Foreign Burial of American War Dead

The Foreign Burial of American War Dead – A History by Chris Dickon (McFarland, 2011) [http://theforeignburialofamericanwardead.com/]

As Chris Dickon so vividly demonstrates in his new book The Foreign Burial of American War Dead – A History, it wasn’t always the policy of the US government and military to not leave anyone behind, to account for all combat casualties and provide an honorable burial for those who have given their lives for their country

Rather it is a tradition that was only slowly and painfully realized and a policy that must be continually explained to each new generation so those who sacrificed their lives for the benefit of the living are not forgotten

This long neglected subject caught the interest of Chris Dickon and he has done a masterful job of researching the facts and presenting them in an interesting and readable way. Well documented with extensive footnotes, a reliable index, appendix and many photos, Dickon’s book will certainly be the primary reference work on this subject for many years to come.

While this book chronicles the changes in attitudes about the care for the graves of those killed in combat, it is also timely and pertinent in regards to the graves of the first known combat casualties abroad – the remains of the 13 officers and men of the USS Intrepid who were buried in Tripoli in 1804 and remain there today.

As Dickon explains in his recent OpEd article Bring U.S. naval hero home to America [http://hamptonroads.com/2011/09/bring-us-naval-hero-home-america], “The right of return for American war dead wasn't fully implemented until after the Civil War, and it excluded those who had died in earlier years. Until that time, there had been just two apparent official attempts to bring home military members buried abroad.”

That would be John Paul Jones, who Teddy Roosevelt had repatriated from his grave in Paris and reburied at Annapolis, and Richard Somers and the men of the Intrepid, who still remain buried in Tripoli today, five in marked graves at a walled cemetery and eight buried under a Martyr’s Square outside the walls of the old castle fort.

From the Shores of Tripoli to the Halls of Montezuma, Flanders Field and Normandy, Dickon’s book chronicles the fascinating story of the burial of American war dead, and describes how the American Battle Monuments Commission (ABMC) owns and oversees the maintenance of the foreign cemeteries, though not the graves in Tripoli.

As Dickon returns to the status of the situation in Tripoli at various times in the chronology, it is a recurring theme that brings the history into the realm of current events that are still happening in revolutionary Libya.

As explained in the first of a number of fact-filled Appendix on various sites around the world, he notes the names of the three officers buried in Tripoli – Richard Somers, Henry Wadsworth [Longfellow’s uncle] and Joseph Israel, and names the ten seamen and their ships. He explains: “It is believed that ten seamen were buried on the beach, and three officers buried together on land above the beach. Known and possible reburials since 1804 have resulted in five unnamed Intrepid crew being [re]buried in a Protestant cemetery near the beach and the belief that five crewmen are buried at one location under Green Park [now Martyr’s Square]. Richard Somers and two other officers are believed to be buried in another location beneath [the Square], approximately 500 feet from the west gate of the Old Castle Fort.”

While Dickon’s subject is brought up on Veteran’s and Memorial Day every year, when flags are placed on the graves and those veterans who have died are remembered, their sacrifices are also recalled whenever our traditions and values are threatened, or when taken for granted.

As expressed in Archibald MacLeish’s poem “The Young Dead Soldiers Do Not Speak,” – “They have a silence that speaks for them at night,...They say: We were young. We have died. Remember us…We have done what we could, but until it is finished it is not done…Our deaths are not ours, they are yours, they will mean what you make of them…Whether our lives and our deaths were for peace and a new hope or for nothing we cannot say, it is you who must say this. We leave you our deaths. Give them some meaning. We were young, they say. We have died; remember us.”

It is up to us to speak, and as Dickon concludes, this fascinating story must be taken to the children, so the living remembers the dead and what they died for.

[William Kelly is the author of “300 Years at the Point – A History of Somers Point, NJ” and “Birth of the Birdie,” a history of golf. He can be reached at billkelly3@gmail.com]

David Talbot's Pulp History - Devil Dog - The Amazing True Story of the Man Who Saved America

Pulp History

Devil Dog – The Amazing True Story of the Man Who Saved America (Simon & Schuster, 2011) by David Talbot, Illustrated by Spain Rodriguez and Shadow Nights

After founding Salon.com, one of the first successful and influential internet magazines, David Talbot has started what may become a new literary genre – Pulp History – which combines classic comics and the novelized pulp paperback adventure story with real biography and history, thus opening up a whole new world of opportunities for bringing fresh topics to a new audience.

