Category:

Telescoping Distance and Time

1/5/2025

If you’ve lived in a place with sweeping, wide vistas, you understand that objects can appear much closer than they actually are. Here in New Mexico, where the air is thin and dry, it’s not uncommon to see mountain peaks that are well over a hundred miles distant. From my living room, South Mountain looks like an easy walk, when it is really a good twenty miles away.

Charles Dickens experienced this when he visited the Alps in September of 1846. The individual mountain peaks were so large that they fooled the eye into believing they were much closer than they actually were. In his novel Little Dorrit, he begins Chapter 1 of Book 2 by describing this phenomena:

In the autumn of the year, Darkness and Night were creeping up to the highest ridges of the Alps. . . . The air had been warm and transparent through the whole of the bright day. Shining metal spires and church-roofs, distant and rarely seen, had sparkled in the view; and the snowy mountain-tops had been so clear that unaccustomed eyes, cancelling the intervening country, and slighting their rugged height for something fabulous, would have measured them as within a few hours’ easy reach. Mountain-peaks of great celebrity in the valleys, whence no trace of their existence was visible sometimes for months together, had been since morning plain and near in the blue sky. And now, when it was dark below, though they seemed solemnly to recede, like specters who were going to vanish, as the red dye of the sunset faded out of them and left them coldly white, they were yet distinctly defined in their loneliness, above the mists and shadows.

I think reading historical fiction can do the same thing for events long distant. As we read what it was like in long ago times, the events draw nearer to us, the people more real. We live and breathe the experience as if it were in our own time, and we realize that we are much closer to these ancient peoples than we believed.

Jennifer Bohnhoff is a former middle school and high school history and language arts teacher. She lives in the mountains of central New Mexico and write historical and contemporary fiction for middle grade through adult readers. She is available to lecture on the history behind her stories.

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Christmas 1944

12/20/2024

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No one battling in Europe in 1944 knew that this would be the last Christmas of the war. Americans didn’t know they were halfway through the Battle of the Bulge, the major German offensive that had begun December 16 and would end late in January, 1945. This battle, also known as the Ardennes Offensive, raged throughout the densely forested Ardennes region between Belgium and Luxembourg during what was one of the area’s coldest winters on record. About 8 inches of snow lay on the on the ground, and the temperature averaged of 20 degrees Fahrenheit.

Christmas was definitely not celebrated in style among the troops. In front line hospitals, Bing Crosby’s “White Christmas” played on an old gramophone and champagne was served, but nearby, piles of undelivered Christmas cards and packages were drenched with gasoline and set on fire to keep them out of German hands. Years later, Lt. Robert I. Kennedy recalled his Christmas dinner he shared with three other soldiers:

“One can of hamburger patties and one can of mashed potatoes so cold they were almost frozen. No one had any mess kits or any utensils, so each man reached dirty, bare hands into one can for one patty and with the other dirty hand for a fistful of mashed potatoes.”

Life was a little better for Americans who had already been captured. At Stalag Luft III in Sagan, Poland, temperatures hovered just below 0°F, but at least the men were in barracks instead of foxholes. The American Red Cross had packed and shipped 75,000 Christmas parcels containing canned turkey, fruit cake, tobacco, games, and Christmas decorations during the summer of 1944. Kriegies, the English slang for the German Kriegsgefangenen or prisoner of war, used those packages to celebrate.

The prisoners in Stalag Luft III wrote that they had a gigantic “bash,” and were allowed to roam the grounds. Alcohol, made by fermenting raisins from aid packages, flowed in several camps. Many camps had Christmas concerts and services. The Christmas pageant at Stalag Luft III was so well attended that not all of the 11,000 POWs were able to attend in the 700 seat auditorium, even though they gave multiple performances. German guards in Stalag VIIA gave their prisoners small Christmas trees from guards, which the men decorated with snowflakes cut from tin cans, lint, food labels, and nails.

Donald G. Cassidy Collection (AFC/2001/001/1599), Veterans History Project, American Folklife Center, Library of Congress

Donald G. Cassidy, who was a Technical Sergeant in the 570th Bomb Squadron, 390th Bomb Group, 8th Air Force, spent Christmas of 1944 in Stalag XVIIB, just outside of the village of Krems, Austria. When he’d first arrived, in December of 1943, he and the other prisoners each received their own Red Cross parcels. Eventually, the supplies dwindled. Guards explained that American planes were bombing the Red Cross supplies. They began dividing parcels between two men when they got them at all. To make up for the loss of parcels, the Germans gave the POWs soap on occasion. The POWs also got ersatz coffee, a coffee substitute made from the taproots of chicory, soybeans, barley, and grains and formed into bricks, and sauerkraut, but the POWs found both so bad tasting that they used it for fuel.

Ministry of Information Photo Division Photographer, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Meanwhile at home, families managed as best as they could. Rationing of sugar and butter made cookie making challenging. Many had to forego the Christmas turkey, since so much of the supply was sent overseas for the troops. Children’s toys were manufactured from wood and paper since metal, rubber, and rayon were all rationed for the war effort. Worst of all was the absence of so many men, and the fears that they might not come back at all, It’s no wonder that many of the songs released during the war, including “White Christmas” (1941), “I’ll Be Home for Christmas” (1943), and “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” (1944) have a melancholy air to them.

Jennifer Bohnhoff writes historical and contemporary fiction for middle grade through adult readers. Her novel, Code: Elephants on the Moon tells the story of a young French woman who joins the Resistance as D-Day approaches.

