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The Aisne-Marne American Cemetery: A Monument of Remembrance

10/20/2022

Americans call November 11th Veteran's Day, and use the day to honor veterans of all wars . But originally November 11th observed Armistice Day, the when World War I ended, at least officially. .

There are many cemeteries in Belgium and France that hold the remains of Americans killed during the First World War. Unlike the cemeteries in Normandy, which contain those killed during the D-Day Invasion in World War Two, many of the World War 1 cemeteries recieve very few visitors each year.

The Aisne-Marne American Cemetery covers 42.5-acres at the foot of the hills that holds Belleau Wood. It contains the graves of 2,289 war dead. Most of these men came from the U.S. 2nd Division, which included the 4th Marine Brigade, and fought in the 20 day long battle for Belleau Wood. Also buried here are soldiers from the 3rd Division who arrived in Château-Thierry and blocked German forces on the north bank of the Marne throughout June.and July of 1918.

The second largest number of New Mexicans killed in France during World War I died at the Battle of Chateau-Thierry. Many of them were part of Battery A of the New Mexico National Guard, which came from Roswell. The 28 New Mexicans killed in this battle are interred at the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery together with 2,261 AEF soldiers.

The carved marble at the top of the pillars that flank the entrance to the French Romanesque chapel depict soldiers engaged in battle in the trenches.

One of the stained glass windows inside displays the insignias of American divisions engaged in the area. Another window has the crests of countries on the Allied side of the war.

The inside of the chapel is inscribed with the names of 1060 men who were missing after the battles. Some of those names have a small brass star next to them. That means the body was later found and identified.

It has been over a hundred years since World War I ended. There are no veterans left for us to honor. But we must never forget, and we must continue to honor the men who went "over there" and fought to keep us free.

Jennifer Bohnhoff is a native New Mexico with an interest in history. In 2019, she had the privilege of touring the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery and walking through Belleau Wood. That experience led her to writing A Blaze of Poppies, a novel about New Mexico's involvement in World War I.

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The Bard of the East Mountains

8/15/2022

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A sketch of San Antonio, New Mexico, by A. Petticolas, Confederate soldier

A while back, a neighbor was over and we were talking about the history here on the east side of the Sandia Mountains. He was raised here. I spent my teens in Albuquerque, the city that lies just west of the Sandias. I hiked in the mountains plenty, and I had friends that lived over here, especially after I got to high school. Manzano High School was, and still is the high school that kids from the east mountains attended. I’ve always been interested in the geology of the mountains. Its most ancient of records are the rocks, which tell us that what is now the top of a mountain used to be at the bottom of a sea. But I didn’t become interested in the human history of the east mountains, its small towns, and the people who inhabited them until I moved here in 2017.

This visiting neighbor told me he’d like to get his hands on a novel entitled Fiddlers and Fishermen because it was set in the east mountains. He’d searched, but he’d never been able to find a copy. That set me on a mission that began on Google, went to the public library, and finally to rare booksellers. What I discovered was that Fiddlers and Fishermen is one of two books written by Benjamin Frederick Clark. Born in Kansas in 1873, Clark moved into a cabin in Sandia Park, New Mexico in 1927. He passed away in that same cabin on May 30, 1947. He was 74 years old.

Back in 1947, Sandia Park was the area uphill from the little village of San Antonito. A dirt road went through the middle of it on its way up to the crest of the mountain. My area was on the outskirts of a village called La Madera, whose economy was based on truck farming, limestone mining, and timber. The stream that was the lifeblood of La Madera has ceased to flow and the town has become a ghost town. I drive a little over six miles to get my mail at the Sandia Park Post office.

Clark’s other book is a small tome of poems. Entitled Melodious Poems from the Hills, it was published in 1945 under the pen name of Sandia Bill by Crown Publications. I managed to get a copy delivered to my local library through interlibrary loan. The copy is signed, in pencil, by the author. A second pencil notation, reading “gift of the author 6/30/45” is written along the gutter of the first page. There is a picture of Clark playing his fiddle in the frontpages. I have included it here.

