By Ronald S. Coddington
Norman Delaney enjoyed a rare moment of relaxation on May 25, 1952. The 20-year-old, full-time college student and army reservist also worked part-time and commanded his local chapter of Sons of Union Veterans in Lynn, Mass. On this particular Sunday, his dad brought home a copy of the Boston Globe. As Norman thumbed through the pages, the cover of the Pictorial section caught his eye—a collage of faces of five army men: a young man in the center, on active duty in Korea, surrounded by four surviving Union veterans of the Civil War.
The image deeply impressed Norman, who kept it.
“You can imagine how thrilled I was at seeing this memorial page, well worth saving all these years,” Norman noted in a recent email from his home in Corpus Christi.
A caption accompanying the cover celebrated the “Boys in Blue” and the “Boy in Khaki.”
At this time, 1952, military matters loomed large. President Harry S Truman, who had led the victorious United States and its allies out of World War II just seven years earlier, would soon leave office as his second term concluded. Rising from the ashes of devastation across Europe, a Cold War pitted the communist nations of Russia and China against the United States and Western democracies. One of the early proxy wars of this period engulfed the Korean Peninsula, where the superpowers paid a heavy price in blood and treasure to secure competing visions of the way of life for the world’s inhabitants.
In the midst of these geopolitical maneuvers, the centennial of the U.S. Civil War entered the mainstream of American popular culture. The first two volumes of historian Bruce Catton’s Army of the Potomac trilogy (Mr. Lincoln’s Army and Glory Road) inspired and engaged Americans. Catton’s third volume, A Stillness at Appomattox, published in 1953, received the Pulitzer Prize for history. Hollywood movies, primarily Westerns with Civil War connections, and flicks about the conflict, notably the 1951 film The Red Badge of Courage starring Audie Murphy, headlined theaters. Across the country, children and teens collected artifacts from the war, giving rise to the modern collecting community.
Amidst these happenings, the last survivors of the Civil War passed from the scene. Coverage of their final illnesses and deaths in newspapers and magazines contributed to the popularization of the war. In dying, these old soldiers reminded the living of the national calamity that redefined the nation.
This Boston Globe Pictorial is one of the countless mass media references to the Civil War in the 1950s. Savvy Globe editors pegged the cover to the upcoming Memorial Day, originally founded as Decoration Day by Civil War veterans, and current American involvement in the war in Korea. Support for the conflict waned as the casualty list of American GIs grew and fighting along the peninsula ground to a stalemate.
The Boy in Khaki
In the center of the cover is one of the wounded GIs, framed against the backdrop of the United Nations (UN) banner under which President Truman committed troops and other military support. Alfred Roger McLaughlin, born and raised in Maine, had joined the U.S. Army in 1949. Stationed with the U.S. Signal Corps in Japan, 18-year-old McLaughlin enjoyed a relatively routine existence.
Everything changed on June 25, 1950, when the Korean Peninsula erupted in war after communist Northern forces invaded the South. The UN Security Council authorized military action and acted quickly to establish a defensive perimeter around Pusan, South Korea’s second largest city and a major port. On July 1, McLaughlin and his comrades shipped out for Pusan. Assigned to a heavy mortar company in the 25th Division, McLaughlin, still 18 years old, spent the next 50 days in combat along the Pusan Perimeter, existing on C-rations, one change of clothes, and the occasional bath in a rice paddy.
On August 18, at the Battle of Taegu, McLaughlin’s machine gun ran out of ammunition. As he stood guard over it waiting for more bullets, enemy fire found him. He recalled, “It was around 6 o’clock. The sun wasn’t up yet. But we could see the Koreans over a little ways. There was a machine gun chattering—one of those little burp guns. I could see a Korean with the gun up on his shoulder. I figured he was going to hit me before he got through [the defenses].” A bullet struck McLaughlin in the lower right leg, injuring a nerve. Evacuated and eventually sent stateside to recover, friends and neighbors in Lewiston, and much of the rest of New England, celebrated him as a hero. President Truman presented him with the Bronze Star, Silver Star, and Purple Heart. McLaughlin ended his service as a corporal in 1953 and lived a half-century more.
The Boys in Blue
As the ranks of Civil War veterans dwindled to a handful in the 1950s, Americans followed the final battles of the last survivors with rapt attention. One newspaper, The River Press in Fort Benton, Mont., noted in 1952 that the few still able to answer the roll call “will bring many memories to older folks, to whom the GAR and its southern counterpart were representatives of a bloody war and a grand tradition of service. Near the turn of the century, GAR posts were almost everywhere in the north, and their influence on the life and politics of the nation was great. That influence has vanished and most members are gone, but the survivors of the great army which answered Abraham Lincoln’s call still common the respect of a nation.”
