Neptunus Lex

On June 17th, 1775, Joseph Warren - a teacher, doctor, President of the Massachusetts Provincial Congress and the man who sent Paul Revere on his famous “midnight ride” - was killed defending the wall at the Battle of Bunker Hill. Having been recently appointed a major general by the Massachusetts congress but the commission not yet in effect, he had been asked by General Israel Putnam and Colonel William Prescott to take over command of the revolutionary defenses. He declined, serving as a private soldier instead.

The first two British assaults were repulsed, but the third carried the battlements even as the colonial army ran out of ammunition. Warren was killed in the final assault, shot by a British officer who recognized him. The British army won the field that day, but at a terrible price relative to their numbers - British General Henry Clinton wrote in his diary that, “A few more such victories would have surely put an end to British dominion in America.”

Warren was one of 140 Americans that died in battle that day, and one of perhaps 8,000 battle deaths in the Revolution, which lasted 8 years and resulted in at least another 17,000 non-battle deaths. The conflict engaged the efforts of 217,000 met at arms and had begun as an affirmation that American citizens should enjoy the same political freedoms as those of their peers in the metropolitan center. It ended in the birth of a new and sovereign nation founded upon the radical notion of liberty in opposition to tyranny.

For what they did we remember them.

On June 1st, 1813 Captain James Lawrence, commanding officer of the USS Chesapeake fell mortally wounded on the quarterdeck of his frigate, a victim of small arms fire. His ship had sailed from Boston Harbor determined to engage a fighting captain named Philip Broke, commander of the HMS Shannon in blockade off the coast. The war had broken out between the young United States and her old master over sailors’ rights, free trade and the question of who should set limits on the westward expansion of a restless nation. As he was carried below, Lawrence told his surviving officers - all of whom had been wounded by a galling fire directed upon their quarterdeck by guns both great and small - to “fight her ’til she sinks and don’t give up the ship!”

The ship was taken by a British boarding party, but Lawrence’s friend Oliver Hazard Perry would learn from his friend’s sacrifice and stitch those words on the battle standard he wore to victory over the British squadron at Lake Erie in September 1813. We learn them still.

Nearly 500,000 Americans served under arms in some capacity during the War of 1812, 2,260 were killed in action and another 17,000 succumbed to disease and accidents. The war lasted nearly three years and was fought to a strategic draw but nevertheless solidified the national identity of an infant nation even as the vigorous defense of Canada by British regulars and local militias terminally ended its northern aspirations. The warrior ethos of the US Navy was molded there, as single-ship victories by heavy American frigates over adversaries from the world’s oldest and most powerful navy cemented a tradition of honor, courage and commitment. These characteristics would be called upon again and again by an island nation in her time of need.

For what they did we remember them.

Our Indian Wars spat and guttered from before the Revolution all the way up until 1898, taking the life of George Armstrong Custer along the way while opening up the westward frontier all the way to the Pacific Ocean and teaching us a specific lesson on the dangers of hubris on the one hand, and on the other the general lesson that savagery in warfare was by no means a characteristic exclusively limited to our foes. Many tens of thousands died over the years, great warriors in blue and great warriors in buckskin and all too often non-combatants on every side. Nearly all of them fought for the right as they saw it, usually in exceptional circumstances of great hardship. Great bravery and low barbarism were sufficient to share all around even as it became clear over time that the outcome was never seriously in doubt.

But we remember them still. We remember them all.

Major Levi Twiggs, USMC, would fall to enemy fire on 13 September 1847. With him at Chapultepec, 39 Marines - 35 of them officers and NCOs - would lay down their lives and earn the “Blood Stripe” for future non-commissioned officers while memorializing “the halls of Montezuma” in song forever. On the 9th of March, 1847 a combined naval and infantry force conducted the first large-scale amphibious assault in US history at the Battle of Veracruz. Eighteen American soldiers would die in the 20-day campaign, during which such names as Robert E. Lee, George Meade, Ulysses S. Grant and Thomas Jackson - later to be called “Stonewall” Jackson - first entered the ledgers of martial note. They would meet again in time, but not before 1733 soldiers died to hostile fire in the Mexican-American War and another 12,000 died non-battle deaths in a campaign that integrated an independent Texas into the union and defined our southern borders. For the first time - but not the last - domestic politics would divide America even as over 78,000 of her armed forces won victories on a far-flung battlefield.

For the greatness of the country that they deeded us by their sacrifice, we remember them.