Melodious Poems from the Hills has ninety-six pages. Some pages have two short poems on them. Most have one poem, and a few poems span a couple of pages. The first poem, “When I Am Dead,” is mentioned in his obituary and is the reason he was cremated.

When I Am Dead

When I am dead, don’t cry for me;
Just wrap me in a shroud
And burn me, that the vapors may
Help form some lovely cloud.
Then place my pictures and my dolls,
And my ashes pure and clean,
‘Neath my rosevine and that tree
That always is so green.
Just leave the earth plain and smooth--
I want no omark or stone.
Just let the yard look like it did;
When in flesh, it was my home.
Take care of my sweet rosevine
And that evergreen tree –
This still my home will be;
And may flowers bloom around by tome
While gay robins sing for me.

This was one of my favorites, and seems appropriate in a year that saw so much of the west burning:

The Dying Monarch

Here stands the monarch of the forest,
Slowly expiring on the mountainside,
Who only a few hours ago,
Was the embodiment of health and pride.
His kindred pines for miles around,
And neighboring aspens, oaks, and firs
Are slowly tumbling to the ground
In bulks of smoldering embers.

The Lively squirrels and cheerful birds
From these parts have fled,
And they’ll be homeless for awhile,
For their friendly trees are dead.

Stands here the monarch of the forest,
Preaching a sermon as he expires,
Broadcasting his message to the world:
“Oh, men, be careful with your fires.”

Like the poem above, many of Sandia Bill’s poems are about the nature that surrounded him. Some are about the people, mostly ranchers, who he associated with. A few tell tales of love lost and found, of pretty women, dangerous men, and faithful old dogs, horses, and mules. This one, dear reader, I find speaks his heart, and mine.

I Am Thankful

I am not a rich or famous man,
And perhaps I’ll never be.
But I am in love with many things
And they’re all in love with me.

I am thankful for the sweet sunshine,
For snow, the clouds, and summer showers.
I am thankful for the Love Divine,
For butterflies, the birds, and flowers.
I am thankful for the girl I love
With eyes so soft and blue;
I am thankful for the stars above,
But more thankful, dear, for you.

I have yet to get my hands on a copy of Fiddlers and Fishermen. The only copy I’ve managed to locate is housed in the special collections in Zimmerman Library on the University of New Mexico campus, and they are not willing to circulate it through interlibrary loan. The only way I can read this 76 page novella is to make an appointment to read it at the library. Zimmerman’s old reading room is a beautiful, contemplative space. I did much of my undergraduate study there because it was such a peaceful place. Perhaps someday soon I will jump through the hoops to make this appointment happen.

Jennifer Bohnhoff’s newest novel, Where Duty Calls, is set in New Mexico during the Civil War and is the first in a trilogy. Written for middle grade readers, it is a quick, informative read for adults. She lives and writes in the mountains east of Albuquerque, New Mexico, close to the camp the Confederate Army used as they advanced towards Santa Fe in the spring of 1862 that is pictured above. .

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Civil War Mules in Fact, Fiction, and Poetry

7/27/2022

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Mules were the backbone of both Confederate and Union Armies during the American Civil War. According to a page on the Stones River Battlefield site, about three million horses and mules served in the war. They pulled the supply wagons, pulled the limbers and caissons for cannons, and moved the ambulances.

Although mules died in battle, just like the soldiers they supported, a greater percentage died of overwork, disease, or starvation. Rarely was the daily feed ration for Union cavalry horses, ten pounds of hay and fourteen pounds of grain, available during the long campaigns.

Jemmy Martin, one of the lead characters in Where Duty Calls, my middle grade novel about the Civil War in New Mexico, loves the two mules who work on his family's farm. When his brother sells them to the Confederate Army, Jemmy decides to travel with them to protect them. He tries hard to find good forage for his mules after Major General Henry H. Sibley's army crosses into barren New Mexico territory on its way to capture the gold fields of Colorado.

But Jemmy couldn't protect his mules from Union trickery. The night before the battle of Valverde, a Union spy named Paddy Graydon concocted a plan for killing the Confederate hoofstock using a couple of run-down mules as weapons. While his plan didn't work, he managed to spook the Confederate's pack mules. The animals, who'd been denied access to water for several days, stampeded down to the Rio Grande, where Union soldiers rounded them up. Jemmy finds himself continuing to follow the army even though his reason for being with them is gone.