They include the four men surrounding Cpl. McLaughlin.
The closest drummer Albert Henry Woolson (born Feb. 11, 1847) came to hostile fire during his time with the 1st Minnesota Heavy Artillery occurred in the garrison of Chattanooga after his enlistment in October 1864. “One day the colonel handed me the long end of a rope,” Woolson recalled. ‘When I yell, you stand on your toes, open your mouth an pull.’ First time the cannon went off I was scared to death.” Woolson was the second generation of his family to fight. His father, Willard Paul Woolson, served in the ranks of the 4th Minnesota Infantry and suffered damage to his leg in a steamboat accident that ended in his discharge in 1862 and death in 1865, following an amputation of the damaged leg. Albert’s stint with the 1st lasted until September 1865, when he mustered out with his comrades. A carpenter active with the Grand Army of the Republic, Woolson passed away in Duluth, Minn., on Aug. 2, 1956, at age 109. He holds the distinction of the longest surviving Union veteran. Condolences poured in from across the country, including President Dwight D. Eisenhower, a native Texan, who observed that Woolson’s passing “brings sorrow to all of us who cherished the memory of the brave men on both sides of the War Between the States. The American people have lost the last personal link with the Union Army.”
Recognized as the oldest surviving Civil War combat veteran, James Albert Hard (born July 15, 1841) fought in the ranks of the 32nd New York Infantry at First Bull Run, the Peninsula Campaign, Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, South Mountain, and Antietam before the regiment mustered out. Perhaps the closest he came to being wounded occurred during the 1862 Battle of White House Landing, when his captain was killed beside him. One of Hard’s fondest memories of the war years was meeting President Lincoln at a public reception in the White House in May 1861. “I shook hands with Mr. And Mrs. Lincoln and little Bobby Lincoln. I can’t remember what the President said to me—it was just something pleasant,” he told a reporter in a 1947 interview, adding, “But he gave me a smile I always remembered—whenever he spoke to anyone he had a wonderful homely smile. And he gave me a handshake with a grip that crushed my hand nearly. I thought his hand was as big as a ham.” After the war, he worked in the construction business before becoming a lawyer. He lived until age 111, dying on March 12, 1953.
William Allen Magee (born Aug. 19, 1846) is listed as 18 when he left his home in Findlay, Ohio, to join the Buckeye State’s 12th Ohio Cavalry as a bugler in October 1863. In fact, he was 17, perhaps inflating his age to become a soldier. Magee also served in the regiment’s band. The historian of the 12th noted: “Mounted on snow-white horses, with their bright instruments and trappings gleaming in the sun, the band at once became the pride of the regiment while on the march, and added not a little to the maintenance of that esprit de corps which alone can make a regiment or squadron capable of the honest service.” For Magee and his comrades, this included raids and skirmishes in Kentucky, Tennessee, and southwestern Virginia. Army life agreed with him, and he went on to serve as a private in the 2nd U.S. Infantry until being placed on the retired list in 1898. News reports noted Magee as the last surviving Union Army veteran west of Ohio upon his death in California at age 106 on Jan. 23, 1953.
According to one story, Israel Adam Broadsword (born Dec. 23, 1846) joined the Troy Home Guard in Doniphan County, Kansas, at age 14, and fought in the September 1861 First Battle of Lexington, Mo. His participation in the engagement has yet to be confirmed. His first appearance in an official military record is April 4, 1865, when he enlisted in the army. On April 12, three days after the surrender at Appomattox Court House, he mustered into Company H of the 51st Missouri Infantry, one of six new regiments authorized by the state. None of these units completed its organization, and the recruits were consolidated in the 51st. Stationed in St. Louis, the regiment mustered out in August 1865. Broadsword went on to serve on the frontier with the 19th U.S. Cavalry from 1866 to 1869. Upon his death on July 25, 1952, at age 105, he was buried in his uniform, wearing a pin he had received in 1946 to honor his war service.
Epilogue
Norman Delaney still has the Boston Sunday Globe Pictorial cover that inspired him in 1952. He went on to earn three college degrees, including a Ph.D at Duke University, and become a history professor. He has authored two books, The Maltby Brothers’ Civil War (Texas A&M University Press, 2013) and John McIntosh Kell of the Raider Alabama (University of Alabama Press, 2003). He has done extensive research on Confederate commerce raiders, notably the Alabama. He served as an associate editor and contributor to the Historical Times Illustrated Encyclopedia of the Civil War edited by Patricia L. Faust (Harper & Row, 1986) and a contributor to Volume IV, Fighting for Time, of The Image of War: 1861-1865 series by William C. Davis (Doubleday and Company, 1983). Dr. Delaney has also written many articles for historical publications, including Military Images.
Ronald S. Coddington is Editor and Publisher of MI.
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