On September 17, 1862 generals Robert E. Lee and George McLellan tested strength of arm against American arm on the way to the single bloodiest day in US history at a battlefield called, variously, Sharpsburg or Antietam. The result was twenty-three thousand casualties on both sides and 3,600 killed in return for a battle of very little of tactical consequence that nevertheless marked a significant strategic victory for a Union army that, up until that point, had reeled from disaster to defeat. One of those who fell that day was Private A. Hicks Baker, formerly a newspaper writer from Columbus, Texas.

At age 23, Pvt Baker was fighting for the right of his state to self-determination by serving with Company B of the 5th Texas Infantry - the famous Texas Brigade of General John Bell Hood’s division in the Army of Northern Virginia. Opposite him on the field of battle, in rank and in cause was Union General Joseph Mansfield, a professional soldier from the Old Army. Born in Connecticut, he had risen slowly in the peacetime service, but served honorably in the Mexican campaign. Wounded at Monterrey and breveted to lieutenant colonel for bravery there, he was promoted again to colonel at Buena Vista in 1847.

Fighting against Hood’s Texans at Antietam - and perhaps against Pvt Baker himself - he received a mortal wound to the stomach, dying the next day in the cause of preserving the union. The repulse of the Confederate army from Maryland gave Abraham Lincoln the victory he needed to announce the Emancipation Proclamation, explicitly tying the northern cause for the first time to the liberation of southern slaves - a cause that would in four years’ time claim the lives of over 623,000 American soldiers on both sides, at least 200,000 of them in battle. The work that they began but that we have not yet concluded was the task of wiping away entirely the birth stain and legacy of our country’s original sin. Well over 3 million Americans on both sides contested this, the signal issue of their day.

For the martial legacy bequeathed by southern valor and the moral clarity delivered through northern determination, we remember them. We remember both sides.

On the June 1st, 1898, Corporal William F. Johnson of Troop B, 10th Cavalry fell coming to the desperate need of Teddy Roosevelt’s Rough Raiders as they charged up San Juan Hill under the withering fire of a determined Spanish defense. Of the 385 battle deaths in the Spanish-American War (and over 2,000 non-battle deaths), he was one of 124 American soldiers to die in battle on that hill alone. He was also a member of the “Buffalo Soldiers,” African American veterans of the Indian Wars and the acknowledged saviors of the day.

Five of his race would win the Medal of Honor for services rendered during the Spanish-American War, which would see America begin to recognize the dignity and courage of its black soldiers even as it bound up the national wounds of the Civil War, freed the Cuban citizenry from an increasingly oppressive imperial yoke, and announced the arrival of a young but energetic nation on the international stage of affairs.

Today we remember Corporal Johnson, Troop B, 10th Cavalry, who fought and died courageously given only second hand gear and under a regime of systemic prejudice. We remember them all.

(Posthumous) Medal of Honor recipient Frank Luke of the Army Air Corps was killed in action on September 29th, 1918. Luke shot down 14 enemy aircraft - including 10 balloons, thought to be a particularly “hard target” at the time - over a space of 8 days. Shot down himself over enemy lines he refused to surrender, continuing to fight with a pistol in hand until killed by German soldiers. He was the second ranking ace behind Eddie Rickenbacker, and his service coincided with the first tactical use of aviation in combat. Strategy was still to come.

Over 4 million US servicemen answered the call to arms when America finally joined the European intramural slaughter in 1917, coming in on the side of western democracy and against eastern militarism and autocracy. By the summer of 1918, 10,000 fresh American troops joined the battle every day, demoralizing a Central Powers alliance that had already bled itself nearly white in years of vicious trench warfare. Over 53,000 Americans died on European battlefields, and another 63,000 died non-battle deaths in the two years we spent engaged in combat. It was to be the war that ended all wars.

It wasn’t.

We remember them.

Henry Hinman Fanning was a Third Mate aboard the Merchant Ship SS Rawleigh Warner who died when his ship was sunk in the cold waters of the North Atlantic on June 23rd, 1942 by a German unterseeboot, the U-67, then under the command of Korvetten Kapitan G?ºnther M?ºller-St??ckheim. The U-67 went on to sink seven other merchant ships on that patrol from L’Orient, ships bringing desperately needed war supplies and dry goods to embattled forces and imperiled democracies. One in twenty-six merchant mariners died in the line of duty, the highest percentage killed in any of the several armed services during World War II.

Over 16 million Americans would serve under arms in the fight against fascism and militarist imperialism. Nearly 300,000 would die in battle, and over 100,000 would succumb to non-battle injuries and accidents. They saved the world.

We remember them.

