Civil War and World War One Memorial, Hall County (Memphis) Texas

The Hall County, Texas memorial in Memphis Texas was dedicated in 1924 in honor of the veterans of that county who had served in the Civil War, and World War One.  MKTH Photo.

100th Anniversary of the Dedication of the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier

Today is the 100th Anniversary of the Dedication of the Tomb of the Unkown Soldier.

Lex Anteinternet: Friday, November 11. Veterans Day: 

Friday, November 11. Veterans Day

Today In Wyoming's History: November 11. Veterans Day: 

1921 Warren G. Harding dedicated the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Arlington National Cemetery.

On this day in 1921 the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier was dedicated in Arlington National Cemetery.  I noted that on our companion blog, Today In Wyoming's History, quite some time ago, but the photo below, of Chief Plenty Coups, whom I discussed on November 8, is a new addition here.

Also noting the tragedy of the Great War, today was the first day in which the Royal British Legion sold poppies in remembrance of the war.  This tradition still goes on in the United Kingdom and also in Canada.  When I was a kid, it occurred here in the form of artificial "bloody poppies" that were sold by one of the two veterans organizations, although I forget which one  I dimly recall it was the VFW, but I could be in error.

Harding gave a speech, as noted, at the event, which was transmitted nationwide by telephone wires by AT&T.

A photographer played with black and while film to capture this image at 10:30 that evening.

The war with Germany officially ended on this day, not coincidentally, as the US and Weimar Germany officially recognized the peace.   Germany also was reaching out to the Soviet Union with the formation of Deruluft, a joint German Russian airline.  It operated until 1937.

The New York Bible Society presented a bible to the conference meeting in Washington on arms limitation.

Lex Anteinternet: Wednesday, November 9, 1921. The Unknown Soldier Comes Home

Lex Anteinternet: Wednesday, November 9, 1921. The Unknown Soldier ...: 

Wednesday, November 9, 1921. The Unknown Soldier Comes Home.

The body of the Unknown Soldier arrived in the United States from Europe abord the USS Olympia, and was conveyed to lie in state.

 

President Harding visited the bier of the Unknown Solder.  The body had been conveyed by ship to the United States arriving earlier that day.

April 18, 1921. "Grave of Edith Barnett of New York City. An American Red Cross nurse who died in Siberia, Aug. 15, 1919. Monument placed at Tomsk, Siberia on April 18, 1921. Photograph taken on April 19, 1921"

 

Lex Anteinternet: Tragic, no doubt. But is it historically correct and comparatively of value?

Lex Anteinternet: Tragic, no doubt. But is it historically correct a...: 

Tragic, no doubt. But is it historically correct and comparatively of value?

Soldiers sick with the Spanish Flu at Ft. Riley, Kansas during World War One.  Ft. Riley is where the Spanish Flu first demonstrably broke out.

Yesterday, we posted this item:

Lex Anteinternet: 500,000. Governor Gordon Orders Flags Be Flown at ...

500,000. Governor Gordon Orders Flags Be Flown at Half-Staff Statewide Through February 26 in Memory of Americans lost to COVID-19

 

Governor Gordon Orders Flags Be Flown at Half-Staff Statewide Through February 26

in Memory of Americans lost to COVID-19 

CHEYENNE, Wyo. - Governor Mark Gordon, pursuant to President Joe Biden's Proclamation remembering the 500,000 Americans lost to COVID-19, has ordered both the U.S. and State of Wyoming flags be flown at half-staff statewide until sunset February 26.

The Presidential Proclamation follows: 

REMEMBERING THE 500,000 AMERICANS LOST TO COVID-19
- - - - - - -

BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

A PROCLAMATION

As of this week during the dark winter of the COVID-19 pandemic, more than 500,000 Americans have now died from the virus. That is more Americans who have died in a single year of this pandemic than in World War I, World War II, and the Vietnam War combined. On this solemn occasion, we reflect on their loss and on their loved ones left behind. We, as a Nation, must remember them so we can begin to heal, to unite, and find purpose as one Nation to defeat this pandemic.

In their memory, the First Lady and I will be joined by the Vice President and the Second Gentleman for a moment of silence at the White House this evening. I ask all Americans to join us as we remember the more than 500,000 of our fellow Americans lost to COVID19 and to observe a moment of silence at sunset. I also hereby order, by the authority vested in me by the Constitution and laws of the United States, that the flag of the United States shall be flown at half-staff at the White House and on all public buildings and grounds, at all military posts and naval stations, and on all naval vessels of the Federal Government in the District of Columbia and throughout the United States and its Territories and possessions until sunset February 26, 2021. I also direct that the flag shall be flown at half-staff for the same period at all United States embassies, legations, consular offices, and other facilities abroad, including all military facilities and naval vessels and stations.

IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this twenty-second day of February, in the year of our Lord two thousand twenty-one, and of the Independence of the United States of America the

two hundred and forty-fifth.

JOSEPH R. BIDEN JR. 

--END--

First of all, let us note that this is a grim and tragic marker.  500,000 lives cut short, and we're not out of the woods yet.  Not by a long shot.

But breaking this down, what does it mean, and is it actually accurate?

First, let me note that what I did was to link in the state's endorsement of President Biden's proclamation. So that we can be sure we're reading it correctly, let's first link in the actual proclamation:

A Proclamation on Remembering the 500,000 Americans Lost to COVID-19

FEBRUARY 22, 2021 • PRESIDENTIAL ACTIONS

As of this week during the dark winter of the COVID-19 pandemic, more than 500,000 Americans have now died from the virus.  That is more Americans who have died in a single year of this pandemic than in World War I, World War II, and the Vietnam War combined.  On this solemn occasion, we reflect on their loss and on their loved ones left behind.  We, as a Nation, must remember them so we can begin to heal, to unite, and find purpose as one Nation to defeat this pandemic.

In their memory, the First Lady and I will be joined by the Vice President and the Second Gentleman for a moment of silence at the White House this evening.  I ask all Americans to join us as we remember the more than 500,000 of our fellow Americans lost to COVID-19 and to observe a moment of silence at sunset.  I also hereby order, by the authority vested in me by the Constitution and laws of the United States, that the flag of the United States shall be flown at half-staff at the White House and on all public buildings and grounds, at all military posts and naval stations, and on all naval vessels of the Federal Government in the District of Columbia and throughout the United States and its Territories and possessions until sunset February 26, 2021.  I also direct that the flag shall be flown at half-staff for the same period at all United States embassies, legations, consular offices, and other facilities abroad, including all military facilities and naval vessels and stations.

IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this twenty-second day of February, in the year of our Lord two thousand twenty-one, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and forty-fifth.              

JOSEPH R. BIDEN JR.

And, as can be seen, the linked in text was in fact correctly quoted by the Governor.  I know that linking that in is pedantic, but we want to be quoting correctly.

And I'm not faulting Governor Gordon or President Biden for the half mast order.  Indeed, I think it may be a useful reminder to the living that this isn't over yet and precautions are still needed.  We certainly don't want to hit the 1,000,000 mark.

None the less, can deaths due to disease really be compared to combat deaths?

Let's start with this, is it correct that the 500,000 tragic deaths amount to "more Americans who have died . .  than in World War I, World War II and the Vietnam War combined"?

