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The Americans who Lie in Flanders Field

9/5/2021

Flanders Field American Cemetery and Memorial is the only World War I American cemetery on Belgian soil. It is located on the southeast edge of the town of Waregem and honors 411 American servicemen, some of whose bodies are unidentified and others whose bodies are unrecovered.

The memorial was designed by architect Paul Cret, who ennobled the site with art deco and lots of quiet, garden-like areas that make it a deeply moving place.

Lieutenant Kenneth MaCleish

One of the men interred in this cemetery is Kenneth MaCleish, the brother of American poet Archibald MaCleish, who lived into the 1980s and produced a massive and impressive body of work. Here is one of his poems to think on:

Liberty
When liberty is headlong girl
And runs her roads and wends her ways
Liberty will shriek and whirl
Her showery torch to see it blaze.

When liberty is wedded wife
And keeps the barn and counts the byre
Liberty amends her life.
She drowns her torch for fear of fire.

Jennifer Bohnhoff is a former educator who writes historical fiction. Her World War I novel, A Blaze of Poppies, will be released in October 2021.

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A Poem to Lead Men Into Battle

8/18/2021

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When I first began plotting out a novel set in World War I, it was tentatively entitled Agnes Goes to War. Then I came across this poem, and it moved me enough that I retitled the novel The Destined Will, used this poem as a preface, and named my lead male character Will. Two different critique partners suggested that the title wasn't inspiring and that readers wouldn't bother with a poem so long at the beginning of a novel, so I dropped both, and the novel became A Blaze of Poppies.

Julian Grenfell's parents were members of the Victorian high-society group called “the souls.” He attended Oxford's Eton and Balliol Colleges where he was known as a superb athlete and sportsman. He excelled at boxing and steeplechase, but most loved to take his greyhound hunting. Like many aristocrats of his time, he sketched and wrote poetry.

Grenfell joined the Royal Dragoons in 1910. He served in India and, after the outbreak of World War I, transferred to France, where he received a Distinguished Service Order and refused a staff position in order to continue fighting.

On May 13, 1915 during the Battle of Ypres, Grenfell volunteered to run messages during a heavy bombardment. He was seriously wounded when a shell splinter struck his head, and died in a Boulogne military hospital thirteen days later. 'Into Battle' was published alongside his obituary in The Times.

Into Battle

by Julian Grenfell

The naked earth is warm with Spring,
And with green grass and bursting trees
Leans to the sun's gaze glorying,
And quivers in the sunny breeze;

And life is Colour and Warmth and Light,
And a striving evermore for these;
And he is dead who will not fight,
And who dies fighting has increase.

The fighting man shall from the sun
Take warmth, and life from glowing earth;
Speed with the light-foot winds to run
And with the trees to newer birth;
And find, when fighting shall be done,
Great rest, and fulness after dearth.

All the bright company of Heaven
Hold him in their bright comradeship,
The Dog star, and the Sisters Seven,
Orion's belt and sworded hip:

The woodland trees that stand together,
They stand to him each one a friend;
They gently speak in the windy weather;
They guide to valley and ridges end.

The kestrel hovering by day,
And the little owls that call by night,
Bid him be swift and keen as they,
As keen of ear, as swift of sight.

The blackbird sings to him: "Brother, brother,
If this be the last song you shall sing,
Sing well, for you may not sing another;
Brother, sing."

In dreary doubtful waiting hours,
Before the brazen frenzy starts,
The horses show him nobler powers; --
O patient eyes, courageous hearts!

And when the burning moment breaks,
And all things else are out of mind,
And only joy of battle takes
Him by the throat and makes him blind,
Through joy and blindness he shall know,
Not caring much to know, that still
Nor lead nor steel shall reach him, so
That it be not the Destined Will.

The thundering line of battle stands,
And in the air Death moans and sings;
But Day shall clasp him with strong hands,
And Night shall fold him in soft wings.

A Blaze of Poppies is a novel set on a ranch in southwest New Mexico and in France during World War I. You can read more about Jennifer Bohnhoff, its author, here.

Preorder A Blaze of Poppies here

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Horses in History: Traveller

6/27/2021

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This Photo by Unknown Author is licensed under CC BY-SA

Horses served an important role in the Civil War, and suffered as greatly as the men beneath them. It has been estimated that 1.5 million horses and mules died in the Civil War. Five million pounds of dead horses was removed from the Gettysburg battlefield alone. But of all the horses that served in this period, none is as famous as Traveller.

