The origins of Memorial Day

[LincolnMan]

Herb: I'm showing my ignorance here- but what part of the plane was the waist gunner placed? Donna's uncle was a tail gunner in WWII on a B-24. Boy, the stories he used to tell me!

[Wild Bill]

A waist gunner manned a single ,50 cal. machine gun on the left or right side of the plane just aft of the main wing. The tail gunner on a B-24 was in a separate turrent at the tail and had twin .50 cal mgs. It was considered suicide to attack the tail gunner. I am not sure about a B-24, but a B-17 tail gunner had to leave his parachute in the alleyway before he took his firing position. The waist gunners were more likely targets as they had less firepower and a poorer position for defense.

My father-in-law flew a B-24 out of New Guinea in WW II. Charles Lindbergh came out to the Pacific for Lockheed Aircraft Co. and showed the guys how to get an extra 50 miles out of a tank of gas by feathering the props correctly, so they could make it back from bombing Burma without cracking up in the ocean just off the beach of their landing strip.

FDR hated Lindy for being in an isolationist group American First before the war and would not let him join the Army Air Corps. The story is that the pilots liked Lindy so much that they let him go up with a flight of P-38 American fighters (another Lockheed plane) and shoot down a Japanese Zero before he went back to the states. Sort of a thank you note.

[LincolnMan]

Wild Bill: great post. Thanks!

[L Verge]

It's nice to hear something nice about Charles Lindbergh in this day and age. I'm not sure why, but to me it seems that our authors (and some of society) have preferred to tear him apart based on his private life over the past 20-30 years.

I had the pleasure to meet and hear one of his daughters speak a number of years ago at College Park Aviation Museum in Maryland, which is owned and operated by the same government agency as Surratt House. She was delightful in her reminiscences of both her father and mother. After the talk, I stood in line for about a half-hour to get her to sign her book. When it came my turn, I told her that I had to admit that I was afraid of flying. Her response was, "I am too. The only time I ever felt safe was when my father was the pilot."

[brtmchl]

For the earliest and most remarkable Memorial Day, we return to where the war began. By the spring of 1865, after a long siege and prolonged bombardment, the beautiful port city of Charleston, S.C., lay in ruin and occupied by Union troops. Among the first soldiers to enter the city was the 21st United States Colored Infantry; their commander accepted the city’s official surrender. Whites had largely abandoned the city, but thousands of blacks, mostly former slaves, had remained, and they conducted a series of commemorations to declare their sense of the meaning of the war.

During the final year of the war, the Confederates had converted the city’s Washington Race Course (a huge symbol of southern aristocracy)and Jockey Club into an outdoor prison. Union captives were kept in horrible conditions in the interior of the track; at least 257 died of disease and were hastily buried mass graves behind the grandstand.

On the morning of April 14, 1865, the same day that Abraham Lincoln was assassinated, the city of Charleston held a grand celebration. General Anderson, who as a Col. Surrendered the fort 4 years ago, will now raise the United States flag at Fort Sumter. Newly freed blacks on the night of that ceremony went to the race course, reburied the Union dead properly in unmarked graves and built a high fence around the cemetery. They whitewashed the fence and built an archway over an entrance on which they inscribed the words, “Martyrs of the Race Course.”

On May, 1 1865, Union infantry, freed slaves, teachers and preachers, staged a parade of 10,000 on the track. The procession was led by 3,000 black schoolchildren carrying armloads of roses and singing the Union marching song “John Brown’s Body.” Several hundred black women followed with baskets of flowers, wreaths and crosses. Within the cemetery enclosure a black children’s choir sang “We’ll Rally Around the Flag,” the “Star-Spangled Banner” and spirituals before a series of black ministers read from the Bible.

After the dedication the crowd dispersed into the infield and did what many of us do on Memorial Day: enjoyed picnics, listened to speeches and watched soldiers drill. Among the full brigade of Union infantrymen participating were the famous 54th Massachusetts and the 34th and 104th United States Colored Troops, who performed a special double-columned march around the gravesite. The war was over, and Memorial Day had been founded by African-Americans in a ritual of remembrance and consecration.

The old racetrack is gone, but an oval roadway survives on the site in Hampton Park, named for Wade Hampton, former Confederate general and the governor of South Carolina after the end of Reconstruction. The old gravesite of the Martyrs of the Race Course is gone too; they were reinterred in the 1880s at a national cemetery in Beaufort, S.C.

Officially, as a national holiday, Memorial Day emerged in 1868 when General John A. Logan, commander-in-chief of the Grand Army of the Republic, the Union veterans organization, called on all former northern soldiers and their communities to conduct ceremonies and decorate graves of their dead comrades.

- summarized from a very detailed article written by David Blight.

[RJNorton]

"And they who for their country die,
Shall fill an honored grave.
For glory lights the soldier's tomb,
And beauty weeps the brave."

---Joseph Drake

[LincolnMan]

Very nice Roger.
As always, I will be observing Memorial Day in ceremonies with my Sons of Union Veterans camp.

[RJNorton]

Memorial Day ceremony at President Lincoln's Cottage:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/hous...o-lincoln/

[PaigeBooth]

In honor of Memorial Day, I had the pleasure of speaking to a group of Veterans about keeping their story alive. Such an amazing opportunity:

[RJNorton]

That is terrific, Paige!

[BettyO]

Wonderful Paige! It's great when our young folk keep history alive!

[HerbS]

Waterloo,NY held the first Memorial Day parade after the Civil War! Monday,there will be a huge cellebration of the anniversary of the parade! My friend[historian]from Canandaigua,NY is originially from Waterloo,NY.He says that that Waterloo,NY will be very crowded during the cellebration!Stay away from the traffic and crowds!

---

Lincoln Man! The B-24 was often called a flying coffin!

[Eva Elisabeth]

(05-28-2016 04:26 PM)PaigeBooth Wrote:  In honor of Memorial Day, I had the pleasure of speaking to a group of Veterans about keeping their story alive. Such an amazing opportunity:

That's great, Paige!!! I bet the veterans were amazed, too, to see such a young lady speaking on the topic!

[LincolnMan]

A lot of Abraham Lincoln presenters are out there this Memorial Day weekend in various events. It's good to see. The look in little children's eyes as they talk with them is very heartwarming.

[BettyO]

Supposedly Memorial Day was began to remember those who fell in the Civil War - North and South about 1866. It was said to originate in Hollywood Cemetery, Richmond, VA -

Lest we forget those who have served in ALL wars - now more than ever!