unrememebred history
UNREMEMBERED Preview: New Book Explores History’s Connections and Coincidences
Author Ken Zurski (Peoria Stories & The Wreck of the Columbia) answers questions about his new book “UNREMEMBERED: Tales of the Nearly Famous and the Not Quite Forgotten:”
Unremembered is an interesting word. Why did you choose it?
I really liked it for one. It’s not used very often, but I saw it once and immediately knew it fit what I was trying to do.
And that would be a blog of forgotten history stories?
Well, yea, sort of. I was thinking a book first and thought it would make a terrific title. I had stories but wasn’t sure of the direction. I had a list of people and events I’d read about and wanted to write so I started the blog first and now here we are two years later and finally a book.
The book is different from the blog in that it tells multiple stories but within the context of a flowing or entwined narrative. Was that planned?
Mostly, yes. I didn’t want to do a bathroom book with just a bunch of articles. The stories on the blog are short so there would have to be a hundred or more in the book. I began thinking of stories intertwining and that sparked my interest in telling stories of people and events and their connections to each other, something I did in an abbreviated way with my book Peoria Stories. Some of the connections are more obvious than others and there are four parts to Unremembered so there are different themes, but with a thread that connects them all.
Some people seem to pop up and leave and others reemerge. Is this because of their connections?
Oh, Yes. There are probably 70 people featured in the book all under the same guise of being nearly famous or not quite forgotten. Some appear briefly others more prominently.
George Francis Train is one character that seems to have his hand in everything. Did you know that going in?
Oh, of course. Train was probably the person that best exemplifies what I was trying to convey in Unremembered. He was a resourceful figure and had some pretty amazing accomplishments in his lifetime, but he tried too hard to be important. Eventually his antics led many to believe he was insane. Others greatly admired him. In the end though, hardly anyone remembers him.
So he fits under the category of “nearly famous”?
Yes, I suppose, in how time treated his story. Today, he’s certainly not famous when compared to others, but in the later half of the 19th century he was a very famous figure, prominently in the news and influential and controversial too.
And Nellie Bly, the journalist, where does she fit in?
She is sort of like Train but never seemed to push herself into the spotlight like Train did. Certainly traveling around the world is a heady stuff for a woman at the time, but she did it to further her status as a journalist, not become a celebrity. That she became famous was a bonus.
So she is not quite forgotten?
Exactly her name comes up in books about the early history of journalism. But most people don’t know all of her amazing story.
Train and Bly seems to be main characters but don’t enter the book until the third part, especially Bly. Was this by design?
Sort of. Train has a connection to a man we meet in the first part Cornelius Vanderbilt, who has a connection to a steamboat disaster in New York whose tragic events has a connection to a young printer, it just follows along. Train is actually in every part in some way.
Niagara Falls is an interesting subject? How did you choose that to continue the narrative in Part Two?
Beyond the nature part of the beast, there’s a human story to the Falls which really interested me. Why did people risk their life to challenge it? So many stories emerged I had to tell it.
And yet, somehow it ties into balloon travel which ties into the birth of transportation
Yes, Part Three is about reaching new limits and new heights in transportation both by water and air. Some interesting and forgotten stories can be found here beyond the more familiar names like the Wright Brothers, Charles Lindbergh and even the Titanic.
So there is an “unremembered” ship?
There is. Again famous for it’s time, but mostly forgotten now.
And then we’re back to a tragedy in Part Four?
Yes, the Great Chicago Fire.
And a familiar face emerges?
Yes, Train has a history there as well.
It’s all very fascinating stuff and the book covers a lot of ground. Were you ever surprised by the connections?
Most everything in the book is included because of the connections, but there were a few that were unexpected and came about while during research.
They call that writer’s luck, right?
Exactly
3/2/18
“Unremembered: Tales of the Nearly Famous and the Not Quite Forgotten” is scheduled for release in August 2018 by Amika Press, Chicago.
Breece D’J Pancake: A Legacy in One Book
By Ken Zurski
Breece D’J Pancake never had a book published in his lifetime. He died at the official age of 26, just shy of his 27th birthday. But four years after his death, The Stories of Breece D’J Pancake was released to critical acclaim. In fact, it was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize.
“A young writer of such extraordinary gifts that one is tempted to compare his debut to Hemingway,” praised a fellow author, Joyce Carol Oates.
Born in 1952, the name Pancake is a surname of German origin. The odd apostrophe in D’J was a printer’s error, which stuck.
