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New Mexicans in WWI: Charles M. de Bremond

11/2/2023

Charles Marie de Bremond is an important figure in twentieth century New Mexican military history.

The de Bremond family was originally French, but migrated to Switzerland during the French revolution.Charles was born on the tenth of July in 1864 in the town of La Chatelaine, in the canton of Fribourgh, Switzerland. He served in the Swiss Army for eight years.

In 1891, he and his uncle, Henry Gaullier, immigrated to the US. Three years later they bought 280 acres of ranch land northeast of Roswell, New Mexico and started a successful sheep operation.

de Bremond was civic minded. He participated in Roswell's cultural and social activities and served as a Captain in New Mexico's National Guard.

Photo taken during the Punitive Expedition into Mexico. de Bremond is the man in the center.

On March 9, 1916 Francisco “Pancho” Villa and approximately five hundred of his men raided the border town of Columbus, New Mexico. In response, President Woodrow Wilson ordered John J. “Black Jack” Pershing to lead American troops into Mexico. de Bremond's outfit,
Battery “A,” First New Mexico Field Artillery, was one of the first to respond. After being ordered to Fort Bliss, Texas for training, Battery A was attached to the Sixth U.S. Field Artillery. Approximately 5,000 U.S. troops spent nearly a year in Mexico in what turned out to be an unsuccessful attempt to capture Villa. When the Expedition ended, the battery, which had received many accolades, was mustered out of federal service and returned to Roswell.

The Mexican Punitive Expedition served as a training ground and prelude to World War I. When the U.S. entered WWI on April 2, 1917, many of the men who participated in in campaign in Mexico, including the men of New Mexico Battery A, went almost immediately to serve in World War I. Although many of its men had already entered service, the remainder of the battery was called up in December of 1917. They were again nationalized, this time joining the 146th Field Artillery.

de Bremond taught many of his men to speak French, which came in very handy during their deployment.

The training Battery A received while attached to the Sixth U.S. Field Artillery proved invaluable, and Battery “A” became one of the best known American Expeditionary Force units of WWI.

The action for which New Mexico’s Battery A, 146 Field Artillery received the most praise was the destruction of a bridge at Chateau-Thierry. This bridge had served as the German’s main line of communication, and its destruction contributed to the failure of the last great German offensive of the war.

In the course of the war, de Bremond was promoted three times, rising from Captain to Colonel. By the time the war ended on November 11, 1918, the battery's four guns had each fired over 14,000 rounds. This was more rounds fired in combat than all the other American heavy mobile field Artillery combined. None of the men in the battery died during the war, but 12 were wounded. For some, including de Bremond, their wounds proved fatal.

The men of the Battery earned six battle stars for their victory medals and their commander, Lt. Colonel Charles M. DeBremond, received the Distinguished Service Medal posthumously.

de Bremond inhaled poison gas during the battle of the Marne in July 1918. He was evacuated to the states, where he gave lectures on the war to help boost civilian morale and support. He also worked on the creation of the Veterans of Foreign War. He died of pulmonary tuberculosis, a direct result of the gas attack, on December 7, 1919 in Roswell, New Mexico. He was 55 years old. His funeral was one of the biggest events Roswell had ever seen. The deBremond National Guard Facility, located at the Roswell Industrial Air Center, was named in his honor.

Jennifer Bohnhoff is an educator and author who lives in the mountains of central New Mexico. Her novel A Blaze of Poppies, tells the story of a New Mexico couple whose lives are affected by World War I.

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Ambrose Bierce, Classic Western Writer

10/30/2023

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Ambrose Bierce was a prolific American writer and journalist, whose pioneering work in horror and in realistic war fiction inspired many, including H. P. Lovecraft, Stephen Crane, and Ernest Hemingway.

Bierce was born in a log cabin at Horse Cave Creek in Meigs County, Ohio, on June 24, 1842. He was the tenth of thirteen children, all of whom their father gave names beginning with the letter "A": Abigail, Amelia, Ann, Addison, Aurelius, Augustus, Almeda, Andrew, Albert, Ambrose, Arthur, Adelia, and Aurelia. Bierce’s parents impressed on him the importance of reading and writing, and when he was only 15 years old, he left home to become a writer at a small Ohio newspaper.

