am.  What do you want the Colonel to do?"

"I want you to go have a sleep study done."

"Yes, ma'am."


A month ago the Colonel spent the night at a sleep clinic in town.  The sleep study specialist wired up the Colonel with more leads than an ANTIFA riot investigation.  The Colonel quickly fell into a deep sleep -- old infantry habits die hard -- and he was soon dreaming the dreams of a clear conscience...  

Okay.  His dreams are actually quite disturbing, but that's not important right now...

Suddenly, bright lights and a strident voice disturbed the Colonel's disturbing dreams... "Mr. Gregory!  Wake up!"

"It's Colonel!"

"Excuse me, sir?" 

"Never mind.  Man, that was a quick night..."

"Oh, no sir, you've only been asleep for two hours.  You have severe sleep apnea, Mr. Gregory, and we need to..."

"Colonel.  Colonel Gregory."

"Okay, that's cute Mr. Gregory."  The sleep study specialist was clearly in need of some remedial training in military customs and courtesies.  "You stop breathing for extended periods of time.  We need to put you on a CPAP machine."

"A cee, what?" 

"CPAP."  The military customs and courtesies challenged sleep study specialist was struggling to pull a velcro-strapped contraption over the Colonel's head.  The Colonel was not cooperating.

"What is this velcro-strapped contraption you're trying to put on the Colonel?  Just go away and let him get back to sleep -- the comely and kind-hearted Miss Brenda ain't here punching him in the chest every hour..."   

"Mr. Gregory, why are referring to yourself in the third person?"  The question was just enough of a distraction that while the Colonel paused his physical resistance to formulate a witty, yet educational, response, the military customs and courtesies challenged sleep specialist was able to slide the velcro-strapped contraption over the Colonel's lead-covered noggin and position a soft plastic cup over the Colonel's nose.

High pressure air was pumping from the soft plastic cup over the Colonel's nose.  He opened his mouth to tell the military customs and courtesies challenged sleep specialist that there was a high pressure air leak somewhere in the system...

"Gaaaaaaahhhh!  Aaaaraaagh!"  The Colonel's open pie hole provided an escape route for the high volume air pushing into his nose and he felt like he was recreating a scene from "The Exorcist." "Aaaooogaaahaarrr!  Maaagoorafff!"

"Try to keep your mouth closed, Mr. Gregory, and breath normally through your nose."  The military customs and courtesies challenged sleep specialist's calm voice told the Colonel that not only had she not yet grasped the fine points of addressing a senior, if retired, Marine officer; but, she was still completely unaware of the high pressure air leak in the system.  

"Iaat's Caaawnuull!  Caaawnull Graaawgaawwry!"  The Colonel was beginning to gain control over the high pressure air demon possessing his respiratory passages.  "Yooovv gaaawtaa haaah praaasssa aaar leaaak aain yooorrr saassstiiim!"  

"Try to relax, Mr. Gregory.  The CPAP machine's positive airflow will help keep your air passages open so that you won't snore and won't stop breathing.  Go back to sleep, now."

"Oawwkayy.  Bahhtha waayy, iaaht's 'Cawwnull'."

"Good night, Mr. Gregory."  



Funny thing, the Colonel is not only waking up each morning far more rested than before, but his chest isn't sore and bruised anymore. 

         

           
  

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... 








        

"Retreat, Hell...!"

To the west of the French city of Chateau Thierry, just north of the Marne River, a patch of woods, formerly part of a private hunting preserve, bears the name of the village of Belleau just to its north.

Belleau Wood.

The words conjure, in the minds of those who know anything of the events there 100 years ago this week, images of heroism and horror, symbolism and sacrifice.

Beginning on the 6th of June 1918, and raging for the next three weeks, the battle for the key ground of Belleau Wood -- astride a major avenue of approach for the German army advancing on Paris --  would see horrific fighting, even by the standards of a war already known for its horrors.  By the battle's end -- when the commander of the 3rd Battalion, 5th Marines, Major Maurice E. Shearer, signalled "Woods now U.S. Marine Corps entirely" -- the Marine brigade, composed of the 5th and 6th Marine regiments, had suffered over half its initial strength in casualties, including over 1800 killed in action.  

After the battle, the French government renamed Belleau Wood.  Today it is known as Bois de la Brigade de Marine.

But this battle, one of the most famed in the history of the Marine Corps, almost didn't happen.  In fact, that there was a United States Marine Corps at all in 1918 was in itself a bit of a wonder. 

Two battalions of American Marines were raised in late 1775, pursuant to a resolution of the Continental Congress, for service with the fledgling American Navy.  Although they conducted an amphibious raid or two during the Revolution, the role of Marines was primarily modeled after that of the Royal Marines -- maintaining order and discipline on ships crewed by very competent sailors, but men somewhat lacking in the order and discipline department.  As such they were hated by the Navy.

The Army wasn't all that fond of Marines either.  Their existence was viewed as duplicative and competition for scant resources. At the conclusion of the War for Independence, all Marine units were disbanded and mustered out.  As a matter of fact, the Continental navy by and large ceased to exist as well.