Hospital Corspman Third Class Edward C. Benfold died September 5th, 1952 while attached to the 1st Marine Division in Korea. According to his citation for the Medal of Honor:

(H)is company was subjected to heavy artillery and mortar barrages, followed by a determined assault during the hours of darkness by an enemy force estimated at battalion strength, Benfold resolutely moved from position to position in the face of intense hostile fire, treating the wounded and lending words of encouragement. Leaving the protection of his sheltered position to treat the wounded when the platoon area in which he was working was attacked from both the front and the rear, he moved forward to an exposed ridge line where he observed two Marines in a large crater. As he approached the two men to determine their condition, an enemy soldier threw two grenades into the crater while two other enemies charged the position. Picking up a grenade in each hand, Benfold leaped out of the crater and hurled himself against the onrushing hostile soldiers, pushing the grenades against their chests and killing both the attackers. Mortally wounded while carrying out this heroic act, Benfold, by his great personal valor and resolute spirit of self-sacrifice in the face of almost certain death, was directly responsible for saving the lives of his two comrades. His exceptional courage reflects the highest credit upon himself and enhances the finest traditions of the United States Naval Service. He gallantly gave his life for other.

Twenty-one years old when he died, Benfold was one of nearly 34,000 battle deaths in the three years of the Korean War, with more than 2,000 non-battle names stricken from the list of the 5.7 million servicemen who dedicated themselves to stemming the onrushing tide of a new kind of tyranny. We have for too long forgotten their service and sacrifice.

Today, as is their due, we remember them.

LT Sharon Ann Lane was on duty in the evac hospital in Chu Lai, the Republic of Viet Nam on June 8, 1968 when a 122mm rocket slammed into the compound. A nurse dedicated to saving lives and mending bodies tortured by the incidents of war, she could not help herself when shrapnel pierced her aorta. She died, one of over 58,000 American lives lost in Southeast Asia from 1964-1973 in an effort to stabilize the Pacific Rim by stemming the rise of a totalitarian ideology and encourage the growth of liberal democracies. Commonly perceived at the time to have been a defeat for the US-led forces of democracy and liberalism, the long-term US commitment did buy breathing space for other nations in the Rim to get their own political and economic houses in order. With even Viet Nam and the PRC moving to liberalize their economic systems - and with the expectation that political liberalization will lag only a little way behind the emerging aspirations of a growing bourgeoisie - the only remaining bastion of pure communist tyranny in the region is the Hermit Kingdom. Meanwhile, US forces that had never suffered a significant defeat in the field were instead brought low by the collapse of political will at home. The cultural and political divisions engendered by the Viet Nam war continue to inform the national political discourse to this day, not always sensibly.

They fought for us in a far place for reasons imperfectly enunciated and did so with courage and honor. We remember them.

On January 17th, 1991, Lieutenant Commander Michael Scott Speicher was flying a suppression of enemy air defense mission on the first night of the air war against Iraq when his FA-18 was shot down by an Iraqi MiG-25. Having briefly been declared dead, his status was changed first to “missing” and then to “missing, presumed captured” ever since, with no evidence to prove whether or not he died, no news to positively determine his fate. The US suffered 147 battle deaths in the 2+ million strong successful effort to dislodge a tyrannical and militarist aggression in a strategically critical region that wedded our national interest to the byzantine complexities of a very foreign world.

As these things become closer to our own time, as these become not only people we read about but people we know, our understanding of them grows dimmer, the context less clear - the clarity of our resolve slackens. This is the nature of things.

And yet, the ones that fell for us?

We remember them today.

On September 11th, 2001, 2,996 innocents lost their lives to underline the point that a new and threatening fascism really did mean it when they said “Death to America,” and that their impotence against our armed forces was psychologically counterbalanced in their own minds at least by a willingness to kill civilians in numbers bounded not by any sense of shared humanity, but rather by the limitations of the weapons they could fashion to the purpose. One of the innocent victims of that barbarism was named Heather Lee Smith. She stood in for you and me, although she never meant to - she was all of us.

Her name is counted in the roll now too, as is that of former NFL player Pat Tillman, whose death by friendly fire and the bollixed reporting thereof in no way diminishes the quality or character of his personal sacrifice, nor of the debt we owe him. As of May 27, 2007 there have been 387 casualties in Afghanistan.

We remember them.

On Friday, May 25th, 2007, Private First Class Casey Zylman, age 22, of Coleman, Michigan died of wounds sustained when an improvised explosive device detonated near his vehicle in Tal Afar, Iraq. He was assigned to the 3rd Squadron, 4th Cavalry Regiment, 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 25th Infantry Division, Schoefield Barracks, Hawaii.

He is one of the 3,426 US servicemen that have given their lives for us in Iraq as of May 27, 2007.

We remember him.

We remember them all.

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:

Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.

At the going down of the sun and in the morning,

We will remember them.

– Laurence Binyon