Old Battlefields

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A few of the comments in Juvat's Monday post really resonated with me, let me reproduce them here -

juvat January 22, 2018 at 8:18 AM

Yeah, I had the opportunity to take a guided tour of the Okinawa Battle. It started offshore in a landing craft and came ashore on the beach. It was an interesting experience to be standing there, with your nose at the ramp and hear the bottom hit the beach. The realization that, if this were real, your life expectancy was probably measured in seconds was "educational" to say the least.

I always wondered how I'd react, hence the prayer.

Andrew January 22, 2018 at 9:32 AM

Living on an island that was wrenched, inch by bloody scary inch, from the hands of the Japanese, changed my view of war forever (and this was at 7 years of age.) Being able to daily walk the island and see bomb and shell craters, find bits and pieces of exploded stuff (and one time finding a case of Jap grenades while snorkeling, yikes, more scared of them than the sharks) and all the other little reminders that three days of extreme combat occurred under my feet, well, was sobering. That was at Kwajalein, and it was considered a 'cake-walk.'

 

juvat January 22, 2018 at 10:19 AM

I can imagine. Or, maybe, I can't imagine.

Andrew January 22, 2018 at 12:04 PM

About every two years I read the official US Army documentation on the invasion. And I can, in my mind, walk in their steps, remembering where I was, what was there at the time I was. Sobering. At the end of the island-island before you got to the 'we added extra room on the island-island' there is/was 'Bunker Hill' which was a Jap concrete command post where the US forces had to do unthinkable things in order to secure it. So strongly built they just covered it up and left it in place. No ghosts there. We played on it during the day, but come dusk the general feeling was decidedly creepy.

Visited Cape Canaveral one year on a tour, which included the Apollo 1 launch pad. Their ghosts haunt that place, too.

I don't think I can handle going to someplace like Iwo or Okinawa or the trenches in France. Cold, windy places, no matter the time of the year.

 

juvat January 22, 2018 at 12:20 PM

Visited Ypres while visiting NATO HQ on a trip to Sarajevo in 97. There was a Museum set up with intact trenches that you could travel down. Couldn't do it. Could walk along and look in, but walk in as if I were there, no way.

When I was less than 3, my Dad and Mom were stationed at Naha AB Okinawa. There quarters were on Suri Ridge. Mom, later, said she wouldn't let me play outside unless she was there. Heck, EOD was still active when I was there 35 years later. Mom also said she didn't like being outside after dark. Said it was just too eerie. So, yeah, I understand where you're coming from.

Andrew and Juvat were talking of places where combat took place, where men (and often women and children, especially on Okinawa) died, in horrible ways. Places they had been and experienced long after the day of battle.

I have walked the ground of a few old battlefields -

• Fort Ticonderoga
• The Hürtgenwald
• Bastogne
• Elsenborn Ridge
• Stoumont
• La Gleize
• Krinkelt-Rocherath
• Quatre Bras
• Waterloo

They haunt me. Sometimes they haunt my dreams, perhaps I read too much military history. I have studied warfare for as long as I can remember. The great battles and campaigns, the generals, the admirals, and (especially) the common folk who actually go forth into battle. The ones who spill their blood (and more, for battle is a very messy experience), the ones you seldom read about unless they are decorated for bravery.

Most Americans of my generation are familiar with Fort Ticonderoga from our Revolution, seized by a small band of men led by Ethan Allen and Benedict Arnold. The latter fellow was a pretty fine leader until he let his ego and lust for position override his common sense. The Battle of Saratoga would no doubt have turned out differently had General Arnold not been there. We won due to his bravery on that field. I won't judge him, I wasn't there when he turned his coat and betrayed the fledgling United States.

Unless you've "been there, done that" it's hard to understand what motivates a human being in times of high stress and the nastiness of battle.

But Ticonderoga (then held by the French and known to them as Fort Carillon) was the scene of a vicious fight during the French and Indian War. George Howe, brother to Admiral Richard Howe and General William Howe (both of whom you should know from the American Revolution) was killed in action there in July of 1758. When the Green Mountain Boys, commanded by Allen and Arnold, got there in 1775 it was undermanned, though still an important post. It was taken without a fight.

