DEATH ON THE KC RANCH - 4/9/1892

4/9/1892 - In Wyoming, what historians will one day call the Johnson County War (it is also referred to as War on the Powder River and the Wyoming Range War), a conflict between large cattle companies and homesteaders and alleged rustlers over land, water rights, and livestock, violently explodes at the small "KC" Ranch of cowboy Nathan David "Nate" Champion. 

Champion

Nate is born into the large and respected family of John and Naomi Champion on September 29, 1857 near the town of Leander, Texas, in the state's Williamson County, about 22 miles miles northwest of the city of Austin.  His father the sheriff of the county, his Aunt Hattie a hard woman capable of driving her cattle to market in Abilene, Kansas in 1871, Nate grows up among seventeen brothers and sisters near the Wild West town of Round Rock, a locale known for Comanche raids, the nearby Chisholm Trail, and the 1878 gun battle between Texas Rangers and the outlaw band of Sam Bass in which Deputy Sheriff A. W. Grimes, bandit Seaborne Barnes, and gang leader Bass are all killed.  Learning the outdoor skills required to survive the region, by 1881, 24-year-old Nate is a top cowboy, and as such, accompanied by his twin brother, Dudley, he takes a herd of Longhorn cattle north along the Goodnight-Loving Trail to Cheyenne, Wyoming.  Enchanted by the area, the brothers decide to stay and soon become top hands on several Wyoming ranches, and begin dreaming of one day having a small ranch of their own.

L-R ... Martin Tisdale, Dudley Champion,

And Nate Champion

But Wyoming of the 1880s and 1890s can be just as easily a nightmare for it's inhabitants as the territory undergoes the growing pains of transforming from a region of public domain open to both ranchers and homesteaders, into a place of boundaries and settlements, where water rights are paramount and the once common practice of branding orphan or stray cattle as one's own morphs into an act of criminal rustling.  Increasingly, as the Champion brothers put down roots in the Powder River Country of northern Wyoming, they find themselves siding with the homesteaders and "rustlers" against the big ranches of wealthy owners that organize themselves into the Wyoming Stock Growers Association (WSGA) which meets at the Cheyenne Club in the bustling town of Cheyenne and organizes the cattle industry into scheduled roundups, cattle shipments, decides who can participate, has the power to push through the legislature the Maverick Act in which unbranded cattle on the open range automatically belong to the association, and employees a private army of "range detectives" to police their holdings against rustling.  When the winter of 1886-1897, known as the the "Big Die-Up" hits the region and horribly mauls the cattle business (the region will be hit by a series of blizzards that drop temperatures to -50 degrees and pile snow into drifts in places above ten feet in height) the gloves come off for both sides in a series of incidents that escalate into murders and retaliation killings.

The Cheyenne Club

The Big Die-Up

Typical of the greed and murderous nature of the Johnson County War are two of it's first deaths.  On July 20, 1889, range detective George Henderson, local rancher, Albert John Bothwell, and a handful of their cohorts take captive at gunpoint, 29-year-old Ellen "Ella" Liddy Watson and her husband, 38-year-old local businessman Jim Averell, accuse the pair of rustling (she has a bill of sales for the cattle in question and it is no coincidence that Bothwell wants the water rights to the 320 acre property the pair is occupying, has been turned down numerous times in his attempts to buy the land, and is incensed at the temerity of being bested by a woman), and without any kind of a trial, set the couple air dancing from a nearby tree along a canyon of the Sweetwater River (where they are left dangling for two days, the only hanging of a female in Wyoming history).  Then, as if that isn't bad enough, Ellen, a cook, housekeeper, waitress, seamstress, and shrewd business woman, is transformed into an outlaw prostitute known as Cattle Kate by the Cheyenne Daily Sun and other newspapers controlled by the WSGA, while Averell, a widower, general store and saloon owner, postmaster (appointed by President Grover Cleveland), notary public (appointed by Wyoming governor Thomas Moonlight) and Justice of the Peace (at the behest of the Carbon County Board of Commissioners), becomes an avaricious pimp for his paramour.  Not surprisingly, when the men responsible for the lynching are rounded up by Sheriff Frank Hadsell and Deputy Sheriff Phil Watson (no relation to Ellen), arrested, and put before a grand jury (half of which are cattlemen belonging to the WSGA), witnesses start vanishing or turning up dead, none of the participants are found guilty of any crime, and as expected, Bothwell acquires the land of the couple he helped hang.

Watson

Averell

Hanging Tree

Bothwell

Unhappy at what happened to Watson and Averell, the enemies of the Cheyenne Club strike back, killing range detective Henderson near Sweetwater Creek in October of 1890.  That killing in turn causes the WSGA to lynch even more "rustlers" ... a horse trader named Tom Waggoner is hung, a friend of Waggoner called Jimmy the Butcher is murdered, and range detective Tom Smith kills a suspected rustler and is indicted for murder, but then freed by the political power of the Association   Those acts in turn cause the small ranchers and homesteaders to form their own "protective," creating the Northern Wyoming Farmers and Stock Growers' Association (NWFSGA).  Seeking a leader worthy of the new association, the group elects a man who isn't even yet a member and that refuses the post when he hears about his office, Nathan Champion.  Not caring, when the WSGA hears of Champion's election, he becomes the number one name on a list of "rustlers" (also on the list of 70 names is the Johnson County Sheriff, all his deputies, three county commissioners, a newspaper editor, a prominent Buffalo, Wyoming merchant, and an assortment of local cowboys, small ranchers, and homesteaders) they have marked for assassination (he will be christened the "King of Rustlers"), and the first target of their head gunman, a former Texas outlaw and cattle rustler named Joe Horner, who as a "lawman," becomes Sheriff of Johnson County, Wyoming, Frank Canton.