While Jemmy and his mules are fictional characters that I created for my novel, the story of Paddy Graydon is true. Graydon really did spook the Confederacy's pack mules, and the Union Army did really collect over 100 of the beasts when they broke to gain access to water. They lost over 100 animals and had to reconfigure their supply train. Before they left camp, the Confederates burned what they could no longer carry.

In Hardtack and Coffee: The Unwritten Story of Army Life, Civil War veteran John D. Billings shares the story of another mule stampede. During the night of Oct. 28, 1863, Union General John White Geary and Confederate General James Longstreet were fighting at Wauhatchie, Tennessee. The din or battle unnerved about two hundred mules, who stampeded into a body of Rebels commanded by Wade Hampton. The rebels thought they were being attacked by cavalry and fell back.

To commemorate this incident, one Union soldier penned a poem based on Tennyson's Charge of the Light Brigade.

Charge of the mule brigade

Half a mile, half a mile,
Half a mile onward,
Right through the Georgia troops
Broke the two hundred.
“Forward the Mule Brigade!”
“Charge for the Rebs!” they neighed.
Straight for the Georgia troops
Broke the two hundred.

“Forward the Mule Brigade!”
Was there a mule dismayed?
Not when the long ears felt
All their ropes sundered.
Theirs not to make reply,
Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs but to make Rebs fly.
On! to the Georgia troops
Broke the two hundred.

Mules to the right of them,
Mules to the left of them,
Mules behind them
Pawed, neighed, and thundered.
Breaking their own confines,
Breaking through Longstreet's lines
Into the Georgia troops,
Stormed the two hundred.

Wild all their eyes did glare,
Whisked all their tails in air
Scattering the chivalry there,
While all the world wondered.
Not a mule back bestraddled,
Yet how they all skedaddled--
Fled every Georgian,
Unsabred, unsaddled,
Scattered and sundered!
How they were routed there
By the two hundred!

Mules to the right of them,
Mules to the left of them,
Mules behind them
Pawed, neighed, and thundered;
Followed by hoof and head
Full many a hero fled,
Fain in the last ditch dead,
Back from an ass's jaw
All that was left of them,--
Left by the two hundred.

When can their glory fade?
Oh, the wild charge they made!
All the world wondered.
Honor the charge they made!
Honor the Mule Brigade,
Long-eared two hundred!

The Stones River Battlefield Website stated that roughly half the horses and mules employed during the Civil War didn't survive. Jemmy Martin loses his to Paddy Graydon's plan. He spends the next two books in the Rebels Along the Rio Grande series trying to find them and return them to his home near San Antonio, Texas.

Jennifer Bohnhoff is a retired middle school English and History teacher. She has written several novels, most of which are historical fiction for middle grade readers. Where Duty Calls is the first book in Rebels Along the Rio Grande, a trilogy set in New Mexico during the Civil War.

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Canister and Grapeshot

4/6/2022

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Before I became a full-time writer, I taught history and English to middle school students. I found that one of the things that made historical fiction difficult for my students was the vocabulary. Many terms were perplexing to young teens.

This became apparent one day when a 7th grader asked me what was so scary about having grapes shot at you. We were studying the Mexican American War, and read that the cannons were loaded with grape. She honestly believed that cannoneers loaded their guns with the same kind of grapes that make their way into jelly and jam. While this would lead to a sticky situation, and perhaps some stained uniforms, it likely wouldn't lead to many fatalities.

"A little more grape, Captain Bragg." General Zachary Taylor's comment at the Mexican American War Battle of Buena Vista (February 23, 1847) continues to confuse students.

By Geni - Photo by user:geni, GFDL, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=11925339

Grape, when referring to 18th and 19th Century war, is just a shortened form of the word grapeshot. Neither grape or grapeshot refer to shooting people with grapes. Rather, it refers to how small metal balls, or shot, were bundled together before being loaded into the gun. Those bundles resembled clusters of grape: hence the name. When the gun fired, the bag disintegrated and the shot spread out from the muzzle, much like shot from a shotgun.

