Kevin Costner got it all wrong. He filmed the movie in South Dakota. But Fort Sedgwick was in Colorado. And there were no caves outside the fort. Sedgwick County has famous hand-dug caves, but they were made by an eccentric Italian immigrant at least 40 years after the events in the movie. I know all of this because we were there. My family, I mean. Again, this is the story as best as I can remember it.
After the civil war, the United States Army set up various outposts as they expanded across the frontier. One of these was Fort Sedgwick (named for the Union General, John Sedgwick). The Fort was either abandoned and/or destroyed by Indians, and later re-established with westward expansion. I'm not too clear on the history. Apparently neither was Kevin Costner.
A few miles up the road, within what would later become Sedgwick County was a Pony Express station, trading post and community called Lodgepole Creek. It was a target for Indians and robbers. A black-hat gunslinger named Jules Beni came to town in 1859 and was appointed as general protector. The town came to be known as Julesberg. A short time later, it was noted by white-hat gunman Jack Slade that robberies in the area were increasing. Jules was implicated in the matter and a gunfight ensued. Slade was bullet riddled and left for dead. He survived, however, and later captured Jules. He reportedly tied him to a fencepost and tortured him by shooting him repeatedly, cutting off his ears, and eventually killing him. Slade kept one ear and wore it as a watch fob. The other, he sold for drinking money.
In 1865, Indians burned Julesburg to the ground in retaliation for the Sand Creek Massacre. By 1867, when the Union Pacific railroad came through, the town was rebuilt, but not necessarily improved. Julesburg became home to horse thieves, gamblers and con artists attracted by an abundance of saloons, dance halls and a steady supply of naive travelers heading west along the Overland Trail. One saloon in town claimed to sell the vilest of liquor at two bits a glass. One historian called it "The Wickedest Town in the West."
Over 100 years ago, my maternal great-grandfather travelled west to seek his fortune. Grandpa "Tin" (as my mother called him) was a roving tinker and tinsmith. He rolled out with a wagonload of tools and made his living day to day, job to job. When he got to Julesburg, he set up shop along the raucous mainstreet, and hung out his shingle for "Dye's Hardware". Somewhere along the way he married Ruby Cunningham, the daughter of Welsh and English immigrants.
Great-Grandpa Dye bought a lot four blocks off of mainstreet and built a house with his own hands. Using rough-cut hardwood timbers, he framed the house with true 2x4s: 2" by 4" studs, nailed with 60-penny nails. (When grandma tried to have a bay-window installed in the 1980's, the contractors had to raise their bid due to broken drill bits, snapped saws and difficulty driving cheap modern wire nails!)
In 1926, my grandfather William Lawrence Dye was born. He grew up in the one-square mile town (literally 12 blocks by 12 blocks), and learned the hardware trade. He had planned to take over his dad's store, but by the time he graduated from highschool, the country was in the middle of the second world war.
My grandfather enlisted in the United States Marine Corps in the summer of 1944. By the spring of 1945, he would be slogging it out in the mud of the Asiatic-Pacific Campaign. He went through bootcamp at MCRD San Diego, and was trained as an aviation ordnance man at El Toro and Miramar Air Stations. They boarded the ship on Christmas day. In the morning they set sail for war. After a port call in Hawaii, they continued on to the Gilbert Islands.
Once ashore he was attached to the infamous VMF-422 "Flying Buccaneers", who became known as "The Missing Squadron". Just months before Private Dye joined them, 23 out of their 24 F4F Wildcat planes were lost when they flew into a massive tropical storm. 6 pilots were killed and the rest spent 3 days floating on rafts before they could be rescued.
Private Dye spent several months on the atoll, loading the bombs and bullets for the aircraft. The Japanese made random attacks, but nothing "serious". In April, however, things would change. The United States had made enough progress to finally attack the mainland of Japan. The airfield at Iwo Jima had been secured and could now support an invasion of Okinawa. The newly promoted Corporal "Whitey" Dye, so nicknamed for his blinding complexion, was really going to get his feet wet.
Part of the invasion of Okinawa included capturing a tiny island just to the northeast. Ie Shima was a small but significant stronghold and the task was given to the 77th Infantry Division of the Army. The Army would bear the brunt of the assault, but the amphibious landing would be led by a company of Marines.
