The Great Locomotive Chase
In honor of the 4th of July, Badass of the Week author Ben Thompson and Professor Pat Larash talk about some of America's first Medal of Honor recipients -- Union soldier John Alfred Wilson, hero of the Great Locomotive Chase, and Dr. Mary Edwards Walker, the only woman to ever receive the nation's highest award for battlefield bravery.
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Episode Transcript:
A single locomotive flies around the bend with no cars in tow. The two men inside frantically shovel coal as if their lives depend on it.
Suddenly, a second locomotive roars around the bend right after the first. But this one, is going backwards, it’s on fire, and it’s manned by angry confederate soldiers determined capture the fleeing Union Soldiers ahead of them.
This isn’t just any old chase. This is the great locomotive chase. And Union Soldiers John Alfred Wilson and Mark Wood are both about to jump for it. In 3… 2…. 1….
Ben [00:00:00] Hello and welcome back to another episode of Badass of the Week. My name is Ben Thompson, and I'm here, as always, with my co-host, Dr. Pat. Larry Pat. Happy 4th of July.
Pat [00:01:07] Happy 4th of July to you too!
Ben [00:01:09] Yeah, we are. We generally like to think of ourselves as being a fairly international show. But today on the 4th of July, we are going to celebrate some American badasses. And we have some really interesting stories that we want to talk about, particularly as they relate to the Medal of Honor. Right, Pat?
Pat [00:01:32] Yeah, the Medal of Honor was the first and to this day, highest award for military valor offered by the U.S. government. It was something created in 1861. The U.S. looked at the British and said, okay, you have the Victoria Cross. Let's do something like that for our people. And originally, it was simply issued for quote unquote, gallantry in action. But over the years, the circumstances for receiving it have been really tightened up. And to illustrate this, about 1200 Medals of Honor were awarded during the Civil War. But then when they tightened the restrictions in 1916, over 900 of them were revoked.
Ben [00:02:18] Yeah, And it's it's what you said, the Medal of Honor. Now it has this very kind of sacred reputation as being the highest award for bravery. And I think, you know, in in looking through the annals of the Medal of Honor, in many cases, the person who received it was killed in the action for which they received it. And talking about the the revoked awards, you know, what ended up happening was there was only one award for bravery, and it was the Medal of Honor. And, you know, around the time of World War One, we started the US government created different awards of different levels. So you have the Distinguished Service Cross and the Silver Star and the Bronze Star. And, you know, there's there's a number of of of other medals and there's a tier of them. And Medal of Honor was at the top. And so they had given out so many during the Civil War that they they took some of them back or lowered them to Silver Stars or Bronze Stars, depending on what the action was the recipient had taken. Everything that you mentioned is going to be relevant as we go through the rest of the the episode. But what I wanted to start with was very quickly, I wanted to talk about the most recent Medal of Honor recipient because we're going to talk about the first one and we're going to talk about the first. And to this day, only woman who has ever received one. We thought, hey, 4th of July, let's let's get three American badasses in here. And we'll start with the most recent Medal of Honor recipient. So as of the time of this recording, the most recent Medal of Honor was awarded on the 3rd of March, March three, 2023, to Colonel Parris Davis. And, you know, with all of the acts of bravery and heroism that are taking place along, you know, throughout the United States military today and in recent memory. VA you would think that perhaps this award would be for Afghanistan or maybe Iraq or some other action that is being taken somewhere in the in the world right now. But no, it's from 60 years ago. And it's a it's a Vietnam War hero, which is the most recent recipient, which is kind of interesting, right?
Pat [00:04:27] Yeah. Sounds like it was long overdue.
