
Looking for 509th PIB Vets from WWII

Visiting Monocacy National Battlefield




While considered a Confederate victory, as Early’s men continued to hold the field, the rebels were delayed for an entire day and sustained casualties of approximately 900 killed, wounded, or captured. The delay gave the Union time to reinforce Fort Stevens in the District of Columbia, which Early moved forward and attacked two days later. The Confederates fired on Fort Stevens, but Early knew that now that Union reinforcements had arrived, he did not have the resources to take the fort and threaten Washington further. Early withdrew the next day, July 12th, and headed back to Virginia.


Riding on the C&O Canal

For an excellent history of the area and a step-by-step guide to what you'll see along the towpath trail, check out The C&O Canal Companion by Mike High.












For more information on the C&O Canal NHP and its history, visit the park’s website at http://www.nps.gov/choh/. The Western Maryland Historical Library Project has digitized historical maps and photos online at http://www.whilbr.org/candocanal/index.aspx. Or check out the book The C&O Canal Companion by Mike High (John Hopkins University Press, 2001) for mile by mile descriptions and an excellent history of the Potomac River valley.
Go visit the Army Heritage Trail!






Next post: Bicycling on the C & O Canal!
Another Move, Honoring a Traitor, and Augmenting Reality
My friend Paul over at History Delivered put up an interesting post. He made us aware of an article on the Smithsonian website about how an American was the force behind a memorial in London that honors Benedict Arnold. Paul asks us how we feel about honoring a man whose name is synonymous with traitor. Can a person do something so bad that it trumps the good? In this case we’re talking about Arnold offering up the plans to West Point to the British versus his leading Continental troops to victory at Quebec and Saratoga. I won’t repeat Paul’s argument…I hope you’ll visit his blog and read it for yourself. Nevertheless, I’ll add to the questions he poses and ask if a historical figure can be remembered as so great and good that we fail to study and learn from their faults and foibles as well?
Several weeks ago, I received an email from Jeff Mummert at the Civil War Augmented Reality Project. Jeff asked me to review their project on this blog and I am honored to do so. I have never met Jeff or anyone else connected with the project but I’ll admit that I’m intrigued by what they are working on. Of course I share their passion for history, and as some of you will recall, my “day job” for the last 14 years has been running a computer consulting and website development business (http://www.ridinthewave.com/).
They have a Kickstarter site to help with the funding for their project. I highly recommend that you visit the site to find out what this project is all about. In essence, they are developing software to run on tablet PCs that will help students learn about historical sites, while standing on the ground. For example at Gettysburg, the student will look out at the terrain in front of them, then on the tablet PC they will see the same view with unit dispositions superimposed on that sight picture. This video (also on the Kickstarter site) can better explain what they’re doing:
I think this technology is fascinating. It also has some amazing potential for learning. However, and don’t take my opinion as a criticism of the work that the Civil War Augmented Reality Project is doing, I don’t agree that this technology is best serving the public, as it is meant to be used “on site.” After all, the target user of this technology is already there, on the site. While the student or visitor has their attention drawn to the technology in their hands, will they be more likely to miss the thrill of being on the site? What about the teacher, docent, park ranger, or guide who has developed their knowledge and honed their presentation to bring the history alive? Don’t we owe them an attentive audience?
I’m a big fan of technology. However, we often ask, “Can we?” and forget to ask, “Should we?” or even, “Do we need to?” After 14 years in the business, I have seen this many times. Sheila and I often talk about the availability of our historic sites and archives. We are so pleased to see that historic sites like Gettysburg and large museums like the Smithsonian are free. Anyone can go to NARA and look at the nations documents…for free! The sarcastic punch line is always the same… “You just gotta get here.” I think we should be using our technology to assist the students who do not have the means to travel to the sites, to the museums, and to the archives. In a perfect world, a person with few resources could go to their public library, sit down at a computer, and via the Internet obtain an image of any document, or virtually walk through any museum or visit any historic site. But there’s no taking away from it Jeff, what you guys are working on is COOL. ;-)
Trippin' through Gettysburg

As I’ve mentioned before in this blog, my friend John works as a park ranger at Gettysburg National Military Park and rents a house on the battlefield from the NPS. Of course I wanted to visit my friend that I hadn’t seen in three years, but I was also looking forward to another visit to one of my favorite Civil War battlefields and getting a personal tour from the most knowledgeable person I know about the battle and the war.




I’ll close by saying, "Thanks again, John!" for the fantastic tour and a great steak dinner.
The Army Heritage and Education Center


When you enter the main building of the AHEC, you will have to sign in with security before going in the research library. Lockers are provided to store your coat and any carry cases. You can only bring laptops, cameras, writing paper, and pencils into the research room. A research assistant is available to help you fill out your “pull request” from the library. Don’t try to go it alone, use their expertise. The staff is extremely knowledgeable, very friendly, and eager to help you with your project.