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Wagons West Under ONE BIG OPEN SKY

8/22/2024

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Back when I was a kid, if you wanted to read about families going west, you read a book by Laura Ingalls Wilder. Wilder's The Little House on the Prairie series, published between 1932 and 1943, were based on her childhood in a settler and pioneer family. By my childhood in the 1960s, the books were considered classics. They have been continuously in print and have been translated into 40 other languages..

If you look up Best Sellers in Children's 1800 American Historical Fiction on Amazon, chances are you will find Wilder's books high in the rankings. Today when I looked, she held the #1, #4, #5 and #6 places among the top ten: not bad for books that are seventy and eighty years old! Wilder was a runner-up for the Newberry Medal, five five times, and when the American Library Association (ALA) created a lifetime achievement award for children's writers and illustrators in 1954, she was not only the first recipient, but the award was named for her.

A screen shot from 8/20/2024

But times change, and with them, tastes and sensibilities in books, and in recent years, the bloom has faded a bit on the Wilder rose. While still popular, critics have pointed out that many of the Little House books include stereotypical and reductive depictions of Native Americans and people of color, and the story they tell is a White story, giving many people the perception that the western expansion was exclusively the story of the dominant culture taking over the land.

Lesa Cline-Ransome's new middle grade novel, One Big Open Sky opens up the story of families moving west, making it more inclusive and offering the familiar tale in a way that has long been ignored.

In lyrical free verse, it tells the story of Black Americans seeking a better life in the west during post civil war reconstruction.

Ten families take the arduous journey from Mississippi to North Platte, Nebraska seeking acceptance and land of their own. They face dangerous weather, river crossings, threatening mobs, deprivation and death, but their faith and their hope in the future keep them going.

Three characters tell the story. Lettie is a perceptive girl who keeps a log of the journey. She loves her father dearly, despite his faults, which endanger the family. Losing his family when he was a child and a slave has damaged his self worth, and he is continuously trying to prove himself. Her mother, Sylvia, struggles with self determination. Years of being a slave or married to a strong-willed man has left her passive, and she must learn to be strong on this journey. The third voice is that of Philomenia, a strong-willed young woman determined to become a teacher and her own woman after years of living with the knowledge that she was a burden to the aunt and uncle who reluctantly took her in when her parents died.

Because two of the three point of view characters are adult, this story is best for older middle grade readers. It presents serious issues, including enslavement, racism, sexism, and death, and would be excellent for classroom discussion. I think this book is excellent for adult readers, too.

I have one ARC of One Big Open Sky that I would like to give away to another reader now that I have finished with it. If you'd like to be considered, leave a comment.

Jennifer Bohnhoff is a former middle school English and Social Studies teacher who now writes historical and contemporary fiction for middle grade and adult readers. The Famished Country, book 3 in the Rebels Along the Rio Grande, will be published by Kinkajou Press in October of 2024 and is now available for preorder.

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Recognizing the 80th Anniversary of D-Day

6/6/2024

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Eighty years ago, the Allied Forces began the largest amphibious military invasion in human history. On June 6, 1944, more than 130 battleships, cruisers, and destroyers bombarded the French coast while 277 minesweepers cleared the water. Behind them, about 7,000 vessels, packed with nearly 200,000 soldiers from eight Allied nations, crossed the channel, ready to storm the beaches of Normandy. Overhead, over 1,200 aircraft delivered paratroopers behind enemy lines. It was feat the size and scope of had never been seen. It still remains singularly large and impressive today.

More than 2 million Allied personnel took part in Operation Overlord, the code name for the Battle of Normandy that began with the D-Day invasion and continued on through August. During the Trident Conference in Washington in May 1943, the Allies appointed U.S. General Dwight D. Eisenhower to command the Expeditionary Force and put British General Bernard Montgomery in charge of the 21st Army Group, which comprised all the land forces. The allies chose the Normandy coast for the landings, assigning Americans the sectors codenamed Utah and Omaha, while the British were to land at Sword and Gold, and the Canadians were to land at Juno.

By Harrison (Sgt), No 5 Army Film & Photographic Unit - http://media.iwm.org.uk/iwm/mediaLib//8/media-8246/large.jpg This photograph BU 1024 comes from the collections of the Imperial War Museums., Public Domain

The Allies needed to develop special technology to meet the conditions expected on the Normandy beachhead. They invented artificial ports, called Mulberry harbors, to provide deep water jetties and places where the invasion force could download reinforcements and supplies before major French ports were recaptured from the Germans and their damage repaired. Two Mulberry harbors were created: Mulberry "A" at Omaha Beach and Mulberry "B" at Gold Beach. The harbor at Omaha Beach was damaged by a violent storm before it was ever completed, and the Americans abandoned it, landing their men and material over the open beaches. However, the harbor at Gold Beach was a great success. Over 2.5 million men, 500,000 vehicles, and 4 million tons of supplies used Mulberry “B” during the 10 months it was in use.

Another technology developed for the D-Day landings were the Hobart's Funnies,a group of specialized armoured fighting vehicles based on the British Churchill tank, and American M4 Sherman, but equipped with bulldozers, flamethrowers, demolition charges, reels of canvas that could be unrolled to form paths for other vehicles, assault bridges, ramps, and other modifications to help take the beach and destroy German fortifications. Hobart's Funnies were named for Major-General Sir Percy Cleghorn Stanley Hobart, a British Engineer.

Train damaged by resistance sabateurs https://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205206871

All the while that Allied forces were developing their plans and technologies, Resistance groups were active throughout German-occupied France. Their contributions to the invasion of Normandy included the gathering of intelligence on German defences and the carrying out of sabotage missions to disrupt the German war effort, including the destruction of rail lines and train engines and the cutting of telegraph and telephone lines. Because there were many different Resistance organizations that operated independently and often had different goals, coordinating them with the Allied forces was difficult. Many, however, listened to the secret messages from the Free French that were broadcast over the BBC. On the first of May, and again on June 1, such messages warned that the invasion would be soon and encouraged Allied secret agents and resistance fighters to carry out their acts of sabotage as soon as possible.