Ben [00:04:30] So I want to talk about Parris Davis quickly. He was born on May six, 1939. He studied political science at Southern University on an ROTC scholarship and shipped out to South Vietnam very early on, before the war, really even before the Vietnam War, really kicked into gear. He was a captain in the fifth Special Forces Group, part of the four Special Forces, the Green Berets, the same unit that we talked about when we were talking about Robert Howard a few weeks ago. He was one of the first black officers in the history of the US Special Forces. The action for which he received the Medal of Honor took place on June 17th, 1965. So this is really early on in the fighting. The U.S. hadn't kind of officially been involved yet at this point, which may contribute to why it took so long for him to receive the award. But he was an advisor. He was he was there with three other Special forces, Green Berets, training the 883rd Vietnamese Regional Forces Company. So South Vietnamese Army and just a couple of American advisors kind of training and guiding them and helping them out and, you know, providing, you know, oversight, but not really supposed to be too involved in the fighting. But what happens is, Captain Davis, he gets wind that there is a relatively large. A North Vietnamese army base in the region. And he leads the 883rd on a mission to take it. The situation is right and he sees an opportunity and he is able to get the drop on the base and he makes the call to attack and they attack. And he is, you know, he very heroic in the battle that ensues. He kills several of the enemy personally, including in hand-to-hand combat. He gets wounded by a grenade, but he keeps going. He captures the base, takes some gun positions, captures prisoners, reorganizes his forces, and then starts calling in artillery and airstrikes on enemy positions. So this very heroic battle to take this NVA base that outnumbered his own guys, but he was able to through surprise and and strategy, overcome that and take a bunch of prisoners, which is great except that there were more North Vietnamese called in to assist and there's a big counterattack. Oh, yeah. So there's a counterattack. And now that he's taken this, he has to hold it. So North Vietnamese are attacking the base that he's just captured. He's shot. He gets into some hand-to-hand combat, gets wounded with a knife, but kills that guy. He's heavily outnumbered now and starts calling for evacuation, which I think reading some of these accounts, like he was kind of hoping would have come a little bit sooner, Like you get in there, you hit this base, you capture the guys, you get out of there. He's kind of soon as possible. Right. Yeah. Before they can mass a counterattack, which is for whatever reason, what happens in this situation. So now he's fighting for his life. He and his guys. There's three other special forces with him. And then the 18/83 South Vietnamese Army. They're fighting for their lives and they're fighting for their lives for 19 hours, which is way too long to be on an operation like this. You're not supposed to be fighting for 19 hours straight. You were supposed to get in and get out. You're not supposed.
Pat [00:07:48] To do anything for 19 hours straight.
Ben [00:07:50] That's true. Yeah. You got to sleep at some point, right? Yeah.
Pat [00:07:54] Yeah. So? But somehow he's pushing through.
Ben [00:07:56] He's pushing through, and he's the commander, so he is organizing the defense. A couple of his guys. Two of the other Americans get shot. Many of the South Vietnamese guys get shot. He's kind of like fighting for his life. And the rescue helicopters eventually arrive, and he's got to get the Americans out of there. I mean, he can't leave his own guys behind. You can't leave anybody behind. But he's prioritizing some his Green Beret, his Green Beret buddies. And so he throws one of the guys on his back, runs across an open field towards this helicopter, throws the guy in the helicopter and is in the helicopter pilots like, All right, get in here. We got to get out of here.
Pat [00:08:32] Yeah, I'm imagining the helicopter blades are working all this time. The guys, the pilots ready to leave. He wants to leave.
Ben [00:08:39] He's waved. Yeah, he's hovering. Right. This is. I mean, you can you can kind of picture the Vietnam War era. You know, think about the movies you've seen with, like, the helicopter blades kind of rippling the grass around him. There's gunfire coming in everywhere. And he looks that guy on the the The Hellion is like, no, there's another guy back. There's another wounded American back there. I got to get him. So he runs back 150 yards across an open field, being shot at by the enemy the entire time. Whoa. Yeah. Grabs the second dude, brings him back to the helicopter, puts him in a helicopter, and then. And then the helicopter guy's like, All right, man, that was very heroic. We get in and Captain Davis is like, No, I'm staying. I have to, like, organize the rest of these South Vietnamese. And we got to, like, we got to hold this position. So the helicopter leaves. Both those Americans that were put on it, they they survive the battle. And Captain Davis goes back into the battle and wins it. So he is he's wounded several times. He's he's knifed. He's hit with a grenade, shrapnel. A couple of times he shot a couple of times. But he refuses extraction. He oversees the all of the wounded getting out of there. And he spends the later part of the battle radioing in coordinates for airstrikes until the enemy is destroyed.
Pat [00:09:56] That's impressive.
Ben [00:09:57] Pretty amazing. Yeah. He continues through the entire Vietnam War like he doesn't. The war's not over for him. In 1965, he survives the war. He retires in 1985. At some point, he was the commander of the 10th Special Forces. He retires as a colonel, which is pretty high ranking stone just below general, and he receives a Silver Star for this action and was nominated for the Medal of Honor. But for whatever reason, the paperwork got lost.
Pat [00:10:24] Oh, no.
Ben [00:10:24] Yeah. And then he was he was re suggested for it. And then that paperwork got lost. And, you know, we were talking about this with Robert Howard a little bit where, you know, there's a chance that it was like, you know, we don't want to give the Medal of Honor to the American who was fighting before the U.S. had officially declared war against the Vietnamese. And there's some political reasoning behind this. And there's some maybe he shouldn't have been maybe like he wasn't supposed to be there. And that's a thing that. So I don't know why the paperwork or maybe it just got lost. That happens because that's all is behind the desk and that's, you know.
Pat [00:11:00] Yeah. And we're talking about literal paperwork here.
Ben [00:11:02] Yeah, it's literal paperwork. Like, I don't know where my birth certificate is, right?
Pat [00:11:07] Yeah.