116,516 Americans are officially listed as having died in World War I.

405,399 Americans officially lost their lives due to World War Two, although some figures will add in another 2,000.

58,209 Americans were lost in the Vietnam War.

You don't need the aid of a calculator to realize that President Biden is wrong.  500,000 Americans is a lot of lost lives, and it is tragic, but the combined totals of the three wars noted exceed 500,000.  Perhaps not grossly, but they do exceed them.  That's 580,124 lives lost in combat in the three wars noted.*

Or do they?

President Biden here correctly mourns and laments those who have died due to SARS-CoV-2 during this pandemic, but those are lives lost to a viral agent.  I.e., something loose in nature.  Lives lost in war are those lost due to the direct killing action of other men, in one fashion or another.  Now, I don't want to get into the "yeah, but if so and so had done something earlier. . . " type argument here, which just goes down a rat hole and looses point of this.  The point is, that death by infectious disease is inherently incomparable to death due to war.

Indeed, in human experience, death due to lethal pandemic often grossly exceeds death due to war, even if it occurs in the same time frame.

For example, 116,516 Americans died due to combat during World War One.  675,000 Americans died during the same time period due to the Spanish Flu.

Now, that's a useful statistic.  The Spanish Flu Epidemic and the Coronavirus Pandemic are in fact directly comparable as they're both viral pandemics, save for perhaps the argument that the Spanish Flu Pandemic was made worse by World War One, and perhaps caused by World War One. The first argument is undoubtedly correct.

Indeed, for that reason, although we won't develop it here, you could argue that the 116,516 lives lost due to the Great War need to be added to the 675,000 lost due to the Spanish Flu to get a full scale of lives lost due to the global disaster that was the Great War.  And that argument would in fact make a lot of sense.  We have a ways to go, thankfully, before we reach that mark, although we may very well reach it.  That figure is over 719,000 lives lost.

Be that as it may, we also have to keep in mind that the American population was 92,000,000 in the 1910s.  Lets' say it was 100,000,000, even though we were not there yet.

Looked at that way, the 675,000 would be the equivalent of about 2,000,000 deaths today.  For that matter, the World War One combat deaths, which I didn't add into that, would be equivalent to over 300,000 now.

We're not anywhere close to 2,000,000 deaths, thankfully, and hopefully we will have this in check before we are.

Going back more than a century starts becoming really problematic in such analysis, although it is tempting to do so.  Indeed, it can be argued that even going back a century is not a valid comparison as it was before modern medicine to a significant degree.   There were no effective antibiotics at the time, for example, and while antibiotics do absolutely nothing in regard to a virus, it can help keep a viral infection from developing into something else which is lethal.  For example, we just read the other day of the death of George Gipp, who was infected by strep throat that rapidly killed him. Today, that wouldn't occur. And indeed, there were no effective anti virals either.  No wonder the 1918-1919 Spanish Flu was such a killer.

Indeed, we just passed the 75th anniversary of the discovery of penicillin, the great anti biotic.

Still, we can recognize the 1918-19 Flu as there are those still among us, small in number though they are, who are still with us.  Many families retain some memories of the flu (ours does) and its impact.  And our current society is a direct evolution of that one, even though much has changed.  And of course our governments were highly developed at the time, particularly given that the 1918-19 Flu occurred during a time of war, and therefore mass societal mobilization.

For this reason, going back further, is problematic.  For example, what became the United States lost 6,800 men to death by combat during the American Revolution.  17,000 Americans died of disease, however, although its significant that the majority of them were prisoners of war at the time.  The population, however, was a shade under 3,000,000 (and growing incredibly rapidly) which would mean that the equivalent loss, in modern terms, would have been about 680,000 combat deaths and 1,700,000 deaths due to disease in contemporary terms, or about the same disease loss, oddly enough, as the Spanish Flu had in the Great War period in the United States.  But as noted, these figures would be of questionable utility.

So, what does all this tell us?

500,000 deaths is a terrible tragedy, but the frequent comparison to war, while inevitable, really isn't historically or statically valuable except as a loose measuring stick. What that probably tells us, more than anything else, is that as a species we're geared toward understanding loses due to war, so we use those figures as its easy for us to do it, even though that doesn't really tell us anything.  We are, that is, psychologically geared toward thinking about fighting an invading enemy.  We are apparently less psychologically geared towards thinking about fighting an invading virus.

Indeed, the oppose may in fact be true. We've always lived with killer diseases, but we haven't always really understood them very well, and overall the evidence suggest we really still don't quite, on a day to day personal basis. During the 1918-19 pandemic we really didn't get a handle on it.  When inoculations first were introduced some societies around the globe believed all sorts of fanciful scary tales about it.  Some religions eschew them today for reasons that have very little to do with what is found in any faith.  Folk medicines remain just as popular as ever, and included in that are a collection of myths about vaccinations in general and this one in particular.  We remain pretty willing to line up for uniforms when wars come, but much less so to the wearing of uniform masks in times of pandemic.

Footnotes.

*It's interesting how the Korean War, which had a loss of life comparable to Vietnam's, is skipped, as usual, even though the lives lost in that war occurred in a much shorter period of time.

Lex Anteinternet: What were their lives like? Admiral McCully's adopted Russian orphans, Eugenia Z. Selifanova and Olga Krundvcher.

Lex Anteinternet: What were their lives like? Admiral McCully's ado...: 

What were their lives like? Admiral McCully's adopted Russian orphans, Eugenia Z. Selifanova and Olga Krundvcher.

Recently here I posted this:

January 11, 1921. Fractured and Rescued Russian Lives, 1921 Wyoming Legislature, Work.

Six of the seven Russian children adopted by Admiral Newton A. McCully, with their "governess" Eugenia Z. Selifanova, photographed on January 11, 1921.  

On this day in 1921, a press photographer photographed most of Admiral Newton A. McCully's adopted Russian children together with their governess who was a teenager herself.

McCully was a southern born American naval officer who had been embedded in the Imperial Russian Army during the Russo Japanese War.  In 1914 he returned to Russia as a naval attaché and he was elevated to commend of the U.S. Navy in northern Russia in 1918.  Following this he was sent to appreciate the military situation of the Whites in 1919.  He adopted these children in 1920.

McCully obviously appreciated the East due to all of this service.  A bachelor until 1927, he married Olga Krundycher, an Estonian, in 1929 on the claim that this would provide a mother for his children, and perhaps that was his reason, although I suspect that there was more to it than that.  She was later listed as their mother on census forms, even though the McCully adoptees were not all related and came themselves from varying regions of the former Russian Empire.  She was 29 years old at the time and the marriage took place in Tallinn, Estonia at which time McCully was still a serving naval officer.  He would live until 1951, dying at age 83.  She would live until 1968 and returned to Estonia for reasons of which I am not aware (or am I aware of when that occurred).

Eugenia  Selifanova was 18 or 19 years old when this photograph was taken. She later married another Russian immigrant, about 20 years her senior, and lived the rest of her life in Dearborn, Michigan. She had two children by the marriage and died in 1952.   She's already left the family, and probably had married, but the time of Admiral McCully's marriage.  Indeed, at that time McCully's mother was tasked with minding the children when he was away on duties.

