Ballard's publications include
the following books:
A Long Shadow: Jefferson
Davis and the Final Days of the Confederacy
(University Press of Mississippi, 1986; paperback
edition, University of Georgia Press, 1998). A
History Book Club selection.
Landscapes of Battle: The
Civil War (University Press of
Mississippi, 1988).
Pemberton: A Biography
(University Press of Mississippi, 1991, paperback
under the title Pemberton: The General Who Lost
Vicksburg, 1999). History Book Club selection and
winner of Best Non-fiction work by a Mississippi
author in 1991-award from the Mississippi
Institute of Arts and Letters.
A Mississippi Rebel in the
Army of Northern Virginia: The Civil War Memoirs
of Private David Holt (Louisiana State
University Press, 1995, paperback forthcoming in
2001). Co-editor with Thomas D. Cockrell.
Civil War Mississippi: A
Guide (University Press of Mississippi,
2000)
Special studies include The
Vicksburg Campaign, written for the
National Military Park series published by Eastern
National Park and Monument Association, and The
Battle of Tupelo, written for the Blue and
Gray Education Society.
Other publications include some
25 articles on a variety of historical topics,
most dealing with the Civil War, and over 40 book
reviews.
Current book projects include
(all titles are tentative):
Civil War Mississippi:
Campaigns and Battles, co-author with
Herman Hattaway, to be published by the University
Press of Mississippi, projected publication date,
2002.
The Vicksburg Campaign:
Days of Delusions, 1861-1863, to be
published by the University of North Carolina
Press, projected publication date, 2002.
U. S. Grant: The Making of
a General, 1861-1863, a volume in the
Civil War series being published by Scholarly
Resources, projected publication date, 2003.
COMMON THREADS: A CORPORAL'S
STORY
A Memorial Day
Address
Shiloh
National Military Park
May 28, 2001
By Michael
B. Ballard
University Archivist
Coordinator
of the Congressional
& Political Research Center
Mississippi State University
P. O. Box 355
Mississippi State, MS 39762
Shiloh National Cemetery, Memorial Day (NPS Photo)
He left school in the ninth
grade because his family moved around so much. His
dad ran cotton gins, mostly in the Mississippi
Delta, and the family had to live wherever the job
took him. So he tired of changing schools and went
to work, and in the process learned to drive farm
machinery, including tractors.
Then came clouds of war and on
July 9, 1941, he enlisted, and he endured the
trauma of leaving home for the first time in his
life. He entered the army, and because he could
drive a tractor, he wound up in a tank, and
eventually after training at Fort Knox, Kentucky,
this private was assigned to Company B, 751st Tank
Battalion. By then, Japan had attacked Pearl
Harbor, and the United States had entered World
War II.
He endured the ups and downs of
a long boat trip to England in 1942, and then
moved on to North Africa in 1943, where his
Battalion, along with other American forces,
suffered a setback at Kassarine Pass, but
ultimately triumphed in concert with their British
allies, winning battles at such places as Fonduk
and Bizerta. In North Africa, he saw the elephant
for the first time, and the horror of seeing
comrades in arms blown apart would scar him for a
lifetime. He worried over how many lives he might
have taken in combat, an enemy he often could not
see face to face, civilians who might be in harm's
way, people whose fate he could wonder about but
probably never know. He later brought the
nightmares home on leave and sometimes woke in a
cold sweat and once sought cover when a crop
duster flew over.
Then, back to the war, and the
Italian campaign, and a date with destiny at a
place called Anzio. There with his fellow tankers,
on a beach between the Atlantic and the Germans,
he lived through the unceasing roar and confusion
of war, night and day, risking life and limb to
climb out at night to use the bathroom, enduring
and eating and drinking unpleasant, sometimes
inedible food and water, dozing amid the scream of
shells, wondering at the incompetency of officers
who got he and his buddies in this mess,
regretting that he was now a corporal since he had
never thought too highly of them either, and
mostly praying for divine protection.
