‘Sweet baby:’ The short life and times of John Willie Woods Jr.

The gravestone of John Willie Woods Jr. in Toussaint L'Ouverture Cemetery in Franklin, Tenn.

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ON A SPECTACULAR SPRING MORNING, a large American flag, a much smaller one and faux flowers adorn John Willie Woods Junior’s gravestone at Toussaint L'Ouverture Cemetery in Franklin, Tenn. More than a half-century after his death in Vietnam, Mattie Lee Kinnard surely would be touched that her son is so well remembered. 

Close-up of John Willie Woods Junior's
Purple Heart.

Woods was only 19 when his helicopter plunged into the jungle in a fiery explosion, killing him and three of his crewmates on Oct. 30, 1966. He was one of 342 American military deaths that month during the Vietnam War; one of 6,350 that year; one of 58,220 for the United States in the lengthy conflict.

Woods earned a Purple Heart for sacrificing his life, as many  others did. His hometown newspaper covered his death in four paragraphs, not unusual for the era. A stone carver etched his name among thousands of others on the Vietnam War Memorial Wall in Washington, the same size as every other. 

John Willie Woods Jr., buried on ground the Union Army defended during the Civil War in the Battle of Franklin on Nov. 30, 1864, was unexceptional ... and yet extraordinary — to his family, who agonize over what might have been; to friends and classmates, who remember a “super kid,” a football star “as fast as a jackrabbit” and a "hero"; and to many Vietnam veterans, who yearn to forget but can’t quite shake the demons and ghosts of the past.

LEFT: Woods (35) was a star running back at all-Black Natchez High School in Franklin, Tenn.
His coach, Bill Reynolds, appears at far right. RIGHT: The school 
 now houses a senior living center. (Left photo courtesy of Curtis "Sneaky Pete" Allen.)

BORN ON FEB. 20, 1947, John Willie Woods Jr. grew up in “Hard Bargain,” a predominantly African American section of Franklin, the son of Mattie Lee and John Willie Sr., a World War II veteran. The couple reared two children, but the marriage didn’t last. After Senior and Mattie Lee divorced, she married J.T. Kinnard, with whom she had six more children. Mrs. Kinnard and Woods’ part-native American maternal great grandmother kept a close eye on Junior – grandma even gave him an Indian nickname: “Sorghum.” Family and friends called Mattie Lee “Bunny.”

John Willie Woods Jr. grew up in "Hard Bargain,"
a predominantly African American section of Franklin.

In the late 1950s, Woods — “intelligent and rambunctious,” according to a childhood friend — played for the Rucker Park baseball team at the ballfield off Downs Boulevard, one of the few places Blacks could in Franklin at the time. His teammates went by nicknames such as “Stick,” “Turnipgreen,” “Eyebrow,” “Tadpole,” and “Rabbit.” In a team photo of them from the era, Woods appears to be having a good time — few of his friends today would be surprised if he were gabbing while the photographer took the image.

“He loved to talk,” says lifelong Franklin resident Thelma Battle, who attended all-Black Natchez High School with Woods.

Blacks weren’t allowed in the massive Willow Plunge pool off Lewisburg Pike in Franklin in those days, so in the summer, John Willie Jr. and his buddies splashed in the “Dinky Track,” a swimming hole behind his neighbor Jocelyn Jordan’s house on Green Street. Wiry and muscular, Woods was among the few of his friends who could swim — sometimes the boys would even skinny dip in the hole, raising a few eyebrows. When he wasn’t rabbit hunting or fishing, John Willie might be found shooting marbles with four of Jordan’s brothers.

Woods (far left) with teammates on a Rucker Park
baseball team in the late 1950s.

“He loved all sports,” Jordan says of Woods. “He was always there as a leader of his friends.”

“A very likable person,” says Battle.

“Popular and outgoing,” Natchez High schoolmate Carolyn Wall says.

Never gave me any trouble, his momma said.