It's easy to see what became of some of the children and that they had long American lives.  I wonder if anything of their early origins and culture was retained at all, or if anything of it remains in their ancestors.

Sometimes I'm haunted by the stories I post here, and they're usually things like this.  Not the big battles and the mass carnage, but rather the small stories of individuals caught up in the big events.

White Russian troops disembarking in Constantinople as refugees.

And its hard not to feel that way regarding the story of Newton McCully and his seven adopted children who had been taken out of Sevastopol as the Reds closed in on it, and then to Constantinople, and then on to the United States. 

Let's start with Admiral McCully, whom in some ways is both the central, and an ancillary, figure in our story.

Newton McCully was a South Carolinian born in 1867 whose father had served in the Civil War for, not surprisingly, the Confederacy.  McCully sought and obtained an appointment to Annapolis and, as noted above, he was embedded in the Imperial Russian Army during the Russo Japanese War.  In 1914 he returned to Russia as a naval attaché and he was elevated to commend of the U.S. Navy in northern Russia in 1918.  Following this he was sent to appreciate the military situation of the Whites in 1919.

He was a bachelor all of this time, which was not surprising for a naval officer given the life they lead.  He'd been in the Navy since 1887.

Something about Russia and Russians, or perhaps just a deep sympathy with a distressed people, heavily struck him in 1919.  During that time he had occasion to be with distressed Russians and to go into Russian orphanages and the like.  At some point he determined to attempt to bring back nine children into the United States with him.  He ended up bringing seven, as two couldn't go for various reasons (one was ill, and one was not actually an orphan, although his father consented to him going with McCully).

McCully adopted the seven children in Russia and sought diplomatic permission to bring them into the United States and to reside at his boyhood home in Anderson, South Carolina, for a time until his home in Washington D. C. could be refurbished to be suitable for children.  He had to post $5,000 a piece for each immigrant, a gigantic sum in 1921.  His mother was living and the initial plan was for the seven to live with her, there, during that time period.  Their stories, and some of their names, are noted in this period news article here:

There was, we'd note, an element of confusion on the number of children in early reports and indeed in some later ones, created in part by Euginia Selfinova's young age.  Some reports seemed to assume that she was one of the orphans, which in a way she was, and to include her in the count.  That wasn't her states however.  There were in fact seven, and she was the eighth young Russian, if looked at that way, to come into the United States with McCully.

Their names (subject to some confusion and difficulties in translation) and ages in 1921 were as follows:  Nikolai Smnov (12), Ludmila Manetzkaya (11), Anastasia Sherbotoc (Sherback)  (Sherbackova) (10), Nina Furinan (8), Feodore Pozdo (4), Ninotahkl Limendo (3) and Antonina Klimenko (2)..  Added to that was Euginia Selifanova, who was 19.  She apparently was already attached to some of the children prior to Admiral McCully asking her to come along and, according to his early interviews, asked her to come along as governess, something that tends to show up in quote marks as if there was confusion or doubt over her status.

McCully's concerns left him with quite a brood on his hands, to say the least, which no doubt explains in part why he chose to ask Selfanova to come along.  Selfanova would have been an adult at this time both in fact, experience and culture and McCully was a bachelor with a busy Naval career.

McCully, children, and Selifanova at a baseball game on November 22, 1922.  The woman in the center is "Miss Gleaves"

We'll pick up here, because of her role in the story, with Selifanova, who turns out to be one of the most difficult to trace.  We'll do that in part, as its necessary to explore Selfianova in order to discuss the story overall and later developments.

Selifanova obviously lived with the family for several years, but then another mystery develops.  Almost nothing is known about her, not surprisingly, before she accompained McCully and the children to the United States.  Her last name simply means the daughter of Selifan, which isn't very helpful and Selifanova is a fairly common Slavid last name.  It might not be Russian, for that matter, but some other Slavic language.* In the few photographs that exist of her, she uniformly has a stern appearance.

She seems to have left the McCully household prior to 1929 when an new woman enters the picture as the wife of Admiral McCully.

We'll take up McCully's wife in a moment, but the marriage in 1927 seems to have come to everyone as a surprise, in no small part as it took place in Tallinn, Estonia.  The Admiral didn't even inform his mother of the marriage until after it occurred.  Early press reports indicated that the marriage was undertaken as McCully had determined he needed a mother for the children, but much of that really doesn't wash in context.  By that time Nikolai, Ludmila, Anastasia, and Nina Furinan were all teenagers and approaching adulthood.  That still left the children at home, of course, but their minding would not have have been the burden that it early would have been, except perhaps if Selifanova had left the household.  The evidence seems to be that she had.

Indeed, her full name is associated with Andrew Trago at about this time.  "Trago" is generally a Latinate name, but Andrew was listed as Russian born on the one census form we've found noting him.  That might not be too surprising, however, as immigration agents weren't good at recording actual last names all that accurately at the time and European peasants proved to be quite willing to accept new last names.  His actual original last name may have been anything sounding close to that.  Anyhow, Adrew Trago was also Russian born but about twenty years Selfinova's senior, leading to some doubt if this is the right person.  Nonetheless, a Euginia Selifanova was was of the same age as the governess married Trago and the couple lived out their lives in Dearborn Michigan, having a son and a daughter.

Having said that, records for the couple are incredibly spotty. The showed up in a census just once, in 1940, and that document reported their son Boris as being 22 at the time.  If that's the case, he would have been born when Euginia was 16, which is clearly incorrect for these photographs.  Having said that, almost everything about the Trago family was vague.  This might simply be explained by slightly moving the dates of his birth and making him slightly younger.  Indeed, in 1940 the family may have had a reason for listing him as older than he was for one reason or another.  At any rate, at that point, Euginia disappears from history.

Euginia wasn't the only one who disappeared at that. The new bride shortly did also, but not quite as definitively.

The bride was Olga Krundycher.  In 1927 Admiral McCully married her in Tallinn, Estonia.   She was then 29 years old and, moreover, ethnically Estonian.  Indeed, she had a family last name of Sermann, and this was her second marriage, as she was a widow. The marriage seems to have come to everyone as a surprise.  The Admiral didn't even inform his mother of the marriage until after it occurred.  Early press reports indicated that the marriage was undertaken as McCully had determined he needed a mother for the children, but much of that really doesn't wash in context.  By that time Nikolai, Ludmila, Anastasia, and Nina Furinan were all teenagers and approaching adulthood.  That still left the children at home, of course, but their minding would not have have been the burden that it early would have been, except perhaps if Selifanova had left the household.

Olga, while an Estonian, appears to have been married to a Russian and perhaps a Russian army officer.  Her father's occupation is what records exist is listed as "soldier" and it may be the case that he was an Imperial Russian Army officer. The clues exist in that at the time of her wedding it was noted in Estonian papers, which covered it, that she "still" spoke some of her "native language".  If she'd grown up in Estonia we'd expect her to speak it perfectly. So its clear that she had at least some prolonged absence.