Pancake wrote about hardships of rural life in the Appalachian Territories where he grew up and rarely strayed. Most of his stories fly by in time, examining just hours of a character’s life, but packed with personal and social struggles both past and present.
When I was a young punk, I tried to run away from home. I was walking through the meadow on the other side of the Hill, and this shadow passed over me. I honest to god thought it was a pterodactyl. It was a dammed airplane. I was so damn mad. I came home. (“Trilobytes” Breece D’J Pancake)
The stories appeared in Atlantic magazine and Pancake submitted them only after he composed four long-hand drafts and ten more on the typewriter.
Ultimately, he struggled with alcoholism, but his untimely death by self-inflicted gunshot in 1979 may have been a tragic accident, some believe, due to a bout of sleepwalking.
It all adds to his lore.
One book, however, remains.
The /rel·e·van·cy/ of a Dictionary Maker
By Ken Zurski
In 1858, Herbert Coleridge, a British philologist, took on the daunting task of compiling and completing a new English dictionary.
It was not an easy undertaking. Wordbooks as they were known had dated back to the early 17th century, and by the 19th century, an American lexicographer named Noah Webster made dictionaries that were based mostly on personal assessments of the English language, which in Webster’s opinion was too closely identified with the British.
Coleridge’s dictionary would be different and involve hundred of volunteers who would find unlisted words in books and write them down on note cards along with the word’s source.
The note idea was not Coleridge’s but rather that of Richard Chenevix Trench, a British professor and lexicographer, who proposed using everyday readers to participate in the dictionary’s creation. “It would be necessary to recruit a team moreover, a huge one comprising hundreds of unpaid amateurs,” Trench proposed.
Trench’s vision took hold and Coleridge was called upon to make it happen.
Coleridge went to work designing a system of collecting the reader’s notes and organizing them. He also grossly underestimated that it would take only two years to complete the work. In reality, near the two year mark, the dictionary was far from finished, and Coleridge, unfortunately, was dead.
Officially Coleridge died of consumption, or a bout of tuberculosis, which makes sense. However, biographers paint a more fanciful ending. While walking to a lecture hall in London’s St. James Square, Coleridge got caught in a downpour and sat soaking wet in an unheated upstairs room for several hours listening to the speaker. His chills turned to a debilitating fever and eventual death.
Despite his untimely demise, the dictionary idea did not go with him. Several enthusiastic wordsmith’s picked up the slack. Soon they learned what a formidable task Coleridge faced. In just a few years of work, Coleridge had only gotten halfway through the first letter. Undeterred the vision carried on and in 1878, nearly a quarter century after Coleridge began. A New English Dictionary on Historical Principles was released. Today, the book is cited as the basis for the inaugural Oxford English Dictionary which was released in 1895.
Coleridge is often listed as its first editor.
The Bloody Reality of Julius Caesar’s Death
By Ken Zurski
The Death of Caesar is an 1867 painting by Jean-Léon Gérôme’, a 19th century artist and sculptor known for the French inspired “academism” artistic style. Among the many portraits and works inspired by Greek mythology, Gérôme’’s portfolio also includes historical recreations.
So here, as the title not so subtly suggests, he recreates the assassination of Julius Casear on the Ides of March, 44 B.C.
Gérôme’ paints the tale of Ceasar’s death in stark clarity. He shows the moment immediately following Ceasar’s murder as the unfortunate victim is seen in the foreground crumpled on the floor. The throne chair is overturned signifying a struggle and those not part of the killing are seen fleeing the room in terror. The conspirators celebrate by raising their weapons in victory.
The only man not holding a weapon above his head is Brutus.
His back is turned. He is walking toward the other celebrants and dragging his weapon behind. Perhaps, as history suggests, this signifies Brutus dealt the final blow. He also carries what appears to be a sword, not a dagger. This would seem appropriate for the time, since swords were commonly used by Roman soldiers in battle. But as history books explain, the weapon of choice to kill Casear was a dagger, not a sword.
Brutus all but confirms it in a coin he commissioned after Caesar’s death. On the coin are two daggers with different shaped hilts. Presumably, the first dagger belongs to Brutus. The second likely belongs to another assassin.
The shorter daggers make more sense in the killing of Caesar.
Daggers were as martial arts experts explain today, “streamlined and remarkably light.” They were also very effective, especially at close range. Plus, a dagger could easily be hidden in a toga and retrieved quickly. The only advantage a sword would have over a dagger is the distance between the striker and the intended target.