When I began teaching out in the country, I found that this perplexed students less. Although a few of my city kids were hunters or had a father or mother who hunted, many more of my country kids did so. They knew that buck shot was fired from shotguns when shooting deer, and birdshot, with its smaller pellets, was effective for shooting pigeons. But even in the country, students were dumbfounded that anyone used shot on grapes.

I also coached track and field. My 7th grade students who were also athletes quickly realized that the shot they "put" in shot put was related to grapeshot.

Grapeshot was especially effective against amassed infantry movements, such as Pickett's Charge at the Battle of Gettysburg or the Confederate charge of McRae's Guns at the Battle of Valverde. But by the Civil War, grapeshot was already becoming a thing of the past, replaced by canister.

By Minnesota Historical Society [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Canister, which is sometimes known as case shot, involved small metal balls similar to the ones used in grapeshot. Instead of being encased in muslin, they were packed into a tin or brass container, the front of which blew out, scattering the balls into the oncoming enemy.

Canister is a word that is unfamiliar to many middle grade readers. They are too young to know what a film canister is. They do, however, know what a can is, and can readily accept that can is short for canister.

Understanding vocabulary words like grape and canister can help middle grade readers understand the historical fiction they are reading. Understanding the fiction can lead them to understand the history behind it, enriching their lives and making their reading much more informative and pleasurable.

After many years in the classroom, Jennifer Bohnhoff is now devoting herself to full time writing. Her novel The Bent Reed is for middle grade readers that is set at Gettysburg during the Civil War. Where Duty Calls, the first in a trilogy of novels about New Mexico during the Civil War is now available for preorder and will be published by Kinkajou Press on June 14, 2022.

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Civil War Weaponry: Mountain Howitzers

3/30/2022

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The youngest reenactor at Glorieta. His father told me that this was his first encampment.

Last weekend, the 160th anniversary of the Battle of Glorieta Pass was observed. I drove up to Pecos National Historic Site on Saturday morning to witness the observation.

The weekend was pretty low key. A group of Union reenactors attended. They put up tents and spend the night. No Confederate reenactors were there.

I was walking up from the parking lot when I heard gun fire. The reenactors gave some black powder displays, but there was no reenactment of the battle. The one and only artillery piece, a mountain howitzer, was going to be fired at noon, but I didn't stay around long enough to hear it.

Fort Union's Mountain Howitzer

The New Mexico Artillery Company has several cannons they bring to reenactments. However, the Park Service demands that all cannons brought on to their property are accurate reproductions. Most of the ones used by the Artillery Company have smaller bores than authentic Civil War cannons. Smaller bores are cheaper to fire. The one present this past weekend was a mountain howitzer which was brought down from Fort Union for the day. This replica, like the actual gun, was made of bronze and had a smooth bore. It could fire an explosive shell, a cannon ball, or canister 1,005 yards.

A mule carrying cannon wheels.

The mountain howitzer was first created in 1837. The United States Army used it during the Mexican–American War (1847–1848), the American Indian Wars, and during the American Civil War, (1861–1865). It was used primarily in the more rugged parts of the West. It was designed to be lightweight and very portable, even in difficult, mountainous terrain. The carriage design allowed it to be broken down into three loads, that could then be loaded onto a pack animal for transport where other guns could not go. When broken down, the tube could be carried by one horse or mule, the carriage and wheels by another, and ammunition on a third. This made it well suited for Indian fighting and mountain warfare.

.Although mountain howitzers provided artillery support for mobile military forces ion the move through rugged country, their shorter range made them unsuitable for dueling with other heavier field artillery weapons. They were replaced by other guns by the 1870s.

Author Jennifer Bohnhoff writes historical fiction for middle grade readers and adults.

Where Duty Calls, the first in a trilogy of novels set in New Mexico during the Civil War, will be published by Kinkajou Press, a division of Artemesia Publishing, in June 2022 and is available for preorder from Amazon or Bookshop.

For class sets or other bulk orders, contact Artemesia Publishing. A teacher's guide will be available this summer from the publisher.