Ambrose enlisted in the Union Army's 9th Indiana Infantry when the Civil War began. His participation in the Battle of Shiloh became a source for several of his short stories and his memoir "What I Saw of Shiloh." In April 1863 he was commissioned a first lieutenant. He served on the staff of General William Babcock Hazen as a topographical engineer, making maps of likely battlefields. He was recommended for admission to West Point, but a traumatic brain injury he received at the Battle of Kennesaw Mountain stopped him from attending. He would suffer from complications, including fainting episodes and irritability attributable to traumatic brain injury, for the rest of his life.

After the war, Bierce joined an expedition to inspect military outposts across the Great Plains. He traveled by horseback and wagon from Omaha, Nebraska, arriving toward year's end in San Francisco, California, where he was awarded the rank of brevet major before resigning from the Army. He worked as an editor of a San Francisco newspaper for several years, then moved to England, where he wrote for a magazine. In 1875, Bierce moved back to San Francisco and resumed working as a journalist.

Bierce’s personal life was marked by tragedy. He married Mary Ellen "Mollie" Day on December 25, 1871. Two of their three children died young, his son Day by suicide after a romantic rejection and his son Leigh of pneumonia related to alcoholism. After discovering compromising letters to her from an admirer, Bierce and his wife separated. They divorced in 1904 and she died died the following year. His daughter Helen outlived them all.

In October 1913, when Bierce was 71, he went on a tour of his old Civil War battlefields. By December, his traveling had taken him into Mexico, where he became an observer in Pancho Villa's army. On December 26, 1913 he wrote a letter to Blanche Partington, a close friend, which he ended with the words "As to me, I leave here tomorrow for an unknown destination." Bierce was never heard from again. He vanished without a trace, one of the most famous disappearances in American literary history. His life, and especially the mystery of his death, have been the inspiration for countless novels and movies.

Bierce was inspired by Edgar Allen Poe. Some of his horror and gothic ghost tales went on to inspire H.P. Lovecraft. Click here to read one of his short stories that's perfect for the haunted, Halloween season:

Jennifer Bohnhoff is a retired teacher who used Bierce's Occurrence at Owl Creek when teaching American Literature. She is now a full time, award-winning writer, mostly of historical fiction for middle grade readers.

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Bill Mauldin, New Mexico Cartoonist

10/26/2023

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People who recognize the name Bill Mauldin most often remember him as the cartoonist who created Willie and Joe, the enlisted soldiers who showed us the human side of World War II. New Mexico is proud to claim him as one of its talented sons.

Mauldin was born October 29, 1921 in Mountain Park, New Mexico, an unincorporated community in Otero County, west of Cloudcroft. His family moved to Phoenix, where he attended Union High School and joined the ROTC, and experience that served him well in the military. Mauldin should have graduated in 1939, but he lacked the credits to do so. Since the editor of the school newspaper and his art teacher recognized his talent and suggested Mauldin pursue cartooning as a profession, he moved to Chicago and took a cartooning course at the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts, then moved back to Phoenix, where he gained a few commissions for election cartoons and joined the Arizona National Guard, 45th Infantry Division. Two days after Mauldin was sworn in, the Guard was "federalized" and the troops moved to Oklahoma. Mauldin soon talked his way into being the cartoonist for the 45th Division News when he was off-duty. He created Willie and Joe for the 45th Division News in 1940.

The 45th Division headed to Italy in time to participate in D-Day in Sicily on July 10, 1943. When the newspaper began issuing editions on mimeograph paper, Mauldin learned how to cut drawings into stencils. Willie and Joe began appearing in the Mediterranean edition of the Stars and Stripes in November 1943. By early 1944, they were syndicated as Up Front by United Feature Service.

Not happy with being segregated from his unit like most of the news staff was, Mauldin volunteered for gunning duty. He made sure he spent time with K Company, his fellow infantrymen. Near Cassino at Christmas in 1943, he was struck by a small fragment from a German mortar while sketching at the front. Although he said that he had "been cut worse sneaking through barbed-wire fences in New Mexico,", he earned a Purple Heart for his injury.

One person who didn’t appreciate Mauldin’s cartoons was General George Patton, who thought Willie and Joe were scruffy and badly mannered. In March 1945, he drove to Patton's quarters in Luxembourg, where the General harangued him:

"Sergeant," he said, "I don't know what you think you're trying to do, but the krauts ought to pin a medal on you for helping them mess up discipline for us."
Mauldin was permitted to speak his mind to Patton. He later told Will Lang, the Life magazine journalist that “Patton had received me courteously, had expressed his feelings about my work, and had given me the opportunity to say a few words myself. I didn't think I had convinced him of anything, and I didn't think he had changed my mind much, either."

