Wednesday, March 6, 2019

A Funny Little War Story


For as long as soldiers have gone to war, which is to say as long as history has been recorded, they have tucked away countless charms and talismans in their pockets and uniforms before heading into battle. From love letters and photos of sweethearts to Bibles and pendants of every known faith and creed, men at war have carried anything and everything to give them what they needed most – hope for another day.
Author and novelist Tim O'Brien knew only too well the power in these trinkets and talismans. He was 22 years old when he was drafted into the army and sent to Vietnam, where he served in the 3rd Platoon, Company A, 5th Battalion of the 46th Infantry Regiment from 1968 through 1970.
In his semi-autobiographical novel The Things They Carried, he focuses on the real and symbolic burdens American soldiers carried with them every day in the jungle heat and tall grass. The weapons they would one day leave behind, the scars and memories would stay at their sides for the rest of their lives.
Not long ago I discovered an interesting memento another war veteran carried into battle. Alonzo Miller volunteered for duty in 1863 and served in Company A, 12th Wisconsin Infantry Regiment of Blair’s 17th Army Corps. Over the next two years of the Civil War, he fought in the Battle of Kennesaw Mountain, the Battle of Atlanta, the Savannah Campaign, and the Campaign of the Carolinas, wounded twice before being honorably discharged at war’s end.
Miller carried with him a ‘Daily Miniature Diary’ for each year he served, each book small enough to fit in the palm of a hand, or the shirt pocket of a Union infantry soldier. He faithfully filled every inch of every page of those books, recording the daily events in fine pencil, each word crammed together like soldiers on parade march.
Alonzo was 25 years old in 1864. Throughout that year he described plainly but honestly a life that any veteran of any war would understand. The endless marching (often 12 to 15 miles a day down the dirt roads of Tennessee, Alabama and Georgia), the lousy food, the common boredom and uncommon camaraderie of life amongst brothers in an army camp. 
And, yes, the deadly scenes of battle, such as this from a skirmish that took place on June 15, 1864 somewhere in Georgia: “It was awful. We jumped the breastworks, formed a line single file, and started on doublequick for the Rebs. They fired—it was like hailstones for a while. One was shot through the thigh, of our company. I was the third man from our Captain and the first one that fired. It was awful, bullets came thick and fast. I did not expect to get out alive.”
Worn down and weary, Miller’s entry a few weeks later said simply: “If I only am spared my life, that will be all I ask.”                                                                                                              
But what intrigued me even more was what I found tucked away in a back pouch of his 1864 diary. It was a newspaper clipping, one column, ten inches in length, neatly cut out and folded up, the paper itself brown and brittle as ancient parchment. No date. No author. Not even the name of the newspaper to which it once belonged. Right away I start thinking this is going to be some kind of life and death wisdom, or story of faith and family, that the man obviously cherished and carried with him always.
Well, not exactly.
Entitled A Dutchman's Complaint, it was a short piece of satire, maybe a thousand words in length. The story is told in first person narrative by a fifty-year-old character with the outlandish name of Gottlieb Klobberyoss. Right away one sees the intended parody of dialect and demeanor when Herr Klobberyoss stands in the local saloon, slurping down another drink, when he says:          
"I dinks much about da war. Und da draft, und da rebils, and all about dese dings. I dinks about 'em more as about anyding else….De odder day begins de draft. Dat bodders me agin…So ven I gets tired mit drinkin on my own stoop, I goes down to Hans Butterfoos's tavern, und I drinks dere, und I tells my opinion."                                                       
True to his word, he goes to the tavern and drinks some more and offers more unflattering opinions of “rebil sojers” and Confederate President Sheff Davis.”
The story reaches a conclusion that is none too dramatic or humorous, at least not by this reader. I’ve read the story several times and still can’t say what the punch line is. Maybe there isn’t one.
But the mystery here, the real story, is what it was about this farcical conversation that made Alonzo Miller think it important enough to carry with him every single day, when any one of those days could have been his last?  
No one can answer that now. Maybe he pulled it out and read it whenever the dull life of an infantryman overtook him. Maybe it reminded him that there was still a world of humor and life outside of war. Or maybe he just needed a chuckle now and then - understandable enough given the circumstances surrounding him at the time.
Whatever the reason was, it worked. Alonzo Miller’s luck held out, and after the war he went back home to Prescott, Wisconsin, where he started up a small farm, married, and raised a daughter. Whether or not a pious and penitent man, he also served for many years as the janitor of the local Methodist church. He ended up living for another fifty years before passing away peacefully in 1917 at the age of 78.
His daughter, Mary Angeline, would live the rest of her life in Prescott and never marry. Upon her death in 1938 she had her estate settled by a woman named Fay Stolt – my paternal grandmother. Fay would eventually pass along Alonzo’s diaries to my father. Because of those diaries Clarence Stolt became a bonafide Civil War history buff, collecting the personal papers of Alonzo Miller and presenting lectures about his life to several Wisconsin civic organizations. After his death I became the caretaker of Alonzo Miller’s war diaries, and now I’m doing my part to carry on the legacy.
Because while the men who once wrote and read the words on that tiny scrap of paper are long gone and forgotten, it is the story that still remains. The tale of A Dutchman’s Complaint has outlived that war and the men who fought it by a century and a half.

Maybe that makes this a funny little war story after all. 

Alonzo Miller


                                   

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