Although the Allies failed to accomplish their objectives for the first day of the invasion, they were able to gain a tenuous foothold on the land that Germany had held since taking France. They captured the port at Cherbourg on June 26, and the city of Caen on July 21. By August 25, the Allies had liberated Paris. Five days later, the Germans retreated east across the Seine marking the close of Operation Overlord and the beginning of the end for the Nazi regime.

Few of the veterans of D-Day are still alive, but we remember them and honor them for their bravery.

Code: Elephants on the Moon is author Jennifer Bohnhoff's novel about Eponine Lambaol, a girl who senses that strange things are going on in her Nazi-held village in Normandy. As D-Day nears, she joins with others to resist the Germans and prepare for the Allied invasion. Written for middle school readers, adults have also found this an informative and entertaining read.

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New Mexico, the Famished Country

5/30/2024

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At the beginning of the Civil War, Henry Hopkins Sibley had a grandiose plan. Because he'd been stationed at Fernando de Taos and at Fort Union, he thought he knew the territory of New Mexico. But he didn't know it well enough, and his grandiose plan failed. He later blamed his failure not on his incompetence or lack of knowledge, but on the land itself.

When the Civil War broke out, Sibley was serving under the commander of the department, Colonel William W. Loring, a career Army officer who'd lost an arm during the Mexican American War. Loring, whose home state was Florida, had already sent his own letter of resignation to Washington when Sibley, a Louisiana native, tendered his resignation to him an April 28th.

Impatient to leave because of circulating rumors of high-ranking commissions in the Confederate Army, Sibley asked for “the authority to leave this Dept. immediately.”

When May 31 arrived and he still had not heard anything, he took seven days’ leave of absence, bid his command goodbye, and left Fort Union on the next stage. He accepted an appointment to colonel in the Confederate army. By June, 1861, Sibley had been promoted to brigadier general.

Sibley's promotion was prompted by his visit to Richmond, Virginia, where he persuaded Confederate President Jefferson Davis that he could sweep through New Mexico and seize Colorado and California for the Confederacy.This bold plan would not only increase the size of the Confederacy, but it would achieve the dream of Manifest Destiny, making the rebel nation stretch from sea to shining sea. Gold from Colorado and California's gold fields would enrich the Southern war chest, and the deep water port of Los Angeles would help supply the army with materiel that was not getting through the Atlantic Union blockade. The proposal sounded too good to be true, especially since Sibley claimed he could do it without encumbering the Confederacy for his supplies. Sibley claimed that he could live off the land during his trek through New Mexico. He believed there was enough water, fodder for the animals, and food for his men. He had heard enough New Mexicans complain about the army presence that he believed New Mexicans would willingly support a Confederate army. Sibley was wrong, both about the amount of supplies available and about the people's opinion of the Confederate army that he led.

Brig. Gen. Henry H. Sibley's supply problems began long before he entered New Mexico Territory. Sibley began assembling his small army in San Antonio late in the summer of 1861. He quickly discovered that outfitting his troops would take far longer than he had anticipated. There were few available weapons, uniforms and military supplies for his 2,500 man force, which he had named The Army of New Mexico, and so when the men finally began the trek to the territories, many did so wearing their civilian clothing and carrying whatever weapons they had brought from home. This included squirrel guns, shotguns, and ancient blunderbusses.

One of the reasons Brig. Gen. Henry H. Sibley was so wrong about New Mexico's ability to sustain his army was a matter of timing. Since outfitting and training his troops took far longer than expected, Sibley's force didn’t begin the 600-mile march across Texas until November. The landscape of West Texas provided very little grass and other forage for the Army's horses and mules, and there was so little water that Sibley's line of march spaced itself so that each regiment was a full day behind the next, allowing the springs to recover somewhat between regiments. Still, the going was rough and the army began losing hoof stock.

After the war, William Lott Davidson, a 24-year old private in Company A of the 5th Texas, recalled that “‘Chill November’s surly blast’ came down upon us as we camped upon the Nueces. There was no timber to shield us and the wind swept at us, and the boys on guard at night must have had a hard time pacing their beats on the cold frozen ground. We were tasting the bitter delights and mournful realities of a soldier’s life. We are now for the first time beginning to find out that we are engaged in no child’s play.”

map by Matt Bohnhoff

Nothing became easier after The Army of New Mexico entered New Mexico Territory. The weather at New Mexico's higher elevations was brutal. Firsthand accounts recall repeatedly waking up covered in snow. Davidson wrote that the sentries "paced in rags and tatters, their weary best through the long tedious hours of the night, with bare-feet over the frozen and ice-covered ground. ‘Found dead on post’ and ‘froze to death last night’ were sounds we often heard, as a poor, stiff, lifeless body was brought into camp, the dauntless spirit having gone to sleep, to rest with the brave.”

Blizzards, combined with too little food and forage led to illness among both men and beast. Measles and pneumonia ran rampant through the troops.

map by Matt Bohnhoff, from Where Duty Calls

After failing to take Fort Craig in a frontal assault, Sibley decided to execute what he called "a roundance on Yankeedom" and bypass the fort. This flanking march forced the Confederate Army away from the Rio Grande, the only source of water in the area. Both the men and their animals suffered intense thirst. Private Laughter of the 2nd Texas recalled that “The dry beef we had for supper needed moisture. The fact was, if one of us coughed you could see the dust fly.”