Horner/Canton

The first assassination attempt on Champion's life takes place on November 1, 1891.  Cowboying for W. H. Hall, Champion and Ross Gilbertson are sleeping peacefully in a line shack on Middle Fork of the Powder River, when they are visited by four gunmen of the WSGA ... Frank Canton, Joe Elliot, Tom Smith, and Fred Coates.  Creeping up the small log structure containing a single bunk adjacent to the cabin's only door, the assassins, attempting to take captive the two men for a later "message" lynching, burst inside just before dawn with their guns drawn as one calls out, "Give up.  We have got you this time!"  Awake immediately, Champion calmly asks the intruders, "What's the matter, boys?" as he grabs his revolver from beneath a pillow and opens fire simultaneously with being fired upon.  In the exchange of lead, Champion receives a powder burn to the face by a near miss and another slug plows into the bedding between the cowboy and Gilbertson while mortally wounding one man in the side, nicking another gunman in the arm, and sending the would-be killers fleeing into the darkness where in their haste to find safety from Champion's gunfire, they leave behind four overcoats, their horses, a Winchester rifle, and a trail of blood.  Chasing after the men, Champion will be driven back into the cabin by Joe Elliot fired bullets (later, Elliot will be arrested and charged with attempted murder but will have the charges dropped when the only witness to the affair, Gilbertson, will decide to cowboy under more peaceful circumstances and disappears).

Nate On Horse Nearest Chuckwagon And Dudley

Farthest Away

Champion wanted dead, and many others in the county too, in the spring of 1892, the Cheyenne Club comes up with a plan to invade Johnson County with a gang of hired gunmen and remove all their "people" problems in one fell swoop, funded by 100 members contributing $1,000 each to a solution.  Recruiting 23 gunmen from Paris, Texas for pay of $5 a day, a $3,000 "accident" insurance policy, and a bonus of $50 for every "rustler" killed, a small force is soon put together under the command of former Civil War major, Frank Wolcott, and gunman Frank Canton, that includes the Texas "regulators," a group of WSGA range detectives, State Senator Bob Tisdale, State Water Commissioner W. J. Clarke, Wyoming statehood organizers, William C. Irvine and Hubert Teshemacher, surgeon Charles Bingham Penrose, and a newspaper reporter from the Cheyenne Daily Leader, and another from the prestigious Chicago Herald, over fifty men in all.  In Denver, Colorado the Texas contingent of killers are gifted with new Colt revolvers and high caliber .45-90 and .38-55 Winchester rifles and board a special train bound for Casper, Wyoming.  Arriving in Casper in the 4:00 in the morning darkness, and during a snow storm, the Texans and Wyoming men mount up on horses and in three freight wagons, and ride off north towards Johnson County, cutting telegraph lines as they go so their invasion will remain a secret until it is too late for anyone to deal with.  The killer's first destination is 150 miles away, the small "KC" Ranch of some two hundred head of cattle belonging to their #1 enemy, Nate Champion.

Wolcott

Most Of The Invaders

Arriving in the early morning darkness of Saturday as snow continues to fall, on April 9, 1892, the Regulators surround the small cabin that serves as the KC Ranch headquarters, a low roofed, four room wooden box with a front and back door, just south of the Middle Fork of the Powder River, and new rifles and revolves at the ready, wait for dawn.  There are four men inside, two trappers passing through the area that have been invited to spend the night inside and out of the elements, Bill Walker and Ben Jones, and two men on the WSGA's death list, Nate Champion, and his ranching partner, Reuben "Nick" Ray.  They have spent the night playing cards, drinking and singing to the accompaniment of Walker's fiddle playing, and all are unaware the death is lurking outside.  Thinking he will help prepare breakfast, shortly after dawn, Jones, a former chuck wagon cook, steps out of the cabin carrying a bucket and heads for a nearby creek to get water.  Not on the hit list, out of site of the cabin he is made captive and gagged.  When about a half hour goes by without Jones returning, Walker goes outside to find out what is keeping his partner, and he too is made a prisoner.  When Ray steps outside a few moments later he receives a different greeting and is immediately fired on by 17-year-old Starl "Texas Kid" Tucker and is hit in the leg.  Going down from his wound, others begin firing on the fallen man as he crawls towards the cabin as Champion appears in the doorway and empties his rifle at gunfire coming from the barn, jumps back inside, reloads, and then starts firing on assassins firing from the creek bed at the same time as he pulls Ray inside the cabin (Starl will shout to his confederates, "By God, he may be a rustler, but he is also a he-man with plenty of guts!").  Unable to stop the bleeding from the leg wound, Ray dies around 9:00 in the morning and Champion is alone against the Regulators, using his rifle and pistol, along with Ray's weapons and those left behind by the two trappers.  .      