I've stood on the reconstructed ramparts of that fort, walked the forests surrounding it, I swear I could hear the echoes of ancient days in those rugged hills south of Lake Champlain and north of Lake George. It makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up even now.

The Battle of The Hürtgenwald was a nasty fight fought in miserable weather starting in September of 1944 and running right up to the start of the Battle of the Bulge. My great uncle John was an infantryman in the 4th Infantry Division there. His war ended during that battle, wounded by a bullet which pierced his helmet and grazed his scalp. Rattled him badly, probably concussed, he was evacuated. By the time he recovered, the war was over.

In the same battle the father of a NATO colleague of mine was captured. His war was over as well. Good thing, my colleague's Dad was an infantryman of the German Wehrmacht.

I still have Uncle John's helmet, the hole in it is a constant reminder of how close we stand to eternity.

I have walked the area, taking pictures so that my uncle could see what it looked like now. Not the same on a pleasant sunny day in summer. I should have gone in the fall, in the rain. But no one in their right mind would visit those ravines in a wet German autumn. Yet men were expected to fight there in 1944.

Now Bastogne, Elsenborn Ridge, Stoumont, La Gleize, and Krinkelt-Rocherath are all battles fought within the larger Battle of the Bulge. One must be careful walking the woods in that area. They still find unexploded ordnance and human remains 74 years later.

As they do in many places in the world where hubris and greed have led our species to wage war upon each other.

Quatre Bras and Waterloo are, of course, two of the battles fought in Napoléon Bonaparte's last military campaign. I have walked both areas, though I concentrated on Waterloo due to the field being relatively well-preserved as opposed to the other. Quatre Bras, Ligny, and Wavre were the other three battles of that campaign. Waterloo gets all the press, it was where Napoléon's imperial ambitions were finally crushed. The other three battles are often forgotten.

Waterloo haunts me like no other place on this earth. Upwards of 40,000 men (and perhaps a lady or two disguised as soldiers, it happened more often than many historians acknowledge) fought and died there, or later of their wounds. At least 10,000 horses perished as well. All in an area no greater than five square miles. That's more than one dead or wounded soldier for every square yard! In reality the areas upon the field where the fighting was heaviest were very small. Afterwards one visitor from Brussels said that one could walk across the field without stepping on the ground, the corpses were so thick.

A horrifying place.

The area surrounding the battlefield has changed since I was last there in 1998, two new parking lots (at least) have been added to accommodate the tourists. While one of these new "car parks" was being dug up in 2012, a nearly complete skeleton was unearthed. The ball which killed him still embedded in his rib cage.

Historians believe the man was a German soldier, named Friedrich Brandt. A Hanoverian serving in what was known as the King's German Legion. You can read about Soldat Brandt here, here, and here.

But who was this soldier? Apparently he left no relatives behind, no wife to claim a widow's pension, no grieving parents to mourn him. He had a pronounced curvature of the spine, which would disqualify someone from service in a modern army. But in those days if you could shoulder a musket and your pack, and stay in ranks, then that was good enough.

Perhaps he was a farm laborer, perhaps he had no trade, no family, no prospects other than to join the army (it still happens today). But whoever he was, whatever his history, he marched to Waterloo in the army of the Duke of Wellington. A member of du Plat's brigade stationed on the Allies right flank.

When his battalion was ordered forward, he marched with his comrades into the smoke and fiery hell of battle. At some point he was hit, he may have staggered forward another pace or two, he may have dropped to his knees instantly. Gasping for breath perhaps, unsure of what had just happened.

If he noticed at all, he would have seen his mates continuing on without him, vanishing into the smoke.

We do know that his brigade commander, Colonel Georg Carl August du Plat was also hit that day. The colonel lingered on only to die of his wounds some three days after the battle.

Undoubtedly Soldat Brandt laid there on the field until he died. After the battle he was no doubt stripped of his possessions, probably his uniform as well, and dumped naked into a mass grave with the multitude of other dead men in the immediate area. Remember, there were thousands of them.

There his body lay for 197 years.

It is the duty of the living to remember the dead. At least that's how I see it.

So, rest in peace Friedrich Brandt, rest in peace soldier, your duty is done, you are not forgotten.

The King's German Legion returns to Hanover in 1816.
Friedrich Brandt was not among them.
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