And while its certainly possible that McCully may have been willing to marry a Russian peasant, we can doubt that.  In the 1920s class distinctions were higher than they are now and McCully was of Southern aristocratic birth.  Indeed, while it might have been quasi scandalous if he'd done so, we'd note that Selifanova wasn't enormously younger than Krundycher at the time that she seems to have left the family.  Of course, we don't know anything else about Selifanova or her character, or even her opinion of McCully and vice versa.  She's truly a figure in the background, not smiling in photographs.  Krundycher is somewhat different.

Anyhow Olga was then 29 years old, ethnically Estonian and a widow. The marriage made the newspapers in Tallinn.

The Admiral may have thought Krundycher a good mother for his family, as American press reports at the time had it, and perhaps she was.  But here too we are presented with a mystery.  Other than the marriage being announced, she disappears from the record to a degree.  She's not buried with Admiral Newton, and indeed, she died in Estonia in 1968, not in the US.  

In fact, we can find her first back in Estonia by 1931, where he arrival was announced in the society page.  The marriage was presumably going well at the time and she seemed to be hailed as a bit of a celebrity.  Nonetheless, she died in Estonia nearly forty years later.  What happened?

Well, that's pretty hard to tell.  What we do know is that as late as 1943 the McCully's, Newton and Olga, were living in Florida, Admiral McCully now well retired. She is listed as his wife on materials pertaining to his death.  They seem to have still been married at the time of his death, and frankly returning to Estonia in the 40s would have been nuts.

Still, the records support she want back to Estonia at some point.  Perhaps after her husband's death, and all of her adopted children having assumed their own adult lives, she felt the call of her native country again.  Or perhaps she was just visiting it at the time of her death.

So, as to the two adult women who were part of this story, we know something at this point.  Selifanova appears to have married a few years later, and to have then lived out her life in Dearborn Michigan, dying at a fairly young age overall. 

Krundychter entered the picture as a somewhat celebrated, but much younger, bride of the Admiral but ended up back in Estonia where she lived until the end of her life many  years later.  She was born in Imperial Russia, seems to have lived in Russia for some time, suffered some sort of tragedy with her first husband, and then returned to Estonia before marrying the Admiral.  At some point, she went back to Estonia, by then an middle aged, or even elderly in context, woman and live there, apparently, until her death in the 1960s.

And what of the children?  Well, we can tell something about their lives from a few period articles and some coming quite later, which gives us a few clues about what their lives were perhaps like.  We'll sum up what we know about each first.  Let's list them out by age as of their time of their adoption and entry into the United States.

1. Nikolai Snourov (12).

Snourov was a boy soldier in the White Army when he came into the eye of Admiral McCully, and therefore hew as rescued from a really grim fate. Had he remained in Russia, and survived the war, he was young enough he could have expected service with the Reds and probably in the Second World War in the Red Army.  He may very well not have lived that long, however, as he could have been killed in combat, or by the Reds at any point leading up to World War Two, one way or another.

He not surprisingly ended up in World War Two as it was, but in the United States Navy.

Snourov was from Kharkov, Ukraine and had been born on April 1, 1909.  In 1933 he married Clair Wilhelmina Von Moser in Baltimore.  The couple had at least one son.  Nikolai did not outlive his adopted father by long, and died in 1954 at age 45.

2. Ludmila Manetzkaya (11)

Ludmila was born in Sevastapol in Crimea.  She married Raymond Francis Colee in 1934 in Florida, where she lived the rest of her life.  She died in 1985 at the age of 75.  She and her husband also had at least one child, whom was named Newton, no doubt after her adoptive father.  Newton passed away in Florida in 2004.

A charming photograph of Ludmila wearing an elaborate kokoshnik, a traditional headdress for Russian, but not Ukranian, women.  Taken in 1924, she would have been fourteen or fifteen at the time it was taken.

Ludmila McCully, 1924.

3 Anastasia Sherback  (Sherbackova) (10), 

Anastasia's real last name was Sherbackova, making her the daughter of Sherback.  On April 23, 1929, her name hit the New York Times society columns when she married William Mortiz of New York.  She was eighteen years old at the time.

4, Nina Furinan (8)

This Nina is the child who is the hardest to find anything out about.  Her age upon entry would indicate that she'd been born in 1912 or 1913.  None of the later information available supports any of the children, however, being born that year.

There are listings for an Antonina Vasilivna Forman for this family, but she was born, according to the records in 1909, which would have made her eleven when she came into the country.  This doesn't match, however, an 8 year old age at the time of entry either, but then at least one other age is also off. 

We know that in this group of children one was latter marred under the last name "Lash" and lived in Detroit.  A 1943 article on another one of the children noted that she was an artist. This is almost certainly here.

5 Feodor Pazdo Mikkaelovich(4)

Feador was born in Sevastopol in 1916.  He married Mary Ann Caruso in November, 1942, in Miami, by which time he was going by the name of Feodor McCully.  

Feodore also served in the United States Navy during World War Two.

Like a lot of the McCully children, he spent the rest of his life in Florida and South Carolina.  He did in 1970 in Florida at the age of 53.  

6 Ninotahkl Limendo (3)

Obituaries support that a Nina Mikhailovna Razahavalina McCully was part of the group and that she was born on June 30, 1915, in Yalta.  She was the daughter of Michael S. Rashavalin and Elena V. Melele.  She was clearly one of the McCully Russian orphans, so this is likely her.  She married John B. McDonald on August 22, 1941 in Santa Monica, California.  She and her husband lived in South Carolina, Florida and California, before she died on June 25, 1999 at the age of 83.

7. Antonina Klimenko (2)

Klimenko was also born in Sevastopol and her original last name is Ukrainian, not Russian.  She's the McCully child about which we know the most, perhaps because she was the youngest and likely, in some ways, the most American. . . maybe.

Antonina served in the U.S. Navy during World War Two, the family being still sufficiently noteworthy that her joining the Navy made the newspaper.  In 1945, following the war, she married George Von Bretzel and they also made their home in Florida.  George, interestingly, in spite of his last name, was also a Russian refugee, having been born in Japan to Russian parents before immigrating to the United States and serving in World War Two.  Indeed, because of his last name he likely came from a quasi aristocratic family that had German roots as well as Russian, something not uncommon for Russian nobility.

He worked for the CIA.  She lived until 1979, dying at the age of 61 in Florida.  The couple had two children.  At the time of her death in 1979 Ludmila was living in St. Augustine Florida, her sister Nina Lash in Detroit, and her sister Nina McDonald in Palos Verdes Estates, California.

Okay, so that's what became of them, but what of their lives?

Based on what we can find, they had adventurous childhoods.  Their adoptive father seems to have taken them all over the world when he could, and they accordingly lived in such places as Brazil.  Upon his retirement, he apparently bought a yacht and they lived for a time on it, before it was sunk when struck by a ship. They all survived the sinking.  In later years, they remained close to their father.

And while we can't tell for sure, there seem to have been a strong element of Russianness that was incorporated into the rest of their lives.  To the extent that we can tell, they all became American citizens only in adulthood, there father preserving the option for them, as he'd promised, for them to return to Russia, which none of them did.  They had a Russian governess early on, and then a Russian speaking Estonian step mother.  The youngest of them married another Russian refugee.  Even the youngest of them surely spoke Russian and had some knowledge of the culture of their homeland.