But, then, in 1796, the "Quasi War" (an undeclared war -- much like those of the last 70 years) with France broke out over U.S. refusal to repay war debts owed France.  The Quasi War was fought almost entirely at sea and primarily along the U.S. seaboard and in and around French possessions in the West Indies.  During the first year of hostilities the French navy decimated the U.S. commercial fleet.  The U.S. Congress finally got around to funding rearmament of an American Navy in 1798 and on 11 July 1798, Congress authorized the funding of a corps of Marines (a little over 800 officers and men) to man the to-be-built frigates and for other duties ashore "as the President, at his discretion, may direct."

The Marines had a new toehold on existence -- one they would hang onto, precariously at times, for the next century.  The naval expeditionary nature of the, albeit miniscule, U. S. Marine Corps meant that whenever a scrap broke out anywhere around the globe, Marines were nearby and often "first to fight" -- a unofficial motto that, rightfully, rankled the Army. 

When war broke out in Europe in 1914, the Commandant of the Marines Corps, Major General George Barnett, sent several officers to France as observers.  As American entrance into the Great War became more and more likely, Barnett seized on the rush to expand the entire U.S. military (from less than 200 thousand to more than 3 million) and conducted a brilliant and aggressive recruiting campaign to expand the Marine Corps, the chief inducement being voluntary service with an elite formation rather than waiting to be drafted by the Army.  When General John J. Pershing sailed to France with the lead elements of his American Expeditionary Force, a regiment of Marines sailed with him.

Pershing was not a fan of the Marine Corps, however.  He insisted that the Marines wear Army uniforms, and instead of training them for combat used them initially in support roles in the French port facilities unloading ships, and as military police.  As more U.S. support troops arrived, that first Marine regiment in France -- the 5th Marines -- and the newly arrived 6th Marine Regiment, were formed into the 4th Marine Brigade and assigned to the U.S. Army's 2d Division.  Pershing's low regard for his Marines was made manifest by his placement of an Army brigadier general, James Harbord, from his staff as the commander of the 4th Marine Brigade.  So, the officers and men of the 4th Marine Brigade were feeling a bit unappreciated and itching for a chance to prove themselves.

They got that chance at Belleau Wood.

But, wait... the Colonel said something earlier about the Battle of Belleau Wood almost not happening at all, didn't he?

He did indeed.  Here's the story.

In March of 1918, the German Army, reinforced with 50 divisions from their now-peaceful former eastern front with Russia (the Russians had overthrown their Czar and sued for peace), kicked off a series of spring offensives in a bid to end the war before the American Expeditionary Force could be full-up and ready to influence the outcome of the war on the side of the French and British.  By the end of May, the German Army had reached the Marne River just 60 miles from Paris.  There at Chateau Thierry, the Germans ran into the U.S. Army's 3rd Division and were stopped cold.  The 3rd Infantry Division of the U.S. Army to this day refers to themselves as the "Rock of the Marne."  The German thrust turned eastward down the northern side of the Marne valley. 

On the 1st of June, the lead division of the German offensive broke through the French divisions' lines at the village of Belleau and advanced into the northern edge of Belleau Wood.  The next day the Germans advanced through Belleau Wood and attacked south in order to reach and cross the Marne.  The French army retreated in the face of their onslaught.  

The 5th Marine Regiment of the 4th Marine Brigade was the only allied force in the way of the steamrolling German advance.  They had been sent the night before to help plug the hole in the French lines and had reached a position astride wide open wheat fields in front of Belleau Wood.  The French commander in their sector ordered the commander of the 4th Marine Brigade to withdraw and dig defensive trenches much further to the rear.  General Harbord refused, instead ordering the Marines to "hold where they stand."  The Marines dug shallow prone fighting positions along a low ridge through the wheat fields and allowed the Germans to advance to within 100 yards before opening up with their highly accurate '03 Springfield rifles.  Decimated, the Germans fell back on Belleau Wood.

The French wanted the Marines to fall back on defensive trench works several miles to their rear and repeatedly implored the Marines to do so.  In response to these entreaties, Marine Captain Lloyd W. Williams of the 2d Battalion, 5th Marines retorted with a line that echoes still in the lore of the Corps -- "Retreat, hell!  We just got here."  

Captain Williams succinctly summed up the feelings of all Marines past, present, and future.  When Marines get a chance to fight, they take it.  No backing down.  And, they don't like occupying permanent defensive positions -- it's destructive to morale.

Had the Marines done as the French wanted, the fight likely would have settled back into the stalemate of trench warfare that had predominated the previous four years.  The Germans would have swept through Belleau Wood and it would have remained nothing more than a patch of trees for eternity.

But, Marines are a stubborn bunch.  That stubbornness in the wheat fields before Belleau Wood meant that the Marines would have to go in and root out the Germans in Belleau Wood.             

And as long as one Marine draws breath, Belleau Wood will for eternity be the Bois de la Brigade de Marine. 