In his senior season at Natchez High School in 1964, Woods — who stood about 5 feet 7 and weighed roughly 165 pounds — starred at running back and served as a team captain. John Willie’s White peers in Franklin attended Franklin High School or the private Battleground Academy; during the era of segregation, Woods’ Panthers never played them. Black schools, John Willie's classmates remember, used “hand-me-down books” and paled in comparison to the more well-funded White schools in Franklin,

Woods in his high school graduation
photo. (Courtesy Woods family)

In the sports section of the local newspaper from his senior season, Woods’ name frequently appeared in boldfaced type: “Wheel horse ball toter,” the Franklin Review-Appeal called him  after he rushed for 147 yards on only 14 carries in a 13-7 victory over Springfield. 

“Helluva athlete,” says Curtis “Sneaky Pete” Allen, who attended Natchez High with Woods.

“Best player on the team,” says Woods’ football coach, Bill Reynolds, who recalls a father-son relationship with him.

“I wish a lot of people had his personality, character, and integrity,” says the former coach, now 84.

In 1965, shortly before he graduated from high school, Woods told friends and family he planned to join the Army. “He felt like he needed to go there,” says his uncle, Fulton Patton. “He felt like he was doing something for his country and his people.” 

Later, Woods posed for a photograph sporting his new military uniform and an “I’ve just won the lottery” smile. But the day he left Franklin for eventual deployment overseas, Mattie Lee’s son sat on the back steps of the family’s house and wept for an hour. Perhaps then was when Woods had a premonition of death — in a letter to his mother from Vietnam months later, he wrote that he did not expect to return home.

In a circa-1960 photo of a youth basketball team, John Willie Woods Jr. appears in first row, bottom left. (Courtesy John Willie Woods Jr. family)

THE NEWS SEEMED OMINOUS from Southeast Asia when Woods began his tour of duty there on May 2, 1966. In late April and early May, American and Communist troops exchanged machine gun fire over the Cambodian border as the conflict threatened to spiral further out of control. North Vietnamese soldiers reportedly were infiltrating the South at a rate of 7,000 a month; and in the air, groundfire took down an American RF101 Voodoo reconnaissance plane near Hanoi.

Front-page headlines in The Nashville Tennessean
on May 2, 1966, the day Woods began his tour
in South Vietnam.

At home, where Blacks faced rampant discrimination, Dr. Martin Luther King returned to Alabama in the closing days of the gubernatorial campaign to get out the African American vote. Lurleen Wallace was running as proxy to succeed her segregationist husband, George. It was just a ploy by the incumbent, who by law could not run for another term, to maintain his grip on the state. To ensure all Blacks could safely vote, U.S. attorney general Nicholas Katzenbach sent Federal agents to Alabama. 

Meanwhile, desegregation of public schools remained a white-hot topic. “Now, today,” a University of Tennessee vice president said on the jump of a Page 1 story in the Nashville Tennessean, “Americans are awakening to the fact that the American Negro has been shut off from access to public life.”

In the public square of Franklin — a booming city of 65,000 people now, roughly 7,500 in 1966 — loomed the nearly 40-foot-high Confederate monument, dedicated in 1899. Locals call the 6-foot-6 statue of a Confederate soldier atop its base “Chip.” An inscription on the monument reads, in part: “In honor and memory of our heroes both private and chief of the Southern Confederacy. No Country ever had truer sons, no cause nobler champions.”

Blacks didn’t pay “Chip” much attention. 

Photo from summer 1969 of Ban Me Thuot City Field showing the "Corral," where
helicopters parked. (Courtesy: Larry Pluhar)

IN VIETNAM, Natchez High School’s star running back morphed into Specialist 4 John Willie Woods Jr. It was a junior rank — “Spec 4,” they called it in the Army. Woods, who initially served in an infantry regiment, became a door gunner on a UH-1 “Huey” helicopter flown by the 155th Assault Helicopter Company, based at Ban Me Thuot City Field in South Vietnam.