Traveller, spelled as the British do, with two Ls, was an iron grey American Saddlebred with black points and a dark mane and tail. The 16-hand tall horse was sired by a race horse named Grey Eagle, who had won $20,000 in a Louisville, Kentucky stake race, and born in 1857 in Greenbrier County, in what is now West Virginia. His first owner named him “Jeff Davis,” after the Mississippi Senator and Mexican American War hero who eventually became the President of the Confederacy.

In 1861 the son of the original owner took the horse with him when he joined the legion of former Virginia governor Brig. Gen. Henry Wise. He sold the horse to Captain Joseph M. Broun, a quartermaster of Wise’s Legion’s 3rd Infantry. Broun renamed the horse “Greenbriar.” When Robert E. Lee arrived to advise Wise in late August 1861, he saw Broun’s horse and was immediately taken with him, calling the horse ‘my colt’ and saying he would need it before the war was over. Aware of the difference in their ranks, Broun offered to give the horse to Lee, who declined the offer. Broun then offered to sell Greenbriar to Lee for the same price he had himself paid for the horse. Lee added an extra $15 to cover the depreciating value of the Confederate dollar. Lee bought the horse in February 1862 and renamed him Traveller because of his ability to walk at a fast pace.

Although Traveller was not the only horse Lee rode from that time on, it was the one he rode and most and the one that became linked to him in the public’s eye. He was known for great endurance during long marches, and being unflappable in battle. He was not perfect, though. Lee’s youngest son, Robert E. Lee Jr later wrote that the horse fretted a lot, especially when in crowds if he wasn’t regularly exercised. At the Second Battle of Manassas he shied at enemy movements, rearing and throwing the General, who broke bones in both his hands during the fall.

After the war, Lee continued to keep the grey near him. He brought Traveller to Washington University when he became its president, and the pair were a common site on campus. Traveller became such a celebrity that his mane and tail thinned because students plucked the dark hairs as souvenirs. Locks of Lee’s hair and Traveller’s mane are still part of the collection at Arlington House, Lee’s former home on the grounds of Arlington National Cemetery.

When Lee died in October of 1870, Traveller was draped in black crepe walked, riderless, behind the funeral hearse. Less than a year later, Traveller stepped on a nail and contracted tetanus. He died June of 1871 and was buried along a creek adjoining Washington University’s campus near Lee Chapel.

But Traveller’s story didn’t end with his death. In 1875, Custis Lee, who had succeeded his father as President of the institution that was renamed Washington and Lee University after the General’s death, exhumed Traveller and sent his bones to Henry Augustus Ward, a University of Rochester faculty member who traveled the world acquiring a massive assortment of geological and zoological specimens and taxidermy samples for museums.

CLIPPED FROM The Times-Picayune New Orleans, Louisiana 15 Dec 1875, Wed

An undated image of Traveller’s skeleton on display in Lexington.

The skeleton was returned to Washington and Lee in 1907, and later moved to the basement of Lee Chapel. By the time his bones were reburied in front of the chapel in 1960, the bones had deteriorated and were covered with the penned signatures of visitors.

Jennifer Bohnhoff is a writer who lives in the mountains of central New Mexico. You can read about her on her website. You can read another story about a horse from history, Sergeant Reckless, an Army horse during the Korean war, here.

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Peanut Pie

1/18/2021

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The last slice of the latest peanut pie in our house.

The author and her sons at Devil's Den, Gettysburg

During the summer of 2000, my husband and I took our three sons on an historical vacation. Among the places visited were Williamsburg and Gettysburg, both places where we ate peanut pie in local taverns, so that the pie is associated in our minds with American history.

Many histories of peanuts say that they came to America in the 1700s, carried from Africa along with slaves. While that may be true, they are not originally from Africa. Peanuts seem to have originated in South America, in Peru. They were taken back to Africa by the Spanish before coming to North America.

Wherever they came from, I'm glad they made it into my family's repertoire. This recipe is adapted from the Chowning's Tavern Pie from historical Williamsburg.

Peanut Pie

For the Crust:

1 1/3 cup flour
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 C shortening

Cut shortening into flour and salt mixture until it resembles cornmeal in consistency, with some particles the size of small peas.