KC Ranch Headquarters

Ambush to siege, moving about the cabin, which is struck by hundreds of Regulator bullets, firing from the doorway and windows, Champion keeps the killers outside at bay for hours, killing four men and wounding several others (accounts of his shooting vary), while also amazingly keeping a pencil written, first-hand account of his fight in a small red tally book that will find its way into the hands of Chicago Herald reporter Sam T. Clover after the battle.  Among the words Champion leaves behind are: Me and Nick Ray was getting breakfast when the attack took place ... They are still shooting and are all around the house ... Boys, there are bullets coming in like hail ... It is now about two hours since the first shot ... Nick is shot but not dead yet.  I must go and wait on him ... Nick is dead.  He died about 9 o'clock ... I don't think they intend to let me get away this time ... Boys, I feel pretty lonesome just now.  I wish there was someone with me so we could watch all sides at once ... I hear them splitting wood.  I guess they are going to fire the house tonight.  I think I will make a break when night comes, if alive ... There was a man in a buckboard and one on horseback that just passed.  They fired on them as they went by.  I don't know if they killed them or not ... They are shooting at the house now.  If I had a pair of glasses, I believe I would know some of those men ... Shooting again.  I think they will fire the house this time ... The house is all fired.  Goodbye, boys, if I never see you again ... Nathan D. Champion

Cowboying - Champion Standing At Left, Jack

Flagg Is Seated At Right

The beginning of the end of the battle takes place when, headed north, for the homesteader friendly town of Buffalo (sixty miles and several hours away), Champion neighbor O. H. "Jack" Flagg (another name on the Regulators death list) and his 17-year-old stepson, Alonzo Taylor, stumble onto the scene in mid-afternoon.  Not immediately fired on because the Texas gunman nearby don't recognize Flagg, the two men are shot at when they refuse to stop and unsuccessfully pursued by seven gunmen, but escape when they abandon the wagon they are driving to town at a nearby bridge and use one of the draft horses (the other is wounded) to ride off to town.  Wagon grabbed by the gunmen, it is filled with alternating layers of hay and pitch pine posts, then set aflame, becoming a huge rolling torch that five men killers push across 75 yards of open ground while other gunmen keep Champion under cover shooting into the windows and front door of the cabin.  Wagon torch placed against the cabin, the structure is soon ablaze, with thick smoke pouring out of every opening.  Signing his name to his tally book and slipping the account of his battle into his vest pocket, Champion crawls to the only part of the building not yet on fire, a storage dugout off the kitchen, and readies himself for a last attempt at escaping ... a dash through smoke and snow blowing south towards a ravine 100 yards away.  Revolver fully loaded and a round waiting for firing in his rifle (actually the rifle of Frank Canton, confiscated when the man fled his attempt at assassinating Champion back in November), as the cabin collapses, to shouts of "There he goes," the 35-year-old cowboy and rancher bursts out of the back door of burning structure.  Running on stocking feet, with bullets striking all around him, he miraculously makes it to the ravine untouched, but it is as far as he will go.  Waiting in the land cut for just such an occurrence are six of the Texas gunmen 

Champion

Enemies at close range, Champion gets off one rifle shot before being hit by a round that shatters his left elbow and knocks his rifle out of his hand, then by another bullet, this time to the chest that puts him on his back as a helpless target ... a helpless target that the WSGA killers turn into a holed hunk of human Swiss cheese.  Down and finally out, Champion will be found to have been hit by 28 bullets.  Stepping forward, Canton recovers his rifle will stating, "He came out fighting and died game."  Game but not above insulting a final time, a lettered placard is placed on his chest that reads, "CATTLE THIEVES, BEWARE!" (while Clover takes the tally book, blood soaked and holed by a rifle round, out of Champion's pocket).  Eyes open to the sky he will never see again, left where he has fallen, Champion's corpse is fed on by wild animals for two days, but his last stand and death will not have been in vain (his remains will be buried in the town that springs up nearby and honors the name of his ranch, Kaycee, Wyoming ... in the Willow Grove Cemetery).

Drawing Of Where Champion Fell

Tombstone

  Delayed an entire day taking Champion out, the cattle baron's invaders completely lose the element of surprise they had worked so hard to achieve.  Word of the WSGA killers spreads like a prairie fire (thanks to Flagg and his stepson reaching Trabling's Postoffice, about 16 miles south of Buffalo, and KC Ranch neighbor, Terrence Smith, who alerts the citizens of Buffalo of the dangerous threat that is headed their way.  Multiple posses converging on the invaders, eventually over 300 men, led by Buffalo Sheriff William G. "Red" Angus (also on the WSGA list of those to be killed) surround the invaders at the T.A. Ranch on Crazy Woman Creek and the second siege of the war begins, with an ending that might have been the same if gunman Mike Shonsey hadn't escaped and gotten word to WSGA friendly Governor Barber, who in turn notifies President Benjamin Harrison and asks for help in quelling an "insurrection," which is soon provided in the form of Troops C, D, and H of the 6th United States Cavalry Regiment out of nearby Fort McKinney, under the command of Colonel J.J. Van Horn.  Killers turned captives, though charges are filed, the corruption and cash of the cattle barons allows everyone to eventually go free (released on bond by money from the Cheyenne Club, the Texans return home and never come back to Wyoming, and bills kill the poor county's ability to prosecute several individuals like Frank Canton, who leaves the state and is allowed to continue his career as a "lawman" in the wilds of the Indian Territory by "The Hanging Judge," Isaac Charles Parker) though for many of the homesteaders attacked, the animosity never really ends.

