Valor Friday

Sergeant Benjamin Levy

We talk a lot about “Firsts.” The first man in space is a name that will likely be remembered for all eternity (it was Yuri Gagarin). The first to fly. The first to sail around the world. The first Pope. The first king of a unified Great Britain. These are the things that we remember. Trailblazers. The people who go “first” set a bar that others will surely attempt to exceed, but they will eternally be judged by how well they surpassed the first.

In the history of the American Medal of Honor, which has been received by about 3,500 men (and one woman), there are several trends one can see. More than 2,000 were to those of Irish ancestry, which accounts for 58% of the total awards, and makes Irishmen the most represented group of MoH recipients. At least 764 recipients were foreign-born.

One group that is well under-represented is Jewish people, with only 17 men who have received the honor. I have talked about the valor of some of these men before, such as two of my personal heroes Captain (Doctor) Benjamin Solomon and First Lieutenant (Rabbi) Alexander Goode (one of the famed Four Chaplains).

Now I’ll tie these two lines of thought together; Today’s subject is the first Jewish Medal of Honor recipient. With so few MoH recipients being Jews, you might be surprised that the first Jew to be pinned with our nation’s highest honor was also one of the first period. He’s also one of the youngest recipients ever.

Benjamin Levy would be just 17 when he earned the Medal of Honor during the Civil War. As I’ve discussed previously, most of the Civil War MoH awards were made decades after the event. Before the Army put regulations in place regarding the award, some men simply submitted themselves for the award with little to no corroboration. While many, if not most, of the Medal of Honors received years or decades (or even more than a century and a half) after the war were very rightfully earned. I still see contemporaneous awards to have a little more meaning behind them, particularly for a low ranking enlisted man. Levy’s award was made on the recommendation of the officers above him, at the time that it happened. Which is to say that he was probably considered by those officers to be among the move brave and gallant men in a company or regiment of brave men.

Levy had enlisted into the 1st New York Infantry Regiment. The 1st NY Infantry was just the start of the considerable contribution that New York would make to the effort to maintain the Union. A staggering 148 infantry regiments, more than a dozen cavalry regiments, and dozens of artillery regiments would be raised and mustered into the Union Army. Some of these were for very short terms (as brief as three months), but most were more long term formations. The standard enlistment at the time was usually for a period of two years, which is what the men of the 1st NY Infantry agreed to in the spring of 1861.

The 1st NY Infantry would see numerous battles in that two years, including the Battles of Big Bethel, Oak Grove, Glendale, Malvern Hill, Chantilly, Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, and the Second Battle of Bull Run. From a peak strength of 842 men in 1862, down to almost 400 when they mustered out, 113 men never came home. Seventy-nine of those were due to enemy action and the rest to disease.

Benjamin Levy was born in 1845 in New York City, but his home of record was Newport News, Virginia when he enlisted. Being only 16 years old, he enlisted as a musician and held the rank of drummer boy, equivalent to a private. He enlisted in October 1861, several months after the regiment was mustered into service, so it’s most probable that he joined when the regiment was training at Camp Hamilton over the summer and fall of 1861 in Newport News, VA. Hundreds of recruits had joined the regiment over the winter 1861 into spring 1862 before they saw their first combat action.

Battle of Hampton Roads

The first shots Levy and the men of the 1st NY Infantry would hear in anger were on 8 March, 1862. The Confederates attempted to break the Union naval blockage at Hampton Roads with their ironclad warship CSS Virginia as the primary element of their thrust. The rebels faced the ironclad USS Monitor and several other ships. While the results of the battle would be inconclusive, it was noteworthy for being the first naval battle between two ironclads. As such, it attracted worldwide attention.

Levy earned a reputation for bravery and quick thinking early in his service. As a drummer boy in garrison, his main duty involved being a dispatch runner for generals. He was in this role one day aboard a steamboat named Express. They were towing a schooner when a Confederate gunboat named Seabird attacked them. Unable to make an escape with the ship in tow, Levy grabbed his knife and cut the dead weight loose. Now unencumbered, Express was able to make her escape. In return, Levy’s actions were commended by several officers.

On 10 June, the regiment would see their first ground combat at the Battle of Big Bethel, where the Union troops lost to the Confederates. Two weeks later, on 25 June, the Seven Days Battles would commence. As the name implies, it was a series of individual battles fought over a period of a week. The 1st NY Infantry would participate in the Battles of Oak Grove (25 June), Glendale (30 June), and Malvern Hill (1 July). It was at Glendale that Levy, a drummer boy would march into action.