In 1945, the war ended and Mauldin won his first Pulitzer for cartooning, prompting his high school to decide that he had done enough work to earn a high school diploma. Mauldin’s post war cartoons first focused on the difficulties that Willie and Joe had reentering American culture. By 1948, Maulding had progressed beyond the plight of Willie and Joe and he was attacking inequality and injustice elsewhere in society. The same stubbornness that allowed him to face General Patton allowed him to take on the FBI, Joseph McCarthy, the House Un-American Activities Committee, and the Ku Klux Klan.

When the Vietnam War began, Mauldin talked the Chicago Sun-Times into sending him to Vietnam, arguing that as a cartoon commentator he owed it to his readers to get "his own feet wet." He was visiting his eldest son Bruce, who was a warrant officer and helicopter pilot with the 52nd U.S. Army Aviation Battalion stationed two hundred miles north of Saigon when he experienced a Viet Cong attack on February 7, 1965. He sent back several cartoons about the experience.
In 1991, and injury to his drawing hand that forced Mauldin to retire. By 2002, he had developed advanced Alzheimer's Disease. Bill Mauldin died on January 22, 2003 and was buried six days later, at Arlington National Cemetery. He truly is a New Mexican treasure.

Jennifer Bohnhoff is a New Mexican who hasn't yet attained treasure status, but it working hard to get there. She is the author of 11 books, many of which are set in New Mexico or involve the trials of war. She is also the daughter and mother of men who have served in the Army.

To commemorate Veteran's Day this year, she is giving away a 1945 copy of Up Front by Bill Mauldin. All of the cartoons in this blog are from that book. The winner will be chosen from among the subscribers to her email list. If you would like to join that list for a chance to win the book, click here.

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Ypres: The Belgian Town with Many Names and a Lot of History

10/20/2023

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In 2019, my husband and I were able to tour the World War I battlefields in Belgium and France. We visited many cities and towns, but my favorite was Ypres, a town with many names and a lot of history.

Ypres is the third largest city in the Flanders, right behind Ghent and Bruges. Its official name is its Flemish one, Ieper, but it is most commonly called by its French name, Ypres. It most likely got its name from its proximity to the Yperlee, or Leperlee, River. During World War I, British soldiers often renamed the places whose names felt strange to their tongues. The town of Bailleul became Baloo, Étaples became Eat Apples, Foncquevillers.was called Funky Villages, and Ypres became Wipers..

Ypres is an ancient town. The Romans raided it in the first century BC, mentioning it in their records by location. The first written record of the name is from 1066.

During the Middle Ages, Ypres became a major cloth-weaving city. It was such an important trading partner, its linen so valuable to the English that it is mentioned in the Canterbury Tales. England's Edward III offered economic incentives and protection to Flemish weavers, who migrated to the island nation in large numbers.Ypres cloth, both linen and woolen, was available as far away as the city of Novgorod, in Kievan Rus. Its population grew, possibly to as large as 80,000.

It was during this peak of power that the famous Cloth Hall was built. Erected between 1260 and 1304, it was a jewel of gothic architecture and a testament to the riches that were pouring into Ypres. Behind it sits Saint Martin's Cathedral, which was built in 1221.

Above: The Cloth Guild Hall. Below: the Cathedral Author's photos.

A section of the old town walls

Ypres had long been fortified to keep out invaders. Parts of the early ramparts, dating from 1385, still survive near the Rijselpoort (Lille Gate). Over time, the earthworks were replaced by sturdier masonry and earth structures and a partial moat. Ypres was further fortified in the 17th and 18th centuries. These fortifications did not always protect the city, and the devastation of war and siege. The city has been under French, Spanish, and Habsburg control. Its population dwindled to about 5,000.

By the turn of the 20th century, the town looked old and worn. An extensive rebuilding program restored the Cloth Hall and Cathedral to their former glories. The town's restored beauty was not to last, however.

Because it stood in the path of Germany's Schlieffen Plan, Ypres occupied a strategic position during the First World War. Belgium's neutrality was guaranteed by Britain, bringing the British Empire into the war and many hundreds of thousands of British soldiers into the Ypres area. The German army bombarded the city until it was reduced to ruins. The last inhabitants abandoned the city in 1915. By 1917 not a single house or tree remained standing.