But that was in combat. Caesar was ambushed, presumably unarmed, and received blow after excruciating blow. A task, while effective, that took stamina and strength. Instead of celebrating with weapons held high (as Gérôme’s painting suggests) more realistically, the band of conspirators would be hunched over from exhaustion. Their hands and white garments covered in blood.
Author Barry Strauss in his book The Death of Caesar says this about the use of daggers in warfare: “Few felt comfortable talking about it and fewer still doing it.”
In another painting of Ceaser’s frantic death titled The Death of Caesar (1798), artist Vincenzo Camuccini seems to show a more accurate portrayal of the weapons used in the murder. The depiction portrays most of the mob carrying the shorter daggers, except for a few who still sport a longer blade.
Is one of them Brutus?
One might debate, and likely get few detractors, that Brutus used a sword for the final blow, thus marking Ceasar’s end for all eternity: Et tu, Brute
Yet, despite the graphic detail, there’s still no bloody mess.
That’s because the representation shown in Camuccini’s painting is the moment before Ceasar is struck not after like Gérôme’s and therefore spares the viewer the gory aftermath.
Churchill’s Gift from the U.S.
By Ken Zurski
On June 25, 1954, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill visited Washington D.C. to talk policy with then U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower.
At the time of his visit, the 79-year-old Churchill was showing his age and associates were urging him to retire. “His head was bent and his eyes, with their pale lashes were downcast, lest he stumble,” one biographer wrote of his appearance that day.
Despite Churchill’s weary appearance, Eisenhower greeted the Prime Minister warmly and the two got down to business.
History records a significant meeting which resulted in Churchill’s insistence that Eisenhower attend the tri-lateral talks with the Soviet Union. But history buffs, especially those who love literature, celebrate the trip for another reason.
During the visit, Churchill was presented with a gift from the Library of Congress and the U.S Copyright Office. The “handsomely bound, gold lettered” 35-page bibliography was the result of a massive undertaking to catalog all copyrighted works pertaining to Churchill, including books, periodicals, and his own writing. In the end, they found 565 contributions about or attributed to Churchill between the years of 1898 and 1953.
In a letter, the Library of Congress Reference Division Chief Richard MacCarteney wrote: “The bibliography was not the result of any special request. … It grew out of a realization of the tremendous effect Sir Winston Churchill’s utterances have had upon world history and thus our obligation to develop as nearly complete a copyright record of them as possible. ”
Churchill was obviously pleased, but explained that one book was still missing. “A modest work,” he implied.
Two years later, A History of the English Speaking People’s, an 800,000 word, 1,760 page four volume set, was released. Churchill had finally appeased his wife and close advisers by resigning from office and finishing the book. “It opens like an angel’s wings,” Churchill gushed about its stately design.
Shortly after it was published, a spokesman for the U.S. Copyright Office, who had made a promise to Churchill during his visit, “eagerly anticipated” the book and subsequently added it to the bibliography list.
The Greatest Showman’s Home Was Everything You Might Imagine It To Be And More
By Ken Zurski
In 1848 a mansion went up in the scenic countryside of Connecticut that looked oddly out of place for its location. Not only was it very large, occupying 17 acres of land, but the building itself with its exotic Indian influenced architecture looked like something you might spot in far off Mumbai or New Dehli, not Fairfield, near Bridgeport, Connecticut’s largest city.
All this was the creation of one man who commissioned the building of the mansion as a “permanent residence” for his family. His name was Phineas Taylor Barnum, better known as P.T. Barnum.
Barnum called his new home the Iranistan.
Barnum’s inspiration for Iranistan was the Royal Pavilion in Brighton, England, a place he visited while doing a tour of Europe with his star attraction at the time, the 25-inch tall man known as Tom Thumb. Unlike others, Barnum was greatly pleased by what he saw. “It was the only specimen of oriental architecture in England, and had not been introduced into America,” he wrote.
Barnum hired a New York architect named Leopold Eidlitz to design it with the stipulation that he hold nothing back in terms of style and decorative elements. “The whole was finally completed to my satisfaction,” Barnum expressed, and on November 14, 1848, he held a house warming party for “a thousand guests.”
The invitees found a casual but garish palace to explore. Outside there was a circular carriage way , a fountain, urns and a decorative facade that was filled with symmetrically placed arched openings and numerous decks and porches. Topping the building were onion-shaped domes and minarets.
Inside, there was a circular divan under the dome, a large library adorned in Asian landscapes on its walls and elaborate stained glass windows that filled the rooms with colorful light. The grand ballroom sported a shiny wood floor with an inscription, “Love God and be Merry,” words Barnum used often.
