The Last Reunion (part 5)
Note: This is the last part of the first chapter from my upcoming book, Clay Soldiers: One Marine’s Story of War, Art, & Atomic Energy draws closer, I thought that I would give you a preview of the book by publishing the first chapter. The story is a biography of Chuck Caldwell, a WWII Marine who fought at Tarawa and Guadalcanal. He also worked in Nevada with the above-ground atomic bomb tests, attended the 75th, 100th, 125th and 150th anniversaries of the Battle of Gettysburg, and is a sculptor of miniature figures that are highly sought after. If you are interested in pre-ordering a copy of the book at a 25% discount off the cover price and free shipping in the U.S., contact me at jimrada@yahoo.com. As always, let me know what you think.
A picture Chuck Caldwell took in 1938 at the dedication of the Peace Light Memorial in Gettysburg, Pa.
That second night in Gettysburg, Chuck and his father slept in a bed in a room in a tourist camp, but Chuck was still awake early in the morning ready to go visiting the veterans’ camp. Many of the tents were empty as their occupants were out touring the battlefield. Among the tents that were occupied, Chuck often found the aged veterans sleeping.
They toured the Union camp first and then crossed the street to the Confederate camp.
“I could hardly wait to get to the Confederate camp because there were so many fewer of them,” Chuck recalls.
During one of his trips to the Confederate camp, young Chuck met O. Richard Gillette, who had served in Davis’s Brigade with the Second Mississippi. Though he fought in a number of major battles during the war, the only time that he was wounded was at the Battle of Antietam.
“A piece of shrapnel hit me in the knee. It didn’t hurt me much, but the worst of it was it ruined my britches,” Gillette told the Gettysburg Times.
The old veteran had lived next-door to Jefferson Davis. Gillette had joined the army when he was fifteen years old. Besides being near where the Confederate troops had pierced the Union line during Pickett’s Charge, he had also seen Gen. Stonewall Jackson mortally wounded during the Battle of Chancellorsville in 1863.
Chuck had his picture taken with the man. Gillette still had his hair, though it was white and thinning. He also had a thick white mustache. Chuck asked him to sign his autograph book. Gillette wrote in it that he had been there at the opening and close of the Battle of Gettysburg.
Gillette invited the Caldwells into his tent and out of the sun. He sat down on his cot and reached a hand under it. He pulled out a stone jug filled with whiskey.
“Would you like a drink?” Gillette offered George Caldwell.
George shook his head. “No, thank you.”
Gillette shrugged and poured himself a glass and sipped it. Then the trio began to talk with Chuck anxious to ask questions about the war of the weathered veteran. In an old newsreel from the reunion, an interviewer has a conversation with Gillette, which more than likely resembled Chuck’s and dozens of others Gillette had during the reunion.
“General Gillette, will you tell us in your own words your experiences during the celebrated Pickett Charge at the Bloody Angle at the Battle of Gettysburg?” the interviewer asks.
“Well, I belonged to Davis Division, that Davis Brigade and we get about ten feet at the slope, then we had to turn. Those that were living had to turn,” Gillette replies.
“What do you mean by turn?”
“Run, run like hell.”
“You don’t mean to say, General Gillette, that soldiers run?”
“Well, if one tells you he didn’t, he’s telling you a damn lie.”
Later in the day, Chuck and his father watched the thirty-unit parade through Gettysburg that ended at the stadium where the Civil War veterans reviewed the modern military men and their equipment. The parade included drum and bugle corps representing the major veteran organizations in the country and many of the states that had troops at the Battle of Gettysburg. Interspersed between the drum and bugle corps were regular army units representing infantry, tanks, anti-aircraft, field artillery and cavalry. Other units of the armed forces also had units in the parade. With all of the men and equipment, the parade stretched out for three miles between the reviewing stand at the college and the intersection of Baltimore Pike and Emmitsburg Road. It took two-and-a-half hours for everything in the parade to pass.
The next day was the Caldwells’ last full day in Gettysburg, Chuck once again spent time walking through the camps looking for veterans with whom to speak. By the end of the day, he would have nearly fifty autographs from Civil War veterans in his book along their basic information and picture.
During the afternoon, veterans shook hands across the stone wall at The Angle. The same thing had been done at the fiftieth anniversary reunion in 1913, and one couldn’t help but notice that there were far fewer veterans around to participate in it in 1938.
The big event of July 3 was the dedication of the Peace Memorial with its eternal flame, which stood on the hill northwest of the veterans’ camp.
President Franklin D. Roosevelt arrived by train at a temporary platform next to the Confederate camp and was escorted in a car to the memorial where more than 200,000 people waited.
Chuck and his father were in the crowd not too far away from the memorial. The weather was hot, feeling even more so because of the tightly packed bodies. Many people stood for hours waiting to hear the president speak, and at least a half dozen people had to carried away to get medical care after they collapsed from heat exhaustion.
The president spoke less than ten minutes. Among his comments he noted, “In later years, new needs arose and with them new tasks, world-wide in their perplexities, their bitterness and their modes of strife. Here in our land we give thanks that, avoiding war, we seek our ends through the peaceful processes of popular government under the Constitution.” He concluded his remarks by accepting the monument on behalf of federal government “in the spirit of brotherhood and peace.”
“The Star-Spangled Banner” started playing as two rope that reached to the top of the monument hidden within a fifty-foot-long American flag were pulled. Then the flag slowly came down to be caught by George N. Lockwood, Confederate A. G. Harris, and two regular army attendants. Lockwood was a ninety-two-year-old Union veteran from Los Angeles and Harris was ninety-one-year-old Confederate veteran from McDonough, Georgia. Both men wore the uniforms of their respective armies as they performed their solemn duty.
Following the dedication, the U.S. Army staged a simulated air raid on Gettysburg that included forty-eight aircraft from light attack planes to large bombers. Searchlights on the ground were directed up at the planes as they dropped flares.
The military demonstration continued with tank maneuvers by the Sixty-Sixth Infantry Provisional Tank Battalion near Glatfelter Hall on the Gettysburg College campus.
Once night fell, fireworks were launched from the crest of Oak Hill.
Chuck fell asleep that night exhausted, but he knew that over the past three days he had seen something special and he had been a part of history. That was what he wanted in life.
[1] Author interview with Chuck Caldwell.
Unsigned article, “Here and There With the Veterans,” The Gettysburg Times, July 1, 1938, 1.
Unsigned article, “Blue and Gray Relive Battle In Memories,” Syracuse Herald, June 30, 1938, 1.
Author interview with Chuck Caldwell.
Author interview with Chuck Caldwell.
John McDonough, “Remembering Last Reunion of Civil War Veterans,” http://www.npr.org (http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=106259780) accessed August 27, 2015.
Stan Coben, Hands Across the Wall: The 50th and 75th Reunions of the Gettysburg Battle (Charleston, WV: Pictorial Histories Publishing Co., 2011) pp. 44.
Unsigned article, “President Roosevelt Dedicates Eternal Light Memorial to Cause of Peace Before 200,000 as Climax to 75th Anniversary of Civil War Battle,” The Gettysburg Times, July 4, 1938, 1.
Unsigned article, “Text of President’s Address at ‘Peace Light’ Dedication,” The Gettysburg Times, July 4, 1938, p. 1.