Canadian troops passing the ruins of the Cloth Hall. Image from Library and Archives Canada

After the war the town was extensively rebuilt using money paid by Germany in reparations. The main square, including the Cloth Hall, town hall, and Cathedral were rebuilt based on the renovation plans from before the war.

Today, Ypres is home to about 34,900 inhabitants. The restored Cloth Hall now houses In Flanders Fields Museum, which is dedicated to Ypres's role in the First World War and named for the poem by Canadian John McCrae. St. George's Chapel, which faces the Cathedral, remains a center of British culture in the town and a pilgrimage site for British Citizens who lost loved ones during WWI.

The Menin Gate, in the city's east walls, holds the names of soldiers of the British Commonwealth who fell near Ypres before August 16, 1917 but who have no known grave. Soldiers who died later are commemorated elsewhere. As graves are identified, the names of those buried in them are removed from the Gate.

Every evening at eight o'clock, traffic around the imposing arches of the Menin Gate Memorial stops while buglers sound the "Last Post." During the Second World War Germans who occupied the city prohibited the ceremony, so it was hosted at Brookwood Military Cemetery in England. The ceremony resumed on September 6, 1944 the day the city was liberated, even though there was still heavy fighting in other parts of the town.

If you were to walk through Ypres today without knowing its history, you might think what a cute and quaint medieval town it is. But the gothic buildings are all new, rebuilt after the horror of war had reduced them to rubble. And although the buildings are rebuilt, the memory of trauma remains. Ypres is not a town that will ever forget the horror it went through a hundred years ago.

Although she fell in love with Ypres, the scenes in Jennifer Bohnhoff's WWI novel A Blaze of Poppies do not take place in this area, but farther to the south, in France.

One of the reasons she so loved this area is that her guide, Iain McHenry, breathed so much life into the area. An historian and the author of Subterranean Sappers: A History of 177 Tunnelling Company RE from 1915 to 1919, the definitive book on WWI sappers in the Ypres Salient, he comes highly recommended for the breadth of his knowledge of the area and its battles.

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The Drummer Boy of Valverde

10/16/2023

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A Gothic Ghost story by Jennifer Bohnhoff,
based on the Characters in
her Historical Novel, Where Duty Calls

They lined up now, in three long rows behind the low sand hill. The front line, all 200 of them, prone against the hill while the back two lines, the second wave of 250 and the third wave of 300, squatted on their heels. Behind them, sergeants walked up and down, shouting at the men to make sure their guns had a priming cap in place, to shoot low, and not until they were within effective range.
The whites of their eyes, Jemmy thought, then wondered where he’d heard that before.

Don’t shoot until you see the whites of their eyes.

He glanced right, at Jaspar Jones, whose hands trembled and whose eyes looked as round as a rabbit’s. Plenty of white showing, all the way around. Jones’d make a fine target if the Abolitionists were looking for the whites of his eyes. Jemmy looked past him at the line of men. Some twitched in anticipation of the fight to come. Some used the backs of their hands to wipe tears from their faces. Some prayed, their hands clutched together as their lips moved with the earnest intensity that only the doomed can know. Some men lay so still that he wondered if they’d gone to sleep.

Behind him, Colonel Green called for the men’s attention. The line quieted. Everyone trusted “Daddy” Green to do right by them.

“Boys,” he called, “I want Colonel Canby’s guns! When I yell, raise the Rebel yell and follow me!”

All along the line, men affirmed the Colonel, some with cheers and others with quiet “yes, sirs.” Jemmy felt his resolve harden into a knot in his throat. Afraid his voice would come out in a squeak, he nodded his assent.

He looked left and noticed Wee Willie squatting close by, his drumsticks clutched in his fists, his jaw set with a gritty determination that made the boy look old beyond his years. Willie’s pale skin looked even paler than usual, his black eyes sunken into his face. He was a curious one, that Willie: so small that Jemmy couldn’t look at him without wondering how his Mama could have let him run off to war. Some said he was an orphan, but that was just a rumor. Willie never spoke. He hung around the edges of the camp, eating what others offered him, sleeping on the floor of the Colonel’s tent like a pet pup.

Just beyond Willie, John Norvell and Frederick Wade hunkered shoulder to shoulder.

“Fred, we are whipped, and I will never see my mother again!” John said in between wracking sobs.