Sheriff Angus

The TA Ranch

Rounded Up Assassins

The war finally pitters out with a handful of killings that include U.S. Marshal George Wellman, a rider for the WSGA being ambushed and killed by unknown locals outside the town of Buffalo on May 10, 1892, a "Buffalo" soldier of the 9th Cavalry (which has replaced the 6th Cavalry in trying to bring peace to the area) is killed and two other soldiers wounded in a gunfight with a group of settlers in the town of Suggs, Wyoming, and in the fall of 1892, range detectives gun down two alleged rustlers east of the Big Horn River.  Sadly, Dudley Champion, out of the state on business when his brother is murdered, becomes the conflict's last victim on May 24, 1893.  Riding through the county seeking cowboy work, fifteen miles outside the town of Manville, Wyoming, Dudley comes upon Mike Shonsey, the same man that rode with the Regulators and got word to the governor that the WSGA force was trapped at the T.A. Ranch, and the same man that Nate Champion believed was involved in the night attack he survived in November of 1891.  Recognizing Dudley as Nate's brother, believing he is about to be attacked, without discussion, Shonsey brings his rifle up and shoots the cowboy out of his saddle.  Turning himself in after the killing, Shonsey claims self-defense and is released by local authorities of Douglas, Wyoming, decides the state is too dangerous, and relocates to Nebraska where he becomes a successful stock grower.

Wellman

Shonsey

War long over, whatever the reality of his long ago time in Johnson County, Nate Champion is still remembered in the area as a western hero of epic proportions.  The subject of books and magazine articles, and is played on film by Academy Award winning actor, Christopher Walken in loosely based box-office bomb about the Johnson County War, director Michaek Cimino's "Heaven's Gate."  But his finest tribute might just be the statue created in Nate's likeness by local Buffalo artist, D. Michael Thomas.  Standing in front of the Jim Gatchell Memorial Museum in Buffalo, Wyoming, the town Champion's last stand helped saved back in 1892, erected in 2008, Nate is depicted on the last run of his life, captured forever in bronze trying to make the safety of an unsafe ravine near his cabin ... a hero.

Sold Out Small Version

Historical Marker - Nate Champion's Last Run

On Fort Street Near Adams Avenue

Run, Nate, Run!

       

 

      

 

 

SEAMAN CALVIN GRAHAM - CHILD HERO

4/3/1930 - Certainly a vastly different United States that will come together as one in its crusade against Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, and Imperial Japan after the "Day of Infamy" sneak attack on Pearl Harbor that takes place on December 7, 1941 ... a war with thousands upon thousands of American heroes, thanks to Griffin football teammate Nelson Chamberlain for bringing this story to my attention, the tale of the youngest U.S. serviceman to fight in the war, Texan Calvin Leon Graham.

 

Graham

Born in Canton, a small town east of Dallas in the Van Zandt County of Texas, on April 3 of 1930, Graham is a member of a troubled family of seven children that face the poverty of the Depression era, the death of their father, and abuse from a caustic step-father when their mother remarries.  Family moved to the town of Crockett, north of Houston, Graham begins attending school and starts dreaming of escape and a better future.  While still attending school, escape begins for the youth when he runs away from home with an older brother and settles in to a cheap rooming house on the other side of Crockett, where he contributes to the monthly rent by selling newspapers, shining shoes, and working as messenger when he isn't studying.  Only 11 when Pearl Harbor is attacked on December 7, 1941, the patriotic (he is already no fan of Hitler's Nazi Germany and is told he has lost cousins in the opening battles of WWII) and parentally unsupervised (his mother stops by from time to time to say hello to her two sons and sign Calvin's report cards) six grader soon concocts a plan to join the United States Navy ... thinking it will make his beard come in early, he begins shaving long ahead of any need to, and to seem older, he begins talking in a deeper voice.  Notary stamp stolen from a local hotel and his mother's signature forged (to cover his absence he will tell his mother that he is going to California to visit family in San Diego) on an authorization for early enlistment, now 12, he puts his plan into effect on a busy Saturday at the Navy recruitment center in Houston on August 15, 1942.

At 12

Five feet and two inches tall, weighing 125 pounds, Graham dresses in one of his older brother's suits (including a matching fedora hat), and gets into a line of recruits he is sure are also underage.  Sixteen the legal age okay to join the Navy if parental consent has been given, claiming he is 17, Graham crosses his fingers and marches up to the navy dentist checking age by the development of teeth, and sure enough the man exclaims that he is only 12 years of age ... a fact Graham denies while loudly pointing out that the dentist has already passed several other inductees that he knows are also underage.  A period early in the war in which the Navy is desperate for men after several disastrous engagements with the Japanese, and not wanting a long argument to delay the long line, the dentist lets the youth enlist.  Mission accomplished, Graham is sent to San Diego, California for six weeks of basic naval training (pretty sure they have an underage recruit on their hands, his instructors try to get the boy to quit by giving him extra duties and send him on longer runs than other recruits and have him haul heavier loads than other men, but Graham doesn't break), then is sent off to Pearl Harbor where he is assigned to the newly commissioned (March 20, 1942) battleship, USS South Dakota.