They also lived remarkably American lives. They spread out across the country while young, although they seemed to gravitate back towards Florida in their later years.  The boys all lived remarkably short lives for Americans, but lives that are interestingly about in context of life spans for Russians, which is usually attributed to environmental conditions in Russian culture in Russia.  As there were only two boys, this could be merely coincidental with them.

Were they raised Russian Orthodox?  Did their governess and adoptive mother instill in them a sense of a Russian identity?  Did the older ones retain it due to having been born in Russia?  Or were they just glad to have been rescued from an undoubtedly hard fate.

Of that last item, it seems we can be sure.  They called him "Dyadya" (Дядя), the Russian word for "uncle", right from the onset, but it's pretty clear he became more than that.  And its an extraordinary tale of generosity.  He entered into the role well into his middle age when some of them were very young, and with nobody really at home to help him.

*Technically "ova" merely identifies the bearer of the name as a woman.  It actually shares the same root as ovum, i.e., "egg".

Lex Anteinternet: November 11, 1920. Armistice Day.

Lex Anteinternet: November 11, 1920. Armistice Day.: 

November 11, 1920. Armistice Day.

It was, of course, Armistice Day.

In the U.S., veterans gathered.

In France and the UK, their unknown soldiers were interred.

In the UK, Parliament passed the Government of Ireland Act which provided for home rule in Ireland, in two separate political entities, north and south Ireland.  It never went into effect in the south due to the Anglo Irish War.  It simply came too late.

Lex Anteinternet: July 4, 1920. Remembrance and Forgetting

Lex Anteinternet: July 4, 1920. Remembrance and Forgetting:

July 4, 1920. Remembrance and Forgetting

On this day in 1920, the coal mining town of Hanna, Wyoming dedicated its memorial to its World War One Veterans.  

The monument before it was damaged.

An item about that appears in one of our companion blogs here:



Today In Wyoming's History: July 4: Today is Independence Day



1920  Veterans memorial to World War One veterans dedicated in Hanna, Wyoming.



The Hanna Museum's website has an article about the dedication here.



The monument is still present, and it looked like this 2012 when I photographed it.  However, since that time the actual plaque on the monument was stolen in 2015.  It was found damaged in a nearby ditch. The town was working to raise funds to repair the monument and buy a new plaque, which was apparently still the case at least as of 2019.

World War One Service Memorial, Hanna Wyoming

This is a memorial in Hanna Wyoming dedicated to all from the region who served in World War One.  Hanna is a very small town today, and the number of names on this memorial is evidence of the town once being significantly more substantially sized than it presently is.



The memorial is located on what was the Lincoln Highway at the time, but which is now a Carbon County Highway.  This was likely a central town location at the time the memorial was placed.

Hanna also is the location of the Carbon County Veterans Park which contains a substantial number of additional monuments.

I'd note that this entire item is nearly symbolic of where we are at, in some ways, as a nation today.  In 1920 the town, heavily made up of immigrants from Eastern Europe, proudly dedicated a memorial to its sons who had served in the recent war.  The Town had, at that time, barely recovered from two prior major disasters, the mine collapses at its Number One Mine. Those events had resulted in massive loss of life, and yet the town survived it.

The names of Hanna's men who served in World War One.

A century later its monument to its men who served in the Great War was damaged by would be thieves and the town is a mere shadow of its former self.



This is, of course, the second memorial I've written about this week that was damaged in acts that are acts of vandalism, not social justice.  The word "vandalism", of course, comes from the name of one of the Germanic tribes that invaded Rome in its late period who became famous for acts of destruction due to their ignorance.  The name has been used ever since for people who commit similar acts, the difference in our case is that our own failings have lead to the ignorance and the modern vandal is part of us, not an invading army from the north.



Even the monument to the huge loss of life at the Number One Mine bears a scar from a bullet.

It's pretty hard to be really optimistic on July 4, 2020.



On the same day, in the same region, Lewistown Montana endured a major flood.

Lex Anteinternet: Military Installation Names. What they were, and are, and how they got there. Part 1. Named for Confederate Generals.

Lex Anteinternet: Military Installation Names. What they were, and ...:

Military Installation Names. What they were, and are, and how they got there. Part 1. Named for Confederate Generals

Camp Cody, New Mexico. This camp was named after a figure associated with Wyoming, but not from Wyoming, Buffalo Bill Cody.  It operated from 1917 to 1919.

This is a post that I’m posting here following a discussion I read elsewhere on the seemingly probable, and now apparently Presidentially derailed, decision of the U.S. Army to rename a collection of forts that were named after Confederate generals in the 1917 to 1942 period (or give or take a few years on either side of that).  That lead me to pondering the names of posts in Wyoming, and how they were named, which is what this blog entry was originally going to be about.  It grew so large, however, that I've now busted into at least three parts.

First an item on those posts from the blog Tasks and Purpose.  I was trying to remember what they all were, and couldn't (or didn't realize the association) and that website cleared that up, and added a little more detail. As they noted:

“The bases are named for the following Confederate officers: Gen. Robert E. Lee, Gen. Braxton Bragg, Gen. Pierre Gustave Toutant-Beauregard, Gen. John Bell Hood, Lt. Gen. John Brown Gordon, Lt. Gen. A.P Hill, Lt. Gen. Leonidas Polk, Maj. General George E. Pickett, Brig. Gen. Henry Benning, and Col. Edmund W. Rucker.

Among those commanders: Gordon is believed to have become the leader of the Ku Klux Klan in Georgia; Pickett ordered the execution of 22 prisoners who had switched from the Confederate to Union army; Bragg was fired after being defeated at Chattanooga and was also roundly despised by his peers and subordinates; and Hood’s military career came to an ignominious end after his army was smashed at the Battle of Nashville.”

For those who might not be familiar with it, and by way of a brief introduction to the topic, U.S. Army military posts are frequently, but not always, named after prior significant or heroic Army figures.  The Air Force also does this as well.  Neither service, as noted, uniformly does this and there are exceptions to this practice.  Indeed, the exceptions aren't uncommon.

Anyhow, one thing that this tread, which is growing to the overlong stage, will explore a bit is the history of naming conventions.  And what we'll tend to find looking at that is that who things are named after changes quite a bit over time.  During the Revolutionary War, for example, forts were fairly frequently named after presently serving commanders, in the American case, not always wisely.  Ft. Washington, for example, was outside of the City of New York and didn't stand up at all to the British assault on it.

Anyhow, period from 1917 to 1942 provides a really odd example of naming practices in that its the only instance in American history when posts were named after people who had been treasonous.

Camp Wheeler, Georgia, named after Confederate general Joseph Wheeler.  Camp Wheeler was used from 1917 to 1919, and again from 1940 to 1945, after which the land was returned to its original owners.

In recent days there's been a service wide movement to address Confederate symbols in the military, the first of which was an order by the Commandant of the Marine Corps banning the Confederate battle flag from appearing in any form on Marine Corps installations. The Navy followed suit  but the Army, which has the only official vestiges of the Confederacy, demurred on the topic of renaming those military bases which had been named for Confederate Army figures, something that was done in the 1917 to 1942 time frame.  President Trump has apparently put the kibosh on this, noting:

It has been suggested that we should rename as many as 10 of our Legendary Military Bases, such as Fort Bragg in North Carolina, Fort Hood in Texas, Fort Benning in Georgia, etc. These Monumental and very Powerful Bases have become part of a Great American Heritage, and a history of Winning, Victory, and Freedom. The United States of America trained and deployed our HEROES on these Hallowed Grounds, and won two World Wars. Therefore, my Administration will not even consider the renaming of these Magnificent and Fabled Military Installations...

