Books for the French and Indian War reader

Last week I went on about the French and Indian War. This week I’m giving you a reading list on the war, especially how it played out in Pennsylvania and the Lehigh Valley. Here are the books I recommend:

Crucible of War: The Seven Years’ War and the Fate of Empire in British North America, 1754-1766, by Fred Anderson

The Scratch of a Pen: 1763 and the Transformation of North America, by Colin Calloway

Facing East from Indian Country: A Native History of Early America, by Daniel K. Richter

King of the Delawares: Teedyuscung, 1700-1763, by Anthony F.C. Wallace

Into the American Woods: Negotiators on the Pennsylvania Frontier, by James H. Merrell

The Lenape-Delaware Indian Heritage: 10,000 B.C. to A.D. 2000, by Herbert C, Kraft

Breaking the Backcountry: the Seven Years’ War in Virginia and Pennsylvania, 1754-1765, by Matthew C. Ward

George Washington Remembers: Reflections on the French & Indian War, edited by Fred Anderson

Blooding at Great Meadows: Young George Washington and the Battle that Shaped the Man, by Alan Axelrod

Forts on the Pennsylvania Frontier: 1753-1758, by William A. Hunter

Juniata, River of Sorrows: One Man’s Journey into a River’s Tragic Past, by Dennis P. McIlnay

The Indian Wars of Pennsylvania, by C. Hale Sipe

The French and Indian War in Pennsylvania, 1753-1763: Fortification and Struggle during the War for Empire, by Louis M. Waddell and Bruce D. Bomberger

The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin

Benjamin Franklin, by Carl Van Doren

General Benjamin Franklin: the Military Career of a Philosopher, by J. Bennett Nolan

A Frontier Village: Pre-Revolutionary Easton, by A.D. Chidsey Jr.

Bethlehem of Pennsylvania: The First Hundred Years, 1741-1841

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Let’s go fight the French and the Indians

It’s not often that you get an invitation to the French and Indian War.

Well, I got one a few weeks ago in the mail at work. It’s not for any real fighting, of course. It’s for the French and Indian War Weekend at Old Bedford Village in Bedford County.

A unit/re-enactor application form was enclosed, asking me to put a check mark next to whether I was a British Regular, Colonial Provincial or Colonist, French Regular, French Malice (militia) or Woodland (Indian).

This is the first time I’ve gotten an invitation to the re-enactment, which shows how the war was fought in Pennsylvania and how people lived in the mid-18^th century. I’m not a re-enactor of any battles, but getting the letter reminded me of the summer I experienced the F&I War at Bedford.

It was 2005, and The Morning Call was gearing up for a series on how the conflict, which raged from 1754-63, unfolded in the Lehigh Valley.

History writer Frank Whelan, photographer Patricia Hess and I spent a day at the Bedford encampment. We saw re-enactors playing the French and Indians nearly wipe out a force of Britons and Americans along a let’s-pretend Monongahela River, a stunning defeat for British Maj. Gen. Edward Braddock in 1755.

In the French camp, I stood alongside a powerfully built horse with a “Frenchman” sitting tall on its back and felt transported through time: I’m there. It’s 1755. This is the real thing.

The Morning Call’s three-day series on the F&I War ran more than a year later, on Thanksgiving weekend 2006, to mark the 250^th anniversary of peace talks in Easton that helped determine the outcome of the war and secure North America for Britain. Linda Matys O’Connell and I did most of the writing. To this day, it’s one of my favorite projects, representing a year-and-a-half of work. Here’s one of the stories, my piece on the fighting in the Lehigh Valley: http://www.mcall.com/news/all-fi_mayhemnov26,0,5222127.story

Old Bedford Village’s re-enactment of the war is scheduled for Aug. 18 and 19. For more info:  http://www.oldbedfordvillage.com/

 

 

How to know a slain soldier you never knew

A man is writing a book about a relative he didn’t know who was killed in Vietnam, according to a newspaper story last week.