San Diego Naval Training Center

Built by the New York Shipbuilding Corporation (1939 to 1941) as Japan decides to leave treaty constraints it has made with the United States, the first of four "South Dakota" style battleships, the USS South Dakota has a fully loaded displacement of 45,233 tons, a length of 680 feet, a beam of 108 feet and two inches, a draft of 35 feet and one inch, is powered by four General Electric steam turbines (and eight oil-fired Babcock & Wilson boilers) that turn four screw propellers to a speed of 27.5 knots (and a cruising range of 15,000 nautical miles). It's armor varies from six inches of steel on the deck to eighteen inches for it's turrets.  For firepower, the vessel carries nine 16-inch Mark 6 guns, sixteen 5-inch DP guns, seven quad 40mm Bofors guns, seven quad 1.1-inch guns, thirty-four 20mm Oerlikon cannons, and eight 50-cal. machine guns.  The ship also has two catapults for launching three "Kingfisher" floatplanes.  Crewed by 2,500 officers and enlisted men, the USS South Dakota is commanded by 51-year-old Captain Thomas Leigh Gatch of Salem, Oregon.  Graham joins the crew of the battleship just in time to participate in the vessel's first battle actions of WWII in the South Pacific waters off a 2,047 square mile jungle island called Guadalcanal where a new American commander has recently taken over the region, an aggressive Vice Admiral and naval aviator (his creed is "Hit hard, hit fast and hit often") who states after Pearl Harbor, "Before we are through with 'em, the Japanese language will be spoken only in Hell!" ... William Frederick "Bull" Halsey Jr.

Shakedown Cruise

Gatch

Halsey

Escorting the aircraft carrier USS Enterprise along with nine destroyers as part of Task Force 16 (they will be joined by the aircraft carrier USS Hornet and the escorts of Task Force 17, and combined, become Task Force 61), at the end of October the USS South Dakota will take part in the three-day Battle of the Santa Cruz Islands ... an air and sea clash that will result in the loss of the USS Hornet (the Japanese will have two carriers and a cruiser damaged, but fail to exploit its victory) and the destroyer, USS Porter, and the USS Enterprise being damaged.  Damaged, but not sunk, partly due to the anti-aircraft fire the USS South Dakota pours into the sky (protecting the USS Enterprise, the ship will claim to have shot down 26 Japanese planes during the battle and its crew will receive a Navy Unit Commendation for outstanding heroism in action against the enemy), a portion of which comes from the 40mm anti-aircraft gun 12-year-old Graham serves as a loader (after the war, naval historians will reduce the number to 13).  During the battle, the battleship will be hit on the roof of her forward main battery by a single bomb from an Japanese Aichi D3A dive bomber that kills two sailors and wounds over fifty more (one of which is Captain Gatch who is hit by a bomb splinter and knocked unconscious by the concussion of the explosion.

USS Enterprise Under Attack

USS South Dakota Is At Center-Left

USS South Dakota Firing At Torpedo Bomber

Bomb damage to the USS South Dakota repaired (along with damage incurred when the ship collides with destroyer USS Mahan leaving the area on October 30, 1942) at the French island of Noumea, and Captain Gatch back in command, detached from guarding the USS Enterprise, on orders from Vice Admiral Halsey, the battleship becomes part of Task Force 64 in November of 1942 (under the overall command of former Olympic shooting champion <five gold medals, one silver medal, and one bronze medal at the 1920 Sumer Olympics held in Antwerp, Belgium> Rear Admiral Willis Augustus "Ching" Lee Jr., the rest of the force consists of the battleship USS Washington and four destroyers, USS Walke, USS Preston, USS Benham, and USS Gwin) and is ordered to stop a Japanese force on it's way to bombard the Henderson Field airbase on Guadalcanal so that Japanese soldiers can be successfully landed on the island (days before, a first attempt at taking out the airfield during the First Naval Battle of Guadalcanal fails after the Japanese force given the task departs the area after losing the battleship Hiei, two destroyers, a heavy cruiser, and seven troop transports at the awful American cost of losing two light cruisers, four destroyers, having two heavy cruisers severely damaged, and the sea taking the lives of Rear Admirals Daniel J. Callaghan and Norman Scott).  Patrolling around Savo Island to the north of Guadalcanal in the waters of Ironbottom Sound (so named for the many sunken Japanese and American warships at its bottom) on the evening of November 14, 1942, the USS South Dakota will play a key role in The Second Naval Battle of Guadalcanal ... a fight that will prove to be a turning point in the struggle for the island.