“Elegant and appropriate furniture was made expressly for every room in the house,” Barnum would later write. “The stables, conservatories and out-buildings were perfect in their kind. There was a profusion of trees set out on the grounds. The whole was built and established literally ‘regardless of expense,’ for I had no desire even to ascertain the entire cost.”
In addition to the design, Barnum filled his home with animals of all kinds, as he did at his popular American Museum in New York City. Roaming the grounds of Iranistan were mandarin ducks, silver peasants, a cow named Bessie, and a pig named Prince Albert.
The biggest attraction was Iranistan’s largest resident, an unnamed bull elephant. This, of course, was all by design. Barnum felt the addition of the animals, especially the elephant was good promotion for the museum. “When entertaining the public, it is best to have an elephant,” Barnum would later explain. It all started at his home.
But it wouldn’t last.
Late on December 17, 1857, only nine years after it was built, the Iranistan was gone. Barnum, who was refurnishing the mansion at the time got the news the next morning by telegram while staying at the Astor House in New York. The building caught fire, he was told. It was a total loss.
The papers were consoling, but skeptical. Barnum’s good fortunes had recently taken a turn for the worse. It all started when Barnum sought to create a “perfect”town in Connecticut that he would call East Bridgeport. He convinced a large business, the Jerome Clock Company, to move their factory there in the hopes of bringing more people and jobs. The clock company agreed to relocate but first needed help to pay down a debt of $100,000 . Barnum loaned them the money, but was tricked into signing more cash notes. Soon he was responsible for a half million dollars in debt. Barnum was forced to go into bankruptcy and lost a fortune.
Many of his friends supported his plight with sympathy, loans and gifts, but others reveled in his misfortune. To his detractors, Barnum’s latest predicament – more like a humiliation – was subject to ridicule. “Here is a terrible illustration of where the practice of humbug will lead,” proclaimed the New York Herald.
The Chicago Tribune’s headline was even more biting.: “The deceiver is duped,” it read.
In the midst of all this turmoil, Barnum lost his beloved Iranistan.
Initially, no cause of the fire was given. “It is supposed to have been set on fire,” was one newspaper dispatch, not mincing words, but refusing to elaborate. Later, it was suspected a construction worker dropped a lighted pipe. Barnum had recently moved some of the more expense furniture out of the Iransitan during the renovation and claimed he would soon return. His insurance money was far less then the initial cost of $150,000. “My beautiful Iranistan is gone,” Barnum would write in his autobiography.
Barnum recovered financially after going on another successful tour of Europe with Tom Thumb. Upon his return he set out to build another home, again in Fairfield, called Lindencroft, that in its design was spacious, but far less extravagant than the Iranistan. “All the taste that money can could do was fairly lavished upon Lindencroft so that when all was finished it was not only a complete house in all respects, but a perfect home.” Barnum wrote his memoirs.
The biggest disappointment, however, was for the riders on a train line that would pass by the Iranistan grounds everyday. Not only was the impressive building gone, but they missed seeing the elephant, roaming the yard, helping plow the fields, and giving them all a thrill by raising its trunk and bobbing its head in a friendly gesture.
(Sources” The Great and Only Barnum by Candace Fleming; P.T. Barnum: The Legend and the Man by A.H. Saxon; various internet sites)
The Spirit of Giving: When The Winter Warlock’s Heart Was Warmed
By Ken Zurski
One day, quite a long time ago, a tiny baby was left on the doorstep of Burgermeister Mesiterburger, the fun-loathing mayor of Sombertown.
Now, this Burgermeister Meisterburger didn’t like babies.
Not one bit, in fact.
So the grumpy Burgerneister ordered his guards to take the baby away.
But something unexpected happened.
While the guard was pulling the baby through the snowy forest on a sled, the rope broke. Suddenly, the sled and baby went uncontrollably down the mountainside and straight into the home of the Kringle family.
Well, the Kringles were quite surprised by their new visitor. They took the baby in and called him “Kris.” This they explained was because the meaning of KRISTKINDL is the Christ Child.
They raised the boy as their own.
Meanwhile, Burgermeister Meisterburger continued to be a very irritable mayor. One day he tripped on a toy and hurt his leg. So, he outlawed toys! The children of Sombertown were very sad.
What would life be like with no toys?
Kris Kringle, now all grown up, sought to bring the joy back to the children. He decided to drop off toys that his family had made to the children of Sombertown. But to get to Sombertown, Kris had to pass through the Land of the Winter Warlock.
