Valor Friday

Continuing last week’s theme on exceptionally long service…

As I’ve said previously, really, really long service was more common in the 19th Century (in America at least). In the 20th Century, mandatory retirement ages meant that it’s very difficult to spend more than four decades in uniform, but I have noted previous exceptions. My first subject though is an example of a long-serving officer from the 1800s.

Anyone who has attended West Point is likely to recognize the man pictured above. Sylvanus Thayer wasn’t the first Superintendent of the United States Military Academy at West Point (he was fifth), but he was one of the earliest men to lead the institution. Called “The Father of West Point”, he was known for bringing more stringent standards to the school, and was a proponent of engineering education.

Born to a gentleman farmer in Massachusetts in 1785, Thayer was sent to live with an uncle in New Hampshire when he was eight. His uncle was a veteran of the Revolutionary War, and the young Thayer made the acquaintance of Benjamin Pierce. Pierce had been an officer in the Continental Army during the Revolution, and was present during the Battle of Bunker Hill. Post-war he was a brigadier general commanding the New Hampshire state militia, and in the 1820s would twice be the state’s governor. Pierce was also the father of Franklin Pierce, the 14th President of the United States.

Thayer, with the intercession of General Pierce, received an appointment to West Point in 1807 from President Jefferson. Thayer had already graduated as valedictorian from Dartmouth College that same year. After one year at the USMA, Thayer graduated and was commissioned a second lieutenant in the US Army.

He served as a military engineer, building forts and fortifications. During the War of 1812, he led the fortification and defense of Norfolk, Virginia, and rose to the rank of major. In 1815 he was provided $5,000 (a very large sum for the time) to travel to France to study at the École Polytechnique, France’s school for military engineers. On his return to the States, he was made Superintendent of the USMA.

His tenure as commander of the school from 1817 to 1833 saw Thayer institute many reforms to militarize the school. His groundwork became many of the school’s long-standing traditions, through to today. He required cadets to maintain military bearing and appearance at all time, required high academic standards, participation in a summer encampment, and created the demerit system, among other changes. One of the more structural changes to the school saw him arrange the cadets into a standard four year program, with the cadets organized into the four-class system you’d recognize today. Many of the men who studied under his leadership during this time became key commanders during the Mexican-American and Civil Wars.

Thayer resigned as Superintendent in 1833 after disagreeing with President Jackson, and returned to the Army Corps of Engineers. He spent the next several decades as the chief engineer for the Boston area. For a year he served as the commander of the Corps of Engineers from December 1857 to December 1858. That same year he was placed on an extended military leave for medical reasons, not surprising as he was 73 years old.

Thayer officially retired on 1 June 1863 from the Army as a colonel. He was retired under the first act of legislation requiring the retirement of officers with more than 45 years of service. While he technically served during the Civil War, he had not seen active service during the conflict. He had served our country for 55 years.

In retirement, Thayer donated a whopping $40,000 to Dartmouth College to establish the Thayer School of Engineering. In 1864, at the request of President Lincoln, Congress awarded Thayer the rank of brevet brigadier general in recognition for his long and faithful service. A brevet promotion ranked behind only the Medal of Honor, and was the highest honor available for non-combat service.

Thayer died in 1872 at the age of 87.

Louis Mountbatten is the very picture of a British nobleman. His official title was Admiral of the Fleet Louis Francis Albert Victor Nicholas Mountbatten, 1st Earl Mountbatten of Burma, and his title was followed with an impressive list of post-nominals which denote the many awards and honors he earned (they include KG GCB OM GCSI GCIE GCVO DSO ADC PC FRS).

Mountbatten was born into royalty. He was born Prince Louis of Battenberg. Among his relations you can find numerous European royals from across the continent. His great grandmother was Queen Victoria of the UK (who was his godmother at his baptism in 1900). His godfather at his baptismal was Tsar Nicholas II of Russia (an uncle of his by marriage and a second cousin by blood).

The British Battenbergs anglicised the family name to Mountbatten due to the anti-German sentiment during World War I. By this time, Louis had attended the Royal Naval College and begun a career as a Royal Navy officer. He was just 16 in 1916 when he was posted as a midshipman to the battlecruiser HMS Lion. By war’s end he had spent 10 days on the Western Front in July 1918 and was a sub-lieutenant and second-in-command of P-Class sloop HMS P. 31.

Mountbatten survived the post-war military cuts and became a career officer. He was predominately a communications officer. He was a well regarded officer and obviously well connected politically. He steadily rose the ranks during the interwar years, becoming a captain in 1937. He commanded a destroyer at the start of World War II.

With the outbreak of war once again, Captain Mountbatten was given command of the 5th Destroyer Flotilla, which became famous for their wartime exploits. He twice had his flagship torpedoed by the Germans, with the sinking of his flagship by dive bombers during the Battle of Crete. This incident would become the basis for Noel Coward’s 1942 film In Which We Serve. During this time, Mountbatten twice was mentioned in despatches (roughly equivalent to an American Bronze Star Medal w/ “V”) and was given the Distinguished Service Order (at the time the second-level decoration for combat valor behind only the Victoria Cross for an officer of his rank).

He paid a courtesy visit to Pearl Harbor, three months before the Japanese attack on the base, and accurately predicted the surprise attack and noted the base’s lack of preparation for such. He was in Churchill’s good graces, and was made a commodore and given command of the Combined Operations Headquarters. He planned the successful Bruneval Raid and St Nazaire Raid. By March 1942 he was an acting vice admiral with the honorary ranks of lieutenant general in the British Army and air marshal in the RAF, giving him the proper authorities for combined operations.