Best known for his critically acclaimed Brothers – The Hidden History of the Kennedy Years (Free Press, Simon & Schuster, Inc., 2007), Talbot and his sister Margaret thought of the Pulp History idea as “a way to bring untold history stories to life, working with comics artists and illustrators and designers to fully exploit the lush possibilities of the printed pages.” They then convinced the Simon & Schuster publishers of its validity and potential.

It’s hard to say whether the audience for Pulp History will be young people who are just waiting to be inspired by such works, or older adults who were themselves inspired by comics and paperback adventures and who find these books almost nostalgic.

For starters, Talbot tells the story of US Marine Corps General Smedley Butler, who fought his way through China’s Imperial City, the Panama Canal and the trenches of World War I in establishing a reputation for bravery and integrity that was admired by all Americans, especially veterans.

In the course of his fighting wars, Butler came to understand the financial and industrial forces that instigate and fuel most wars, and eventually came to conclude that “war is a racket.”

“As a youngster, I loved the excitement of battle,” Butler said. “It’s a lot of fun, you know, and it’s nice to strut around in front of your wife, or someone else’s wife – and display your medals and your uniform. But there’s another side to it.” As Talbot notes, because of this other side, “he devoted the rest of his life to stopping war – and to exposing those who grew as fat as ticks off the endless blood.”

So in the early 1930s, during the course of the Great Depression, when a group of men decided President Franklin Roosevelt’s economic reforms were too radical and leading America towards socialism, they decided to stage a coup. They thought they could strip the power of the presidency from Roosevelt if an army of veterans would march on Washington and call for the resignation of the president, setting the stage for a coup.

First they went to Douglas MacArthur, who would later have his own run-ins with Presidents, but he declined to lead the charge, and instead suggested Smedley Butler.

When the men in suits visited Butler and made the pitch, Butler was certainly disenchanted with the state of affairs, but he was more suspicious of the men who were plotting against the president and played along in order to learn who was behind this conspiracy. Eventually he learned their identities, but instead of leading the veteran’s march on Washington, Butler instead testified before a Congressional committee and told them everything he knew.

Rather than investigate the sensational charges however, the committee didn’t do anything, and the mainstream media of the day, especially Time Magazine, the Washington Post and New York Times ridiculed Butler as a paranoid conspiracy theorists. Independent reporters however, confirmed much of what Butler had to say, including the identities of those bankers and industrialists he mentioned, as well as their plans, which Roosevelt took security measures against.

Few people today have ever heard of Smedley Butler, but David Talbot hopes to change that with his first Pulp History book Devil Dog -“the amazing true story of the man who saved America.”

In order to help establish more than a new genre, but a series of books, they published a second volume in the same vein - Shadow Knights – The Secret War Against Hitler by Gary Kamiya, with illustrations by Jeffrey Smith. Kamiya was Talbot’s partner in creating Salon, and Jeffrey Smith’s illustrations are a bit more realistic than those by Rodriguez in Devil Dog, though they both do the job of graphically portraying the riveting action of the text.

Shadow Knights concerns the secret and daring World War II exploits of the British Special Operations Executive (SOE) – the Baker Street Irregulars, who were ordered to engage in covert operations behind the enemy lines and commit sabotage against the Nazis in Europe before D-Day.

While Devil Dog is a colorful, biographical portrait of one man – Smedley Butler, Shadow Knights scans the exploits of a number of interesting characters, including Colin McVeigh Gubbins, Jens Poulsson, Gus March-Phillips, Harry Ree, as well as vivacious women like Pearl Witherington, Christine Granville and Noor Inayat Khan, some of whom were caught, tortured and died in Nazi concentration camps.

There still might be a place for dry, academic history and biographies, but Pulp History is here, and whether its audience is old comic book patrons or a new, young audience ready to be inspired, there are certainly a lot of historical that could lend themselves to the pulp history treatment.

characters and topics

http://www.salon.com/books/excerpt/2010/10/05/devil_dog_slide_show

[William Kelly is the author of 300 Years at the Point and Birth of the Birdie – a history of golf. He can be reached at billkelly3@gmail.com ]

David Talbot