Talk about grumpy!
The Winter Warlock was a very mean and bitter man. But Kris knew there was good in the heart of all men. When he gave Winter a gift of a toy train it warmed the Warlock’s cold heart.
All this didn’t sit well with Burgermeister Meisterburger
He ordered Kris arrested for smuggling toys into Sombertown. The Winter Warlock was also arrested along with the other members of the Kringle family. Although all his powers might disappear, the Warlock uses his magic feed corn to make Kris’s reindeer fly.
Together, they all escape.
Finally, thinking his powers will disappear forever, on December 24, the Warlock uses one final bit of magic to create Christmas trees at the wedding of Kris and his girlfriend Jessica, the future Mr and Mrs Santa Claus.
Thanks to the spirit of giving, the Warlock’s powers have magically returned…along with a snowy, white Christmas.
‘The Greatest Gift’ is a Story You Know Well
By Ken Zurski
In November 1939 Philip Van Doren Stern, an American author, editor and Civil War historian wrote an original story titled “The Greatest Gift,” a heartwarming Christmas tale about a man named George Pratt who gets a dying wish granted by a guardian angel that literally changes his life.
Stern’s story begins at an iron bridge as a despondent George leans over the rail:
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” a quiet voice beside him
said.George turned resentfully to a little man he had never seen
before. He was stout, well past middle age, and his round
cheeks were pink in the winter air as though they had just been
shaved. “Wouldn’t do what?” George asked sullenly.
“What you were thinking of doing.”
“How do you know what I was thinking?”
“Oh, we make it our business to know a lot of things,” the
stranger said easily.
Stern desperately tried to get his little story published, but it never sold. So in 1943, he made it into a Christmas card book and mailed 200 copies to family and friends.
The card book and story somehow caught the attention of RKO Pictures producer David Hempstead who showed it to actor Cary Grant’s agent. In April 1944, RKO bought the rights but failed to create a satisfactory script. Grant went on to make “The Bishop’s Wife.”
However, another acclaimed Hollywood heavyweight, Frank Capra, who already had three Best Directing Oscars to his name, liked the idea. RKO was happy to unload the rights. “The story itself is slight, in the sense, it’s short,” Capri said referring to Stern’s book. “But not slight in content.”
Capra bought it and brought in a slew of writers to polish the story. They hired another a well-known actor James Stewart to play the main character renamed George Bailey and in December of 1946, “It’s a Wonderful Life” was released in theaters.
General MacArthur and the Defining Days After Pearl Harbor
By Ken Zurski
In the book The General vs the President, author H.W. Brands examines the often tenuous but respectful relationship between General Douglas MacArthur and President Harry Truman.
Besides their differing personalities, in the public eye, the two men drew widely opposite impressions. Truman had unexpectedly assumed the presidency amidst doubts about his leadership and foreign policy experience while MacArthur was the beloved general of the Allied forces in the Pacific.
After World War II ended and when North Korea threatened South Korea, both men had vastly different views on how America should proceed.
Truman gave MacArthur leverage, but China was drawn into the conflict and the two world powers were nearly brought to the brink of a nuclear war. Truman relieved the popular general of his duties. “With deep regret I have concluded that General of the Army Douglas MacArthur is unable to give his wholehearted support to the policies of the United States Government and of the United Nations in matters pertaining to his official duties,” Truman announced at a press conference. That explosive missive is the basis of Brand’s book.
But Truman, as important as he was to ending the war, was just a senator from Missouri when President Franklin Roosevelt crossed ways with MacArthur.
That relationship nearly reached the boiling point in 1941, shortly after Japan attacked Pear Harbor.
It’s worth a closer look.
MacArthur who is in the Philippines at the time Pearl Harbor was attacked feared the American bases on the island would be next. He was right. The next day, December 8, Japan hit hard. MacArthur asked Roosevelt to immediately strike back. Force Russia to attack Japan, he pressed, before Japan can do more damage in the Philippines. Roosevelt ignored MacArthur’s plea and set his sights on Germany instead.
MacArthur rebutted. He supported a plan by Philippine President Manuel Quezon to broker a peace deal with Japan. It was the only way, MacArthur agreed, to avoid a “disastrous debacle.”
In retrospect, Brands assumes, MacArthur was abandoning the Philippines. But there were lives at stake. A defiant Roosevelt dismissed the peace deal. “American forces will continue to fly our flag in the Philippines,” the president commanded, “so long as there remains any possibility of resistance.”