Camp Custer,  Michigan.  1918.  This camp was obviously named after Michigan native Col. George A. Custer.  I've put it up here to illustrate that problems with who forts are named after may be a bit more problematic than the news at first seems. Camp Custer went into military service in 1917 and is still used today by the Michigan National Guard.

Meanwhile, the Army itself has indicated that it has intended to start the process of looking at new names for the posts and the current defense appropriations bill would require it.

So what are those posts?

The Confederate Named Posts.

The actual installations are:

Camp Beauregard (Louisiana National Guard)

Camp Beauregard, 1941.

Camp Beauregard was established in 1917 as part of the World War One build up.  In 1919 it was returned to the state, following the war.  It became a Federal installation again in 1940 which used it as a major training base during World War Two.  Following the war, the Federal Government returned it to the state, which used it for a couple of years and then deactivated it.  It returned to Louisiana National Guard use in 1973.

The post is named after P.G.T. Beauregard who was a career Army officer who fought in the Mexican War but who resigned to join the Confederate forces at the start of the Civil War.  A native Louisiana, he held mixed views that make him stand somewhat apart from most Confederate figures, something that tended to be more common with Louisianans as it reflected their Catholic background.  His family had owned slaves itself and he was a post war opponent of Reconstruction in the South, even as, at the same time, he went on record on more than one occasion urging white Southerners to accept full equality for blacks and he urged black land ownership, something we also have a post on.

The choice of the name of this post reflects that Beauregard was a Louisianan.  Renaming this post might be something that even those urging renaming might reconsider, as Beauregard was not only a rebel against his country, which he was, but he was one that rethought white Southern positions on the equality of blacks, which he urged be accepted after the war when it would not have been a popular thing to do.  He moved on rapidly after the war to look very far forward towards a new Louisiana, and was even the subject of a memorial poem by black Creole Victor Rillieux upon his death.

Ft. Benning, Georgia

Ft. Benning is a massive U.S. Army installation in Georgia which is home to the Army's Infantry and Armor schools.  It was established as Camp Benning in October, 1918, making it a post established at the tail end of the First World War, and was converted to permanent status in 1920.  It's been a major U.S. Army installation ever since.

Benning was named for Confederate general Henry L. Benning.  Benning was a lawyer from Columbus, Georgia, and therefore different from some of the other Southern figures that have posts named after him in that he had no service in the U.S. Army at all.  He was an ardent and radical proponent of slavery and proposed a Southern system designed to permanently institutionalize it out of the fear that the arch of history would start to eliminate it in the northern most Southern states.  As a Justice in the Georgia Supreme Court he was of the view that the court was free to ignore decisions made by the United States Supreme Court.  He joined the Confederate service during the war, survived it, and returned to the practice of law following it, at which time he was essentially financially ruined by the war.  He died in 1875 of a stroke.

Henry Benning provides a really good example of why some would like to rename these posts.  It's baffling why a post was named after him in the first place and it seems to be simply because he was a Southern Civil War figure from Georgia.  There's very little to admire about Benning personally in that he was such a dedicated proponent of slavery and succession that his views were radically in that direction even for Southerners.

Ft. Bragg, North Carolina.  

U.S. Airborne troops training at Ft. Bragg very early in World War Two.  The howitzer is the 75mm pack howitzer that had been developed for pack artillery between the wars and which was used by airborne troops, as well as others, during it.  The soldiers in this photograph are completely lacking the unique uniforms associated with the airborne and are still wearing M1917 helmets, although they are equipped with the new M1 Carbine.

Ft. Bragg is currently the most populous military installation in the world with 50,000 residents.  It started its existence in 1918 as an artillery training center and was converted to a permanent installation in 1922.  During World War Two it became associated with the airborne and it remains associated with them and special warfare units today.

Ft. Bragg was named after Braxton Bragg, who had served as a U.S. Army officer in the Second Seminole War and the Mexican War before leaving the Army in 1856 to purchase a sugar plantation in Louisiana.  He was, accordingly, a slave holder and the Southern born Bragg had never been known to oppose slavery.  His long service in the Army resulted in a military sense of discipline over his slaves which in turn resulted in the quick profitability of the plantation.  Pretty clearly, therefore, he had a vested interest in slavery.

Bragg's reputation as a commander hasn't held up well post war, a war which he survived.  He relied upon frontal assaults which, contrary to the widespread movie fed belief, were already past their military prime after the early stages of the war..  He lost his plantation due to the war and died in 1876 of a stroke, at age 59, in Texas.

Bragg's poor reputation as a Civil War commander has caused some to wonder, on this topic, why any post was ever named after him.  Oddly enough, it was the second time a fort was named for Braxton Bragg, however, as a military post in northern California was named that upon being established in 1857. In that instance the field commander at the location named the post after his former Mexican War commander, Braxton Bragg, who at that time had no association with the Confederacy as the naming predated it.  In 2015, prior to current events, there was a petition to rename the town given Bragg's later association with the armed effort to keep men enslaved in the South.

Bragg points out the problem with renaming posts.  The post has become so closely associated with the Airborne that mentioning it is more likely to bring to mind the Airborne of World War Two, or the Special Forces of the Cold War, than it is to bring to mind Braxton Bragg.

Ft. Gordon, Georgia.

The 82nd Division  honoring the widow of John Brown Gordon at the first Camp Gordon.

The first Camp Gordon was one of the many World War One training camps established as part of the effort to train troops for the Great War.  It was the training camp for the 82nd Division, one of the divisions made up of conscripts during the war, with that division being given the name the "All American" division, as its men were drawn from across the country.  Having said that, half of those men were from Georgia and of course additional men were from Southern states, such as the units most famous Great War soldier, Alvin York of Tennessee.  The Camp was disbanded in 1921 and the real estate sold.

Black soldiers at the original Camp Gordon in 1917.  These troops are being read to by one of tehir members due to the illiteracy of the listening soldiers. What would serving at a camp named for Gordon have been like for these troops?

When the Second World War created a demand for training camps once again, a second Camp Gordon was established in Georgia in a different location.  It seems to have been named Camp Gordon as the first Georgia Camp Gordon was named that.  The second Camp Gordon achieved permanent fort status in 1956.  The Army's important cyber school is located there today.

The first one, and hence the second one, were named after Confederate General John Brown Gordon.  Gordon was a Georgia lawyer and planter, although he was not a large slave owner.  In the 1860 census he reported owning a single slave, a 14 year old girl, while his father owned a further four.  He rose high in Confederate ranks during the war and was highly regarded by Robert E. Lee. Following the war he had an extremely successful career in politics serving in the United States Senate and as the Governor of Georgia.

He is also believed to have been the titular head of the Klu Klux Klan in Georgia, a charge he denied, although he admitted to be part of a secret "peace police" organization.  The KKK records and organization was so secretive at the time that it's proven impossible to prove the charge.