Mountbatten’s role in planning the disastrous Dieppe Raid tarnished his rising star a bit. He next was appointed Supreme Allied Commander South East Asia Command. This came with a promotion to acting admiral. He oversaw the recapture of Burma. At war’s end he was made a Knight Companion in the Order of the Garter (Britain’s most senior order of chivalry) and made Viscount Mountbatten of Burma (a victory title lordship). For the rest of his life, Mountbatten honored the men he’d lost in his command by shunning the Japanese. In accordance with his will, no Japanese representatives were permitted at his funeral.

Mounbatten was made the final Viceroy of India, during the time of the country’s independence from Britain, and oversaw the region’s return to self-rule. Initially charged with maintaining a united India, he saw a partition of India into India and Pakistan as necessary, and thus the British territory split into two countries in 1948. His legacy in the two countries is mixed. India has a fond view of him and welcomed him back on state visits as a former governor general. Pakistan meanwhile declared him persona non grata and forbid his transiting their airspace.

He returned to European service and held command roles in the Royal Navy and NATO. He was then First Sea Lord and Chief of the Naval Staff from April 1955 to July 1959, the position which his father had held some forty years before. He was then Chief of Defence Staff, overseeing the unification of the three branches of the British Armed Forces (Royal Navy, Royal Air Force, and the Army) into a single Ministry of Defence.

He is the man who arranged for the first meeting between his nephew Prince Phillip and the then-Princess Elizabeth (who would become Queen in 1953), which eventually led to their marriage. The first born son of that union, the future King Charles III, claims Mountbatten as an honorary grandfather, with Mountbatten helping to advise and bring up the young royal.

During summers, Mountbatten would take holiday at Classiebawn Castle, his summer home in County Sligo, Northern Ireland. In 1978 the Irish Republican Army allegedly attempted to shoot Mountbatten when he was on his boat, but poor weather thwarted the sniper. On 27 August 1979 an IRA member had secreted a bomb onto Mountbatten’s boat. When he and his party took the boat off the dock, the package was detonated, destroying the boat. Nearby fishermen came to the rescue, and Mountbatten was pulled alive, but with his legs blown off, from the water. He died from his wounds before he reached shore. Also killed in the attack were two of his grandsons (aged 14 and 15) and one other member of the party. The rest of those on the boat were seriously wounded.

During his time in uniform from 1913 to 1965 he had collected awards and honors like candy, with a Goebbels or MacArthur like zeal. He had received dozens of medals and honors during his more than 50 years in service from more than a dozen countries. He had also been appointed as a personal aide-de-camp to three British monarchs (Edward VIII, George VI, and Elizabeth II. This entitled him to wear the monograms of all three royal cyphers on his epaulettes, an exceptionally unusual distinction.

Returning to the United States, Christian Schlit was born in 1895 in Illinois. He enlisted into the Marine Corps in June 1917, just after American entry to World War I.

Schlit was assigned to the 1st Marine Aeronautical Company in the Azores. The seaplane squadron was the first American air unit of any branch to see overseas deployment during the war. After the war, Schlit was a corporal when he was sent to flight training in 1919. Graduating as one of the pioneers of Marine Corps aviation, he was commissioned a second lieutenant a few days after earning his wings of gold.

In the early 1920s he saw overseas service in Haiti and the Dominican Republic. Serving in Norfolk, he returned to deployed service in 1927, going to Nicaragua.

On 6 June 1928 two patrols of Marines were ambushed in Quilalí. Completely surrounded and taking heavy casualties, Schlit (a lieutenant at the time) volunteered to fly his observation plane into the besieged position to bring the men supplies, a replacement commanding officer, and to evacuate the wounded. He did this not once, which would be brave enough on its own, but a full ten times over the day and the following two days.

There had been no airstrip to land, so the Marines destroyed and burned part of the city to clear a makeshift runway. Schlit’s O2U Corsair biplane had no brakes, so after touching down, the Marines would have to hang off the plane’s wing and drag their feet to get it to stop. Schlit not only took hostile fire on his landings and takeoffs, but had to contend with low cloud cover, mountains, and the unpredictable air currents from that terrain. His award citation calls these acts “almost superhuman skill combined with personal courage of the highest order.”

Schlit received the Medal of Honor for his actions in Nicaragua. He served in Quantico after that, then was an air liaison to the British in the opening months of World War II. He was sent to the Pacific Theater of the war once the US joined. He served at Guadalcanal and in the Solomon Islands Campaign. He later served at Peleliu and on Okinawa.

During the Korean War, Schlit commanded the 1st Marine Aircraft Wing in Korea from July 1951. He returned from the war in April 1952, and eventually rose to the rank of lieutenant general and was Director of Aviation at Marine Corps Headquarters. He retired 1 April 1957, and was given a tombstone promotion to full general. He had spent just shy of 40 years in uniform.

Schlit died in 1987 at the age of 91 in Norfolk, Virginia. In addition to the Medal of Honor, he was a recipient of the Legion of Merit w/ “V”, two Distinguished Flying Crosses, the Bronze Star Medal w/ “V”, five Air Medals, and two Presidential Unit Citations, among many other awards.

 

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