Lee

Traveling in column formation with the destroyers in the lead followed by USS Washington (which Rear Admiral Lee has made his flagship and is three nautical miles behind) and USS South Dakota bringing up the rear (a nautical mile to the rear of USS Washington), at 10:55 the radars aboard the battleships begin picking up the presence of intruders approaching Savo Island, the Japanese task force of Admiral Nobutake Kondo (Kondo's flagship, the battleship Kirishima, the heavy cruisers Atago and Takao, the light cruisers Nagara and Sendai, and nine destroyers).  Though heavily outnumbered, shortly after 11:00 the American force engages the Japanese and a slugfest soon develops in which the USS Walke and USS Preston are sunk within the first ten minutes of the clash, the USS Benham has it's bow blown off by a torpedo and has to retire from the area (it will sink the next day), and the USS Gwin is struck in it's engine room and leaves the fight (meanwhile USS Washington is setting the destroyer Ayanami alight).  At the worst time, the USS South Dakota suffers electric failures that make her radar, radios, and most of her gun batteries inoperable (the chief engineer has violated safety procedures during repairs and locked down a circuit breaker) just as the ship is illuminated by Japanese searchlights and fires from sinking ships and becomes the main target for most of Admiral Kondo's vessels shortly after midnight.  Placing shells into Kirishima and on to both heavy cruisers, though the USS South Dakota avoids being hit by any torpedoes, it takes between 26 and 42 hits from the Japanese force that set it's upper decks on fire and knock out most of its gunnery and communication systems (in the words of Rear Admiral Lee, the ship is rendered "... deaf, dumb, blind, and impotent").  But in the chaos of battle, with the Japanese firing at the USS South Dakota and lacking radar, the USS Washington is able to close on Kirishima and undetected, at a range of 5,800 yards, pummels the Japanese battleship with nine hits from it's 16-inch guns and over 40 from it's 5-inch guns (the battleship will eventually capsize and sink at 3:25 in the morning of November 15).  Then the American battleship turns it's guns on the Japanese heavy cruisers, and bracketing both vessels, forces them to turn away from the fight to the point that when they fire their Long Lance torpedoes at USS Washington, all of the weapons miss.  Moving north after the misses, luring Admiral Kondo's force out of the area, the USS Washington becomes the only battleship of WWII to destroy another battleship in a one-on-one contest.  Additionally, because of its victory over Kirishima, the USS South Dakota is able to escape the area and survives to fight another day.  In the morning, once again not flattened by Japanese battleships, Henderson Field is able to launch fighters and bombers, supported by the guns of the destroyer USS Meade, that destroy four beached transports, kill hundreds of Japanese soldiers, and send between 2,000 to 3,000 men into the jungles of Guadalcanal with little food or ammunition (out of a force of 12,000 soldiers).  

USS Washington Firing On Kirishima

Gun inoperable for most of the battle, Seaman First Class Graham is carrying verbal messages between USS South Dakota officers when a hit on the battleship sends shrapnel through the 12-year-old's jaw and mouth, and knocks the youth through three stories of the ship's superstructure.  Child to an adult in an instant, a dazed and wounded Graham, now missing his front teeth and suffering from flash burns, pulls himself to his feet, and after having his fragmentation wounds stitched together and salve applied to his burns, spends the rest of the night and morning pulling other crew members to safety, providing emergency first aid in the form of converting pant belts into tourniquets, passing out cigarettes, and encouraging more grievously wounded sailors not to give up (in the carnage that takes place aboard the USS South Dakota, 40 sailors will be killed and another 180 more will be wounded).  For his actions, still not knowing that Graham is only 12-year-old, the youth is awarded a Bronze Star Medal for meritorious service while in combat, a Purple Heart Medal for being wounded, and as part of the crew, another Navy Unit Commendation ribbon.

Damage To The USS South Dakota

Battle Damage

Japanese Hit On The USS South Dakota

Limping back to the naval base at Noumea, with the help of the repair ship, USS Prometheus, the USS South Dakota undergoes emergency patchwork that allows the battleship to steam back into the Atlantic Ocean from the Panama Canal and undergo permanent repairs and a complete refit at the Brooklyn Navy Yard in New York.  Letting the Japanese believe they have sunk the USS South Dakota, she is heralded by the press upon her return as Battleship "X" ... and as such, Graham's problems with the U.S. Navy begin.  Viewing a newsreel of the battleship and it's crew, Graham's mother spots her son and relates to the naval authorities that Calvin is only 12-years-old, while at the same time, denied proper leave to attend his dead grandmother's funeral, the youth heads for Texas to be with his family (and arrives one day too late to attend services for his grandmother).  Embarrassed that they have enlisted a child in their service that has now gone AWOL from his ship in their eyes, when Graham reaches Corpus Christi he is slapped in the naval station's brig for almost three months, and only released when his sister Pearl threatens to make a stink in local papers about the U.S. Navy's treatment of the heroic "Baby Vet."  Message received, the authorities release Graham from confinement and more ... on April 1, 1943 (two days before his thirteenth birthday, the youth's enlistment in the U.S. Navy is voided and he receives a dishonorable discharge and is stripped of his commendation ribbons and medals, along with any ability to receive disability treatments or payments.   

USS Prometheus

Sent off as if he had never been on the USS South Dakota or experienced naval war firsthand, for a short time Graham becomes a 'flavor of the Month" celebrity.  There are interviews on the radio and in newspapers about his time aboard Battleship "X," and when the movie "Bombardier" premieres in Houston, it's star, Pat O'Brien, calls the youth out of the crowd to take a rousing bow.  Eventually though the spotlight moves on to others, and Graham attempts to return to his pre-war life, but it is not to be.  Returning to school, because of his experiences he has little in common with his classmates and has trouble keeping up with the educational level other students his age are at.  Dropping out and plunging himself into the world of adults once more, by fourteen he is married and finds work as a welder in a local Houston shipyard.  The following year he becomes a father.  But both the job and marriage come to an end, and by seventeen he is divorced and looking for work.  Service record erased by the U.S. Navy, now of age, in 1948, Graham enlists in the United States Marine Corps.  His days as a "Leatherneck" are numbered too however, and he receives a medical discharge from the Corps in 1951, after falling from a pier and breaking his back (an injury for which he gets only a 20 percent service disability).