3 TBS ice water
1/2 TBS vinegar

Mix water and vinegar and sprinkle over the flour mixture, 1 TBS at a time, mixing until the dough clumps together. You may not use all the liquid.

Press together, then place on a floured piece of waxed paper or parchment. Roll out until it is larger than your pie place. Invert the paper over the pie plate to fit in. Flute edged.

For the Filling:

3 large eggs,
3/4 cup brown sugar
1 cup light corn syrup
3/4 tsp vanilla
1 1/2 TBS melted butter

1 cup peanuts (you may use salted or unsalted, but I prefer unsalted, roasted Virginia peanuts with the skins removed.)

Beat the eggs, brown sugar, corn syrup and vanilla together in a large bowl. Add the melted butter and peanuts. Pour into the pie shell and bake in a preheated oven at 350 until the filling is set in the center and the pastry is lightly browned, about 45 minutes.

Jennifer Bohnhoff is a writer and educator who lives high in the mountains of central New Mexico. She wrote about Gettysburg in her novel, The Bent Reed, which is available in ebook and paperback.

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The Only Lancer Charge in the Civil War

6/1/2020

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When 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 the Army of New Mexico headed west. Bright red flags with white stars snapped from their lances. Lances had been common on Napoleonic battlefields, and were used by Mexican cavalry during the conflicts against the Texans in the 1830s and 1840s. The lances that these two companies carried were war trophies captured from the Mexicans during the Mexican American War thirteen years earlier

Colonel Thomas Green

On the day of the Battle for Valverde Ford, Colonel Thomas Green 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 who would break and run from a lancer charge.

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

Captain Willis Lafayette Lang

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.

Captain Theodore Dodd

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 coolly waited until the lancers were within easy range, then fired a volley that 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 Confederate 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 derelict field was once a Confederate Cemetery.

The Charge of Company B of the 5th Texas Cavalry Regiment at the Battle of Valverde Ford is included in Jennifer Bohnhoff's historical novel, Where Duty Calls, published by Kinkajou Press, a division of Artemesia Publishing in June 2022. The author is a former New Mexico history teacher who lives in the mountains of central New Mexico. You can read more about her and her writing here.

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Throwing out the Baby with the Potato Water

1/23/2020

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My critique partners can attest that sometimes I don't remember my own books. They've been through so many revisions that I can't remember what's in them and what's been expunged.
I forget sub-plots. I can't remember characters' names. Often I've forgotten whole scenes.

This became a bit of a problem for me this past week. I'd had the honor of being asked to guest-write a post on Project Mayhem, a fabulous blog on writing hosted by a wonderful group of Middle Grade authors. I decided to address how little historical details can help readers grasp what a period of time was like, and how even the littlest of details could lead to some big questions. As an example, I decided to use a quirky little historical detail from my Civil War novel, The Bent Reed, which will be published in both paperback and ebook in September.

The quirky little historical detail in question is from a laundry scene; After washing Pa and Lijah's shirts, Ma dips them into a vat that contains the water left over from boiling potatoes. Why would she do this, you ask? Because the left-over potato water would have had starch suspended in it, and the starch would have made ironing the shirts easier, and the ironed shirts more crisp.

I remember learning this little historical detail in a Civil War era book of hints for housewives and being fascinated. I delight in little bits of trivia like this. I thought that it could lead to many interesting discussions about resource use and thriftiness.

As I wrote my post last week, I decided that this detail was a perfect example of how little bits of trivial information about everyday life in an historical period could not only bring that period to life for readers, but help readers ask big questions about how history informs the present day. And so I pulled out my manuscript and began searching for the scene.

And this is where I ran into a problem, because the scene wasn't there. I searched using potato and starch and laundry as key words. I found several scenes with laundry, but none involved a vat of potato water or even an iron.
Apparently, at some point in my rewriting and revision process I had cut this beloved little bit of trivia from my story and then forgotten about doing so.

Thinking about it now, I'm not surprised that I'd thrown out the vat of potato water. Even the most interesting bits of historical trivia have to either move the plot along or illuminate the characters. Although I cannot remember thinking so, I must have decided at some point that the potato water did neither.

Now that I think of it, I'm convinced that using the water left over from boiling potatoes show just how frugal Ma was. Like most women in her era, she used a good deal of her own elbow grease and determination to make sure to turn everything to good account.

Maybe I threw out the baby with the potato water.