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A General with a Plan

2/22/2022

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Jemmy and his home, as depicted by illustrator Ian Barstow

The main character Where Duty Calls, my Civil War novel set in New Mexico, is Jemmy Martin, a gentle farm boy from San Antonio, Texas. Jemmy loves his humble home and his family, but has a very special relationship with the farm animals, especially the two mules.

Jemmy's brother, Drew, is a little flightier. When Drew sneaks into town to join the Confederate army, Jemmy is tasked with finding him and bringing him back. While he is in town, a group of riders passes, and Jemmy is impressed:

"At their center was a fine-looking man with silver hair that caught the morning sun and made him look as if a halo circled his head. He had a great, bushy mustache, sideburns, and sad, drooping eyes that made Jemmy feel as if this man had seen all the sorrow the world had to offer and had learned how to push through it. Jemmy instantly felt as if he could follow the man anywhere."

The fine-looking man that had impressed Jemmy so well was Confederate Brigadier General Henry H. Sibley, and while Jemmy Martin is a figment of my imagination, General Sibley was a real person who impressed many. Several contemporary records attest to his natural charisma and ability to inspire people with his words.

The coat of arms of the 2nd Dragoons

Henry Hopkins Sibley' came from a family that had served the United States since its inception. His grandfather, Dr. John Sibley, was a medical assistant in the Revolutionary War. When the war was over, he continued his training and became a surgeon. In 1803, after the United States bought the Louisiana Purchase, he left his native Massachusetts and joined an expedition to the Red River country of western Louisiana. He liked the new territory so well that he moved to Natchitoches, Louisiana, where he worked as a contract surgeon and was an Indian Agent for New Orleans. John Sibley also served as a Senator in the Louisiana State Senate, and was a colonel in the local militia, a cattle farmer, a cotton planter, and a salt manufacturer. His son Samuel Sibley served as a parish clerk.

Henry Hopkins Sibley was born in Natchitoches in 1816. His father, Samuel, died when he was only seven years old, after which lived with an uncle and aunt in Missouri. He was admitted to West Point when he was seventeen, and when he graduated in 1838, he was commissioned as second lieutenant in the 2nd U.S. Dragoons. Between 1840 and 1860 he fought Seminole Indians in Florida, served on the Texas frontier, fought in the Mexican–American War, was involved in trying to control conflict in Bleeding Kansas and quelling a Mormon uprising in Utah. In 1857, Sibley was assigned active service protecting settlers from Navajo and Apache attacks in New Mexico.

During the 1850s, Sibley invented and patented a tent and stove for military purposes. The "Sibley tent", which was inspired by the teepees of Native American Plains Indians, was widely used by both the Union Army and Confederate Armies during the Civil War. The conical Sibley tent stove, pictured on the right side of this tent, was used by the Army into the early years of the second World War. Despite the popularity of both of these inventions, Sibley received little remuneration for them.

Sibley tents in Camp Columbus, NM in 1916 during the build-up to the Punitive Expedition. The lower skirts have been removed from the one in the foreground to keep the air inside cool.

At the time that the Civil War began, Sibley was stations at Fort Union, in northern New Mexico. Like many soldiers who had been raised in the south, he resigned his commission to join the Confederate Army. Sibley resigned on May 13, 1861, the same day he was promoted to major in the 1st Dragoons. Had he not left, he would have been offered the command of the military department of New Mexico, since the man who had held that position, Colonel William Wing Loring, had also left to take a southern commission.

Sibley took a stagecoach out of New Mexico. A diary of a Union soldier stationed in Albuquerque says that, while passing through in a stagecoach, Sibley stuck his head out the window and shouted “Boys, I'm the worst enemy you have!”

He passed through Texas and Louisiana on his way to Richmond, Virginia, where he talked Jefferson Davis, the President of the Confederate States, into commissioning him as a brigadier general. Davis authorized him to recruit a brigade of volunteers in central and south Texas. Sibley’s plan was to march to El Paso, then occupy New Mexico. From there, he would seize the rich mines of Colorado Territory, turn west through Salt Lake City, and capture the seaports of Los Angeles and San Diego and the California goldfields.