Ben [00:11:08] So, anyway, a campaign got started recently for him to get that upgrade from the Silver Star to the Medal of Honor. And the campaign was largely from people that were there, like some of the some of his guys that maybe not necessarily the the three guys that were with him there, but he was part of a Green Beret base in South Vietnam. And the men that were there with him were like, this guy deserves if anybody deserves it, it's this guy. So in March 2023, he finally received it and he traveled to the White House and got the medal put around his neck. And I'm going to just kind of leave it with his words. He said that receiving it, quote prompted a wave of memories of the men and women I served with in Vietnam from the members of the fifth Special Forces Group and other U.S. military units to the doctors and nurses who cared for our wounded. And so very grateful to my family and friends within the military and elsewhere who kept alive the story of 1883 21 at Camp Young Son. I often think of those fateful 19 hours and what our team did to make sure that no man was left behind on the battlefield. So that is the most recent recipient. Colonel Paras Davis of the Special Forces. And when we come back from the break, we're going to talk about the first man and the first. And to this day, only woman who has ever received the Medal of Honor.
Pat [00:12:26] Yes. And be advised, we are talking about the horrors of the Civil War, including prisoner of war camps and battlefield surgery. So consider this a content warning.
Ben [00:12:48] Okay, we are back and we are going to talk about the first recipients of the Medal of Honor. And one thing that makes me really happy when we talk about this is that the first Medals of Honor were given out for an event known as the Great Locomotive Chase.
Pat [00:13:07] Which sounds like, say, a classic silent movie film or something like that.
Ben [00:13:12] And I think they have made plenty of silent movies about this event. Yeah, the Great Locomotive Chase, which is such just a great a great name for a historical event, especially one that is going to, you know, have such lasting significance culturally as this will.
Pat [00:13:28] So what is the actual great locomotive chase?
Ben [00:13:31] Well, let's get into it. I am going to open with a quote from Private John Alfred Wilson of the 21st Ohio Infantry. He says, Experience has taught me that men in the fix we were in is the worst and most desperate creature on earth and will do things that seem utter impossibilities before their accomplishments. So that's how I'm going to preface the great locomotive chase. The great Locomotive chases the tail of two more than two. But specifically, we're going to focus on two union troopers who went on a very high risk, a basically suicide sabotage mission behind enemy lines. They get involved in a high speed train chase that crosses several counties and eventually states. They basically do battle with an entire regiment of Confederate troops and they spend weeks on the run being pursued by basically every able bodied man in the Confederacy. They break out of a prison and they eventually become the first people to receive the Medal of Honor. So let's start in April of 1862. The Medal of Honor was originally commissioned and approved in 1861, but the first ones are not awarded until over a year after that.
Pat [00:14:45] So they came up with the concept of the Medal of Honor before they had a specific person or persons to confer it upon.
Ben [00:14:51] Exactly. And they had to pass through all of the paperwork and stuff. They had to get congressional thing to approval to create the award, and then they had to approve it for the Army. And I you know, I don't know all of the bureaucratic details of it because, frankly, they seem uninteresting. But yes, I know that the first people who received it got it a year or so after it was created.
Pat [00:15:13] Okay. And here we are. April 1862.
Ben [00:15:16] Yes. So there is a federal commander for for the North in the American Civil War. His name is Ormsby Mitchell, which is a really fun name. He is trying to capture Chattanooga, Tennessee. He is moving south through Tennessee in the western campaign of the Civil War. The problem, however, is that Chattanooga is a pretty short train ride away from a couple hundred thousand confederates in Atlanta, which is one of the main Confederate staging areas, mean Confederate bases, and any attempt to capture Chattanooga was going to be difficult because the Confederates were going to be able to ferry tons of reinforcements very quickly along the rail lines. And if you, as Ormsby Marshall wanted to take Chattanooga, you're really going to have to cut off train access from Atlanta. So he does a little bit of out-of-the-box thinking and decides that what he wants to do is commission a crazy spy sabotage mission to infiltrate beyond enemy lines and blow up the rail lines in Confederate territory.
Pat [00:16:24] Ooh. So cut off. Cut off their supply lines.
Ben [00:16:27] Yes. Yes. Railroads were much faster travel than horses and using the roads and stuff. And really vital.
Pat [00:16:35] Anything else?
Ben [00:16:36] Yes, exactly. Really vital, too, to moving men and equipment and ammunition in the Civil War.
Pat [00:16:43] So this is not just out of the box thinking it's out of the boxcar thinking.
Ben [00:16:47] I see what you did there.
Pat [00:16:49] I'll be here all week.