Jemmy closed his eyes, trying to wipe the image of Norvell’s tears from his mind. He raised one shoulder and then the other, lessening the tension in his back. The shoot low part bothered him. Sure, it was just fine if he did it. He was in the first line of men and there’d be nothing in front of him except blue coats. It didn’t matter if he hit them in the head or the kneecap. Shot was shot, and a Yank with a ball in him wouldn’t be trying to return the favor. But Jemmy wasn’t so sure he wanted the second or third waves of men, the men who came behind him, to be shooting low. He didn’t cotton to taking a ball in the back. Not from one of his own. Not when it might be mistaken as a mark that Jemmy was running from the Federal line instead of toward it. He didn’t want to be mistaken for a coward.

The ghostly sun, a pale disk behind thin, gray clouds, hung high overhead, a little past the apex. Snow had started again, tiny dry pellets brought in almost horizontal that it bit his cheeks and made his eyes water. Why did the wind have to come from the west today? Why couldn’t it be at his back, pushing him on towards victory? It seemed like God himself was against him.

He stretched his neck, thrusting his chin forward so he could look over the top of the hill without exposing the crown of his head. There, not 800 yards from him, Federal cannons pointed directly at him, their open muzzles looking like astonished mouths. Soon, he knew, they’d be belching fire at him. Fire, and deadly chunks of metal.

Jemmy shook his head hard. He had to stop talking scary to himself or he was going to end up like Norvell or Jones. Shaking his head didn’t dislodge the images that swirled around in his head like ghost stories. He knew he needed to hear the sound of his own voice, to talk himself calm like he did with his mules.
“You ain’t got nothing to be scairt of,” he told himself in as convincing a manner as he could muster. “The men behind you is there to support you, not shoot you in the back. And the snow and wind? It done mask our sound. It’ll confuse the Federals into thinking there’re less of us than there are. An’ grapeshot and canister’s aimed at the generals and such. Them cannons ain’t interested in a little guy like me.”

Jemmy gave his head a firm nod, but ghastly, terrifying images kept pushing his convictions from him. He frowned. If he couldn’t be brave from himself, perhaps he could be brave for someone else. He grabbed We Willie’s shoulder, pulling the drummer boy into a side embrace.

“This here’s your first fight, son, but you got nothing to be scairt of,” Jemmy said, more to himself than to Willie. “God’s on our side, sure as shoot’n. He ain’t going to let us down. When we let go our rebel yell, them Abs’ll skedaddle back to their fort with their tails between their legs and we’ll take possession of those fine guns. So don’t you worry none. It’s on to San Francisco for us.”

Jemmy pounded the drummer boy into his side with a series of encouraging whacks. He didn’t know if he had said anything to calm Wee Willie, but he was beginning to feel better already.

Willie pulled away from Jemmy. He scrambled back to his feet. He held up his fists, the sticks ready to beat the advance, sending men over the hill and into the cannon’s line of fire.

“You are mistaken, Private.” Willie’s little voice lilted as high and light as birdsong. The sound of it surprised Jemmy. He was sure this was the first time he’d ever heard the drummer boy speak. “This is not my first fight. I have been leading men into battle since time immemorial. It was I who beat the advance at Waterloo. I who beat at Yorktown. At Agincourt. And Thermopylae. But you are right in one respect: I have nothing to be afraid of.”

The boy pulled back his lips in a grin that was more grimace, and the two rows of teeth gave his pale face a skull-like appearance. Jemmy swore that his eyes gleamed a bright and burning red. Jemmy’s mouth dropped open in astonishment, but before he could draw breath, Colonel Green’s voice filled his ears.

“Up, boys, and at ‘em!”

Wee Willie beat the advance and two hundred men bellowed the rebel yell and clambered over the hill.

Where Duty Calls is the first book in a trilogy of historical novels set in New Mexico during the time of the American Civil War. It is written for middle grade readers and adults who want to learn about the war in an immersive way. Published by Kinkajou Press, a division of Artemesia Publishing, a free, 100 page teacher's guide is available on the publisher's website. Teachers, ask about special discounts for class sets. The author, Jennifer Bohnhoff, is available for in person and online meetings. presentations, and discussions.

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Mangia like the Military

10/5/2023

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Robot8A, CC BY-SA 4.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

The October/November/December 2023 edition of AAA Explorer had an interesting article entitled The Great Roman Pasta Mystery. In it the author, David Farley, explored the origins of pasta carbonara. The dish, a luscious mixture of egg, pasta, guanciale, ground pepper and pecorino cheese, is a distinctly Roman dish. My Americanized version uses bacon instead of guanciale, parmesan for pecorino, and adds evaporated milk for creaminess..