One day, May 23, 1944, shortly
before the stalemate ended, he sat inside his
tank, unwrapping a treasured package from home in
which he found stale cake and was about to take a
bite when a German 88 plowed head-on into his
tank. The shell penetrated the armor, fragmented,
and in the midst of tremendous noise, he felt a
sharp, searing pain in his right hand, which was
poised in front of his face, about to deliver the
cake to his mouth.
He was vaguely aware of being
dragged from the remains of the tank, and later in
the uncertain shelter of a field hospital, learned
that all his fingers on his right hand were
shattered and soon would be gone; only his thumb
had survived. Had his hand not shielded his head,
he might not have survived at all. Ahead lay
surgery and a long boat trip home, a stay in a
Texas hospital where, looking around, he realized
how much worse his fate might have been, and
finally home to Mississippi. His future would
consist of marriage, fatherhood (two sons),
dedicated service to the God who had heard his
prayers, reunions with comrades in arms who also
made it back, and coping with memories of battle
that only those who had been there could
understand. He left this earth to be with his God
on November 25, 1989, finally finding the total
peace that had eluded him since he first heard
guns fired in anger.
That man was Corporal Ottis B.
Ballard, my dad. His military service story is one
of endurance, of patriotism, of privation, of
horror, of pain, of sacrifice, of comradeship, of
faith. His story is not that unique; indeed there
are many common threads that link American
servicemen and women of all eras of our history.
Down through the hallowed halls of our country's
history, their stories echo experiences familiar
to all who have experienced the tragedies of
war.
From the American Revolution,
hear the words of Captain Enoch Anderson,
commenting on the Battle of White Plains, October
28, 1776: "A soldier of our Regiment was
mortally wounded in this battle. He fell to the
ground; -- in falling, his gun fell from him. He
picked it up, --turned on his face, --the gun fell
from him, --he turned over on his back and
expired. I forget his name." We can only
wonder how often in his dreams, Captain Anderson
replayed that scene.
And the humor, humor that kept
the soldier going. From the War of 1812, Private
John Pendleton Kennedy described a too long
neglected campfire cooking pot: "[It was a]
black mess which seemed to be reduced to a stratum
of something resembling a compound of black soap
in a semiliquid state. . . . cooling it as quickly
as we could . . . we came to the perception that
our supper, or at least as much of it as we had
cooked, was a compost of charred bones and a
deposit of black fat, the whole plated over with
the scales of iron which the heat had brought off
in flakes from the kettle."
The disruption of war, and the
danger it brings to the innocent haunted an
unidentified American soldier who served in the
war with Mexico. Writing of the Monterey
battlefield, he recorded: "Hungry and cold I
crept to one corner of the fort to get in the
sunshine and at the same time to shelter myself
from the bombs that were flying thick around me. I
looked out, and, some two or three hundred yards
from the fort, I saw a Mexican female carrying
water and food to the wounded men of both armies.
I saw her lift the head of one poor fellow, give
him water and then take her handkerchief from her
own head and bind up his wounds; attending one or
two others in the same way, she went back for more
food and water. As she was returning I heard the
crack of one or two guns, and she, poor good
creature, fell; after a few struggles all was
still-she was dead! I turned my eyes to heaven and
thought, `Oh, God, and this is war!' [Next day] We
buried her amid showers of grape and round shot. .
. ."
Then came our Civil War, and
memoirs and letters full of war's horrors,
poignancy and humor. An Iowa soldier recalled an
incident at the battle here at Shiloh that
demonstrated that however much men might detest
war, it was better to get on with it than to sit
and wait: "We saw right in front of us, but
about three . . . or four hundred yards off, a
dense line of Confederate infantry, quietly
standing in ranks. In our excitement, and without
word of command, we turned loose . . . with our
smoothbore muskets. . . . . . . after three or
four rounds, the absurdity of firing at the enemy
at that distance dawned on us, and we stopped. As
the smoke cleared up we saw the enemy still there,
not having budged or fired a shot in return. But
though our action was absurd, it was a relief to
us to do something, and we were rapidly toned up
to the point of steady endurance."