 

John Willie Woods Jr. in a wartime image.
(Courtesy John Willie Woods Jr. family)

The Huey served as a U.S. military workhorse, used to transport troops and cargo, provide gunship support and evacuate wounded from a battlefield. “The machine left the ground,” a pilot wrote years later about the helicopter, “like it was falling up.” The Huey could take a beating, too. “Some of them came back with so many holes,” another pilot recalled, “you just wouldn’t believe they’d ever fly again.”

In mid-October 1966, two reconnaissance patrols clashed with North Vietnamese forces near Plei Djereng — a camp established in December 1964 by U.S. Special Forces to monitor enemy infiltration along the Ho Chi Minh Trail. Days later, Americans launched Operation Paul Revere IV, sending two brigades into the jungle of the Central Highlands. In the first 12 days’ fighting, 22 U.S. servicemen suffered mortal wounds. Nearly 400 U.S. military personnel would be dead by the conclusion of the operation on Dec. 30.

The area near Plei Djereng, where the 155th often operated, became a hot zone. Cambodia — a sanctuary for North Vietnamese troops — was a short helicopter ride west. In late October, two 155th helicopter pilots, escorted by two gunships, rescued an Air Force pilot shot down over the hostile territory. The unit also supported long-range reconnaissance patrols, a classified operation. “This … turned out to be one of the most interesting and challenging missions for the unit pilots and crew members alike,” a 155th pilot recalled.

On Oct. 30, 1966, Woods boarded a Huey, tail number 64-13587, with three crewmates for a mission to re-supply elements of the U.S. 25th Infantry Division involved in Operation Paul Revere IV. A “slick,” GIs called the lightly armed (two M60 machine guns) troop/cargo carrier.

FROM LEFT: Pilot Wilmer Jay Willingham, commander Michael Noble Coryell and crew chief
James Lloyd Walker, a private first class. They were Woods' crewmates on the ill-fated
helicopter flight on Oct. 30, 1966. (Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund Wall of Faces)

Like Woods, his crewmates were so damn young. Michael Noble Coryell, a 21-year-old from Santa Barbara, Calif., served as helicopter commander. He had been flying in Vietnam for 11 months and was nearing the end of his tour of duty. “Combat hardened and the best Fort Rucker ever qualified,” recalled a veteran who flew with Coryell in Vietnam, referencing the U.S. Army’s Alabama flight training installation. Twenty-four-year-old Wilmer Jay Willingham of Monroe, La., the only married man aboard, served as pilot. He had been flying in Vietnam less than a month.

A 1966 image from Vietnam of Hueys like the one
John Willie Woods Jr. manned when he was killed.
(National Archives and Records Administration)

Crew chief James Lloyd Walker, a private first class and a “fun-loving” soldier from Blackfoot, Idaho, enjoyed the outdoors. Like Woods, he was only 19. After police caught Walker vandalizing houses in Idaho with friends, a court detention judge who attended his church urged the high school dropout to join the military. Walker manned the other machine gun in the rear of the chopper, near Woods. The group was a melting pot of sorts — John Willie and Willingham were Baptist; Walker, a Mormon; Coryell, a Presbyterian. Woods was the only Black soldier aboard.

At about 10:30 a.m., after the Huey flew below 1,000 feet about 4.5 miles north of Plei Djereng, a burst of small-arms fire knifed through the sturdy helicopter’s engine. The Huey exploded and crashed, killing all aboard. A reconnaissance platoon, backed up by tanks from the 69th Armor Regiment, recovered the bodies in the jungle in Pleiku Province, South Vietnam.

After 21-year-old commander Michael Coryell's death,
comrades christened the 155th Assault Helicopter
 Company's base in South Vietnam "Camp Coryell."
(Camp Coryell Vietnam newsletter) 

The shootdown unleashed a furious response from the U.S. military — gunships and a U.S. Air Force strike blasted the supposed source of enemy fire. The next day, an official report noted, “Task Force McDonnell searched for the enemy automatic weapon position without positive results.”