Movie Poster

Post service, the rest of Graham's life is also filled with one struggle after another.  Disabled because of his fall, the only work he can get is selling subscriptions to Life, Look, and other magazines while campaigning to have his awards and commendations returned, and his discharge from the U.S. Navy changed to an "honorable" one.  In 1976, with the presidential election of Jimmy Carter, a naval veteran himself, Graham finds a sympathetic audience to his cause and in 1977, Texas Senators Lloyd Bentsen (Democrat) and John Tower (Republican) introduce a bill in Congress to give Graham the discharge he was asking for.  Passed and approved by the president, Graham's status is changed on the official records of the U.S. Navy and his medals and commendations are returned ... with one exception, his Purple Heart is not part of the package, for awhile.  Public attention finally brought to his story with the 1988 playing of the CBS prime time television movie (the rights to his story sell for $50,000, but two agents receive half of that total, and a third vampire, a writer of an unpublished book about the patriot gets 20%, leaving Graham with only $15,000 before taxes for his own tale), "Too Young the Hero" (with "Hollywood" drama added where it is deemed necessary), starring Ricky Schroder as Graham (the 18-year-old-actor playing a 12-year-old).  President Ronald Reagan becomes involved in the story shortly afterwards, signing special legislation that grants Graham full disability benefits, increases his naval back pay to $4,917, and allows the former sailor $18,000 for past medical bills (but as always it doesn't quite work out that way, and with many of the doctors that treated him passed away and bills lost, Graham only receives $2,100 of the money allotted his plight).  But for some unknown reason, there is still no Purple Heart until after Graham dies of a massive heart attack on November 6, 1992 in Fort Worth, Texas at the age of 62.  No Purple Heart that is until two years after Graham's passing when the wrong is noted and righted by President Clinton's Secretary of the Navy, John Howard Dalton, at Arlington, Texas on June 21, 1994 giving the award back to Graham's family.  Parade rest and gone to his true glory, the youngest American to serve in WWII is buried in Fort Worth, Texas at the city's Laurel Land Memorial Park.

Schroder As Graham

Graham

Resting Place Of A Hero

Thank you for your service, Sir!

Purple Heart

Hero

  

Calvin Graham, the USS South Dakota‘s 12-year-old gunner, in 1942. Photo: Wik  

THE BIG FIGHT AT THE DUNN & JENKINS SALOON

3/21/1886 - Nothing but a ghost town now, but once a place that rivaled the wild locales of the American west like Deadwood, Dodge City, Abilene, Bodie, and Tombstone, Tascosa, Texas (it has no town council, mayor, sheriff, or marshal for it's first five years of existence), a tent, adobe and wood village on the Texas panhandle with a permanent population of never more than 300 souls that draws cattle rustlers, gamblers, dance hall girls, prostitutes, fugitives, thieves, gunslingers, and con men to the area (the "bad" part of Tascosa is known as "Hogtown"), proves on an especially bloody Saturday/Sunday night why Texas Ranger George Washington "Cap " Arrington will call the seat of newly established Oldham County, "the hardest place on the frontier" (it will serve Hollywood as the town where James Stewart's Lin McAdam will begin his final confrontation with his murderous brother, Stephen McNally's Dutch Henry Brown in Anthony Mann's 1950 western, "Winchester '73") with a shootout that will come to be called "The Big Fight at the Dunn & Jenkins Saloon."

The Big Fight - True West Magazine

Once Texas Rangers authorized by the state government to rid the Canadian River Valley of cattle rustling, and led by the killer of Billy the Kid, Pat Garrett, by 1886 the cowboys of the local LS Ranch are considered by the Tascosa locals as just another batch of "barroom gladiators," troublemakers that like to drink, brawl, and are quick to slap leather when not given their proper due from a group of small ranchers and rustlers known as "The Syndicate."  One of the most troublesome LS riders is a cowboy named Ed King, and when he begins courting a Dunn & Jenkins Saloon girl named Sally Emory that has recently broken up with Syndicate member, bartender Lamar Albert "Lem" Woodruff a fuse is lit that will result in multiple deaths.  Not leaving the situation alone, in the days preceding the weekend's regularly scheduled town dance, King and buddies from the LS Ranch make a point of taunting Oldham, calling the man "Pretty Lem," forcing Oldham to call King "Daddy," and even slapping the bartender in the face.

