dual personalities

I had not heard of the Battle of Iuka, nor of Iuka, Mississippi for that matter, until yesterday. Before the Civil War the town boasted an all-female college, a boys’ military academy and a fine hotel. The Civil War brought widespread devastation when a major engagement took place on September 19, 1862.

Major General Ulysses Grant brought two armies to confront Sterling Price in a double envelopment: Rosecrans’s Army of the Mississippi approaching Iuka from the southwest, and three divisions of his own Army of the Tennessee under Maj. General Edmund Ord, approaching from the northwest. Although Grant and Ord planned to attack in conjunction with Rosecrans when they heard the sound of battle, an acoustic shadow suppressed the sound and prevented them from realizing that the battle had begun.

Now hold the phone, what is an acoustic shadow?!

“An acoustic shadow is an area through which sound waves fail to propagate, due to topographical obstructions or disruption of the waves via phenomena such as wind currents, buildings, or sound barriers.”

I looked up in his Memoirs to see what Grant had to say about this:

“During the 19th the wind blew in the wrong direction to transmit sound either towards the point where Ord was, or to Burnsville where I had remained…A couple of hours before dark on the 19th…the wind was hard and in the wrong direction to transmit sound either to Ord or to me. Neither he nor I nor any one in either command heard a gun that was fired upon the battle-field. After the engagement Rosecrans sent me a dispatch announcing the result. This was brought by a courier. There is no road between Burnsville and the position then occupied by Rosecrans and the country was impassable for a man on horseback. The courier bearing the message was compelled to move west nearly to Jacinto before he found a road leading to Burnsville.”

Boy, the things we take for granted in our tech world today.

Anyway, I thought that was very interesting. And now we know what an acoustic shadow is.

Today is also the anniversary ( in 1863 ) of the first day of the Battle of Chickamauga, in northwestern Georgia, the bloodiest two-day battle of the conflict, and the only significant Confederate victory in the war’s Western Theater. You will recall the short story by Ambrose Bierce about the deaf-mute boy who wanders onto the battlefield.

One sunny autumn afternoon a child strayed away from its rude home in a small field and entered a forest unobserved. It was happy in a new sense of freedom from control, happy in the opportunity of exploration and adventure; for this child’s spirit, in bodies of its ancestors, had for thousands of years been trained to memorable feats of discovery and conquest—victories in battles whose critical moments were centuries, whose victors’ camps were cities of hewn stone. From the cradle of its race it had conquered its way through two continents and passing a great sea had penetrated a third, there to be born to war and dominion as a heritage.

A very grim read, to be sure.

September 19 was also the first day of the Battle of the Hürtgen Forest in 1944, which was the longest battle on German ground during World War II. It is the second longest single battle the U.S. Army has ever fought after The Battle of Bataan. The Battle of Hürtgen Forest has been referred to as a stalemate that consumed large amounts of resources on both sides. Many men died in the freezing cold. The Americans suffered 33,000 casualties during the course of the battle which ranged up to 55,000 casualties, including 9,000 non-combat losses, and represented a 25 percent casualty rate.

J.D. Salinger was there. And I always think of a girl I knew in college whose father was there in the Hürtgen Forest and who returned home after the war and became a mailman in Worcester, MA.

He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High
    will abide in the shadow of the Almighty.
² I will say to the Lord, “My refuge and my fortress,
    my God, in whom I trust.”

³ For he will deliver you from the snare of the fowler
    and from the deadly pestilence.
⁴ He will cover you with his pinions,
    and under his wings you will find refuge;
    his faithfulness is a shield and buckler.
⁵ You will not fear the terror of the night,
    nor the arrow that flies by day,
⁶ nor the pestilence that stalks in darkness,
    nor the destruction that wastes at noonday.

⁷ A thousand may fall at your side,
    ten thousand at your right hand,
    but it will not come near you.
⁸ You will only look with your eyes
    and see the recompense of the wicked.

⁹ Because you have made the Lord your dwelling place—
    the Most High, who is my refuge —
¹⁰ no evil shall be allowed to befall you,
    no plague come near your tent.

¹¹ For he will command his angels concerning you
    to guard you in all your ways.
¹² On their hands they will bear you up,
    lest you strike your foot against a stone.
¹³ You will tread on the lion and the adder;
    the young lion and the serpent you will trample underfoot.

¹⁴ “Because he holds fast to me in love, I will deliver him;
    I will protect him, because he knows my name.
¹⁵ When he calls to me, I will answer him;
    I will be with him in trouble;
    I will rescue him and honor him.
¹⁶ With long life I will satisfy him
    and show him my salvation.”

(Psalm 91)