Jennifer Bohnhoff is an educator and writer who lives in New Mexico. She has written two novels set in the Civil War: The Bent Reed, which takes place at Gettysburg, and Valverde, set in New Mexico. The sequel to Valverde, Glorieta, will be published this spring. This post was originally published July 14, 2014.

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Grape and Canister

2/2/2017

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One of the things that makes historical fiction difficult for middle grade readers is the vocabulary. Tweens and young teens are often perplexed by words that don't make any sense to them.

Take, for instance, grape. Once, while teaching about the Civil War, I had a 7th grader ask me what was so scary about having grapes shot at you. 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.

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. When the gun fired, the bag disintegrated and the shot spread out from the muzzle, much like shot from a shotgun.

My students understand this concept better when I ask if any of their parents are hunters. Usually they know the purpose of buck shot (for shooting deer) and birdshot (smaller pellets, for shooting pigeons.)

Students who are involved in track and field suddenly realized that the shot they put in shot put is related to grapeshot, especially when I haul out the one piece of grapeshot I own and we compare them with the team's shot.

Grapeshot was especially effective against amassed infantry movements, such as Pickett's Charge at the Battle of Gettysburg. 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, because 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.

Jennifer Bohnhoff teaches New Mexico History to 7th grade students in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Her middle grade novel, The Bent Reed, is set at the Battle of Gettysburg. Her next novel, Valverde, is set in New Mexico during the Civil War and is due out this spring.

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The use of kennings in Beowulf: Wealtheow the Peaceweaver

7/31/2016

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One of the literary features of Old English poetry is the use of kennings, or compound words that evoke vivid pictures. Beowulf, an epic written sometime before 750 a.d. and arguably the greatest literary work of Anglo-Saxon culture, is liberally sprinkled with kennings.

For instance, Anglo-Saxon scops, or storytellers, compared the bubbles and foam that form around the prow of a ship as it cuts through the water to a necklace on a woman's throat. They knew that the course which a ship took through the water could also be traversed by swans or whales. Therefore, when the hero takes a boat from the land of the Geats to Denmark, the poet uses kennings and says that Beowulf's foamy-throated ship goes over the swan- road to reach the tide-beaten land.

This Anglo-Saxon love of kennings has persisted in the Germanic propensity to form compound words.

The kenning freodwebbe, or peace-weaver is used to describe Wealtheow, the Queen of the Danes, wife of Hrothgar, and mistress of the great hall Heorot. This term refers to a woman married from one tribe into another in order to secure peace between the two groups. While it is obvious that the Danes are one of the groups Wealtheow's marriage was to unite, we know very little of her original family or clan. In line 620, the poet calls Wealtheow "the Helming woman," but the Helmings are not a tribe that can be historically identified. They show up in no other work of Anglo-Saxon literature. I wonder if they even existed by the the time the Beowulf poem was being written down, or had they succumbed to warfare or disease.

Wealtheow's name further confuses those who want to understand her background. Wealtheow is a compound, a combination of wealh, which means Celt, foreigner or slave, and theow, which means in bondage, service, or not free. Although she moves freely through Heorot, Wealtheow's name suggests that she is not there of her own accord. Several researchers explain that there is not a clear distinction in Anglo-Saxon law between a woman being offered by her tribe as a pledge of good faith between tribes and a woman being taken from her tribe as a hostage. Other precious items such as jewelry and battle gear were exchanged as seals of good faith between tribes, demonstrating that women were treated as commodities in the Anglo-Saxon world.

Although she is a queen, Wealtheow is in a difficult position. She is isolated within a society that may not accept her as one of their own. Stripped of the protection of her own family, she lives among people she may not like or trust because they have, in essence, kidnapped her. Her goal, to weave peace among two peoples, is ultimately in the hands of the men who surround her, and who have already proven themselves warlike in the very act of taking her.

The Wealtheow who appears in my novel The Last Song of the Swan is a quiet and dignified woman who carefully works to keep peace within her household, appease her guests and please her husband. She is resigned to her fate, but if one looks, one can see the shadow of distant and violent events long past in her eyes.

Jennifer Bohnhoff writes historical and contemporary fiction for middle school through adult readers. You can learn more about her at her website.