Gordon provides an example of the sort of person the Army shouldn't have honored with a camp name, and beyond that, the bizarre nature of post Civil War American politics in that he actually served as the Presiden to the United States Senate at one time, the first post Civil War Southerner to do so.  If he'd clearly had a change of heart regarding the rebellion and slavery that would be one thing, but clearly, that doesn't seem to have been the case.  Given that, and given that this fort doesn't have a strong connection with post World War One history the way that some other Army posts do, renaming this post doesn't involve the considerations that renaming the others might.

Ft. Hood

Latrine basin at Camp Hood, Texas, in 1943.

Fort Hood stands out in this list as it was established in 1942, during World War Two, and therefore comes a good generation after the Lost Cause naming of most of the other installations in this list.  Having said that, by 1942 the Lost Cause version of the South was highly established and even widely accepted in some circles, having just been celebrated in the film Gone With The Wind.  It's one of the largest military installations in the world.

The post was named for Confederate general John Bell Hood, a West Point graduate who entered the U.S. Army in the late 1850s.  A Kentuckian who has served with the U.S. Army in Texas, he resigned from the Army after the start of the Civil War and ended up joining the Confederate forces in Texas as he was upset that his native Kentucky had not declared for the Confederacy.  He was an outright racist.  A young man during the war, he married after the war and worked as an insurance company representative.  He fathered eleven children with his wife and died of the yellow fever in 1879 at age 48.  The same epidemic that killed him, and one of his daughters, destroyed his companies finances and his family was supported by a Texas veterans organization for the following twenty years.

Hood was the youngest individual to be given command of an army during the Civil War which is likely why he came to mind when Camp Hood was named, combined with his association with Texas.  He wasn't a Texan and lived after the war in New Orleans.  It's curious that as late as 1942, with many examples of heroism having been provided by the recently fought World War One, that the Army was still naming posts after Civil War generals, let alone Confederate civil war generals.

Ft. A.P. Hill

Fort A. P. Hill is a training range in Kentucky.  This is a post that I frankly haven't heard of.  Like Benning, this post was established in the 1940s, with this one being established in 1941, just prior to the war.  It was named after Virginia native and Confederate general Ambrose Powell Hill.  Hill was a West Point graduate who had a cavalry command that did not see action during the Mexican War, after which he transferred to the Coastal Artillery.  He resigned his commission just prior to the Civil War and joined the Confederate forces when the war commenced.

Hill was very well liked by the men under his command and most fellow officers.  His career was hampered by constant ill health due to the effects of gonorrhea contracted while he was at West Point.  He was not a great commander and is sometimes cited as an example of the Peter Principle at work in a military command.  Unlike some of the other Confederate figures here he's not personally associated with ardent racism and seems to have gone with the South simply because he was a Virginian.  Having said that, he was vocal about not wanting to live in a defeated South and got his wish when he was shot dead by a Union officer when he was attempting to quixotically demand the Union troops surrender. This came just seven days prior to the surrender at Appomattox Courthouse and therefore at a time at which the South had obviously lost the war.

Hill likely would not be a candidate for the naming of a post today even if he were a Union officer.

Ft. Lee, Virginia.  

The United State's Navy's Camp Lee, Virginia, in 1911.  This Camp Lee predates the Army's.

This post was established in 1917 as Camp Lee in 1917 and rapidly expanded in size.  Oddly enough the name had already been used by the Navy, which is surprising.  It was disestablished in 1920 and then reestablished in 1940.  It became Ft. Lee in 1950 when it became a training location for the Quartermaster Corps.

The fort is named for Robert E. Lee.  Robert E. Lee is probably the most beloved of the Confederate generals but his reputation ignores that he was a slave owner who had a long career in the U.S. Army prior to the war and who was offered command of the Army by Lincoln but resigned rather than fight in a war against Virginians, only to join the rebellion and fight against the nation he'd sworn a loyalty oath to in the first place.  He was a good an effective general but his conscience was obvious pretty elastic towards some very serious matters.

If a person is inclined to want to change the names of these posts this is one that, interestingly enough, might be capable of being salvaged as there have been a number of well known U.S. officers by that name.  Charles Lee was a Continental Major General during the Revolution.  "Light Horse" Henry Lee also served during the Revolution and again during the Whiskey Rebellion, putting the father of Robert E. Lee, as he was, in the ironic position of commanding the suppression of an earlier rebellion.  William C. Lee was a Major General during World War Two and was the commander of the 101st Airborne. John H.C. Lee was a Lieutenant General who was in charge of logistics in the ETO during World War Two.  Indeed, John H.C. Lee, while a controversial figure, probably makes more sense than Robert E. Lee in terms of a naming influence for an ordinance post, and William C. Lee, the "father of the airborne", would be a good choice for an updated naming.

Ft. Pickett (Virginia National Guard)

Ft. Pickett is obviously named after Confederate General George Pickett of Pickett's Charge fame.

Ft. Pickett was established as Camp Pickett in 1941 as part of the build up during World War Two.  It had been a Civilian Conservation Corps camp prior to that, although not with Pickett's name. The post has an odd  history in that following World War Two it was basically disestablished and then reestablished to support Operation Portex, a large war game, that was staged in 1950, just prior to the Korean War. After that the camp remained being used and was transferred as a military establishment to the National Guard, although it received heavy use from other reserve and active components.  In 1960 the post was converted for Guard and Reserve training cycles and then it achieved permanent fort status in 1974.

The use of Gen. Pickett's name for this post seems to follow on the naming customs that were adopted during World War One as the government chose Pickett's name because this was a Southern post.  In doing this, it named the post after another example of a Southern born regular Army officer who had resigned his commission to join the Confederate forces.  In his case, this involved considerable effort as he was stationed at the time on San Juan Island off the coast of Washington State, where he had been involved in the armed standoff of the Pig War a year prior.  After a lengthy sea voyage, he joined the Confederate army.

Pickett's service is subject to some mixed reviews as to how good of an officer he was.  Obviously fondly recalled by Southerners because of his doomed charge at Gettysburg, he is not uniformly regarded as a great commander.  He did have a measure of wit, however, as he was noted to have commented after the war, when asked about why the doomed charge had failed, "I've always thought the Yankees had something to do with it".  On another occasion, that being a post war gathering of former officers of the Army of Northern Virginia, he'd turned to a companion and blamed Lee for the horrific loss, which is something that Lee deserved, noting that "That's the man who lost my division".

While Pickett is recalled principally for that charge today, he himself feared he'd be recalled by the United States for ordering the execution of 22 Union soldiers at New Bern, North Carolina in 1864. Those soldiers had in some instances served previously in Confederate home guard units, i.e., state militia.  For that matter, prior to this, Pickett had been issuing aggressive orders about the on the spot execution of guerillas that were captured by Confederate forces, something that was apparently starting to occur.

The irony of this is to thick not to notice. Pickett had been a serving Federal officer when the Civil War broke out and, like the North Carolina militiamen he hung, had chosen for the other side.  The only real difference is that the North Carolinians had opted for the Union when faced with Confederate conscription whereas he's opted to rebel.  If he wasn't deserving of hanging, they were not either.