The old western saying that “whiskey is for drinking, but water is for fighting” proved true. The Battle of Valverde occured when the Confederate Army finally returned to the river on the other side of Contadora Mesa and found their access to water blocked by Union troops.

To add to the misery, a major sandstorm, one of many recorded in soldier's diaries and memoirs, hit just before the battle of Valverde. These brutal storms were more proof that Sibley's men were campaigning in the extreme and inhospitable environment of the upper Sonoran and Chihuahuan deserts.

illustration by Ian Bristow in The Worst Enemy

The Confederate's problems continued as the Army continued to head north. In Albuquerque, where they had hoped to pillage the government storehouses. They found that the Union soldiers had burned the supplies before retreating north. Running low on everything, Sibley was once again forced to split his forces in order to maximize their ability to forage on the sparse winter grass. Private Davidson was part of the army that was sent into the Sandia Mountains, where it was believed that grass was abundant. He found that what grass there was was buried beneath deep snow. "The army was marched out in the mountains east of Albuquerque and camped, as I thought, for the winter as the weather was very cold, sleeting and snowing all the time. At this camp we remained a week and we buried fifty men, and if the weather and exposure had continued much longer, we would have buried the whole brigade.”

The weather was no kinder in the mountains east of Santa Fe, where the Santa Fe Trail snaked through Glorieta Pass on its way to Fort Union, where the Confederate Army hoped to capture a wealth of Union supplies. The Texans won another tactical victory at the Battle of Glorieta, but returned to their supply train to find it burned. That night, Davidson wrote that “a severe snow storm arose and snow fell to the depth of a foot and several of our wounded froze to death.”

illustration by Ian Bristow in The Famished Country

Weakened by two battles, long marches, extended exposure, repeated winter storms, and insufficient supplies, it became clear that the Confederate Army had no choice but to to withdraw back down the Rio Grande. With the exception of a couple of cannonade skirmishes at Albuquerque and Peralta, Colonel Canby, the cautious commander of Union forces in New Mexico was content to not engage in any more battles. Instead, he allowed the weather and terrain to finish off Sibley’s army while he skirted alongside the Rio Grande, herding the pitiful remnants of The Army of New Mexico out of the territory they'd hoped to conquer.

map by Matt Bohnhoff, included in The Famished Country

Brig. Gen. Henry H. Sibley had launched an invasion force of 2,500 men in a grandiose scheme to take the Colorado and California goldfields, establish a port on the Pacific coast, and open a route for a coast to coast railroad system, all of which would have dramatically expanded the Confederacy’s presence in the Southwest and perhaps changed the trajectory of the war. By the time his disastrous retreat was completed in the summer of 1862, he returned to San Antonio with less than a third of the men he had begun with. Davidson wrote that, “We left San Antonio eight months earlier with near three thousand men ….And now in rags and tatters, foot-sore and weary, we again march, if a reel and stagger can be called a march, along the streets of San Antonio with fourteen hundred men. I can furnish a list of four hundred and thirty-seven dead, but where are the other sixteen hundred?” While not all the the unrecorded can be accounted for, many deserted on the long retreat, heading for California or hiding in the hills.

In a letter to John McRae, the father of Alexander McRae, a native South Carolinian who fought for the Union, General Sibley blamed the countryside itself for his retreat.

“You will naturally speculate upon
the causes of my precipitate evacuation
of the Territory of New Mexico
after it had been virtually conquered.
My dear Sir, we beat the enemy
whenever we encountered him.
The famished country beat us.”

Sibley's New Mexico Campaign was small in comparison to the battles waged in the east. But on a percentage basis, it was one of the most devastating campaigns any Civil War army suffered through without surrendering. That outcome is even more dramatic when we consider the fact that each of the engagements was a tactical victory for the Confederate forces. Ultimately, Sibley was driven back, far short of his ambitious goals, by the sparsely populated territory's brutal terrain and unforgiving distances. It was, indeed, the famished country that beat him.

The Famished Country, a phrase taken from Major Sibley's letter to John McRae, is the title of Book 3 of Rebels Along the Rio Grande, a trilogy of historical fiction novels for middle grade through adult readers. Published by Kinkajou Press, a division of Artemesia Publishing, The Famished Country will be available in October, 2024.

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Meg Goes to America: An Interview with Katy Hammel

5/9/2024

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One of my favorite books this spring was Meg Goes to America, by Albuquerque author Katy Hammel. The gold winner of the Douglas Preston Award for Published Fiction, this middle grade novel tells the story of Kay, a missionary's daughter who was born and raised in Japan. With the coming of WWII, it is no longer a safe place for Americans, and so her family leaves for the United States -- or that's the plan. When father is detained by Japanese officials, Meg, her younger but very wise young brother, and her mother must make the trip back to Michigan on their own. It's a harrowing trip, but not more harrowing than learning to fit into American society. This novel hit all the sweet spots for me: it is historically accurate and the author really understands how middle grade girls think. Even more enticing, it's based on the real story of the author's mother! I was so interested and charmed that I asked the author if I could interview her. Here are the responses she gave me to my questions.

What inspired you to write this novel? Why do you think it's an important story to share with middle grade readers?

I wasn’t satisfied there were enough books that portray the inner life of a ‘thinky’ child who grapples with big ideas about religion and loneliness and countries and cultures. When I was growing up, I treasured the novels of Louisa May Alcott and Laura Ingalls Wilder and Madeleine L’Engle. They wrote books about America that were specific to time and place through the lens of girl protagonists. I wanted to participate in that kind of story-telling.

Other than family history, how much research did you have to do to write Meg Goes to America? Where did you get the most help?