Ben [00:16:52] Well, he needs volunteers for this crazy mission that he's coming up with. And one of the people who volunteer for it is a guy named John Alfred Wilson. John Alfred Wilson is a he's 29. He is a private, which is just kind of a rifleman from the 21st Ohio Infantry Regiment. He's kind of he looks like what you would picture when you picture a union soldier in the Civil War. He's kind of depicted with or can be had and he's got the facial hair that you would expect for a soldier from this time period. The photos of him and there are photographs of him. They're all, you know, that sepia tone, old style, when the camera shutter speed was so slow that you couldn't smile for pictures. So he's kind of got this very serious look on his face. And, you know, it kind of looks like the photos of him kind of look like, you know, when you see pictures in like ghost movies, you know, that kind of thing. So he decides he's got. Owing to they. The federal High command wants two dozen people to volunteer for this mission. And he does. He signs up alongside another man from his regiment, a guy named Mark Wood. And they put on civilian clothes. They cross the border into Tennessee and they spend four days traveling on foot through enemy controlled territory dressed as civilians. They are looking to get to the town of Marietta, Georgia, where they will link up with 18 other union spies at a train station. And their plan is that they are going to steal a train, ride it from Marietta up to Chattanooga, and wreak havoc on the train lines the entire way. To the best of their ability.
Pat [00:18:33] Whew. That's quite a plan.
Ben [00:18:36] Yeah, that's very daring. And, you know, like you said outside the boxcar there, they are known as Andrew's Raiders because their commander was a guy named James Andrews. They are traveling, you know, in groups of two. There's 20 of them total, and they're carrying their six shooters under their coats. But they are, you know, that's it. They're trying to blend in. So all they have is their their hands. They all board a train called the General at Marietta Station in Georgia. And their plan is to steal this train. And so this is, you know, 1862, the train starts to leave from Marietta, Georgia. They travel for a few hours and they, of course, stop for lunch because this is before dining cars. And this is just it seems like a very free lunch. Yeah, it's a very 1862 thing to do. You you drive a little bit and then you stop. You get out. There's there was a little hotel there that had a cafe. The conductors and the people on the train, they can sit on the train or they can get off and have a little bit of have a little bit of coffee and eat some breakfast. So they're outside Kennesaw and everybody gets off. And these 20 traders, including Alfred Wilson, they get back on the train, they storm the engine, they commandeer the train at gunpoint and they take off with it and just kind of jack the train and start heading up towards Chattanooga. And for the next several hours, they are trying to destroy the train line to cut off the access for the Confederates to bring troops from Atlanta to Chattanooga. They are pulling up. I mean, their equipment is limited. They didn't smuggle explosives in here and they didn't acquire any explosives. So their ability to destroy the train lines are not great. James Andrews at some point acquired a crowbar and was trying to use that to like, manually peel up railroad ties. They were cutting telegraph lines to prevent communications, but the best way they could think to do that was to just jump up and grab on to the telephone poles and swing on them like a Tarzan or something and break them that way or or cut him with it.
Pat [00:20:46] That would work.
Ben [00:20:47] Yeah. Cut the lines with the knife. They're kind of doing everything they can to destroy this this rail line. They're not particularly equipped. This isn't like a, you know, a U.S. Army Engineers Corps with, like, bombs and, you know, TNT and all that stuff. They're doing the best they can.
Pat [00:21:02] And they were undercover. So they can't really publicly walk around with a big truck of explosives.
Ben [00:21:08] Right. Exactly. So they were able to smuggle guns on like pistols on board, and that was it. And so now they're riding up to Chattanooga and they're there. They're executing their mission. They are, you know, like you said, dressed as civilians. And they are just smashing and destroying and and kind of demoing the railroad lines to the best of their ability.
Pat [00:21:27] Yeah. And the fact that they're in civilian clothing and destroying stuff, sabotaging stuff behind enemy lines makes things particularly risky because at this point, you were supposed to treat a prisoners of war in a certain way, but you could execute spies. And if you see someone dressed not in a uniform, but in civilian clothing, i.e. in disguise, and if you see them sabotaging your stuff, if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, you know, the Confederates, if they capture these guys, they're going to think they're spies, which they kind of are, and they could very easily just decide to hang them.
Ben [00:22:09] Yes. And that is like not you know, like you said, you are supposed to treat prisoners of war a certain way, but spies are exempted from the, you know, the rules of of war. Yeah. Especially at this time. So this dangerous and what they're doing is dangerous and it's risky. They are doing okay at it. And and this is where a big wrinkle comes in to the Andrews Raiders plan, because the conductor of the general is a guy named William Allen Fuller. Fuller is a he's from Georgia. He is not a soldier. He is a trained conductor by trade and has been doing this for a long time. He's got a big mustache. He is like a kind of a hard Georgia guy, and he does not like getting train jacked, especially by a bunch of Yankees. He decides he's mad when he sees the train pull off and this guy is like, he's not going to lose this train. So Fuller, you know, was out there eating breakfast. The train starts running the way he's running after it on foot for a while. And then he eventually transfers over to one of those little pushcart things you see from Lake Wylie Coyote would use to go down the tracks with, like, the you know, the it looks like a seesaw, but you just kind of cranking yourself. He hops on one of those things and is like the trailer, the locomotive. He spends the next 51 hours pursuing the general either on foot or by the hand car. And he eventually, like, gets to another station on this hand car, and he commandeers another train that was heading south and puts it on the northbound track and runs it backwards because he doesn't have time to turn the train around. The union guys are heading north. He found a train that was heading south. He found a few stragglers who happened to be from the first Georgia Infantry Regiment. They were just some guys that were hanging out. They were like big whacked out there. And he's like, You guys get on the train, we're going to drive backwards. He's kind of looking out, looking out the side of the train, going the wrong direction on the northbound track. He's very determined to get his train back and he is gaining on John, Alfred Wilson and Andrews Raiders because they are having to stop to destroy things they don't actually know. They're being pursued. They suspect it. They suspect that telegraph exists at this time period. They expect that, you know, maybe.