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Real Characters

4/29/2016

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Where Duty Calls, the Middle Grade Civil War Novel set in New Mexico Territory that I published through Kinkajou Press last summer, is populated with a mix of fictitious and real people. All of the important events and dates are historical, the information gleaned from diaries, newspapers, and secondary sources. If I could have found real people who were always in the middle of the action, I would have made them my main characters. Since I couldn’t, I created Jemmy and Raul. The small, personal scenes depicting their family life are entirely made up. But when my sources described a scene I wanted to include in my novel, I often added the writer of the account into my novel.

Some of the real people whose diaries, letters and sources I used proved to be real characters, with wonderful stories of their own. One of these is Frederick S. Wade, who left the teaching profession to enlist as a private in the Army of New Mexico, the force Major General Henry Hopkins Sibley organized in Texas for the purpose of taking New Mexico Territory for the Confederacy.

Frederick Wade in his later years

Wade’s obituary,in the June 27, 1925 edition of the San Antonio Express says that he was the one who told Abraham Lincoln that Texas would secede from the Union. Born in Ontario, Canada, Wade was raised in Illinois, then moved to Texas in 1857. In 1860, he was visiting his parents in Illinois when Lincoln asked him about Texan opinion. The obituary states that Lincoln tried to get Wade to tour Texas and urge it to remain with the Union. Wade declined, and Texas joined the Confederacy. Wade then joined the Confederate brigade being formed by Tom Green. He continued to serve under Green until he became a prisoner of war in 1862.

While in prison camp, Wade helped a friend escape. His friend had contracted smallpox and was in the hospital. One day, Wade found him sitting in a coffin with a white sheet around him. Wade sprinkled the man’s face and hands with flour, then sealed the coffin and made sure it was loaded on the top of the other coffins in the dead wagon. After the wagon had left the prison, the man raised the lid of the coffin and called “Come to judgement” in his spookiest voice. The frightened driver ran away yelling “Ghosties! Ghosties!” Wade’s friend then stole one of the horses and escaped to Canada. You can read this story, plus some other remembrances here.

Who needs to make up characters when people like this already exist?

Jennifer Bohnhoff is a former middle grade teacher. Where Duty Calls is the first book in a trilogy entitled Rebels Along the Rio Grande. Book 2, The Worst Enemy, will be published by Kinkajou Press, a division of Artemesia Publishing, in August, 2023.

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Quirky Ideas from the WWI History Museum

7/6/2015

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The reflecting pool at the museum's entrance.

When I went to the National World War I Museum in Kansas City last May, I was delighted by quirky artifacts that really got me thinking. I wouldn't be surprised if some of them make it into a future novel, because they would add great depth and detail to a narrative.

Here are a few of my favorites:

This projectile from a from a French 58 mm trench mortar was nicknamed the "Flying Pig" because of what it looked like in the air.

The Flying Pig was used by French, Belgian, and U.S. troops and had a range of 490 yards.

The video below isn't of a Flying Pig, but of an Australian trench mortar.

If I ever write a novel set in the trenches of World War I, I have GOT to have a Flying Pig in it!

This Austrian helmet was sent home as a souvenir by an American. Back then, I guess the postal service had less restrictions than now, because no box or packaging was required to get this helmet from Europe to the U.S. The soldier (I'm assuming it was a soldier. It could have been a sailor or a relief worker for all I know.) Simply attached a tag with his mother's (girlfriend's? sisters?) Kansas City address and stuck stamps directly to the helmet. I hope I find a character with enough spunk and creativity to think about sending home souvenirs like this!

This is an Imperial German Border sign. Made of painted cast iron, a series of these marked the border between Germany and France.

In August of 1914, an elite French strike force penetrated the border on the southern flank of the engagement, capturing many of these border signs.

Can you imagine a young Frenchman bringing this home to his maman?

Am I planning to write a book set in World War I? Not at present. Right now, I'm finishing a final edit on a young adult novel that has two concurrent settings: Swan Song switches back and forth between a modern high school girl and a girl living in Europe during the Ice Age. I'm also researching a book which will be set in New Mexico during the Civil War. But I'm always musing what comes next, especially when I see something quirky that brings the period to life!

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The Americans who Lie in Flanders Field

A Poem to Lead Men Into Battle

Into Battle

by Julian Grenfell

Horses in History: Traveller

Peanut Pie

The Only Lancer Charge in the Civil War

Throwing out the Baby with the Potato Water

Grape and Canister

The use of kennings in Beowulf: Wealtheow the Peaceweaver

Real Characters

Quirky Ideas from the WWI History Museum

ABout Jennifer Bohnhoff

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