The mystery is why there are no old recipes for the dish that is considered traditional. The first published recipe dates from 1952. After talking with many food experts, Farley concludes that pasta carbonara was invented by a clever Roman chef during World War Two, but in the aftermath of war, Italians, hungry both physically and emotionally, forgot the newness of the dish and adopted it into their traditions.

Ferracci asserts that a Roman chef, knowing that Americans ate eggs and bacon for breakfast, managed to pick up some of the powdered egg and dried bacon rations that were on the black market. Roman food historian Emilio Ferracci explained to Farley that American soldiers in Rome were known to eat something they called “spaghetti breakfast,” which included these ingredients. Romans began eating the dish, too, adapting it with local ingredients.

Sumeet Jain from San Francisco, USA, CC BY-SA 2.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

Spaghetti carbonara is not the only example of food influenced by the military. In her book Combat-Read Kitchen, author Anastacia Marx de Salcedo explored how many of the foods Americans eat were first created to feed the military. One example is cheese. During World War II, American GIs craved cheese, but it was heavy and difficult to store and ship. Attempts to dry the product were successful on many fruits, vegetables and eggs did not work for cheese, which crumpled. However, after much experimentation, a USDA dairy scientist named George Sanders developed a cheese powder that was shelf stable and tasted good. Two years later the war ended and the military found itself with tons of dehydrated cheese that they no longer needed. Their solution was to sell it back to food manufacturers at steep discounts. One company who took advantage of this were the Frito Company, who mixed the cheese powder with cornmeal and water and introduced Cheetos to the nation in 1948. The other company that benefitted was Kraft, which had begun experimentation with processed cheeses before the war, but now changed their ubiquitous Kraft Dinners to use the powder instead of grated cheese.

It’s hard to think of Cheetos as a biproduct of the military/industrial complex, but it is!

Spaghetti Carbonara

This version is very American, and may be similar to the original version whipped up by Roman chefs who wanted to sell their food to American GIs. It isn't fancy, but it is made with items that are typically in an American home and are shelf stable. This is rich comfort food at bargain prices.

Cook al dente: 4 servings (8 oz) spaghetti. Drain in colander.
Cook until crisp: 2 slices bacon. Set aside on paper towels, wipe out the pan.
Combine and heat in pan until thick: 1 beaten egg, 1 cup evaporated milk, 1/2 cup frozen peas, 1/4 cup chopped red pepper.
Stir in: 1/2 cup parmesan cheese, the crumbled bacon, and pasta.
Serves 4

Jennifer Bohnhoff writes historical fiction for middle grade through adult readers. You can learn more about her and her books here.

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The Mysterious Medallion Trees of the Sandia Mountains

9/29/2023

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I love having the Sandia Mountains right out my back door. There are lots of trails: some challenging, some of them a leisurely walk in the woods. Like all forested areas, we have beautiful trees and wildflowers, lots of birds and deer and the occasional bear. But one of the things that makes the Sandias unique are the Medallion trees.

Medallion trees are trees that are marked with silver dollar-sized metal disks. Some are coppery or brassy, while others look to be made from stainless steel or aluminum. Each carries a historical event that took place the same year that the tree was likely germinated. Many also number the tree. I’ve seen numbers as high

as #123, indicating that there are well over 100 trees, although the only list I’ve ever found tops out in the 80s. The trees are not numbered in chronological order. Tree #1, which germinated sometime around 1652, marks the invention of the frankfurter. The oldest tree is #19, which commemorates the crowning of Robert II of Scotland in1371. The youngest, marking Alaska becoming the 49th state, sprouted in 1959. #47, the George Washington Birthday Tree, has fallen and the medal is on the lower side, making it difficult to see.

No one knows who began marking the Medallion trees. Sources suggest that the effort began in the last 1920s, and that perhaps Civilian Conservation Corps workers might have started it. Whoever it was drilled core samples into some of the largest trees in the Sandias and counted the rings before they fabricated the medallions, then hiked back to install the disks over the core sample holes. It was definitely a labor of love.

Jennifer Bohnhoff is a writer and former educator who loves getting lost in the mountains on long rambles. To learn more about her and her books, go to her website.

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The New Mexico National Guard In A Blaze of Poppies

9/21/2023

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A Blaze of Poppies takes place in Southern New Mexico and France during the tumultuous 1910s. Its main character, Agnes Day, is a ranching woman who is determined to keep her family’s ranch, the Sunset, within the family who’s held it for three generations.