Pat [00:24:28] The word got around.
Ben [00:24:29] It. Yeah, well, it's getting around. They know they're probably being pursued. They don't quite know the extent to which that is happening. They're kind of destroying things and trying to like, you know, you know, especially at like bridge crossings, trying to do their best to block people from coming after them. But Fuller is on the move and he is not deterred by any of the stuff that they've been doing to destroy the tracks. So he at some point, Andrews Raiders, they see the train coming towards them. They see this train moving backwards towards them and they're like, Oh, no, like this guy's coming for us. So they detach the last car of the locomotive, the union soldiers detach the last train car and just kind of leave it in the track to block Fuller from pursuing them. And Fuller just smashes it with his train goes faster. He's in reverse. Kind of like a demolition derby. And he smashes into that detached train car. It burst into flames, according to some versions of the story. But he goes right through it. Wow. Yeah. Knocks it off the track, keeps going and catches up to the train. I mean, the other thing to mention here is that Andrew's Raiders are not like one guy knew how to drive the train. But they're not train guys. They're not professional engineers.
Pat [00:25:46] Yeah, they're messing things up, guys.
Ben [00:25:49] Yeah, They're there to cause havoc and be agents of chaos. They're not experienced locomotive drivers. You know, Fuller is. And he is not going to be deterred. And he goes faster than them and he catches them. And those guys from the first Georgia, they have rifles and they're opening fire on the locomotive. So our friend John offered Wilson, him and Mark, would they jump off the moving train to kind of escape what's happening here? And they take off into the woods. Some of the first Georgia guys are shooting at them as they run into the forest and now they're on the run and their adventure is kind of just beginning. So we have to think about these guys. They're dressed in civilian clothes. They've got six shooters on them that in the time of the Civil War, it's not like a Clint Eastwood movie. You don't just pop six new bullets in. There is not it's not an easy thing to reload one of those things. So you kind of have six shots for the foreseeable future.
Pat [00:26:40] Yeah.
Ben [00:26:41] And they're being pursued by everything from like Confederate soldiers to like civilians, like angry civilians, to like hunting dogs. Like everybody's looking for these union guys, these spies and saboteurs who were wreaking so much havoc and causing all this chaos.
Pat [00:26:56] Mm hmm.
Ben [00:26:58] Alfred Wilson and Mark Wood, they they're running through the forest, and they get into what Wilson very funnily refers to as a ticklish situation, which.
Pat [00:27:07] Is understatement of the year.
Ben [00:27:09] Right. Yeah. That's his term for being apprehended by Confederate Cavalry and having the commander tell him that we don't take prisoners, we execute them. But he escapes that somehow he captures a boat and takes it 50 miles down the Tennessee River, eventually making it to union lines or very close to union lines. He bluffs a group of Confederate scouts into thinking that he was just like, you know, a civilian.
Pat [00:27:35] Good work.
Ben [00:27:35] Yeah. And he makes it back to union lines in Stevenson, Alabama. So, you know, on foot by boat, bluffing his way out of cavalry, capture multiple times. He makes it to Stevenson, Alabama, and union lines. Except turns out Stevenson, Alabama, had been retaken by the Confederacy a couple of weeks earlier, and he didn't realize that. And so when he walks into Stevenson, Alabama, it's a Confederate stronghold now and he's captured.
Pat [00:28:02] Yeah, because even though you have telegraphs, not everyone gets all the memos all the time.
Ben [00:28:07] Yes. Yes.
Pat [00:28:08] So awkward.
Ben [00:28:10] So, yeah, 51 hours on the train and 36 running through running through the forest until he is he is captured because he didn't have the good intelligence or good information on what was going on in Stevenson, Alabama. So they're captured on site. It turns out they were actually seven miles from from friendly lines. So they were really close. But they didn't they didn't get there. They are brought before the Confederate commander in the sector, a guy named General Ledbetter. And he says, you know, we're going to hang you as spies. You know, I'm sorry, you're going to be hung and we're going to throw you into an unmarked grave. And Wilson is pretty bad as dude, and we're going to see more pissed soon. But his response to being told that he's going to be hung as a spy, it's kind of like the sort of response you'd see in an old cowboy movie. He says, quote, Hang me and be damned. But I tell you one thing to remember If you ever do come across one of our men and hang him, look out that sooner or later your own neck don't pay the penalty because this hanging business will be quite common about the time this rebellion closes up.