On a humid April night, Corporal Dye and a few friends faced their own coming D-Day. Documenting the landing was the beloved journalist Ernie Pyle. Pyle's book "Brave Men" documenting the war in Europe became a national sensation and a testament to the heroic actions of everyday Americans. He couldn't have come ashore anymore than a few hundred meters from Corporal Dye. The fighting was fierce as the Japanese withdrew from their coastal defenses and holed up in caves on "Sugar Loaf Hill". On the second day of the assault Japanese poured down machine gun fire, killing some of my grandfather's buddies. That afternoon, the same machine gun fire killed Ernie Pyle.
Five days later, Ie Shima was secured, and reinforcing Army units arrived to secure the island. The invading units were then sent to help on the southern end of Okinawa where the fighting had bogged down.
Corporal Dye again faced withering machine gun fire from more Japanese holed up in caves on another more famous "Sugar Loaf Hill". Damned sugar loaves. During one phase of the assault he had climbed into a shell-hole with four other Marines from his unit. An enemy mortar exploded in their midst, killing everyone but him. He caught a good piece of shrapnel in the thigh that would leave a 13-inch purple scar.
U.S. losses from the battle at Okinawa were over 48,000 casualties, of whom over 12,000 were killed or missing— over twice the number of casualties as at Iwo Jima and Guadalcanal combined. U.S. forces also suffered their highest ever casualty rate for combat stress reaction during the entire battle, at 48%, with some 14,000 soldiers retired due to nervous breakdown.
When Corporal Dye was discharged from the field hospital and allowed to return to his unit, he was given papers to take to the clerk to document his earning a Purple Heart. But when he saw his comrades missing limbs, eyes... he tore up his papers, turned around and returned to his unit.
He stayed on Okinawa a while longer and then moved to the mainland as part of the occupying force. His unit passed by Nagasaki just days after the atomic bomb was dropped there, and he spent the next several months just miles away from the city. From an airfield along the way, he snatched up a Japanese Arisaka 99 rifle, which now hangs on my office wall.
By February of the next year, he was discharged at Miramar Air Station in California. He boarded a train, and when they stopped in Cheyenne, Wyoming he found a phone to call his dad. "I'm coming home tomorrow! Meet me at the train station at 1300." The next day, Julesburg welcomed him home.
On my desk sits a picture of Private Dye on the day he graduated boot camp. His eyes are bright and proud; full of piss and vinegar. In a box nearby is a picture of him the day he came home from the war. Some family member have said he looks so much older, or hardened, or tired. It's all of those things, but it's more. It's a sorrow that is only known by those who have seen death outside nature's cycle. It's knowing a part of you is missing, but not knowing what it is. It's the price of shedding blood, both the enemy's and your own. It's the face of fear swallowed down so deep it can only rise in ambush while you sleep. It's the face of sacrifice- knowing that those for whom you paid a price will never understand how much it cost.
Sergeant Dye was a different man, but he was still a man. A local Irish firebrand had set her sites on the handsome man in uniform, and he would learn to smile again. But, my it had to have been scandalous.
Just think: a small Midwestern town, the war-hero son of a prominent local businessman, the 16-year old red-haired sass from the church choir...(an evangelist's daughter no less!) Rumor has it they met at a dance hall. Oh, maybe they just saw each other around town, you know...
It didn't matter, though, because as Phyllis Hanley put it, herself, "I let him chase me until I caught him." He didn't stand a chance. They soon married and moved into the sturdy house built by Grandpa Tin. They would populate it with 5 all-American kids.
Sergeant "Whitey" went back to just being called Bill. He went back to work at the hardware store. But he couldn't go back to church. Not after the war. But almost 30 years later, his youngest daughter would convince him to see things otherwise. You see, my mother was as stubborn and charming as his own Irish wife.
(to be continued...)
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1 comment:
Actually, she was your great grandma's housekeeper. I like to think that you grandpa came home from the war, saw this cute little thing learning to cook and clean to perfection, and said something to the effect of, "Thanks, Ma, for me?" ;)
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