Katy Hammel

Family history was definitely the beginning. The character of Meg is inspired by my mother and Meg Goes to America recounts their actual journey from Japan to the U.S. My mother and uncle shared memories, photos, and letters with me and my uncle explicitly gave me permission to write the story. But I had a few other aces up my sleeve. First, back in the early 80’s, I interviewed my grandfather about his experiences during the war years. He recorded the story of his incarceration for me on the cassette Dictaphone he used to prepare his sermons. I digitalized that audio recording and I still have it, so I can hear my grandfather’s actual voice with his distinctive timbre and tone whenever I want. Second, my parents became missionaries to Japan post-war and I grew up there, so the things Meg thinks and experiences in the book are actually an amalgam of my mother’s memories and my own. Third, the Presbyterian Historical Society had a portfolio about my grandparents and other records about missionaries held in Japan during World War II. Those repositories were useful.

Meg and The Rocks: 2023 Winner in the WILLA Literary Awards Young Adult Fiction and Nonfiction category

You had to move from middle grade to young adult to write the next book in the series, Meg and the Rocks. Why did you do that?

That was a decision I tussled with for a long time. It was very important to me that my main character of Meg be a moral decision-maker who had agency to take actions that had impact. That’s hard to pull off in a setting driven by world and family calamities outside her control. Everyone who writes historically based fiction for children faces this problem, including you! I’m thinking about books like the “I Survived” series, Titanicat by Marty Crisp, and your “Rebels Along the Rio Grande” books. There is a scene in the second book where Meg confronts an evil doer and of course, the second book gets us closer to the U.S. dropping atomic bombs on Japan. It’s mature content.

What’s next?

Meg is a teenager at the close of Meg and the Rocks and the family is about to leave the Manzanar concentration camp where her father worked as a chaplain with our Japanese-American prisoners. I’m going to have the family move to Albuquerque, which is definitely not what happened IRL. Stay tuned because Meg is growing up!

Click here to see more on Katy Hammel's books.

I've got three copies of Meg Goes to America to send off to three interested readers. Leave a comment and tell my why this book appeals to you, and I'll pick three people at random.

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Divided Duty

4/4/2024

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the United States Library of Congress Prints and Photographs division. digital ID 04642

Recently, one of my fans let me know that there was a poem about Alexander McRrae, the Union officer who lost his battery of artillery pieces to the Confederates at the Battle of Valverde. Given that tidbit of information, I went down a rabbit hole and discovered not only a poem, but a couple of interesting people.

The poet, it turns out, is a man named Theodore Marburg. Marburg wrote a number of books. Some are poetry. Others are treatises on economics, government, the Spanish American War, and The League of Nations. He was also the United States Minister to Belgium from 1912 to 1914, the executive secretary of an organization called the League to Enforce Peace, and a prominent advocate of the League of Nations

Marburg was born in Baltimore, Maryland on July 10, 1862, which means that McRae was already dead when the poet was born. I found that interesting, and wondered what caused him to want to write a poem about someone he never knew. He died in Vancouver on March 3, 1946.

The poem about Captain McRae, entitled DIVIDED DUTY, comes from In The Hills: Poems, a small volume that was privately printed in Paris 1893, then revised and reprinted by The Knickerocker Press, a division of G.P. Putnam’s Sons, in 1924.

The poem has a footnote, which says

When the American civil war began there happened to be in the regular service a young officer whose home, with all that the word implies, was the South. There were many such. His story is but a type. Is it difficult to picture the struggle that came to them with the sense of a divided duty? This one, with the clearer vision which events have justified, felt that the higher duty was the preservation of the nation; but the thought of fighting against his kindred and the friends of his boyhood so preyed on his mind that he is believed to have courted the death which soon came to him. When the element of fate enters, hurrying the just and the brave to a tragic end, the story must always excite our interest and sympathy. At the battle of Val Verde in New Mexico, February 21, 1862, our hero met his death. The battery, of which, although a cavalry officer, he had been given command for the day, was overwhelmed by the Texans. He remained seated on one of the guns, defending himself until the enemy shot him down. They did him the honor to give his name to one of our forts and to take him back to West Point, to the quiet cemetery in the hills.

McRae's tombstone. It is just four stones down from that of George Armstrong Custer

The poem is almost as much about the beautiful setting of the West Point Cemetery as it is about the man buried there. It made me wonder if the tombstone inspired the poet to research the man buried beneath it.

McRae, a native North Carolinian, commanded Company I, 3rd United States Regular Cavalry. His commanding officer, Colonel Edward R.S. Canby, had given him an artillery battery of six pieces. During the Battle of Valverde, February 21, 1862, McRae's battery performed with great success until about 750 Confederate Texans led by Colonel Thomas Green charged the Union guns. Screaming the Rebel yell, the three waves of confederates were poorly armed with short-range shotguns, pistols, muskets, and bowie knives. Green had instructed his men to drop to the ground whenever they saw flashes from the artiller's muzzles. The Union men thought they were inflicting great casualties on the Rebels, but the fact that they just kept coming spooked the New Mexico Volunteers supporting McRae and his officers. Many fled the battery and ran panic-stricken across the Rio Grande, unnerving the Volunteer troops who were then being held in reserve.

The Texans fell upon the battery and fierce hand-to-hand fighting swirled around the artillery pieces. Samuel Lockridge, a Texan officer leading the charge is reported to have shouted, "Surrender McRae, we don't want to kill you!" to which the North Carolinian replied, "I shall never forsake my guns!" Both men then suffered fatal bullet wounds. The loss of the battery caused Colonel Canby to issue orders for a full retreat to Fort Craig. The captured guns, thereafter known as the Valverde Battery, continued to fire against Union troops for the remainder of the war.