In memory of the Huey’s commander, comrades in the 155th Assault Helicopter Company christened their base “Camp Coryell.” Willingham, who, like Woods, displayed a beaming smile in his Army photograph, left behind a widow named Linda. Shortly after Walker’s funeral in Idaho, his best friend joined the military, vowing “to take the same bastards out who killed Jimmy.” The army posthumously awarded each soldier a Purple Heart. Woods had served barely six months in Vietnam.

On Halloween 1966, a U.S. military representative knocked on Mattie Lee’s door at her home on Natchez Street to deliver awful news. John Willie’s death rocked his friends and family. “Took the life out of me,” says Doug Lane, Woods’ classmate and a Vietnam veteran. “Hurt so bad I was sick.”

And, oh my, did “Bunny” grieve.

At John Willie Woods Junior's grave, his niece, Valerie "Pluckie" Harris (left), holds his framed
Purple Heart. At right, Woods' half-sister, Tammy Brooks, holds the American flag presented
 to their mother at his funeral on Nov. 8, 1966. 

ON THE AFTERNOON OF NOV. 8, 1966, mourners packed Franklin’s tiny Primitive Baptist Church. A military honor guard and chaplain attended, too. 

Mattie Lee, Woods' mother.
Friends and family called
her "Bunny."
(Courtesy Woods family)

“Uncontrollable, crying and thrashing,” a witness described Mattie Lee Kinnard’s demeanor that day. (More than a decade later, “Bunny” would lose two more sons, Belafonte Kinnard, in a freak accident at a softball game, and Barry Kinnard, also a “Spec 4” in the Army, in an apparent fall from an overpass in Hawaii.)

At Woods’ graveside service, a member of the military honor guard presented Mattie Lee a folded American flag. The guard fired a salute, echoing in the cool Tennessee air, and mourners quickly dispersed.

Fulton Patton remembers his nephew as a hero.

 “They do things on the spur of the moment,” he says. “They know they have to do something now.” 

Many in the 155th still are reluctant to talk about their experiences in Southeast Asia: “I believe that every single one of us lives with PTSD — varying degrees, to be sure,” a former helicopter pilot says.

Decades after her son’s death, Mattie Lee, old and frail, visited John Willie’s grave on the hill overlooking town.

“He was a sweet boy,” “Bunny,” who died in 2011, told a reporter. “He was a sweet baby.”

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Williamson County Archives public service archivist Leesa Harmon assisted with this story.

A close-up of the American flag presented to Mattie Lee Kinnard at her son's funeral.

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NOTES AND SOURCES

• American Military Deaths in Vietnam, National Archives web site
• Coffelt Database of Vietnam Casualties
• Franklin Review-Appeal, May 29, 1987
• Mason, Robert, Chickenhawk: A Shattering Personal Account of the Helicopter War in Vietnam, New York: Penguin Books, 1983. (Source for ability of Huey helicopter to take off quickly.)
• MacGarrigle, George (1998). Combat Operations: Taking the Offensive, October 1966 to October 1967. Government Printing Office. ISBN 9780160495403
• Phone interviews with Cheryl Craft, James Lloyd Walker’s sister (May 10, 2021); Jocelyn Jordan, John Willie Woods Jr. neighbor, childhood playmate and schoolmate (May 10 and 17, 2021); Carolyn Wall, Woods’ schoolmate (May 11, 2021); Bill Reynolds, Woods’ high school football coach (May 12, 2021); Les Davison, 155th Assault Helicopter Company unit historian and former pilot in unit (May 13, 2021); Chuck Markham, 155th Assault Helicopter Company veteran (May 14, 2021); and Woods’ friends Bill Grimes (May 16, 2021), Doug Lane (May 16, 2021), and Curtis "Sneaky Pete" Allen (May 23, 2021); and Fulton Patton, Woods' uncle (May 25, 2021)
• In-person interview with Franklin historian Thelma Battle, Woods’ high school schoolmate, May 10, 2021
• The Nashville Tennessean, May 2, 1966, Nov. 7, 2005
• Vietnam magazine, August 2002 issue, (Source for quote on sturdiness of Huey, from former U.S. pilot Richard Jellerson.) 
• Williamson Leader, July 19, 1979, July 5, 1980
• 155th Aviation Company unit history

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VIEW GOOGLE EARTH IMAGE of crash site of helicopter.