Sibley's battle cry, “On to California!” inspired 2,000 men to join his campaign. By early fall of 1861, Sibley had three regiments of what he named The Army of New Mexico, plus artillery and supply units, camped on the outskirts of San Antonio. One of them, at least in my story, was Jemmy Martin.

Where Duty Calls is the first in a trilogy of novels set in New Mexico during the Civil War and written for middle grade readers. It is scheduled to be published by Kinkajou Press, a division of Artemesia Publishing, on June 14, 2022.

It is available for preorder here.

Jennifer Bohnhoff is a former New Mexico history teacher. She is a native New Mexican and lives in the mountains east of Albuquerque.

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The First Song of the Civil War

2/20/2022

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Soldiers sang a lot while sitting around their campfires. Illustration from Where Duty Calls by Ian Bristow

People sang a lot more at the time of the Civil War than they do now. There were no i-pods, no portable boom boxes, no radios to entertain soldiers as they traveled from place to place or sat around the campfire. Instead, they sang together. Singing helped boost morale and united the soldiers. Robert E. Lee, the greatest general on the Confederate side, said, "I don't think we could have an army without music."

In my middle grade historical novel Where Duty Calls, both the Confederate soldiers and the Union ones, as well as the Spanish-speaking residents of the town of Socorro, sing songs that are authentic to the period.

One song that was very popular at the time of the Civil War but not included in Where Duty Calls is "The First Gun is Fired: May God Protect the Right." Written by George Frederick Root, it is recognized as the first song specifically written for the American Civil War, and was published and distributed just three days after the Battle of Fort Sumter.

"The First Gun is Fired: May God Protect the Right," isn't the most recognizable of Civil War songs to 21st century listeners, but it is likely that every Union soldier would have known it. Root went on to write many other songs that had a war theme. "Tramp! Tramp! Tramp!" was also wildly popular at the time of the war. His most enduring song, "The Battle Cry of Freedom," continues to be well known.

The prolific songwriter was born August 30, 1820 in Sheffield, Massachusetts. He died in 1895, leaving behind a legacy of church hymns and popular parlor songs.

Here are the lyrics to the Civil War's first song:

1. The first gun is fired!
May God protect the right!
Let the freeborn sons of the North arise
In power’s avenging night;
Shall the glorious Union our father’s have made,
By ruthless hands be sunder’d,
And we of freedom sacred rights
By trait’rous foes be plunder’d?

Chorus--Arise! arise! arise!
And gird ye for the fight,
And let our watchword ever be,
“May God protect the right!”

2. The first gun is fired!
Its echoes thrill the land,
And the bounding hearts of the patriot throng,
Now firmly take their stand;
We will bow no more to the tyrant few,
Who scorn our long forbearing,
But with Columbia’s stars and stripes
We’ll quench their trait’rous daring.

3. The first gun is fired!
Oh, heed the signal well,
And the thunder tone as it rolls along
Shall sound oppression’s knell;
For the arm of freedom is mighty still,
But strength shall fail us never,
Its strength shall fail us never,
That strength we’ll give to our righteous cause,
And our glorious land forever.

Jennifer Bohnhoff is a former New Mexico history teacher. The native New Mexican lives in the mountains east of Albuquerque.

Her novel Where Duty Calls is the first in a trilogy of novels set in New Mexico during the Civil War and is written for middle grade readers. It is scheduled to be published by Kinkajou Press, a division of Artemesia Publishing, on June 14, 2022 and is now available for preorder here.

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The First - and Last- Lancer Charge of the Civil War

2/16/2022

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Illustration by Ian Bristow from Where Duty Calls.

When Confederate Major General H. H. Sibley invaded New Mexico in 1862, he brought with him two companies of lancers.

Handsome and chivalrous heirs of medieval knights, the lancers were the darlings of the parade through San Antonio on the day Sibley's force, which he named the Army of New Mexico headed west. Bright red flags with white stars snapped in the breeze as they rode past. Ladies swooned. Everyone thought the lancers were invincible.

Lances had been used in battle for a long time. Common on Napoleonic battlefields, and were used by Mexican cavalry during the conflicts against the Texans in the 1830s and 1840s. The lances carried by the two companies that accompanied Sibley into New Mexico were war trophies that had been captured from the Mexicans during the Mexican American War thirteen years earlier.