I am a huge fan of digitizing primary documents so we don’t have to travel to an archive to look up this information. However, I know we will never be able to put every document and picture held in repositories online. There is just too much. You have to travel to where it is stored. Also, there is just no beating the thrill of holding the document in your hand, or to read the contents in its entirety for yourself, unedited and not interpreted for you by someone else. Again, I urge anyone who is interested in any subject to visit the appropriate archive and look up the information. I do not consider myself to be a scholar, an academic, or an intellectual. No one asked me what my qualifications or reasons were before allowing me access to any materials at either the AHEC or NARA. It is our history. Go get it.
Picture credits from the top:
- Screen capture of AHEC website, 6/1/2010.
- WWII in-service airborne recruiting poster, AHEC.
- Text document from William B. Breuer Collection, AHEC.
An Excellent Adventure at NARA





Picture descriptions, from the top:
The Still Pictures research room at Archives II. Image from Microsoft Case Study.
The Textual Records research room at Archives II. Image from Microsoft Case Study.
LTC William P. Yarborough, Commanding Officer of the 509th Parachute Infantry Battalion (left) and LTC Roy A. Murray, Commanding Officer of the 4th Ranger Battalion, aboard the Winchester Castle, study model of the beach where troops aboard the ship will make their assault on Anzio, Jan 1944. NARA image SC 186957.
Infantrymen of the 509th Parachute Infantry moving out with a tank from the 7th Armored Division near St Vith, Belgium, January 24, 1945. NARA image SC 279944.
Memorial Day Once Again
May is upon us once again. The last day of the month will bring us Memorial Day Weekend. For most Americans that means the official start to summer. Here on the Lake Michigan shore it also means the informal beginning to the tourist and resort season. (Our town’s population more than doubles during the summer with the return of all the snowbirds.) That being said, how could I not take the opportunity to talk about the real meaning of Memorial Day?
The tradition of a day of remembrance for fallen soldiers began as early as the end of the Civil War. Various communities around the nation held their own day to honor their dead. The first attempt at a nationwide observance was the proclamation of “Decoration Day” by General John Logan, the commander-in-chief of the Grand Army of the Republic, the national organization of Union Army veterans. General Logan proclaimed that May 30th of 1868, and each year thereafter, be set aside to decorate the graves of fallen Union soldiers. Most communities in the South did not participate, mainly due to a lack of Union graves, not to mention a lingering resentment toward the North.
The name “Memorial Day” did not come into use until after 1882. The sentiment of the holiday became accepted nationally after World War I when the country came together to honor all of our war dead. Now the day is officially Memorial Day by a Federal law passed in 1967. It is celebrated on the last Monday in May as per the National Holiday Act of 1971, passed to ensure that we get a three-day weekend for Federal holidays. Although Texas, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, South Carolina, Louisiana, and Tennessee still have alternate days set aside to honor their Confederate war dead.
Many Americans seem to forget the meaning of the day. Some believe that this was fostered by the creation of the guaranteed three-day weekend in 1971. Some, like the Veterans of Foreign Wars, believe that returning the date for Memorial Day to May 30th would help to re-educate Americans and encourage a more traditional day of remembrance and honoring of our fallen warriors. Over ten years ago, separate bills to do just that were introduced into the House and Senate. Unfortunately, neither bill made it out of committee (the place that most bills go to die). However, in 2000 a resolution was passed into public law to encourage a National Moment of Remembrance, “which invites everyone to pause where they are at 3:00 p.m. on Memorial Day in a uplifting act of national unity.”
I do not glorify the sacrifices that were made in wars past and present. In fact, I view them as a tragedy. Nevertheless, wars do happen and someone has to go and fight them. As a historian and a veteran who was raised in a family of veterans, I am saddened to see the growing numbers of naïve and idealistic, not to mention the legions of the ignorant and apathetic. Memorial Day is a learning opportunity and an excellent day to take a reality check. I don’t want to be a buzz kill or party pooper and take away from the tradition of the barbeque, or the tailgate, or the camping trip you have planned for this Memorial Day weekend. By all means, enjoy. However, I do encourage you to take a moment to remember the sacrifices of others and pass on that reverence to your children…so that they can pass it on to theirs.A History Mystery: Who's in first?