Back home, MacArthur was being criticized for poor decision making.
Brands points out the there was a nine-hour window after the first dispatches were received that Japanese bombers were in the air. There was nothing anyone could do about the battleships in the Harbor; but in the Philippines, in hindsight, why didn’t MacArthur order the planes moved out of the way?
MacArthur blamed his subordinates and miscommunication. Nevertheless, half of MacArthur’s forces were decimated in the attack and the Philippine’s line of defense was greatly diminished.
It would get worse. The conquest of the Philippines by Japan is still considered one of the worst military defeats in U.S. history.
MacArthur endured attacks from Japan forces by hunkering down on the Bataan peninsula and Corregidor Island. “Help is on the way,” MacArthur told the men. “Thousands of troops and hundreds of planes are being dispatched” he continued, hoping to boost morale.
None of it was even being considered.
The only order coming from Roosevelt was getting his four-star general out of the islands before all hell broke loose. MacArthur had no recourse. It was an order, not a choice. He took the next plane out and flew to Australia where he was to organize the counter offensive against Japan and pave the way to his own interminable place in American history. Roosevelt would later praise his departure, but MacArthur felt like he was abandoning his post.
Before boarding he told the troops, “I shall return.”
When MacArthur did return three years later he was hailed as a hero. “Though not by American soldiers he left behind [in the Philippines],” Brands writes in the book.
Winston Churchill, The Boers War and the Invasion of the ‘Body Snatchers’
By Ken Zurski
In the book Hero of the Empire, author Candice Millard explores the military service of a young Winston Churchill and the future Prime Minister of England’s exploits in the Boers War, a devastating conflict against the fiercely independent South African Republic of Transvall, or Boers, that’s as much a part of British history as the two subsequent World Wars.
In 1899, Churchill was in his twenties and officially not a soldier, but a correspondent for the Morning Post. However, he bravely and willingly fought alongside his fellow countrymen. As Millard captures vividly in her book, when a British armored train was ambushed, Churchill fought back, was captured, imprisoned, managed to escape, and traversed hundreds of miles of enemy territory to freedom. He then returned and resumed his duties in the war. Millard’s expert narrative paints the young Churchill as a man of great strength, determination and steadfast loyalty.
The same attributes can also be applied to another famous figure in history who did not fight like Churchill, but bravely dodged the bullets of the Boers to do a thankless and daring task. His contribution is touched on briefly in the book, but is worth noting here as an example of a man whose legacy of peace and non-violence includes the brutal reality of warfare.
In stark contrast to Churchill’s call to arms, this figure refused to pick up a weapon or engage in hand to hand combat. His Hindu faith prevented that, but his desire for justice could not be suppressed. He was an Indian-born lawyer in a country under the flag of the British Empire who went to South Africa to defend his people from cruelty imposed by the Boers. When war broke out, he wanted to contribute, along with other persecuted Hindu followers.
But how?
So he asked the British government if he could put together a team of men to perform the incessant task of removing bodies, dead or wounded, from the heat of battle. The government approved the request, but made it clear that the men were under no obligation or safeguards from the British Army. The decision to risk their own lives in order to save others was theirs and theirs alone.
“Body snatchers,” was the term used by British troops to describe the men who retrieved “not just bodies from the battlefield, they hoped, but young men from the jaws of death,” Millard writes. The “body snatchers” wore wide brim hats and simple loose fitting khaki uniforms and were distinguished by “a white band with a red cross on it wrapped around their left arms.”
Their efforts were lauded by superiors and observers alike. “Anywhere among the shell fire, you could see them kneeling and performing little quick operations that required deftness and steadiness of hand,” wrote John Black Atkins a reporter for the Manchester Guardian.
By now you may discern that the person who assembled this unusual band of brave men is important to history. Millard doesn’t hold anyone in suspense.
The man was Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi whose place in history as the influential Indian civil rights leader was just beginning to emerge.
When war broke out, Gandhi, who was 31 at the time, wanted to disprove stereotypes that Hindus were unfit for battlefield service.
“Although his convictions would not allow him to fight,” Millard writes, “he had gathered together more than a thousand men to form a corps of stretcher bearers.”
Later in his autobiography, Gandhi would recall his non-violent role in the Boers War.
“Our humble work was at the moment much praised, and the Indians’ prestige was enhanced,” he wrote.
“We had no hesitation.”
(Sources: Hero of the Empire by Candace Millard; The Story of My Life by M.K. Gandhi)
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UNREMEMBERED 