Drinking In Tascosa

Two in the morning wild, tiring of the dance, Ed King, King's buddy, John Gottlieb Lang, and two other LS cowboys, Frank Valley and Fred Chilton, grab their mounts and ride off to have a drink at the Equity Bar.  Passing the Exchange Hotel on their way to the Equity, just off her shift at Dunn & Jenkins, Sally Emory calls out to King, who dismounts and with his girlfriend now in tow, heads up the street to Sally's place as Valley and Chilton hand the reins of their mounts to Lang to tie-up (along with King's horse) as the men enter the Equity.  Seconds later the street explodes with violence as King and Emory approach Dunn & Jenkins on the southeast corner of Tascosa's plaza.  "Ed King," a voice calls out from the darkness of the saloon, and as the cowboy turns to see who has hailed him, he is shot in the face by a "Syndicate" gunman.  Crashing to the ground with blood streaming out of his mouth as Sally runs home at full speed, Woodruff comes out of the saloon, puts a Winchester against King's neck and pulls the trigger before retreating back into the bar.  The murder of his friend witnessed from just up the street, Lang rushes into the Equity and calls out to Chilton and Valley, "Boys, they've killed Ed!  Come on!"  Declaration heard, the two cowboys join Lang and sprint across the street to a cramped yard behind the Dunn & Jenkins saloon (inside, along with Woodruff, are "Syndicate" leader, Jesse Jenkins, and gunmen "Squirrel-Eye" Charlie Emory, "Poker" Tom Emory, John "The Catfish Kid" Gough, and Louis "The Animal" Bousman) where a number of men are in the process of exiting the drinking establishment.

Lang

Guns blazing, Valley begins firing on the men with both of his revolvers, scoring two hits on Woodruff (one to the killer bartender's belly and one to his groin that put Woodruff on the ground where he kicks shut the backdoor to the saloon) and one that takes a chunk of flesh out of Charlie Emory's leg.  His gunfire however makes him target #1 for the saloon shooters, and after Valley puts several shots through the now closed door, he follows his rounds into the saloon and is greeted with a lethal rifle round to the head through his left eye.  At almost the same moment, the next door owner of the North Star restaurant, Jesse Sheets (spending a late night at his business to keep an eye on an employee he believes is robbing him), pokes his head out of his establishment to see what all the nearby ruckus is about.  A big mistake with so much lead flying about, targeting movement, Chilton puts a fatal rifle round in Sheets' face, and a second later he is killed from a slug to the chest that comes from someone shooting from behind a woodpile behind the saloon.  Dying, he hands his pistol to Lang who continues the fight as he retreats down Spring Street with bullets striking all around him as he makes for the Equity Bar, where he finds reinforcements in the form of Sheriff James East and his deputy, Charlie Pierce.  Reversing direction, the trio head back towards the Dunn & Jenkins saloon, where they fire on a shadowy figure they drop into the wood pile to much groaning and choking, "The Catfish Kid."  Fight over, as the men police the saloon carnage, "The Catfish Kid" crawls quietly off into Tascosa's darkness, having successfully faked being hit during the gun battle.

 

Lawman East

Four dead and two men seriously wounded in a short matter of minutes, in the aftermath of the shootout 50 LS cowboys "volunteer" to ride into town and burn Tascosa down while killing every "Syndicate" gunman they can find, but they are dissuaded from their plans for retribution by the ranch's foreman, Jordan McAllister, and its owner, William McDole "Alphabet" Lee, and East keeping on eye on things while closing down all the saloons in town.  Bodies all buried the next day in the town's Boot Hill (aghast that her husband might be buried next two one of his killers, Sarah Sheets has her husband buried in a different part of the cemetery, before reburying the unlucky restaurateur in Roswell, New Mexico in 1928), the three dead LS cowboys all go into the ground beneath markers that read "Ill met by the Moonlight."  Trying to find out "who had kicked the lid off Hell," local Justice of the Peace,     Edwin C. Godwin-Austin assembles a coroner's jury that brings murder charges against Woodruff (who is not expected to live, but does), Bousman, Charlie Emory, and "The Catfish Kid."  The men's first trial ends in a hung jury, while the second is even better for the men of the Syndicate," with all the combatants acquitted of the charges they are facing (after another Tascosa killing, "The Catfish Kid will die in prison in 1890, Charlie Emory will pass away in 1897, his brother Tom leaves in 1914, Woodruff moves to Hot Springs, Arkansas and dies there in 1902, and Louis "The Animal" lives in Oklahoma until passing in 1942)

The Dead LS Cowboys - King, Valley & Chilton

Suffering only a hole through his coat sleeve despite the numerous bullets sent his way, Lang goes on from the gunfight to become the Town Sheriff of Amarillo before moving to Oregon to be with his family.  With Oregon as his base, Lang participates in Klondike Gold Rush of 1897, then as an Oregon volunteer (Company E of the Oregon Volunteers), in 1898, he is off to the Philippines during the Spanish-American War (where he takes part in actions at Tondo, Malolos, and Malobon).  War over, he returns to Oregon and opens up a wood cabin saloon, runs the Haines Hotel and Livery Stable, marries Ella Stiltz in 1914, and as a Democrat, represents his district in the state legislature, spends time as the mayor of Haines in 1935, and owns a gold mine named the Western Union in the town of Rock Creek.  Wanderlust never quite cured despite his life successes, he continues to prospect for gold at various times from 1900 to 1930.  He dies in Haines on April 4, 1942 at the age of 80 and is buried beside his wife in the town cemetery.

Lang

As for Tascosa, while there will be more violent flareups for the town, it's fate is sealed when the Fort Worth & Denver City Railroad decides to bypass the wild city and a number of local cattle ranches go bankrupt during the "Big Die-up" cattle killing blizzards of 1886-1887.  Once the capital of ten Texas Panhandle counties, the place is now a ghost town of dust, wind, and a few ruined stone and adobe buildings.

Tascosa

Gunfight - True West Illustration