Me? Well yeah, that fits what I’m doing, but this is about someone else – a 23-year-old who’s pursuing a master’s degree in history. The student, Joe Gilch from Gloucester Township, N.J., is writing about an uncle with the help of a Rutgers University history prof.

Joe’s uncle, Jimmy Gilch, was killed in Vietnam when he was 20 years old, the same age as my cousin Nicky Venditti when he died in the war. The similarity ends there. Jimmy was an infantryman, while Nicky was a helicopter pilot. Jimmy was outside Cu Chi, while Nicky was at Chu Lai. Jimmy died in 1966 when his personnel carrier was bombed; Nicky died in 1969, days after arriving in Vietnam, in what the Army said was a training accident involving a grenade.

Joe got interested in his uncle as a child, when his grandmother read him letters that Jimmy had sent to friends and relatives – and he had written a lot of them, more than 80. I got interested in writing about Nicky when I learned in 1994 that the records show he wasn’t killed by the enemy. I’d always thought he’d died as a result of rocket attack, a story that went around at the time.

At Rutgers, Joe teamed up with professor Michael Adas, who’s 69 and has written about war. He provides the historical context while Joe writes about his uncle. It’s very much a Vietnam War story – Jimmy had been in Vietnam five months when he was killed — while my story about Nicky is less so, because Nicky’s tour lasted a mere 12 days.

Still, Joe and I face a common challenge. He told The Philadelphia Inquirer: “How am I going to write a story about a man that I never knew?”

The answer is: You get to know him.

I was 15 when Nicky died, and all I remember about him is that he said “hi” to me once. Over the years, I’ve been reading his letters, studying pictures of him, walking around his hometown of Malvern, Pa., following his short path in Vietnam, collecting documents and talking with everyone I can find who knew him, both at home and in the Army. My notes and transcribed interviews fill a filing cabinet.

So, Joe, you do the reporting and you’ll get to know your uncle as I’ve gotten to know Nicky.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Pennsylvania’s men of valor in Korea

A few weeks ago I wrote about Pennsylvanians who were awarded the Medal of Honor for their bravery in World War II.

Let’s move on to the Korean War.

There were five, according to Pennsylvania magazine, and all received the nation’s highest military honor posthumously.

Here they are:

Army Pfc. Melvin L. Brown of Mahaffey, Clearfield County; Company D, 8th Engineer Combat Battalion; killed Sept. 5, 1950, near Kasan, Korea

Army Capt. Reginald B. Desiderio of Clairton, Washington County; Company E, 27^th Infantry Regiment, 25^th Infantry Division; killed Nov. 27, 1950, near Ipsok, Korea

Army Sgt. Donn F. Porter of Sewickley, Beaver County; Company G, 14^th Infantry Regiment, 25^th Infantry Division; killed Sept. 7, 1952, near Mundung-ni, Korea

Marine 2^nd Lt. Robert Dale Reem of Lancaster; Company H, 3^nd Battalion, 7^th Marines, 1^st Marine Division; killed Nov. 6, 1950, near Chinhung-ni, Korea

Army Cpl. Clifton D. Speicher of Gray, Lycoming County; Company F, 223^rd Infantry Regiment, 40th Infantry Division; killed June 14, 1952, near Minarigol, Korea

You can read the citations for all of them on the Congressional Medal of Honor Society website, www.cmohs.org. Go there, and prepare to be moved to tears.

 

Scrap the Stolen Valor Act

Back in 1999, I was editing a story about a Vietnam War vet for a special section in The Morning Call and a flag went up. The guy was making some claims about his own heroism. It didn’t sit right. I went to see him, and his claims got even wilder. When I asked to see proof that he was in Vietnam, he couldn’t produce it. The story never got in the paper. I’m sure it wasn’t true.

I bring this up because the U.S. Supreme Court recently heard arguments on whether the Stolen Valor Act is constitutional. The law, which Congress passed in 2005, during the height of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, makes it a crime to falsely claim that you’ve won military honors.

A federal appeals court in San Francisco ruled the law violates the right to free speech. An appeals court in Denver upheld it, saying the First Amendment doesn’t always protect false statements. That’s the Obama administration’s take: that the law specifically protects the system of military honors Gen. George Washington put in place during the Revolution.