Faced with probable prosecution, Pickett fled to Canada but soon benefited from the intercession of an old Army friend, U.S. Grant.  He returned to the U.S. and was pardoned by act of Congress in 1874, a year prior to his death in 1875 at age 50.

Pickett provides a good example of somebody whom the Army should not have honored by naming a fort after him and also of the attitudes of the majority of whites following teh war.  Connections allowed him to escape conviction and receive forgiveness in spite of his actions, where as black citizens, as they now were, were not to receive, ultimately, the sort of systemic assistance that they required to establish their place in the country.

Ft. Polk, Louisiana

Ft. Polk was established as Camp Polk in 1941, making it part of the World War Two collection of posts in this article.  It was a major training post during the war, but following the war it was closed and reopened repeatedly, sometimes serving as a reserve training facility.

It achieved permanent fort status in 1955, which hasn't saved it from continually being on the edge of closure.

Ft. Polk was named after Confederate general, the Right Reverend Leonidas Polk.  Polk was a planter and the Episcopal Bishop of Louisiana prior to the Civil War.  He resigned his ecclesiastical position to take up the sword during the Civil War.  Prior to the Civil War he was a major slaveholder.  He was killed by Union artillery in June, 1864.

Polk is another example of the mystery of the naming conventions in this period.  He was a poor commander and unlike Lee or Pickett he had no pre war association with the U.S. Army.  He was a major slaveholder and his associations in life, including his role as Episcopal Bishop while still retaining his fellow human beings in bondage, and then resigning his clerical role for a military one, make him a poor example of any kind.

Ft. Rucker, Alabama

Ft. Rucker was opened during World War Two in 1942 as Camp Rucker.  It was closed at the end of the war but reopened during the Korean War and made a fort in 1955.

The post was named after Col. Edmund Rucker, an Alabama Confederate officer who became an industrial leader in Alabama after the war.  Rucker was thought fairly high of by his immediate commander as after he was wounded, losing an arm, and captured, that commander, Nathan Bedford Forrest, arranged a prisoner exchange for him. After his recovery, he returned to a Confederate command.

Rucker is somewhat unusual in this collection as he was not a career soldier, although as noted some of the others on this list were not either, and he wasn't technically a general, although he was breveted to that rank, much like George Custer, during the war.  He seems to have come to mind as he was a very successful post Civil War businessman in Alabama.

Pondering those Confederate names

So what of these bases?

I've heard of all of these bases save for one which I somehow wasn't aware of and I wasn't going to comment on it directly, but I will be frank that from a northern and western perspective, naming Army installations after men who were traitors to their country just seems flat out bizarre.  Naming a post after somebody who was associated with the KKK is flat out inexcusable.  And the whole thing is a bit hard to figure.  Until I saw the list, I didn't realize that there were ten, which is a lot.  I didn't know about Beauregard and Pickett having posts named after them at all and I'd not realized that Ft. Gordon, Ft. Polk and Ft. Rucker were named after Confederate generals, although I should have.

We noted just the other day that this film, which is a brilliant film and also a piece of Lost Cause apologetics, was made in 1939 but we failed to note that it was released on January 17, 1940.  This film, as brilliant as it is, definitely has racist elements and unashamedly glorifies the Southern cause in the war, showing how late the Lost Cause Era really lasted.

I also would not have guessed that five or six, depending upon how you reckon it, of these posts were given the names of Confederate figures during World War Two.  Perhaps because I was aware of the use of Confederate figures for camps in the South during World War One, and perhaps because I associate the Lost Cause Era with the 1910s, I would have guessed that they were mostly named during World War One.  I was wrong on that.

Indeed, as the purpose of this blog is to learn, what we've learned from that is that the Lost Cause era went on for a lot longer than I would have guessed. But perhaps I should have known better.  We covered Spiro Agnew going to Battle Mountain's dedication in 1970 just the other day, and while doing this I was informed that the Confederate unknown soldiers tomb was established in 1980.

I did know that all of these came about during the 1916 to 1942 time frame, and that they fit into the same period in which monuments to Southern generals were going up all over the South, even if I erroneously contracted the time period they went up overall (I probably should have run the era from about 1900 to 1980, rather than concentrate on the 1910s).  That period was the heyday of the "Lost Cause" movement that glorified the Southern cause, omitting that it was about slavery, and for which the bookends could perhaps be seen as the movies Birth Of A Nation (nasty racist trash) and Gone With The Wind (well filmed technicolor whitewashing).

It frankly baffles me a bit that the Army remained so concerned about drawing in Southern troops, if that's what it was really concerned about, that it started this practice in World War One, particularly as so many Southerners (black and white) had enlisted to fight in the Spanish American War, which is further baffling in light of the fact that the government resorted to the draft during the Great War, so the concern seems unwarranted, but then I guess I wasn't around doing the worrying at the time so perhaps I'm missing something.

If I am, I'm really missing it in regard to World War Two, by which time it was abundantly clear that the Army was having no trouble at all recruiting Southern men to the service and during which, moreover, the Amy eventually went completely over to conscription and quit taking volunteers as it was more efficient.  Given that, the names assigned during the Second World War really have to be regarded as part of the Army culture at the time.

Indeed, we might note on that culture that the Army's officer corps always had a strong Southern make up. That was the case prior to the Civil War and caused problems in the ranks during the Mexican War when large numbers of German and Irish immigrants, whom Southern officers generally despised, joined for the duration of the war.  Things became so bad that it inspired the only really large defection of US troops to an enemy as Irish soldiers in some numbers left the U.S. Army and joined the Mexican Army.  And that helps explain why so many officers were simply allowed to leave the service at the start of the Civil War and go freely into treason.  The brotherly nature of the officer corps allowed for it, and there were a lot of Southerners in that corps.* In spite of post war fears, Southerners continued to join the Army in numbers greater than Northerners after the Civil War and this was still the case at least as late as the Vietnam War, if not later.

I get why blacks. . .and white Northerners, may remain offended by those names and might want them changed.  Having said that, I also get President Trump's point that by now more Americans may associate those post  names with the Second World War than they do with the Civil War, so it may be a bit late to change some of  them now.  Having said that, the association of some of these individuals with hardcore racism or, in Pickett's case, with a war crime are so strong that at least in some cases something should be done.  Indeed, in the list of names a person might wish to now preserve on post titles, the ones where the post name now overshadows the original person the name honored is small, and when you look at those examples, at least one of them is extremely problematic.

So, now that the Army is looking at it, perhaps all the names should go.

When I first thought of this post I guessed, apparently inaccurately, that some southern states may have National Guard posts named after Confederate figures as well.  Anyhow, that then caused me to ponder how the US has named its military installations, in general, in the past, which lead me to thinking about military installations locally, and who they were named after.  We all know the well-known posts, but rarely the lesser known Guard and smaller military installations. Given that, as it might be interesting, I’ll list them for my state, Wyoming.  I’ll break them down into a couple of different categories.

Part of the reason that I thought this might be interesting, and I hope others follow, is that it helps illustrate what posts were named at various times and why.  So we'll get to Wyoming next.

_________________________________________________________________________________

*Of interest, very few artillerymen, which required some mathematical knowledge, were Southerners prior to the war and, of those who were, most stayed in the Union Army.  The Confederate artillery was, accordingly, always bad.