Pat [00:29:10] Wow. Which I love. Yeah.
Ben [00:29:12] I mean, if that was his last words, he would be badass. It's not. Ledbetter doesn't like it, but he does taken prisoner. He doesn't hang him on the spot. He throws them in, too. He takes them down to Chattanooga, the town they were planning on attacking. He's dragged through the streets in chains, and he is thrown into a horrible prison that is known among the prisoners as the whole.
Pat [00:29:34] Yeah, and this is pretty awful. Being a prisoner of war in the Civil War did not mean that you were actually safe in any useful definition of the word. No one expected the war to go on as long as it did, So they didn't really invest in what we would consider adequate prison facilities, and most prisons were actually just giant, overcrowded messes like the hole. And you didn't have bathrooms, you didn't have reliable food, you didn't have reliable medical care. And two of the most notorious prison for the war were like this Andersonville in the South. And there the situation was so bad, the warden ended up being hanged for war crimes. And in the north you have Elmira, where prisoners had to camp outside in the snow in the middle of the New York winter and about 12 to 15% of all civil war P.O.W.s ended up dying in captivity. That's like one out of every eight or maybe even one out of every six.
Ben [00:30:34] Yeah, really rough situations for prisoners in the Civil War. And you know, the union spies in the hole in Chattanooga were not. We're on the lower end of the survivability spectrum when we are talking about prisoner of war treatment during the Civil War. So Wilson is thrown into the hole and he's thrown in there with the bunch of his other guys. So the rest of the guys from the from the great locomotive chase had already been captured and they were all kind of there waiting for him. There were 22 prisoners. They were 20 guys, 20 of the Raiders, plus two other spies who had been captured that were on their way to Marietta to be part of the locomotive chase. They didn't actually get on board the locomotive. They got captured before they got there. So 22 union prisoners, they spend five months in a 13 by 13 foot unventilated unlit dirt room in the basement of an old building in the stifling, suffocating, airless heat of the Tennessee summer. 22 guys in a 13 by 13 room for five months. Yeah, their chains were never removed, their clothes became infested with lice. Their food was was mostly spoiled, just cornmeal and rancid meat. And they figured that they their lives couldn't possibly get any worse. And maybe they were right. But things do get the situation does get worse for John Alfred Wilson because eight of those raiders do end up getting hung as spies, including Andrews, the commander. So after five months in the hole, Wilson is transferred to a different prison. He ends up going to Fulton County Prison in Atlanta, which is a much better situation for him. A big improvement over the whole in Chattanooga. He and the 13 remaining prisoners, though, like, you know, even though the conditions have improved 20%, they still know they got a they can't stick around if they want to. They want to get out of here alive. So, of.
Pat [00:32:32] Course.
Ben [00:32:33] Yeah. So they decide they're going to organize a prison break because they haven't had enough time being on the run. So they are going to break out of Fulton County Prison. That's their plan. And this is Atlanta. This is the heart of the Confederacy. This is the head. Orders for, you know, several high ranking generals, huge numbers of soldiers in the in the area. You know, this is this is a stronghold. This is a major strongpoint for the Confederate military. They make their plans in one night when the guard comes to drop off their food. The Raiders attack John Alfred Wilson has removed a brick from the wall of his cell. And when the guard comes in to drop up the food, Wilson hits him with the brick, takes his keys, starts opening up the cells. Now we have a prison break in the middle of Confederate controlled Atlanta. Wilson has to fight his way out of the prison. He fights these guys with a brick. He's fighting with his bare hands. He has an empty bottle of whiskey that he found in a barracks. He hit somebody with that. He in the Raiders, they bust out of the jail and they head off into town and they scatter in all different directions. And the alarms are going and people are shooting at them. And one shot hits so close to Wilson that the wooden wall splinters up next to him and he gets some splinters and some shrapnel in his leg. But they're scattering and it's chaos. There's alarms, Everybody's screaming and yelling. And Wilson takes off. He ends up again with his friend Mark Wood, who has gone through this entire ordeal with him. And they start running through the woods, wild dogs and guys with guns. And like I said, even some civilians are chasing them and they they run and they make their way through the woods. They don't really know where they are. They don't know the geography of Georgia that well, But they're going to run for it. And they eventually make it to the Chattahoochee River. They decide like, you know, they're at the river. You know, they're being pursued, but they decide something really interesting. They decide that rather than getting on the river and trying to go north, they are going to take a boat, They steal somebody's boat and they are going to they decide they're going to go south. They're going to go towards Florida.