Finding Patrick Cleburne in 'Wedding Capital of the South'

The world famous Ringgold Wedding Chapel of Love.

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WARNING: This post includes bad puns.

Sometimes the pursuit of history can be frustrating. En route from Cartersville, Ga., hometown of General Trevor Lawrence, to Nashville on Route 41, I got sucked in by Civil War historical markers in Cassville (burned by Sherman in '64!), Adairsville (home of annual Great Locomotive Chase festival!), and Resaca (site of best reenactment in Georgia!).

And then I stopped in Ringgold, Ga., about 17 miles south of Chattanooga, Tenn. Curses to you, soul-sucking Ringgold!

The Patrick Cleburne monument
 in Ringgold, Ga.

Bad news came in waves after I stopped in the county seat of Catoosa County, where food was so scarce in late 1863 that Confederate soldiers often subsisted on mule meat. First, Mrs. B. nixed my idea to purchase a brown rocking chair at Southern Traditions. (Her text was remarkable for its brevity: "No.")

Then I saw several or a hundred kids, hovering like drunken bees, about the Patrick Cleburne monument in the "pocket park," where their parents were having a picnic and smoking cigs. On Nov. 27, 1863, the "Stonewall of the West," outnumbered roughly 3 to 1 at Ringgold Gap, stuck it to Joseph Hooker, thus burnishing his already impressive resume. But I couldn't focus on the text on a grimy historical tablet because two of the brats children, stalking me like tigers, looked like they wanted to bite me on the leg.

Ugh.

And then I read a Nashville Street historical marker: Ringgold apparently was the Wedding Capital of the South (and still is, according to this.) Talk about tying me into knots. 

Dolly Parton
(Kristopher Harris)

In 1966, Dolly Parton was married in Ringgold in the First Baptist Church. "We picked Ringgold to get married because for some time in his youth, my husband lived on Missionary Ridge, right on the Tennessee-Georgia border just outside of Chattanooga,” Parton said. “I also liked the idea of ‘rings of gold’— Ringgold. I thought that sounded like a good sign.” The Parton-Carl Dean union has stood the test of time. The George Jones-Tammy Wynette marriage — the country music stars tied the knot in Ringgold in 1969 — did not. I can't say I am surprised — her hit single was D-I-V-O-R-C-E.

From 1858-2016, according to a town historical marker, 228,000 couples were married in Ringgold (present-day population roughly 3,600). Why? Quick turnaround on a marriage license and super-fast blood tests (no longer required in Georgia for a license). Damn, a testing facility in town even had a wedding chapel. "We got married there because that was where you would go to get married in a day," Jones told the local newspaper in 2003. "Everyone went there if you wanted to get married fast."

The chapel offers an Ultimate Romantic Package wedding reception for $525.

I vowed to dig a little deeper, to see if the historical marker had a ring of truth. So I walked across the street, where a sign on the small, brick building proclaimed "Ringgold Wedding Chapel of Love," and read another historical tablet.

Decades ago, Ringgold was a popular wedding destination for soldiers based at Fort Oglethorpe, near the Chickamauga battlefield. The post there served as a military base until 1947, when it was decommissioned. My research indicates one military man got married in Ringgold and then moved with his bride to Buffalo. (Sheesh, talk about starting a life together at rock bottom.) 

I pressed my iPhone against the window 
of the Ringgold Chapel of Love for this
peek at the inner sanctum. The RWC was 
closed on a Sunday afternoon.