After the war, Confederate Gen. Henry Sibley, who led the Confederate forces into New Mexico, wrote a letter to Alexander McRae’s father. In it, he said "The universal voice of this Army attests to the gallantry of your son. He fell valiantly defending the battery he commanded. There are few fallen soldiers that are admired by both armies of a conflict. Capt. Alexander McRae was one."

DIVIDED DUTY

OH, plateau the eagle's brood has known
What potent dead you hold!
In fear of God, in duty's light,
For country and for human right
On varied fields they fought the fight
And, while you claim their mould,

They live and will live through the year,
Though deaf to drum and fife,
For manly deeds are fertile seeds
That spring again to life.

What peace, what perfect peace broods o'er
The soldiers ' burial - ground
Here in the heart of the silent hills
With Hudson flowing round.

A stately guard, these mighty hills,
Close crowding one another,
Gigantic Storm King locking arms
With Old Cro ' Nest, his brother!

Their summits command to the North a range
Where a sleeping figure lies
Stretched on its back on the mountain tops
Against the changing skies.

There Rip Van Winkle, the children know,
Beheld with exceeding wonder
The queer little men whose ninepin balls
Create the summer thunder.

Down from the Donderberg scurried the winds
That tossed the Dutch sailor of yore.
Down from the highlands the captains came
When trembled and strained a nation's frame,
When all the fair land was aflame,
Aflame with civil war.

Far in the South was the home of one '
Twas there he had spent life's morn-
Where winds are soft and women are kind
And gentleness is born;

Where the grey moss waves from the great live - oak
And the scarlet tanager flutters;
Where the mocking - bird, hid in the bamboo- vine,
Its passionate melody utters.

The boom of the gun upon Sumter that caused
A million hearts to sicken,
That rolled o'er the land and grew as it rolled
While a knell in the mother's breast was tolled
And city and meadow and mountain old
With the spirit of war were stricken,

Brought from the hills of the Hudson one
Whose home was the South, ' tis true,
But o'er him the flag of his fathers waved:
He marched in command of the blue.
Oh, the sad story, the story they tell,
The story of duty and death!
The comfort of heaven, the anguish of hell,
Surging with every breath!

Out from the North, the awakening North,
Came comrades whose step was light.
Ah! that was their home, and a mother's prayer
Went with them into the fight.

Measureless plains of the wide South - west
Ye shook ' neath the tread of men.
Nor winds of the prairie, though mighty they be,
That fashioned your reaches like waves of the sea,
Nor rush of the bison once roaming you free
Have caused you to tremble as when
Through all the long day the sulphureous smoke
Hung heavy over the field
And man from his brother the hand of God
Seemed powerless to shield.

The battle is lost.
What use to stay When his men are slain or fled!
Did anguish too great for the brave to bear
Bring longing to lie with the dead?

His battery silenced, on one of the guns
Alone he sat ' mid the rout,
Unmoved as the cliff that the ocean in anger
Whirls its white surges about

A whirlwind of dust, a whirlwind of men,
A whirlwind of lead therefrom,
A vain pistol shot from the figure alone
And the coveted end had come.

What peace, what perfect peace broods now
O'er the beautiful burial - ground,
Up in the hills, the stately hills,
With the river flowing round.

1916: Captain Marburg and his first wife

In researching the poet, I found that Theodore Marburg had an interesting son. Captain Theodore Marburg Jr. was born November 27, 1893 in France and attended Oxford University. When World War I broke out, he joined the Royal Flying Corps, which required him to take the oath of allegiance to the British Government. While on a mission to photograph the German lines in 1915, his plane crashed and a strut pierced his left knee, requiring the leg to be amputated. Marburg wanted to return to the US to get an American-made artificial leg, but the U.S. government refused to issue him a passport since, according to their interpretation of law, he had broken his allegiance to the United States by taking the oath in Britain. His widely publicized case led President Wilson to a bill in October 1917 that restored US citizenship to US citizens who enlisted in Canadian, British, and French services before the US declaration of war if they took an oath of allegiance at a US consulate. Marburg then came back to the U.S. and was treated at the Johns Hopkins Hospital.
Marburg’s life did not go well after the war. Believing an outdoor life would be good for his health, Marburg moved to Arizona, where he purchased a cattle ranch. His first wife, Baroness Gesell de Vavario of Belgium, did not like ranch life and divorced him. He had only been married a month when he shot himself in the head on February 17, 1922. He was buried in Druid Ridge Cemetery in Pikesville, Maryland. It would be interesting to learn more about Marburg Jr. and his struggles.

Jennifer Bohnhoff is the author of a number of historical novels for middle grade and adult readers. Where Duty Calls, the first in the trilogy Rebels Along the Rio Grande, includes the scene where McRae's battery is charged by the Confederates. A Blaze of Poppies tells the story of a young, female rancher from New Mexico who serves as a nurse in World War I and comes back to marry a wounded American soldier.

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Walnut Pie

2/15/2024

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I’ve been sharing Perspective, an historical novel set on Isle Royale during the Great Depression, with my critique group. This past session, my chapter included a scene where the characters make a walnut pie. It fit into my chapter well, since the characters, Genevieve and Ida, are using the shells to create ornaments for their Christmas tree, and if they’re shelling walnuts, they’d better do something with the meat. But I’d never researched further to find out just what was in that pie.

“Walnut pie?” my critic partners wondered. “What’s that? What goes into it? What does it taste like?”

Creator: Rainer Lesniewski | Credit: Getty Images/iStockphoto

In truth, I didn’t know. I’d included it because it was convenient. Maybe it was mentioned in one of the memoirs written by an islander that I had read while writing the first draft of this novel back in 2002, but I’ve forgotten whether that was the case, or I’d just made-up walnut pies out of thin air. Clearly, I needed to do more research.

