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Prisoner of war

 The Union army marched Lieutenant Cherry and other captives from Doles’s Brigade to the rear and held them for several days. Crab described his experience: After being crowded up with other prisoners in the rear of Grant’s army for a few days, I was put upon a small boat, Swanee, on the Chesapeake Bay and carried to Point Lookout. I was not landed there but taken to Fort Delaware in Delaware State and there landed and put into officers’ quarters. There were 2,200 of them [officers]. Crab was fortunate to have avoided Point Lookout, which sits on the Maryland shore of the Chesapeake Bay. It was the largest of the Union’s…

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Yellow Tavern

 On May 12, 1864, the Army of Northern Virginia suffered its greatest loss after Stonewall Jackson. The Union cavalry commander, General Philip Sheridan, took his entire force of 10,000 men from Grant’s front at Spotsylvania. His column was 13 miles long. He rode for Richmond, the capital of the Confederacy, to duel with Major General J. E. B. Stuart, our great cousin. The Union cavalry outnumbered Stuart’s cavalry two to one. Stuart set up a counterattack on the Union rear. Then he stopped by a plantation nearby where his wife, Flora, was staying with their two children. He did not have time to dismount, but leaned down and kissed Flora,…

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Capture

 Grant’s army lost almost 18,000 killed, wounded, and missing in the battle of the Wilderness. That was about 15 percent of his army.  Any other Union commander would have retreated across the Rapidan, as several had. But Grant lunged instead for Spotsylvania Court House to the east. Spotsylvania lay at a crossroads. Whoever controlled Spotsylvania controlled the road to Richmond. The Union army, beaten at the Wilderness, cheered when Grant marched them south. There was a foot race – literally – to Spotsylvania. The First Corps of the Army of Northern Virginia, commanded by General Richard Anderson after General Longstreet had sustained a severe wound in the neck, won the race. When…

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Into the Wilderness

 On May 3, 1864, the Union Army of the Potomac once again crossed the Rapidan River into Orange County, Virginia. The Yankees had been there before at Chancellorsville, Fredericksburg, and Mine Run. This time a new general, Ulysses Grant, led the offensive. The Union army comprised 120,000 men, the Army of Northern Virginia 65,000. Federal invasions in the Shenandoah Valley and the Peninsula of Virginia below Richmond prevented reinforcement of Lee’s army. Lee’s First Corps, commanded by Longstreet, lay a hard day’s march away. But when the Union army forded the Rapidan on May 3 and 4, Lee ordered the Confederate army to march toward them. Lee’s objective was to…

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The last lull in the war

 Crab wrote only two paragraphs in his memoir about the winter of 1863-64, which followed the battle of Gettysburg. The Army of Northern Virginia had set up winter quarters in and around Orange County, Virginia. The mapmakers called the place “Orange Court House.” Crab wrote about an army in hardship: We were inactive after [Gettysburg] generally, until the spring of 1864. Nothing of great interest occurred to me except much marching, sometime without shoes or very poor ones and often without provisions, except green corn or apples for several days at a time. We wintered in 1863 near the Rappahannock near Culpepper Courthouse. General Lee knew it would soon be…

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Back to the future

 Four staff sections serve large infantry formations – battalions, regiments, and divisions. A battalion in 1964 comprised about 1,200 men. Three battalions made up a regiment, and three regiments a division. Specialized units, such as tank battalions, anti-tank battalions, artillery regiments, reconnaissance units, and other elements, add to these units. At the level of battalion and regiment, the table of organization labeled the intelligence section as “S-2″; at division it became “G-2.” The purpose of S-2 and G-2 was to inform the commanding officer what he should expect of the enemy. My basic MOS (military occupation specialty) of 0200 qualified me for the Intelligence Section – one of these staff…

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March 12, 1938 — Present at the Anschluss

 Fitzhugh Carter Pannill, one of the children of Dr. William Pannill and Carrie Maria Witherspoon Pannill, saw Hitler march into Vienna in March 1938 —  76 years ago. March 12 is the anniversary of the Anschluss – the political union – in which Nazi troops took over Austria in 1938. Wikipedia offers a brief account of the takeover, which violated the Treaty of Versailles and became one of the Germans’ major steps to war on September 1, 1939. The circumstances of the takeover – even to the referendum, which the Nazis called a plebiscite – foreshadow the Russian invasion of Crimea. F. C. Pannill was a lawyer, born July 8,…

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Leaving San Onofre

 No graduation took place at Camp San Onofre. Our only document was a photograph of Charlie Company – including a few NCOs, such as the First Sergeant, whom we rarely saw, and our glowering troop leaders, whom we saw too much. The training schedule covered weapons and tactics of the combat infantryman. Just as the Marine Corps considered every man a rifleman, infantry training familiarized us with weapons and tactics. In an emergency, a unit could turn clerks and cooks into riflemen. The 1st Marine Division had transformed the rear echelon into reinforcements during the campaign at the Chosin Reservoir in North Korea in 1950. Well worth reading is L.…

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Pannills in the Army of Northern Virginia

 Battlefields operated by the National Park Service often contain a bookstore. You find material there you never knew about. In the bookstores of the Eastern battlefields, I discovered the Virginia regimental histories. I could not afford all of them: they were small gray hardback volumes published for each regiment and priced at $25 each. One bookstore describes them as follows: In 1974 Harold Howard determined to publish a history of every Virginia regiment that served in the Civil War. The first book was published in 1982, the last in 2004. Each book contains a unit history and annotated muster roll including every soldier known to serve with the unit. Each…

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The pleasures of infantry training

 After Christmas week in Midland, I boarded the flight to Los Angeles. This trip carried a bonus. Orders required that we leave a base only in dress uniform. In winter that was the forest-green uniform with tan wool shirt and tan field-scarf (that is, a necktie). The utility work uniform we did not wear among civilians. The airline seated me at the front of the plane in a group of facing seats. Across from me already was seated a pretty young college girl who was traveling back from Colorado City, Texas, to Pomona, California. To show how much boot camp had changed me, my first thought was of my shoes.…

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