Many have experienced the utter
confusion of combat. Captain T. W. Jones, 10th U.
S. Cavalry, wrote of action at Santiago, Cuba,
July, 1898, during the Spanish-American War:
"The troop came under a very severe
fire-musketry and artillery-at once, with no means
of determining from whence the fire came, as all
view was entirely cut off by the densest
underbrush which lined the road, and no effective
cover to get to. After something like half an hour
of this fire the squadron was put in the attacking
line as support and moved forward. In the brush
and amid the roar of guns all sight of the firing
line and touch of adjoining troops was
lost."
From World War I we have an
account by American soldier William Triplet of his
experiences with medical care after he received a
slight head wound in the Meuse-Argonne in
September, 1917. "A Salvation Army cutie
asked if I would like a doughnut. Declined the
doughnut but took a chance on the coffee she was
pushing. Sipped slowly and was encouraged when it
showed signs of staying down. A medico captain,
four nurses, and eight or ten orderlies were
moving about among the stretcher cases, checking
on bandages, temperatures, and morale. Now and
then they'd just pull the blanket up and the
orderlies would carry him out the door. One of the
nurses jerked me out of a sound sleep by taking a
quick palm-to-forehead temperature reading. `Howe
do you feel soldier?' I knew she couldn't do
anything about a cracked head so I said, `I'm
fine, thank you ma'am.' Thought of continuing `And
how are you?' but since she was a lieutenant and I
didn't know if that was proper military courtesy
just went to sleep again."
A philosophical look at war
comes from Dr. Melvin Horwitz, MASH surgeon in
Korea. In a November 21, 1952, letter to his wife
Horwitz writes: "Had a few hours this
afternoon when I relaxed and bathed out of a
helmet. A trio of musicians and several singers
went about the hospital playing and singing for
the patients. It almost made me cry to see the
patients we had (only the sick ones-the others had
been sent out), many covered in plaster casts from
toe to waist, battered and aged before their
time-enjoying the music. I think I could be a
conscientious objector in another war were I not a
physician. There never can be any justification
for war. The problems are not solved, but merely
pushed back."
All soldiers in all wars wonder
if, when it gets right down to it, they can kill,
and how they will react if they do. From a Vietnam
vet, we have a poignant reminder of that common
thread. Jon Neely recalls: "I pulled up and
fired first. I was carrying a grenade launcher and
- well, I hit the guy dead center and there wasn't
much left of him. It was all over. That turned out
to be my first kill. Although we had to continue
sweeping through the jungle, I started getting the
feeling that I wasn't going to make it too far.
When my squad leader and I went over to the dead
gook, I took one look and I just puked my guts
out."
Finally, from an American flyer
in Desert Storm, we have a wonderful summary of
the various forces tugging at the hearts of those
in combat. Writing of his mission on January 29,
1991, Michael Donnelly says: "I wonder if I
killed anyone today. I don't worry about it much,
though I think of it more as dropping bombs on
things instead of people. I'm trying to destroy
their ability to fight. I'm saving the life of our
boys down on the ground every time I take out some
of them. Besides, they sure as hell are trying to
kill me too! I don't intend on letting them down.
That is all cold hard fact."
In the final analysis, my Dad's
war was the war of others mentioned here today,
and theirs his. They all did what they did for
their country to be sure, but in a larger sense,
they fought their fights for comrades in arms, for
home, for family, for people around the world
they would never know. As one World War II veteran
put it, "I knew the difference between right
and wrong, and I did not want to grow up in a
world in which wrong prevailed." So we set
aside a day to honor, to praise, to applaud, to
reminisce, to salute, but most of all to remember
those who have served us and generations past. To
remember them is at once the least and the best
that we can do.
***
Copyright © 2001
Michael
B. Ballard
.gif)