As awful as it is for someone to puff himself up by claiming he was awarded a Medal of Honor or other high decoration, I can’t get past the idea that we’re making criminals out of people for something they said. It doesn’t make sense that in this country, you can go to prison for lying – as reprehensible as the lie is. Better to expose the faker and hold him up to public disgrace.

The appeals court in San Francisco had this good suggestion: “Preserving the valor of military decorations is unquestionably an appropriate and worthy governmental objective that Congress may achieve through, for example, publicizing the names of legitimate recipients.”

Some lawmakers have jumped on that, criticizing the Defense Department for not having a searchable database of medal recipients. One Pentagon official responded that there’s a benefit to that, but is it worth the cost?

Even without a central database of medal recipients, there are online resources you can use to check on someone’s claims to bravery. There’s the Congressional Medal of Honor site, http://www.cmohs.org/recipient-archive.php, and the Military Times Hall of Valor site, http://militarytimes.com/citations-medals-awards/.

And if you want a big picture, read Stolen Valor: How the Vietnam Generation Was Robbed of its Heroes and its History, a 1998 book by B.G. Burkett and Glenna Whitley. It’s a shocker.

We already have a federal law that bars folks from wearing military medals they didn’t earn. That’s something you’d do, not say. We should leave it at that and get the government out of the business of identifying and prosecuting liars. I say overturn the Stolen Valor Act.

Where devotion to country flourishes

I’m always awed by the patriotism of older Americans, especially at veterans events.

On Saturday, at the annual banquet of Lehigh Valley Chapter 190, Military Order of the Purple Heart, I looked around during the playing of taps and saw aging warriors in their service caps, some in their 90s, standing as straight as they could and saluting. Earlier they stood for the Pledge of Allegiance and sang “God Bless America.”

Old-fashioned? Yeah, I guess so. Corny? No.

I’ve been going to the Purple Heart banquets in Fullerton since 2003, missing only one for a family wedding. Naturally, there was a more robust crowd back then, many of them World War II vets who were still doing all right health-wise. But there are far fewer now.

Some of the chapter’s members became subjects of my series “War Stories: In Their Own Words,” among them Woody Woods, Charlie Kowalchuk and Whitey Eschbach, who have since died. Others, like Joe Motil, are still going strong. Joe is 93 and still works on the Williams Township farmland he grew up on.

The backbone of the Purple Heart chapter now is a core of Korean and Vietnam War vets. They seem no less passionate about their country than the World War II guys.

In a nod to frailty, the banquet’s program focused on benefits available to survivors of veterans. The speaker was Dale Derr, director of veterans affairs in Berks County, where 800 veterans die each year. He said most survivors don’t know what benefits they’re entitled to, and told how the feds, the state and counties can help.

Groups like the Purple Heart chapter provide vets and their families a venue for camaraderie and purpose. For an outsider like me, it’s inspiring to witness their spirit and devotion to country.

Introducing “War Stories,” the Kindle edition

"War Stories" is now available as an e-book.

If shameless self-promotion burns your grits, read no further.

I’m here this week to hawk the new Kindle edition of my book War Stories: In Their Own Words, available on Amazon.com for $9.99.

Thanks to digital technology, now you can read an e-book with all 34 stories of Pennsylvanians from the World War I era, World War II, the Cold War, and the Korean and Vietnam wars. It’s auto-delivered wirelessly, Amazon says, with all the same photos that appear in the print version.

If you missed it, the book came out in print last September, published by my employer, The Morning Call of Allentown. You can still buy the paperback edition from the newspaper for $14.95.

I can get you to the digital version a couple of ways. Go to the Call‘s website, www.themorningcall.com, and in the upper right, click on Store, then on War Stories Kindle Edition. That will take you to the Amazon page.

You can get to the Amazon page directly with this link: http://www.amazon.com/War-Stories-Their-Words-ebook/dp/B007C5P9AW/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1330322467&sr=8-2

I hope you like War Stories in this digital format.