In 1959, a Catoosa County officer insisted rules and procedures were in place so all the Ringgold weddings were on the up and up. "It takes the three-day waiting period for those under the legal age, and I enforce it," he told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. "I issue marriage licenses five and a half days a week — none at night, and none on the weekends. If somebody who has been drinking comes in for a license, they don't get it, and may wind up in the county jail."

Well, that sure beats marr... Ah, let's move along here. 😀 

In 1969 in Ringgold, former Louisiana governor/singer/song writer Jimmie Davis, who wrote "You Are My Sunshine," married Anna Carter Gordon of the "world-famous" Chuck Wagon Gang — that's a singing group, not some weirdly named criminal enterprise. To get hitched, couples went to either the county courthouse, a church, or one of the town's wedding chapels. 

Judging from the vibe, the wedding biz isn't what it used to be in Ringgold. But if the town packaged "Weird Wedding Tales of Ringgold" for TV, it could generate some buzz.    

"I have seen men in jail come in in shackles to apply for a license,” a county official told the Journal-Constitution in 2003. “We had one woman who was only 37 years old who had been married 13 times. One woman came through who was 78 years old marrying a man 25. She had on 3-inch heels, came in a limo, and invited us to go with them to Atlanta to party.” (Mom, WHY!?)  

K-9 Tub Time, the Ringgold Wedding Chapel
of Love's neighbor, is for mutts, not
post-wedding romance.

Because I'm not married to the Ringgold version of the truth on the historical markers, I deployed journalism skills honed long ago — I used Google — and discovered the Ringgold Wedding Chapel of Love offers a Ultimate Romantic Package wedding reception for $525. Personalized for a bride, groom, and five guests, it includes:

• Unity Sand or Unity Candle Ceremony 
• CD of 10 photos (Photography Basic Package)
• Ringgold Wedding Chapel Historical Certificate Bouquet & Boutonniere 
• Mini-reception with cake cutting (personalized 8-inch cake)
• Toasting ceremony (with sparkling juice)
• Two bottles of sparkling juice 
• Decorated reception room 
• Romantic first dance (Note: Italics added by blogger.)

Hmmmm ... wonder if they'd decorate a cake with an image of Cleburne. For those aiming higher, you may select the Ringgold Wedding Chapel Ceremony Doves ($75 for release of two). You can't make this stuff up. No word if  K-9 Tub Time —  a "place for God's creatures" and RWC's next door neighbor — offers romantic wedding specials. 

Needless to say, my trip home wasn't completed without a hitch. All my time in Ringgold added at least an hour's travel time and guaranteed a very frosty reception — pun intended — in Nashville. And I simply didn't have the heart to tell Mrs. B about my visit to the New York State Civil War monument next to Ringgold's water treatment plant.

Let's keep history alive. 

The New York State monument in Ringgold sits near the town's water treatment plant.

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SOURCES

-- Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Aug. 20, 1959, April 9, 2003

Where famous Grant photo was taken at Lookout Mountain

Was Ulysses Grant chomping on a cigar or a stick during this stop after the Nov. 24, 1863, U.S. Army victory?  (Oh, Lord, what a walk on the Cravens Trail here!)

Library of Congress

No talking: Exploring the Dunker Church at Antietam

You won't hear my voice on this video ... promise.

Wilderness weirdness: A president, Marines and a buried arm

An aerial view of Marines forming a profile on the Wilderness battlefield of President Harding.

Apparently not all of the Marines were pleased to be there, as these cropped enlargements
of the photo above show.  (Library of Congress)

Clad in white T-shirts, these Marines formed President Harding's "collar."

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In late September and early October 1921, 57 years after the Confederate and U.S. armies slaughtered each other in the Wilderness, U.S. Marines held maneuvers on the old Virginia battleground. The event included what you would expect when the military stages a sham battle with 5,000 "Devil Dogs": machine guns and mortars, military airplane flyovers, anti-aircraft guns, massive searchlights, a camouflaged tank, an "attack" on a hill ... and grunts forming a silhouette of their commander in chief for a photograph near the buried arm of a revered Confederate general.