The family’s brand is the lazy D, a capital D laid over on its side. The D not only stands for the Days, who’ve owned the ranch since before the Civil War, but on its side it looks like a sunrise.

The man who quietly supports Agnes through difficult times is Will Bowers, a member of the National Guard who is serving border patrol at Camp Columbus.

New Mexico’s National Guard began serving its country before New Mexico was even a state. In 1898, when the Spanish American War broke out, New Mexico Guardsmen helped form the 2nd Squadron, 1st United States Cavalry. This unit was part of Teddy Roosevelt's Rough Riders and were among those who charged up San Juan Hill.

Teddy (center) and some of his Rough Riders.

In 1916, when Pancho Villa raided the southern New Mexican town of Columbus, New Mexico’s National Guard, under the command of Black Jack Pershing, pursued the outlaw into Mexico. The Guard spent the next year on this border duty.

Pershing was so impressed with the Guards’ performance in the rough field conditions of the desert southwest that he insisted they join the mobilization efforts when the United States entered World War I. New Mexico National Guardsmen were among some of the first to arrive in France. They didn’t, however, go over as a single unit. The First Infantry Regiment was activated into Federal Service and assigned to the 40th Infantry Division. A Battery of Field Artillery was assigned to the 41st Division and became part of the 146th Field Artillery Regiment, which took part in the actions at Champagne-Marne, Alsne-Marne, and Meuse-Argonne.

Because the 41st Division was largely made up of soldiers from Oregon and other northwest states that bordered the Pacific Ocean, it was named the "Sunset Division." Its semicircular shoulder patch featured a red background, with a yellow sun setting into a blue sea.

When Agnes first sees Will’s patch, she thinks it is a sunrise instead of a sunset. To her, it looks like a fancier version of the lazy D that is the family brand. They are, after all, the Day family, and the ranch is The Sunrise Ranch. She muses that perhaps she should add rays to the lazy D so it will look even more like the image on Will’s patch.

Agnes wants to keep the ranch, and she wants Will to be there with her. But Will has a hidden past that makes him afraid to commit, even to the woman he loves. Read A Blaze of Poppies to find out whether the story ends in sunshine or shadow.

A Blaze of Poppies is an historical novel set in southern New Mexico at the time of the Pancho Villa Raid and World War I. If you'd like to see pictures that correspond with the story, go to Jennifer's Pinterest page. To buy the novel as an ebook, go to Amazon. A paperback version can be bought at many online booksellers, including Amazon and Bookshop, Signed copies can be bought directly from the author.

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The Thiepval Memorial

9/14/2023

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Back in 2019, when I was researching World War I for A Blaze of Poppies, I had the honor of touring battlefields and memorials in Belgium and France. It was a sobering experience, and one of the most sobering was the memorial outside the little town of Thiepval, in Picardy, France.

The Thiepval Memorial is dedicated to the men of the British Commonwealth who went missing in the Battles that occurred in the Somme between 1915 and 1918 and whose bodies have not been found. Designed by Sir Edwin Landseer Lutyens, one of the most famous architects of the time, it is the only memorial that Edward VIII ever dedicated, since he abdicated soon after.

Inside the memorial, a large inscription on an internal surface of the memorial reads:

Here are recorded
names of officers
and men of the
British Armies who fell
on the Somme battlefields
July 1915 February 1918
but to whom
the fortune of war
denied the known
and honoured burial
given to their
comrades in death.

Piers of Portland stone
are engraved with over 72,000 names. 90 per cent of these soldiers died in the first Battle of the Somme, between 1 July and 18 November 1916.

Because the monument is reserved for those missing or unidentified soldiers who have no known grave, a soldier’s name is excised from the wall by filling in the inscription with cement when his body is found and identified. The remains are then given a funeral with full military honors at a cemetery close to the location at which they were discovered. This practice has resulted in numerous gaps in the lists of names. 80 names came off the monument 2018.

Just behind the Thiepval Memorial lies two cemeteries that commemorate the joint nature of the 1916 offensive. One side of the cemetery holds 300 soldiers of the British Commonwealth under rectangular, white stone headstones inscribed with "A Soldier of the Great War / Known unto God". The other side holds the graves of 300 French soldiers under grey stone crosses that bear the single word "Inconnu" ('unknown'). Most of the soldiers buried here – 239 of the British Commonwealth and 253 of the French – are unidentified. Their bodies were found on the battlefields of the Somme and as far north as Loos and as far south as Le Quesnel, then reburied here between December 1931 and March 1932.