The role of the musician, principally the bugler, in a unit at this time was to direct the movement of troops over the din of battle. The drummer’s job was more for when the unit was on the move, setting and keeping the marching cadence. Musician is therefore a “safe” job to hold, in that you were not expected to carry arms into action. Your instrument was your weapon, and you’d be wielding it from a position of relative safety near the unit’s command elements.

It was at Glendale where Levy would lose that weapon. During the heavy combat actions, Levy’s drum was destroyed. Levy’s tent mate, Private Jacob Turnbull was nearby, ill with malaria. Turnbull, was ready to give up, so Levy took Turnbull’s weapon and joined the fray.

Jumping into a heated battle when you don’t have to is brave enough, but Levy took it even further to really drive the point home. Shortly after joining the fight, Levy watched as several color bearers fell to heavy enemy fire. Running to one set of colors, Levy lifted them back up. Moments later, the final color bearer, Charley Mahorn, went down with a bullet wound to the chest. Levy grabbed those colors too, and carried them all back to the command post. When he emerged from the woods with colors hoisted over both shoulders, General Kearny is said to have promoted him to regimental color sergeant on the spot.

As key as the bugle is for directing troops over the noise of combat, so too are the unit’s colors. They serve two main roles in battle. First, they serve as a guidepost for men to follow. If the colors keep moving forward, so to does the foot soldier who can’t hear any orders. If the colors suddenly start retreating, that’s a sign that you too might want to un-ass the area. Second, the colors are the principal emblem of a unit. They are the flag under which they march, train, and move into battle. Losing a unit’s colors to the enemy has, since at least the time of the Roman Legions, has been demoralizing to a unit.

It is because of these reasons that a man who takes up the colors when they fall is hailed a hero. It’s especially brave as the enemy is also aware of the value in taking a unit’s colors, hence why Mr. Mahorn had been a target for an enemy sharpshooter, and can easily see the man carrying them. This is to say that the color bearer stands out. A man grabbing fallen colors will instantly be the prime target of the enemy.

Before Levy had picked up the colors, four color sergeants and 11 corporals composed the color guard. All of them had fallen, though only one apparently was not wounded and had just given up his post. They were killed or wounded in quick succession, over a span of about 10 minutes. That’s how important the colors were to infantry units at the time.

Original 1862 pattern US Army Medal of Honor

For his actions that day, Levy received the Medal of Honor in 1865. He was the only man of the 1st NY Infantry to receive the award. He was slightly wounded in his rush with the colors, but was present the very next day for the Battle of Malvern Hill. The Union troops’ colors had become so dusty after several days of fighting that the Union artillery couldn’t distinguish friend from foe. The big Union guns were hitting the Union line, not the rebels.

Levy, as a dispatch runner, was ordered to go out and unfurl a clean flag. Following the colonel’s order, he went out, in plain view of the enemy, and hoisted the colors. Enemy sharpshooters immediately started firing on him. They hit the flag pole and struck some of Levy’s personal gear, but he was amazingly unharmed. With the new colors out, the Union artillery started firing the right way.

Levy was given that meritorious promotion to sergeant, which was made official in November 1862. He honorably mustered out in May 1863 with all the other men of the 1st NY Infantry. In January 1864 though he re-enlisted as a private into the 40th New York Infantry Regiment.

The 40th NY Infantry had also been raised in 1861, and remained in service through the end of the conflict. They’d seen heavy action throughout the war, including most famously at Gettysburg. They tallied the second-highest casualty rate of any New York regiment. They lost more than 400 men dead to enemy action or disease. Their final act while in federal service was to take part in the victory celebration in Washington, D.C. They took part in the two-day parade of troops (80,000 on 23 May 1865 and 65,000 the following day) down Pennsylvania Avenue in DC. This was the origin of the Memorial Day holiday.

Shortly after Levy joined the 40th NY Infantry, he was wounded quite severely in action on 5 May 1864 at the Battle of the Wilderness. His injury was described at the time as, “The thigh bone was fractured, wound subsequently attacked with gangrene.” After his brutal leg wound, Levy was captured by the enemy. He was held captive for two weeks, in deplorable conditions, until the sick and wounded were re-captured by the advancing Union line.

On 1 May 1865, Levy received his Medal of Honor. President Lincoln assigned him 10 days later to a special volunteer force, but Levy was against mustered out on 31 May due to disability.

Levy was twice married, had five sons and a daughter, and worked as a clerk at a customs house in New York City. He passed away in July 1921 at age 76. Levy’s older brother Robert (b.1843-d.1926) also served in the Union Army. He was a private in the 58th New York Infantry Regiment and was wounded in the Third Battle of Chattanooga.

Category: Army, Historical, Medal of Honor, Valor, We Remember