Pat [00:34:44] And it sounds counterintuitive. Shouldn't they be heading towards the union? But it actually is really smart because they're heading towards water. They're heading towards open water and the union has a blockade all over the place. So they're going to have union boats all around. So all our guys have to do is get to open water and take advantage of that. And the union blockade was a huge reason for the Union victory. They were starving out the Confederacy. They were blocking their supply lines. They were blocking international trade with England and other places. So, yeah, it actually was a good idea to go south.
Ben [00:35:23] Yeah, and it does pay off for them. We will see. So they cross roughly 300 miles in the next 30 days. So they're sailing downstream on a stolen boat for a month. They're living off the land. Like I said, they have no weapons or for food they definitely didn't like. They got a brick and an empty bottle of whiskey and this boat that they stole. And they're going downstream in Georgia and Florida. They're scavenging farmland at night. They'll like, you know, pull the boat up on shore and try to sneak in to see if there's anybody living nearby and try to steal food from them. They're doing whatever they can. They start seeing alligators which scare them. So they way they have to fight off the alligators is by hitting them with the the oars and the paddles. At one point, I love the story of it. At one point, a dolphin popped its head up out of the water. And neither of these guys had ever seen a dolphin before or knew what it was. So they just frickin hit that thing to with the paddle.
Pat [00:36:16] Probably knew it was just a funny looking alligator.
Ben [00:36:18] Yeah, who knows? I don't know what to say. I think. I think if a dolphin popped its head up out of the water next to my little rowboat and I didn't know what it was, I'd probably want to hit it to you.
Pat [00:36:26] Yeah.
Ben [00:36:28] Yeah. Big mammal hit it. Yes. Yeah. And so they're after 30 days, they're half dead. They're sunburns, they're covered in mosquito bites, they've got scurvy, they've got yellow fever, they're starving. But they finally reach the mouth of the Chattahoochee River. And in the distance, they see the federal blockade, the union ships that are preventing all Confederate shipping from getting in or out of the Confederacy. And so they they have to take they have to make a canoe by the time they get here, because at some point during their adventure, their stolen boat was stolen from them while they were sleeping.
Pat [00:37:06] What goes around comes around.
Ben [00:37:07] Yeah, exactly. And so they had to make a boat from, you know, basically just like Bear Grylls and get. Right.
Pat [00:37:13] Yeah.
Ben [00:37:13] Yeah. I'm picturing just like a homemade raft or a canoe or something. And. And they have to take that out on open water and out on the high seas and they get picked up by a federal gunboat on November 10th, 1862.
Pat [00:37:26] So this whole adventure is taking about half a year.
Ben [00:37:29] Yes. So it's a long time. It was supposed to be, you know, a pretty short little sabotage mission. They left in April 1862 and now it's mid-November. And they have finally, like, survived this ordeal and been picked up by this union gunboat crew. They were the only of the prisoners that were being held in Fulton County Prison. Eight of them escaped, made it out, weren't recaptured immediately inside Atlanta. And of those eight, Wood and Wilson were the only two who didn't get recaptured. Everybody else was recaptured trying to make it back to union lines. They all went north, which was what the Confederates would expect them to do. And they were all grabbed. Yeah, nobody else was hanged. So they all or all of the others who were captured ended up surviving the war or at least surviving this part of it. And Alfred Wilson and Mark Wood, they end up on this union gunboat that sails to Jamaica and a couple other cool places in the Caribbean. And eventually he is returned to Washington, D.C., safe and sound and is promptly imprisoned for violating a mandatory curfew that he didn't know existed. Oh, no. He's still in civilian clothes in L.A. and you're not supposed to be out at night. So he's he's thrown in jail overnight. And then the story.
Pat [00:38:45] Of his life.
Ben [00:38:46] Yes. And the next day he meets Abraham Lincoln. Yes. They find out who he was and he meets Lincoln. And he's personally presented with the first ever batch of Medals of Honor for his service to the U.S. Army.
Pat [00:38:59] Congratulations.
Ben [00:39:00] Yes. So he isn't the a guy named Jacob Parrott, who was one of the Raiders who survived the whole is credited as the first guy to receive a medal of Honor. The original presentation of these was on March 25th, 1863. Most of the Raiders were eventually returned to union lines via prisoner transfers or prisoner exchanges. So the Andrews Raiders eventually all made it back to the union lines. And this guy, Jacob Parrott, had had like the hardest time of it in prison. And he all of the guys that were part of this crew decided that it should be the first guy to receive the Medal of Honor. He had kind of taken a couple of beatings in prison and had had a really hard time of it. But he lived and he got the first Medal of Honor. John Alford Wilson gets his several months after the rest of Andrews Raiders because he was missing, presumed dead and didn't get his, you know, the actions for which he received the Medal of Honor were at the same time as Andrews Raiders. But he wasn't present to receive his medal until several months after everybody else got theirs. But, you know, you get the idea. I like you're talking about Wilson because his story is, for me, one of the more interesting ones. And yes, it is also because he he wrote it down. He wrote down his autobiography. It's called He Yeah, The Adventures of Alpha Wilson. A thrilling episode of The Dark Days of the Rebellion is what it's called. And it's it's great. It's really funny. And I mean, he's not the right word. It's great. It's really good and and exciting. And it reads like an adventure story. And, you know, it's definitely worth a read. John Alfred Wilson later rejoins his old unit in Ohio. He survives the war. He gets married. He writes his memoirs, and he lives to be 72 years old. And he is among the first recipients of the U.S. Medal of Honor.
