I'm not sure if the story Mendoza wrote is wrong but he was just following the source he got the story from. On page 125, describing a scene in the campaign for Knoxville, Mendoza wrote, "In one incident that day, a Federal shell landed in the center of the 5th South Carolina Regiment as the men advanced toward the enemy, tearing off the arm of Pvt. Robert McKnight. The severed arm flew through the air and struck the head of Pvt. Lorraine Swann, killing him instantly. Lt. J.D. McConnell remembered that portions of Swann's brain had splattered on his coat." Mendoza sites James J. Baldwin III's The Struck Eagle: A Biography of Brigadier General Micah Jenkins, and a History of the Fifth South Carolina Volunteers and the Palmetto Sharpshooters.
Baldwin wrote on page 248, "One bizarre incident occurred during the fighting when a Federal shell landed in the midst of Company E of the Fifth Regiment, tearing off the arm of Robert McKnight. The severed arm then flew through the air, striking Lorraine Swann in the head and killing him instantly." Baldwin actually reprints his source at the bottom of the page, I believe because it is not a readily available source. The citation reads, "McConnell, 'Recollections' 6. McConnell wrote: [A]t Campbell's Station, [the Federals] shelled us . . . and one shell killed four men and tore off Bob McKnight's arm. It struck Swann in the head and tore it to pieces scattering his brains on my coat."
I believe that when McConnell says "It struck" the "it" is the shell. He had been talking about the shelling, how it had just killed four people and tore off another guys arm. I think he was just further explaining the damage caused by the shell. I'm not sure its possible for an arm to be severed off with enough force to then shatter a guy's skull. The physics of the event seem impossible. Why Baldwin interpreted McConnell this way I do not know, perhaps the rest of the paragraph reveals why. And then I'm not sure why Mendoza accepted this story as fact without some critical thinking on it. He could have easily included in his footnote that this did not seem plausible but that he got the story from Baldwin.
Here is the page from Mendoza, the quote is about a third of the way down the page, at the end of the paragraph that is continuing from the previous page.
And here is the page from Baldwin. The quote is about halfway down the page and the citation is the next to last citation.
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7 comments:
Very interesting to see how sources can be misunderstood and reprinted until something completely different is formed from there. I agree that would be a pretty ungodly thing for a shell to rip off someone's arm and be thrown with such velocity that it killed someone. The author should have looked into it before interpreting it that way.
Thanks for the info,
Chris
Great catch and thanks for putting the reference information on there--I am responding now in English since my Chinese is not so good..
I normally do not rain on anybody's parade but a limb violently ripped from a person can kill another. There are numerous accounts, even in more recent military conflicts, of oddities just like this one caused by explosions. Some of the projectiles range from jeep parts, cow manure, and yes even body parts (especially bones). Though rare, it does happen just like Bibles and belt buckets deflecting bullets. Weird things happen in battle.
I have no idea how cow manure could kill anyone. I realise the story in question is possible but it seems highly unlikely. And from reading the original source material I'm not convinced that the witness was talking about an arm doing the damage.
I'd like to know to how the person was killed by cow manure in battle. Where they so covered by it that it suffocated them to death? I've studied quite a bit of military history and never heard the death by cow manure story. I agree that bones flying could cause serious damage. But, as Nick pointed out in the original post the author made a mistake and misinterpreted what damage the cannonball exactly did and thats really the issue.
Chris
I am sorry that I do not only have a BA, but from my studies I have learned that bacteria lives in manure. If introduced to the interior of the body it can cause an infection and kill the soldier, especially in the time before penicillin like the Civil War.
I guess I was thinking of how cow manure as a projectile could kill. Certainly if it was introduced into an open wound it would have ill effects.
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