Isle Royale is a long, thin island in Lake Superior, the westernmost of the Great Lakes. To some people, Lake Superior looks like a wolf looking to the left, and Isle Royale is the eye.

Isle Royale is a national park now. Earlier, it had been a site of copper mining, fishing and logging operations, and marginal farming. By the early 1930s, most of the inhabitants were only seasonal, visiting every summer to escape the heat and humidity of mainland Michigan and Minnesota. Tourists visited the island's hotels. Only a small but hardy group of fisherman endured hard winters cut off from the rest of the world by treacherous ice. What kind of pie, I wondered, would these independent souls create in their isolated wilderness homes?

There are lots of recipes for pies with walnuts on the internet. Many are fruit pies, often apple or apple and cranberry. Some, called Amish walnut pies, included oatmeal. Another Amish pie had whipping cream and gelatin. Many were similar to pecan pies. I didn’t find any pies on the internet that were called Isle Royale pie or even Michigan or Minnesota pies. Even if the inhabitants of this Lake Superior Island had made pies, they’d left easily accessible record on the internet, and I was in Maine while all my printed resource material was back in New Mexico. If I wanted a pie recipe now, I’d have to create it myself.

The recipe I finally settled on is very simple, like I assume my characters, living in an isolated island forest, would be most likely to make. It uses maple syrup, which was then produced on the island in small quantities for use by the local inhabitants. I made a test pie and shared it with my family and they pronounced it a winner, so here it is.

Walnut Pie

Put a pie crust into a 9” pie plate.
(Don’t have your own pie crust recipe? Click here for one of mine.)

Preheat oven to 375°

Place 1 ½ cup chopped walnuts on a baking sheet.
Bake 5-7 minutes to toast the nuts and bring out the flavor.

Mix together:
½ cup brown sugar
2 TBS flour
1 ¼ cup maple syrup
3 TBS melted butter
¼ tsp salt
3 eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract

Stir in toasted walnuts. Pour into shell.

Bake for 40-45 minutes. Let cool completely before slicing and serving.

Jennifer Bohnhoff writes historical and contemporary fiction for middle grade through adult readers from her home high in the mountains of central New Mexico. She and her family visited Isle Royale during the summer of 2000, where they camped, canoed and portaged by day and listened to the wolves howl by night. During her ten days there, she fell in love with the island and its history. Perspective, her novel set there during the Great Depression, may come out this summer. The cover will be a lot better than the one pictured here.

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Heritage Fiction

2/8/2024

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Have you ever heard of Heritage Fiction? I hadn’t until I came across Ora Smith, a genealogist who creates fascinating historical fiction based on true events involving her ancestors. I’ve read two of her novels now, and I’m fascinated at the depth of research she puts into her stories.

I read White Oak River: A Story of Slavery's Secrets a while back. It’s the story of Caroline Gibson, who leaves a life of privilege on a plantation that uses slave labor to marry an abolitionist preacher, the Reverend John Mattocks. This couple is the author’s great-great-great-grandparents, from coastal North Carolina. When she gives birth to a son with dominant African traits, Caroline must decide if she’ll hold onto her bigotry at the cost of her relationships with both her husband and her son. The novel does an excellent job portraying that the Civil War may have changed laws, it failed to create a change of heart within southern society.

I just finished reading Smith’s The Peace of Pocahontas: Based on a True Story. This novel is the middle in a trilogy about Pocahontas and her role in securing peace between the Native peoples and the English colonizers. Chapters are presented in the voice of Pocahontas and of Thomas Savage, an orphan and indentured servant who lived among the Natives and served as an interpreter, and who is an ancestor of the author. It takes place in Virginia in 1613, when Pocahontas is kidnapped after three years of war. During her captivity, she learns English customs, wears English clothing, converts to Anglicanism, and marries John Rolfe. This series is a fascinating dive into a chapter in American history that most people are familiar with.

As luck would have it, I ended up reading another author in 2023 who is also writing Heritage Fiction. Olivia Hawker writes historical fiction, some of which is based on stories from her own family.

One of them, The Fire and the Ore, tells the story of three women: Tabitha, Jane, and Tamar, who are all wives of Thomas Ricks, one of the early Mormon settlers in Utah Territory. Set in 1856, the novel follows Tamar Loader and her family through a brutal pilgrimage from England to Utah, when she meets the man she is sure is destined to be her husband. She agrees to a polygamous union that is threatened when the US Army invades to stop the Mormon community from engaging in what they consider illegal practices. This is a part of U.S. History that few textbooks mention.

Hawker also wrote The Ragged Edge of Night, which tells the story of her grandfather and grandmother during World War II. When the Nazis close his school for handicapped children, Franciscan friar Anton Starzmann moves to a small German hamlet to wed —in name only—a widow who needs someone to protect her and help raise her three children. He joins the Red Orchestra, an underground network of resisters plotting to assassinate Hitler, but questions his values as he finds himself falling in love with his wife. This is a tense story, filled with beauty and emotion.

We all have family stories that we think would be good novels. The incidents our forebears went through were often dramatic and harrowing. I know it’s unlikely that I ever turn my family stories into novels: there’d be too many relatives who’d dispute the events or be offended by the portrayals of the people in their family. I’m glad Ora Smith and Olivia Hawker were able to overcome their worries (if they had any!) and produce such interesting windows into the past.

Jennfer Bohnhoff writes historical and contemporary fiction for middle grade through adult readers. None of her books have been based on her own family. You can read more about her and her books here.