Col. Thom Green

On February 21, 1862 those two companies, along with the rest of Sibley's forces, had made it well into New Mexico. After finding E.R..S. Canby, the commander of Union forces in New Mexico, unwilling to come out of the heavily fortified Fort Craig, the Confederates had bypassed the fort and made their way to Valverde Ford, a crossing on the Rio Grande several miles north. There, they found Union forces blocking their way. The battle for that crossing, known as the Battle of Valverde, was over by that afternoon.

On the the day of the battle, Confederate Colonel Thomas Green's forces had taken shelter in the curve of a dried oxbow that the river had abandoned. He peered across the battlefield and saw uniforms that he couldn't identify. Knowing they weren't Union regulars, he guessed that these men on the Union extreme right were a company of inexperienced New Mexico Volunteers whom he expected would break and run if faced with a lancer charge.

Captain Lang

Green turned to the commanders of his two lancer companies, Captains Willis Lang and Jerome McCown. He asked which would like to have the honor of the first charge.

The first hand up belonged to the leader of the 5th Texas Cavalry Regiment's Company B. Captain Willis L. Lang was a rich, 31 year old who owned slaves that worked his plantation near Marlin in Falls County, Texas.

Lang quickly organized his men. Minutes later, he gave the signal and his company cantered forward, lowered their lances, and began galloping across the 300 yards that divided his men from the men in the unusual uniforms. The plan called for McCown's company to follow after the Union troops had broken, and the two lancer companies would chase the panicking Union men into the Rio Grande that stood at their back.

But Colonel Green was wrong. The men in the strange uniforms were not New Mexican Volunteers. They were Captain Theodore Dodd’s Independent Company of Colorado Volunteers. Dodd's men were a scrappy collection of miners and cowboys who were reputedly low on discipline but high on fighting spirit. They formed into a defensive square, then coolly waited until the lancers were within easy range. Their first volley unhorsed many of the riders. Their second volley finished the assault. More than half of Lang's men were either killed or wounded, and most of the horses lay dead on the field.

Lang himself dragged himself back to the Confederate lines because he was too injured to walk.

Lang's charge was the only lancer charge of the American Civil War. The destruction of his company showed that modern firearms had rendered the ten-foot long weapons obsolete. McCown's men, and what remained of Lang's men threw their lances into a heap and burned them. They then rearmed themselves with pistols and shotguns and returned to the fight.

The day after the battle, Lang and the rest of the injured Confederates were carried north to the town of Socorro, where they had requisitioned a house and turned it into a hospital. A few days later, depressed and in great pain, he asked his colored servant for his revolver, with which he ended his suffering. Lang and the other Confederate dead were buried in a plot of land near the south end of town that has now become neglected and trash-strewn. The owners do not allow visitors.

This field used to be a Confederate Cemetery.

The Confederate lancer charge is one of the events detailed in Jennifer Bohnhoff's novel Where Duty Calls, an historical novel for middle grade readers which is scheduled to be released in June 2022 by Kinkajou Press, a division of Artemesia Publishing.

To commemorate the 160th anniversary of the battle, Ms. Bohnhoff is having a Preorder Party for Where Duty Calls from February 20-26th. Anyone who preorders a copy of the book and lets Ms. Bohnhoff know will be entered into drawings for prizes and book bling.

You can contact Ms. Bohnhoff at [email protected]
Click here to preorder the book.

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Changing Covers

12/5/2021

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Publishing houses and self published authors sometimes change the covers on their books. Many do so to keep up with changing trends in the book marketplace. As reader tastes change, so do book covers. Below are some examples of different covers for award winning books by Karen Cushman, and a brief synopsis of each book to help you analyze the cover.

Catherine, Called Birdy is a novel written as a diary. It begins in September 1290, with Catherine describing her father's manor, her parents, and the world she lives in. Her father wishes her to marry someone who will make advantageous social connections, but all the suitors he brings fall short of Birdy's ideal. Finally, Catherine's father demands her to marry an old, repulsive man whom she calls "Shaggy Beard." She refuses, and devises many scenarios to escape. As the day for Catherine's official betrothal approaches, she realizes that she herself will be the same no matter who she marries. However, Shaggy Beard dies and she is pleased to become engaged to his clean, young, educated son.