At the Marine manuevers at the Wilderness battlefield
in 1921, President Harding (left) visits with a
Confederate veteran. (Library of Congress)

Yes, sometimes history can get a little weird.

Exuding a "man of the people" demeanor, President Warren Harding attended the event, staying overnight with the First Lady on the battlefield in the same military encampment as the troops. The Hardings ate a breakfast of ham and eggs in the officers' mess, but they didn't exactly rough it in the wilderness. Their large tent, the "canvas White House," included three rooms, hardwood floors, electric lights and a sunken tub with hot running water "electrically heated." Two Black servants of Fredericksburg families tended to the Hardings' needs. 

The president chatted with the few Civil War vets who attended the event, sang hymns with the Marines, reviewed troops, somehow endured the Marine Corps Band playing "There'll Be a Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight" and enthusiastically watched the war games.

"His neat, brown suit was dusty, he was ruddy faced, and down his cheeks trickled small streams of perspiration," a wire service reporter described the president's battlefield appearance. 

Florence Harding, who witnessed part of the battle, told the commanding general she thought there ought to be "a little more noise." But the Marines apparently were short on ammo and they didn't sing well, prompting one of them to say: "We ain't no Y.M.C.A. soldiers."

The event, however, did not disappoint the president. Harding loved his Marines, and they loved their commander in chief back.

"I shall not exaggerate a single word when I tell you that from my boyhood to the present hour, I have always had a profound regard for the United States marines and I am leaving camp today with my regard strengthened and a geniune affection added," he told them in a speech.

The Marines — who had marched to the battlefield from their base in Quantico, Va., roughly 40 miles — cheered loudly. (Or was the roar because their feet were sore?)

"The unaffected, human fashion in which [Harding] displayed interest in all the affairs of the camp bridged the gap of officialdom between the President of the United States and a buck private in the Marine Corps," the New York Times reported. "Each was well satisfied with the other."

President Harding and the First Lady pose with some of the few Civil War vets who attended.
(Library of Congress)

But back to that revered general's buried arm ... 

Near the end of their stay, the Hardings examined markers in the Lacy family graveyard behind Ellwood Manor, HQ for U.S. Army General Gouveneur Warren during the Battle of the Wilderness on May 5-7, 1864. Among them was a stone marking the burial site for the left arm of Stonewall Jackson, who lost the limb to amputation after his friendly fire wounding at Chancellorsville on May 2, 1863. 

Before the visit, Florence Harding admitted to "sort of a creepy feeling" knowing the arm was buried there. To put the cemetery "in a condition in honor of Jackson," Marines days earlier cleared weeds, added a white fence and repaired and decorated the monument atop the general's buried arm. (Who knows if the limb is still there?)

Marker for Stonewall Jackson's amputated left arm
at the Lacy Family Cemetery, near Ellwood Manor.

Before the Hardings departed for their three-hour drive back to the White House, hundreds of Marines quickly formed the profile likeness of the president in a field near Jackson's buried arm. Roughly a dozen Devil Dogs clad in white T-shirts became the "collar" of the president's shirt, undoubtedly a plum assignment. 

A photographer in a high platform shot images of the stunt, which brass hoped would be a surprise for the president. But word leaked. (Hey, who's that stray dude at upper left of the image?) Judging from their faces and body language (see cropped enlargements of photo above), some Marines preferred a good ass-chewing from their sergeant instead. 

Unsurprisingly, the "colossal living picture of himself" impressed Harding.

"He was extremely interested in this accomplishment," the Times wrote, "and watched the making of the picture with close attention." 

In this cropped enlargement, we spot the "stray dude." 

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SOURCES 

• Alexandria Gazette, Oct. 4, 1921
• New York Times, Oct. 3, 1921
• New York Tribune, Oct. 3, 1921
• The News Leader, Staunton, Va., Oct. 2, 1921
• The Pittsburgh Press, Oct. 2, 1921