Getting Out of the Den


The "Borinqueneers”

With that motivation, I searched the NY Times for other recent articles about Korea and came across the obituary for Modesto Cartagena, who as a staff sergeant serving with the 65th Infantry during the Korean War was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross and is the most decorated Puerto Rican soldier in history. Mr. Cartagena passed away at his home in Puerto Rico on March 2, 2010 at the age of 87. His obituary in the Times explained that the 65th Infantry was an all-volunteer unit from Puerto Rico. Since I had never heard of this unit of Puerto Ricans, I had to satisfy my curiosity.
A simple Google search provided me with the story. Here is a link to the Borinqueneers’ website that contains photographs and archival video. In addition, here is a link to an excellent Wikipedia article summarizing the history of the unit. It would seem that the 65th Infantry Regiment experienced similar prejudices as other ethnic units in the history of the United States Army. Moreover, like the 442nd Regimental Combat Team (Japanese-American), the 92nd Infantry Division (African-American), and others, this unit distinguished itself beyond all expectations.
The unit’s nickname, “Borinqueneers,” is a combination of the words Borinquen, which is what the Puerto Rican natives called their island before the arrival of the Spanish, and Buccaneers. The soldiers coined this name during an exhausting month long boat trip from Puerto Rico to Pusan, Korea in September 1950.
The unit met its greatest challenges in Korea. Many new officers transferred into the unit by the army where white continentals who could not speak Spanish, the native language of the common soldier in the unit. After more than two years of distinguished service in combat, an action occurred in which one of the regiment’s line companies was pushed off a hill by Chinese forces. A new Regimental Commander, a continental, accused the unit of cowardice. The commander ordered the unit to stop calling themselves Borinqueneers, took away their special ration of beans and rice, ordered the men to shave off their distinctive mustaches, and even had one soldier wear a sign that said, “I am a coward.” Due to the humiliation, combat exhaustion, and cultural barriers, it is understandable that the unit rebelled and refused to continue fighting. Ninety-one of the unit members were found guilty at court martial and sentenced to prison. Later, the sentences were remitted through intervention by the Puerto Rican government. Though the men who were court martialed were pardoned, there currently is a campaign for a formal exoneration.
This “mass court martial” does not take away from the fact that members of the unit were awarded 10 Distinguished Service Crosses, 256 Silver Stars, and 606 Bronze Stars during their time in Korea. The 65th Infantry Regiment earned streamers for nine campaigns during the Korean War. Approximately 61,000 Puerto Ricans served during the Korean War, most of them were volunteers.
Update on Non-nonfiction
The publisher placed a statement in the product description of the books offering on Amazon. However, Amazon is still selling their stock of the suspect book. For a while there was a rousing debate going on in the customer reviews of the product where the author joined in to defend himself and the book that he says is factual with the exception of a small part where he was “duped.”
Back to the NY Times article. It’s a good read for us budding authors, as well as fans of nonfiction. It reminds the reader of several recent and notorious cases of fabricated nonfiction works. I’m still at a loss as to why one would need to make up a story when real life and history is so full of action and excitement in its truth. As I’ve mentioned before in this blog, my first book project (research coming along quite well, thank you) concerns the 509th Parachute Infantry Battalion in WWII. Their story is so much better than fiction that I can’t wait to tell their story.
One glimmer of hope for us history fanatics: The Pacific by Hugh Ambrose is #5 on the current NY Times Best Seller list for hardback nonfiction. I’m glad to see the interest in military history, even if it is the result of a television miniseries. It put a good history book on the list that is clearly dominated by books about fad diets and “tell all” gossips. I’m reading Mr. Ambrose’s book now and will review it for you later. Spoiler alert! I’d go ahead and buy it. ;-)
Stolen Valor and Getting It Wrong
The book is out there on the shelf at your local bookstore. It is number sixteen on the list of bestselling military history on Amazon. If it is not recalled, it becomes part of the historical record. Historians almost always base their works on the secondary sources created previously. It is quite possible that twenty years from now, a writer might find this book and cite something from it, and perpetuate the fabrications it contains. The fact that the book does not cite any sources and the author admits that it contains fabrications, makes suspect the remainder of its contents. I will not purchase or read this book.
As a historian, my ire is directed at the author, Charles Pelligrino, and his publisher. This entire episode could have been avoided with some simple fact checking and review of primary sources. When the author was interviewing Mr. Fuoco, how hard would it have been to look at his discharge or other documents like award certificates? Did the author not make a trip to the National Archives or other repositories to view the official records like flight plans and passenger lists? We do not know because there is no list of sources in Mr. Pelligrino’s book. Moreover, the most distasteful part is that Pelligrino has been published previously (albeit this is his first history book) and had a movie made based on one of his earlier books. Not only should an author of his experience know better, but he also has the financial wherewithal to easily conduct primary source research and fact checking.