The Midwife's Apprentice tells the story of a homeless, nameless orphan girl. Called Brat, the only name she can remember anyone calling her, she sleeps in dung heaps to keep warm until a harsh and uncaring midwife named Jane Sharp takes her in as an apprentice. She takes on the new name of Alyce and begins to grow as she learns skills, but eventually runs away from the midwife. While away, she learns to read and write and discovers that she truly has a calling to be a midwife. She returns to Jane Sharp's service determined to learn.

Just this week, the wonderful middle grade author Karen Cushman posted a link to an article written by the woman who is creating the cover for her newest book. Jamie Zollars explains the process she went through, and it is fascinating and well worth reading. Grayling's Song is Cushman's first fantasy novel, and as such the cover needed to be very different.

Jennifer Bohnhoff is a writer that lives in central New Mexico. Her books On Fledgling Wings, the story of a motherless young boy in medieval England who wishes to become a knight to help himself feel more worthy, is on sale on Amazon now through December 8. You can read about the author and her books on her website.

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A Visit to Sleepy Hollow

10/31/2021

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This summer I visited family on the east coast. While there, I got to visit the Old Dutch Church, in Sleepy Hollow, New York.

The Old Dutch Church was built somewhere around 1685 by settlers to the area when it was still under Dutch control, and New York was still New Amsterdam. The church is part of the Lutheran branch of Christianity, and still has services.

The church was locked up on the day that I visited, so I didn’t get to see what it looks like inside. I did, however, spend several hours touring the cemetery.
I love cemeteries, especially old ones. The tombstones tell so many stories. This tombstone has the names of three children, Cornelius, Jacob and Catalyia, who all died on September 24, 1794.

I took a picture of this tombstone because of the interesting use of English. It says the woman is the relict of a man. I had to consult a dictionary to learn that relict is an old word for widow.

Many of the tombstones had American flags and badges indicating that the buried was a veteran. This is the grave of one of the many Revolutionary War veterans who were interred in this cemetery. There was a large area with Civil War dead, including one who, if I read the dates correctly, died during the war when he was only twelve years old. I assume he had been a drummer boy. There were World War I tombstones, like the one pictured below, and tombstones from later wars as well.

When most people think of Sleepy Hollow, they think of Washington Irving, an early American author. He is buried here, too.

Irving’s short story, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow put this little town on the literary map and into American consciousness. I think most people know the story of the pompous and prudish teacher Ichabod Crane, who meets his match in the strapping farmboy Brom Van Brunt as they battle for the hand of the fair and rich Katrina Van Tassel. (If you don’t know the story, you can read it here.)

While the story may be fiction, Irving set it firmly within the real place he lived. The cemetery was filled with Van Tassels. This stone is written in Dutch, but others were in English. It’s clear that this was a prominent family in the community.

The stream that is part of the story still exists as a little rill that runs right past the church, but the covered bridge is gone, replaced in more recent times by this concrete one.

And the headless horseman? Supposedly a Hessian soldier who was decapitated by a cannonball during an unnamed battle of the American Revolution, he’d not been searching long for his head, since the story is set in 1790. If he’s searching still, tonight would be the night!
Wishing all of my readers a safe Halloween!

Jennifer Bohnhoff writes historical fiction. To learn more about her and her books, go to her website.

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The Aisne-Marne American Cemetery: A Monument of Remembrance

The Bard of the East Mountains

When I Am Dead

The Dying Monarch

I Am Thankful

Civil War Mules in Fact, Fiction, and Poetry

Canister and Grapeshot

Civil War Weaponry: Mountain Howitzers

A General with a Plan

The First Song of the Civil War

The First - and Last- Lancer Charge of the Civil War

Changing Covers

A Visit to Sleepy Hollow

ABout Jennifer Bohnhoff

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ABout Jennifer Bohnhoff

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Archives

When I Am Dead

The Dying Monarch

I Am Thankful