I'm not a numbers person, but over 72,000! Even if I can't really conceive a number that large, I know it is huge. And that's not the number of men who died in the area: it's the number of men who died and whose bodies were never recovered. It's astounding and beyond comprehension.

World War I was supposed to be the Great War: the War to End All Wars. Yet here we are, over a hundred years later and wars rage throughout the globe. Clearly, we have not yet learned the lesson such carnage should have taught us.

Jennifer Bohnhoff is the author of a number of historical novels for middle grade through adult readers. A Blaze of Poppies is set in New Mexico and the French Battlefields in the time leading up to and including the American involvement in World War I. Her intent in writing the book was not to glorify war, but to give readers a taste of what life might have been like during that tumultuous period.

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An Interesting Connection

8/24/2023

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Back in July I wrote a blog about Gabriel Rene Paul, the commanding officer at Fort Union at the time of the Civil War. I had no idea then that I would run across a curious connection to him so soon, but I have: a connection between him and Sacajawea, the young Shoshone woman who traveled with the Lewis and Clark Expedition.

Not much is actually known about Sacajawea. The teenaged girl left no writings of her own, if indeed she could write. The journals, letters, official records, and reports from the period call her by many names, and often fail to record that she was even present. Author Candy Moulton’s Sacajawea: mystery, myth and legend does a great job of piecing together a thorough timeline of her life those few references, then goes on to tackle Sacajawea’s legacy and the myths surrounding her years after the Expedition.

© 2022 by WikiCommons user Tommy5544. Permission to use granted under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license. This design by Glenna Goodacre and modeled by Shoshone Randy’L He-dow Teton

Sacajawea may be legendary for her travel with Lewis and Clark, but her legacy comes through her son, Jean Baptiste Charbonneau. Jean Baptiste was just an infant when he crossed the continent with his mother and father, the French trapper Toussaint Charbonneau. The members of the expedition nicknamed the baby Pompey, and named a prominent stone pillar in Montana after him. He is the only Native American child who has been honored to have his image placed on an American coin.

Pompey's Pillar

August Chouteau,

William Clark was so taken with the child that he offered to adopt him and raise him as his own. This was too good an opportunity for the Frenchman and his Indian wife to refuse. Adoption by the man who had been the Indian agent for all tribes west of the Mississippi and was now the Governor of Louisiana Territory would open the child to the upper echelons of power and wealth. In 1809, when Jean Baptiste was about four years old, the couple brought him to St. Louis, where he was baptized and handed over to his new guardian.

Toussaint was clever in his choice for his son’s godfather, picking someone who would offer just as much prestige and chances for advancement as Clark himself did. August Chouteau, who jointly founded the city of St. Louis with his stepfather, Pierre de Laclède Liguest, was one of the richest and most politically prominent men on the western frontier. His twelve-year-old daughter, Eulalie, became the child’s godmother.

Now, here’s the curious connection: Four years later, after her marriage to Louis Rene Paul, Eulalie would give birth to her son, Gabriel Rene Paul. This child would grow up to be the commander of Fort Union at the time of the Civil War, and later be seriously wounded at Gettysburg. The godmother of a child on the Lewis and Clark expedition was the mother of a Civil War general!

Colonel Philip St. George Cook

But that wasn’t the only connection I found between Jean Baptiste Charbonneau and someone else who’s been an interest of mine. Charbonneau followed his in his father's footsteps, becoming and trapper and guide and meeting many of the men who were famous for trailblazing the west, including Kit Carson and Jim Bridger. In 1846, during the Mexican American War, he was hired by Colonel Philip St. George Cook to guide the Mormon Battalion to California. Charbonneau met Cooke and his men in Albuquerque on October 24 and took them all the way to the Pacific. It was the second time he’d seen this ocean, but the first time he’d remember it: he’d seen it when he was just about a year old, when his mother had guided Lewis and Clark through the Rockies.

Left: The only picture that may be a picture of Charbonne.

Above: Charonne's gravestone. He died enroute to a Montana goldfield when he was 61 years old.

Jennifer Bohnhoff writes novels for middle school readers through adults. Gabriel Rene Paul plays a very small part in her recent novel, The Worst Enemy, book 2 of the trilogy Rebels Along the Rio Grande.

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A Gothic Ghost story by Jennifer Bohnhoff,
based on the Characters in
her Historical Novel, Where Duty Calls