I don’t want to tell you how to think or who to blame. Make up your own mind. I’m just going to give you my opinion, my philosophy if you will. I believe that the job of the nonfiction writer, whether an academic or a popular historian, is to honor those who came before us by telling their story so it is not lost to history. The recollections and eyewitness accounts of individuals are an integral part of telling that story. However, the absolute primary function of the interviewer is to check the validity of a claim before publishing it as fact.
As far as we veterans are concerned, I know this in my heart to be true. I think that however you got there; circumstances make the hero. You might have joined or you might have been drafted. You might have volunteered for Special Forces, or prayed for the Finance Corps. Nevertheless, fate, kismet, or karma put you in the line of fire or it didn’t. You either witnessed history, or wish you had, and it wasn’t totally up to you, no matter how hard you tried either way. That being said, anyone who steps forward and signs up, no matter what their role, should be thanked for their service and their courage should never be in question. Not by anyone else, and certainly not by themselves.
Response: Getting a Job with the NPS
It is just as hard getting a job with the NPS as it is teaching. During the summer we employ about maybe six graduate students as seasonal rangers and another four as interns. Many of them would love to work for the NPS once they graduate from school but for every position, (when they become available) there is usually over one hundred applicants. Some are only open to permanent, (as opposed to seasonal) NPS employees. For all positions, the Park Service considers KSAs (knowledge, skills, abilities), education, experience, and assigns a certain point value. I don't know how this works exactly but there is a system. Veterans and applicants with disabilities get an additional 5-10 points. That means that usually a recent college graduate with a bachelor’s degree, or even a master’s degree, usually isn't going to make the cut.
All hope isn't lost though. There are a couple of other ways to get in. One way is through the STEP program, where a student can work full time for the Park Service while they are going to school. While you may work the entire year through STEP, you still aren't considered a permanent, full time employee. There are no benefits except a paycheck and once school is finished you are still out of a job, but I have known a few people who have managed to stretch their time in STEP over several years and in one case, it did lead to a permanent position.
Another way to get in is through what are known as "gateway parks.” These are parks that see a lot of turnover. They are usually very popular with visitors, but are somewhat stressful and exhausting to work at. Examples of "gateway parks" are the Mall in Washington D.C., Independence Hall in Philadelphia, and Boston National Historic Park. Because they have high turnover it is a little bit easier to get a job at these parks. [Then hope to transfer to another park at a later date] However, it may be years before a position at the park that the applicant really wants to work at opens up.
While these are permanent, full time jobs with benefits, it doesn't necessarily mean you will be working the entire year. Some of these jobs are subject to furlough, which means you may only work six or nine months out of the year. Also, these are entry level GS-4/5 jobs which means you aren't making a lot of money. Unless you have a [working] spouse or some other additional income, you might not be able to get by on just an NPS paycheck. If I didn't have an Army retirement paycheck I probably couldn't do this. Considering my experience and education, I'm making a lot less than most people my age with similar backgrounds, but this is one of the best jobs in the world.
Thanks for the input, John!
In the Service of Clio
Dr. Sarantakes is a military, diplomatic, and political historian who is the author of several books and multiple published articles. He has his Ph.D. from the University of Southern California and is currently an associate professor at the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College. What is unique about his blog is that he has “guest bloggers” post articles concerning a career in academic history and the state of the profession. In the earlier postings on his blog, Dr. Sarantakes has discussed some alternate employment options for Ph.D.s in history. In the last couple of months, the subject is the budget strategy taken by universities to hire cheaper adjunct professors over more costly tenured positions and what effect that has on the job market in that field.
The bottom line is that there are too many Ph.D.s for the number of university teaching jobs available. That drives down salary and benefits, as it would in any profession. I hate to sound like my dad here, but a couple of old adages used to fly around my house, as I am sure they did in most of yours. The first piece of advice is to “do what you love and the money will follow.” The other thing dad used to say was “Whatever you do, be the best at it and you’ll always have a job.”
The best example I know of these wisdoms in action is my friend John. We met in the masters program at Shippensburg. We have a lot in common and I have a great admiration and respect for him. John retired from the army and is better read on the Civil War than anyone I know. The job market for MAs in history is as tight and pay is as low as it is for Ph.D.s. Nevertheless, John started the program knowing what he wanted to do when he finished. He wanted to work for the National Park Service and be a ranger at one of the Civil War Battlefields. While still pursuing his masters, John interned with the NPS. He networked and he studied the job market. Today, John is leading tours at Gettysburg Battlefield. I wonder if he knows how really amazing that is. Do what you love and the money will follow. Be the best at what you do and you will always have a job. Livin’ the dream. Way to go, John!