            

     

Cantigny

One hundred years ago this spring, the Great War in Europe entered its last phase.  The great continental cataclysm, begun four years previous, had claimed the cream of a generation.   On the Western Front a line of opposing trenchworks stretched from the English Channel to the Alps.  In the East, a similar stalemate line crossed the continent from the Baltic to the Black Sea.  Land operations ranged from Finland to Palestine.  The Atlantic and the Mediterranean hosted unprecedented naval warfare.  

It was a meat grinding mess.

Americans, by and large, were loathe to participate.  Some did, as volunteers, with French, British, and Canadian units; but, U.S. politicians cemented their election campaigns with promises to keep "our boys out of the war."

Unrestricted submarine warfare by the Germans ended up targeting American ships and the mood in America began to turn.  By the spring of 1917, German submarine "atrocities" -- denounced by an increasingly vociferous American press -- finally precipitated U.S. entry into the war on the side of the French and British.

Enter the most influential (and largely unknown) Mississippian of the 20th Century -- Fox Connor.  Then-Colonel Connor, of Slate Spring, Mississippi, was the operational brains of Pershing's American Expeditionary Force (AEF).  

When President Wilson tapped "Blackjack" Pershing to command the AEF, he gave Pershing one overarching commandment -- do not allow American men to be fed piecemeal into the trenches.   Pershing's and Connor's plan was to build a 3 million-man  American army in France that would be ready by the spring of 1919 -- two years after America's declaration of war on Germany -- for a war of movement to leave the trenches behind and take the fight to the heart of Germany.  A rather grandiose strategy given the condition of the American military in early 1917.

In April of 1917, the United States of America had less than 5% of the men needed in uniform.  The plan to build 100 divisions from scratch, train and equip them, and transport them to France was mind boggling.  There was no one in American uniform with experience commensurate with the task -- the U.S. Army hadn't conducted a multi-division operation against a peer adversary since the end of the Civil War.  The arms and equipment of the American army were antiquated at best.  But, a year later, the AEF was beginning to grow rapidly and Pershing and Connor were confident that given another year they would have a force ready to end the war.  

German military planners were well aware of the game-changing nature of a full-up AEF, and they were determined to end the war on terms favorable to Germany before the AEF was ready.  When Russia dropped out of the war and signed an armistice with Germany, German high command immediately began transferring scores of divisions from the Eastern Front to the West.  By March of 1918, a German offensive designed to breach the Allied defensive lines between the British and French sectors and roll up the British flank was ready to go.   

Germany needed to reduce the effectiveness of the British army in France to the point that it was no longer capable of participating in the war on the continent. With the British army eliminated, the German army could brush aside the French army and take Paris.  They needed to do all of this before the AEF was strong enough to make a difference.

To effect the breakthrough, the German high command had created several elite "shock troop" divisions by taking the best and most experienced troops from the rest of their divisions.  When the offensive kicked off at the end of March 1918, these lead divisions accomplished their mission.  However, the follow-on divisions, with many of their most effective small unit leaders gone and hampered by logistics shortfalls, were not able to accomplish their missions of quickly eliminating British strongpoints bypassed by the lead divisions.  And, attacking over ground churned by over three years of continuous artillery barrages slowed the German advance to a crawl.  The Allies were able to shift forces quickly enough to restrict the overall German advance.  

By this time, the AEF had only a handful of divisions considered combat ready in France.  To get as much manpower to France as quickly as possible, Connor and Pershing maximized the shipping available by forming divisions with minimal training in the United States and then moving them to France without any heavy equipment (trucks, artillery, heavy machine guns).  This necessitated extensive training time for divisions once they arrived in France.  And, despite continual French and British appeals, Connor and Pershing persisted in their refusal to feed American troops into the trenchworks as a manpower infusion to depleted French and British units.   

With the German offensive blunted, the Allies desired to reduce the salient in their lines.  A position on high ground near the village of Cantigny provided German forces excellent observation from which to direct artillery fires onto French forces, and was the target for a planned Allied counterattack.  Connor and Pershing lobbied the Allied high command for the mission to be assigned to an American division.  Their reasoning was that a successful attack would help them to continue to make their case that American divisions would soon be ready for commitment to Allied offensive operations under American command.  

The most experienced and ready U.S. division was the 1st Division (aka The Big Red One), held in reserve behind the French line.  At first light on the 28th of May, the 28th Infantry Regiment (Reinforced) of the 1st Division climbed over trench parapets and advanced under a rolling artillery barrage.  For the first time since America entered the war a year previous, her boys were in the attack in American units under American command.  Within the hour, they swept over the German position and advanced to more easily defended terrain a half mile beyond.  Over the next two days, the 28th Infantry Regiment withstood several determined German counterattacks.  They stood their ground, proving to the world that American fighting men could indeed fight.

The American victory at the Battle of Cantigny would be quickly overshadowed by bigger and bloodier victories over the remaining five months of the war, but the 199 men who fell should be remembered foremost.  

Until Cantigny, French, British, and German soldiers doubted the elan and effectiveness of American soldiers.  After Cantigny, the French and British had confidence in the AEF, and the Germans had a first taste of American steel.  The German army would test American mettle in the coming days -- at Chateau Thierry and Belleau Wood.  

But, that story is for another post.