For more on Ora Smith, go to her website at https://orasmith.com/
For more on Olivia Hawker, go to her website at https://www.hawkerbooks.com/

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A Couple of Inspiring Christmas Gifts: Treasures from the Past

1/11/2024

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One of my sisters really gets me. I mean, really, really understands what interests and excites me. Luckily for me, she also loves to search ebay for unique things.

This past Christmas, I got two treasures from her that will undoubtably work their way into one of my novels. I’m sharing them with you and hope that they interest and excite you as much as they did me.

The first gift was a little brass box with an emblem that read “Gott Mit Uns” over a picture of a crown. After a little research, I discovered that Gott Mit Uns is German for God with us, and was a slogan used by the German army in World War I. The crown is the imperial crown of the Second Reich, and is described both as German and as Prussian online.

The emblem on the box originally graced a belt buckle on a uniform. Here is a picture of one still attached.

So how did this emblem get placed on a brass box? The answer is an interesting bit of World War I history. Most people know that World War I is notable as the war in which both sides hunkered down in trenches along a front that became unmovable. Soldiers spent many weary months hunkered down in the mud, waiting to go “over the top” and attack the other side. The waiting grew monotonous.

To counter the boredom, soldiers found things to do to occupy their time. They had to use what they had at hand, and once one creative soldier had invented a form of art, it seems all his buddies copied it. The thousands of examples of vases made from shell casings, each unique in its decorations, attests to the hundreds of thousands of shells that flew over the trenches.

Sometimes what was lying around was pieces of uniforms. The belt buckle on a German uniform is exactly the right size to be made into a match box. The one I have has a lid that separates from the box. Others I found online were hinged or were squared off tubes with open ends. On some, the smooth brass had been deckled or worked into ridges. I do not know if the top of the box is part of the original belt buckle or if it was fashioned from a fragment of a shell casing. Either way, I can imagine a soldier hunkered down in the cold and damp, intently working on a bit he picked up in no man’s land to turn it into a little trinket for his loved ones back home.

The second treasure my sister gave me is a little, paperback book entitled History and Rhymes of the Lost Battalion, by “Buck Private” McCollum. Lee Charles McCollum self-published a 32-page volume of poetry by that name in 1919. That edition included sketches by Franklin Sly, another veteran of the American Expeditionary Force that went to Europe in 1918. Pt. McCollum saw action in France in many of the same areas as the famous Lost Battalion, but he is not listed on the unit's roster. Whether that means he wrote under a nom de plume was something I was not able to ascertain. The books was again published in 1919, 1921, 1922, and 1929, by which time Franklin Sly had passed away and another veteran, and Tolman R. Reamer, had completed artwork. The little volume grew over time. By 1939 it was up to 140 pages and included stories, remembrances by some of the key figures in the fight, pictures and tributes both to the Battalion and to its commander, Lt. Col. Charles Whittlesey, who had passed away in 1921. Over 700,000 copies of the various editions were sold.

The volume tells the story of Battalion 1 of the 77th Division, which pushed hard into the Argonne Forest and found itself cut off from the rest of the American forces.

On the morning of October 3, 1918, Companies A, B, C, E, and H of the 808th Infantry, the 308th Infantry’s Company H, Company K of the 307th Infantry and Companies C and of 306th Machine Gun Battalion, all members of the Seventy-Seventh Division, were cut off from the other American forces near Charlevoix, in the Argonne Forest, and surrounded by a superior number of Germans. For four days, the approximately 550 men, under command of Major Charles W. Whittlesey managed to survive without food and with a dwindling supply of ammunition, fending off enemy machine gun, rifle, trench mortar, and grenade fire and some friendly fire from their own artillery. When they were finally reconnected with the main American force, only 194 of the officers and men were able to walk out of the position. 107 had been killed.

McCollum’s poems are about that experience, plus other observations in war, including poems about his gas mask and about kissing a French girl. Some are cute and sweet, while others are sad elegies to friends now dead. It’s a great volume for anyone interested in the experience of American doughboys.
I’m thinking I need to write a sequel to my WWI novel, a Blaze of Poppies, with a character who was in the Lost Battalion and now carries around a matchbox as a memento.

What do you think? Is that a story you'd like to read? If I ever write it, you can thank my sister.

A Blaze of Poppies is an historical novel that tells the story of a New Mexico rancher in the southern part of the state and a member of the New Mexico National Guard's Battery A, who participated in many of the final battles of World War I. It is available in paperback and ebook through many online booksellers and directly from the author.

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Telescoping Distance and Time

Christmas 1944

“One can of hamburger patties and one can of mashed potatoes so cold they were almost frozen. No one had any mess kits or any utensils, so each man reached dirty, bare hands into one can for one patty and with the other dirty hand for a fistful of mashed potatoes.”

Wagons West Under ONE BIG OPEN SKY

Recognizing the 80th Anniversary of D-Day

New Mexico, the Famished Country

Meg Goes to America: An Interview with Katy Hammel

Divided Duty

DIVIDED DUTY

Walnut Pie

Walnut Pie

Heritage Fiction

A Couple of Inspiring Christmas Gifts: Treasures from the Past

ABout Jennifer Bohnhoff

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Archives

​“One can of hamburger patties and one can of mashed potatoes so cold they were almost frozen. No one had any mess kits or any utensils, so each man reached dirty, bare hands into one can for one patty and with the other dirty hand for a fistful of mashed potatoes.”

DIVIDED DUTY

Walnut Pie

ABout Jennifer Bohnhoff

Categories

Archives

“One can of hamburger patties and one can of mashed potatoes so cold they were almost frozen. No one had any mess kits or any utensils, so each man reached dirty, bare hands into one can for one patty and with the other dirty hand for a fistful of mashed potatoes.”