Scott over at the Power Line Blog reminds us that yesterday was the 242nd anniversary of Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain’s heroic stand with the men of the 20th Maine atop Little Round Top near a small town known as Gettysburg.
Bill Whittle, at Eject Eject Eject, tells the tale in a current context in his essay History.
Hat Tip: Power Line
As I head to bed at 1:24am after a very long day, we’ll take a few moments to pay our respects and honor the memory of Shelby Foote, who died today at the age of 88:
Shelby Foote, the historian whose incisive, seasoned commentary – delivered in a drawl so mellifluous that one critic called it “molasses over hominy” – evoked the Civil War for millions in the 11-hour PBS documentary in 1990, died on Monday at a Memphis hospital He was 88 and lived in Memphis.
His death was reported by his wife, Gwyn, The Associated Press said.
Mr. Foote’s 89 cameo appearances in Ken Burns’s series “The Civil War” were informed by his own three-volume history of the war, two decades in the making, that blended his practiced novelist’s touch with punctilious, but defiantly unfootnoted research.
His mission was to tell what he considered America’s biggest story as a vast, finely detailed, deeply human narrative. He could focus on broad shifts in strategy or on solitary moments of poignancy, like the tearful but still proud Robert E. Lee picking his way through the ranks of his vanquished army to surrender.
“He made the war real for us,” Mr. Burns said.
His goal was to emulate the authoritative narrative voice of the 18th-century British historian Edward Gibbon. Mr. Foote’s books carried a great plot, and as academic historians increasingly saw themselves as social scientists armed with the tools of quantitative analysis, he turned to Shakespeare for metaphors and to colloquialisms for literary impact.
“What sort of document was this anyhow?” he wrote of the Emancipation Proclamation, before going on to discuss it.
Facts, Mr. Foote said, are the bare bones from which truth is made. Truth, in his view, embraced sympathy, paradox and irony, and was attained only through true art. “A fact is not a truth until you love it,” he said.
Critics suggested that Mr. Foote played down the economic, intellectual and political causes of the Civil War. Some said that Mr. Foote may have played down slavery so that Southern soldiers would seem worthy heroes in the epic battles he so stirringly chronicled.
Long a student of history, I was introduced to Foote the same way that millions of others were, through Ken Burn’s Civil War series. Foote, as outlined in the New York Times article above, was – more so than David McCollough, the real narrator of this series. Through almost ninety scenes in Burn’s incredible documentary, it was Foote that carried the story.. and in the end, he brought the series to its dramatic conclusion with his reading of Sergeant Berry Benson’s writings:
“In time, even death itself might be abolished; who knows but it may be given to us after this life to meet again in the old quarters, to play chess and draughts, to get up soon to answer the morning role call, to fall in at the tap of the drum for drill and dress parade, and again to hastily don our war gear while the monotonous patter of the long roll summons to battle.
Who knows but again the old flags, ragged and torn, snapping in the wind, may face each other and flutter, pursuing and pursued, while the cries of victory fill a summer day? And after the battle, then the slain and wounded will arise, and all will meet together under the two flags, all sound and well, and there will be talking and laughter and cheers, and all will say, Did it not seem real? Was it not as in the old days?”
For my birthday, we purchased Foote’s three volume set of writings covering nearly four thousand pages and outlining the history of the war in great detail. Who knows when I will finish them…
But this man, this author, I will remember…
Rest in peace.
John over at Castle Arggghhh visited Normandy recently.
Check out his post and pictures here. In particularly, there’s a photo of Pointe du Hoc taken from the side of the cliff the Rangers scaled on D-Day – it really shows the scale and sheer challenge that the Rangers were faced with.. but climb they did.
I’m hoping to get there soon. Looks like Hawaii first though…
Cox & Forkum have a great editorial cartoon and column up about Memorial Day:
In the sloppy terminology so typical of today, it is common to attribute the courage of our soldiers to “self-sacrifice.” But this misses the enormous difference between our soldiers and the malevolent fanatics on the other side, who declare that they want to die because they “love death.” American soldiers do not go into battle because they love death. They go into battle because they love freedom. They love the liberties we enjoy and the prosperous and benevolent society that these liberties make possible. And they realize that someone has to fight to defend all of this.
Our soldiers do not want to die, and they do not expect to die; they know they are far better trained and better armed than their adversaries. But they know that some of them will die, and they believe that freedom is worth that risk. Here is how the family of Petty Officer 1st Class Neil Roberts, the first American soldier to die in Operation Anaconda, expressed it: “He made the ultimate sacrifice to ensure that everyone who calls himself or herself an American truly has all the privileges of living in the greatest country in the world.”
Smash, the Indepundit, also has a great post up about Memorial Day and his “Flags In” experience with the local Boy Scouts, something I did for many years in and around my hometown of Covington, Indiana.
Although he states in this beginning that this is not a deep posting, it is. Lex writes about Memorial Day:
They stand there still in the certain knowledge, gained now not through the musty reminiscences of scarred and hoary elders, but in testimony woven into the daily fabric of their everyday existence, that having cleared their throats and raised their voices and answered the question, “Who will stand for us?” with a firm, “I will,” that this could happen.
They did this because collectively we asked them to. All of us, even those who said, “Not in my name.”
Yes – in your name too. They did it for you.
These are their lives and this is our loss. Futures that will not now happen. Stories that remain incomplete. Not for today the debate about why or whether. For today, we must merely acknowledge their sacrifice, and the debt that we cannot repay. And give thanks to those who agreed to stand for us.
And maybe just this weekend, even if just for today – let us say their names.
Another post from Lex worth reading this Memorial Day: The Empty Chair.
As we approach Memorial Day in a few days, Jim Lacy over at National Review Online has a great article up about the sacrifices made by American military leaders:
Last month over 1,500 family members who have lost a loved one in Iraq or Afghanistan gathered at Arlington National Cemetery at the behest of an organization called Faces of the Fallen, which has assembled dozens of artists to paint portraits of those killed in Afghanistan and Iraq. General Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was the keynote speaker. While his speech managed to strike a few emotional chords, it was what he did after speaking that was remarkable. Hours after his speech concluded General Myers was still standing out in a cold drizzle talking at length to any family member who wanted to have a word with him. As the man ultimately responsible for ordering the missions that resulted in many of these American deaths, this must have been an incredibly hard thing for him to endure. Still, he never hurried a single person and listened as bereaved family members told him about the child, the spouse, or the sibling they had lost.
It would have been an easy matter for General Myers to claim pressing business and escape as soon as his speech concluded. In fact, he could have ordered a subordinate to represent him at the reception and spared himself the pain of meeting these families. Of course, no real leader would do such a thing. Like General Eisenhower, who felt compelled to go visit the paratroops on the eve of D-Day and meet the men who were expecting to take 90 percent losses, General Myers could not send anyone else to do what must be the most difficult part of his job.
I am reliably informed that General Myers starts each workday with a full briefing on the circumstances of every American casualty in the previous 24 hours. I can think of no more emotionally searing way to begin what are often long, arduous days. This is not something he has to do and I imagine he continues it only because it is a daily reminder that any decision he makes can have a dire consequence for the men and women who make it happen. During World War II, General George Marshall, the first chairman, did much the same thing. Every day he sent the casualty list to the White House to remind the president that real people died as a result of every order given. General Marshall continued this despite a White House request that the practice be discontinued.