Pat [00:40:51] Yeah. Quite a story.
Ben [00:40:52] Yeah, The great locomotive chase. It's the succeeding is as the silent movie is referenced earlier, I think.
Pat [00:40:58] Yeah. And actually, I was thinking about it. There is a silent movie about the Great Locomotive chase starring Buster Keaton, and it's called The General. Oh, and it's named after the.
Ben [00:41:07] The train. Yeah.
Pat [00:41:08] Yeah, yeah. Yeah, It's from 1926.
Ben [00:41:12] Wow. Really early. Yeah. Awesome. So that's that. And if you you know, if you want more details, you can watch the silent movie. I'm sure it's extremely historically accurate. Yes.
Pat [00:41:23] Or you could read Alf Wilson's memoirs.
Ben [00:41:25] Which I definitely recommend you should do. It's very. It's very good. And so then when we come back, we are going to talk about the first woman to ever receive the Medal of Honor. So stick with us And we will be right back.
Pat [00:41:48] Lieutenant Colonel W.W. Blackford of the first Virginia Cavalry describes the situation as follows. Quote, Tables about breast high had been erected upon which the screaming victims were having legs and arms cut off. The surgeons and their assistants, stripped to the waist and bar spattered with blood, stood around, some holding the poor fellows, while others armed with long bloody knives and saws, cut and sawed away with frightful rapidity, throwing the mangled limbs on a pile nearby as soon as removed. So that's the situation I want you to keep in mind when we talk about Mary Edwards Walker. This is the state of battlefield surgery in the Civil War. So imagine artillery shells detonating. Imagine musket tree rattling nonstop in the distance. And this is all over the groans and agonizing cries of men who are dying. And while that's going on, you still get flood after flood of new arrivals into the, quote unquote, hospital. But this is a frontline field hospital, so it's actually just an ordinary single family home that got converted, got commandeered. The driveway is lined with horse drawn ambulance carts full of trauma victims. And the, quote, emergency room is barely worthy of the name. You've got this just house being used as an emergency room, an operating room, and even a morgue. And we're on the outskirts of Chattanooga, Tennessee. And the hospitals, overworked, exhausted nurses. They're trying to triage the wounded between those who are possibly treatable and those who weren't going to make it. So that's in Chattanooga, outside the city walls. The Union Army is pushing back to Chattanooga. They had been totally swamped at Chickamauga, and they're trying their very best to hold the city against this ferocious Confederate counterattack. And 46,000 men of Braxton Bragg's Army of Tennessee are on the heights. They're overlooking the critical Strategic rail and communications center. And we know from the story of the great locomotive chase how important those are. The union forces are backed up against the Tennessee River. And now we've got an assault led by General George Thomas marching up a steep ridge right into enemy positions. We've got 112 cannons. There's murderous fire. And we're trying trying to break out of the siege. And, of course, soldiers get wounded and those who were lucky enough to find their way back to friendly lines, find themselves here in this little converted home. And now it is unsterilized. A lot of the men have malaria. The surgeons are using saws. And in some ways, the only comfort was a cup of cold water and the nurses trying their best to just say soothing things to them and ease their pain, suffering in some small way. These nurses were doing a very important job and there were over 10,000 women working as nurses in field hospitals across the war zone in the Civil War. But Mary Edwards Walker of the 52nd Ohio Volunteer Infantry, was the only one who served as a surgeon. She's also the only woman in history ever to receive the Medal of Honor. So she was maybe 150 years ahead of her time. She was routinely criticized by both women and men for her desire to wear, quote unquote, men's clothing, which meant pants because they were practical.
Ben [00:45:35] You don't want to do battlefield surgery in a big hoop skirt. Why?
Pat [00:45:40] Why not? So, yeah. And she paid her own way through Syracuse Medical College in 1855, becoming just the second woman in American history to complete official physician training and work actually, as an official doctor. And when the Civil War broke out in 1861, Walker. Excuse me, Dr. Walker had already been running her own private practice for six years. You know, she's looking at the situation like, oh, there's a war going on. There are only 86 licensed surgeons in the Union Army at the start of hostilities. So she tries to sign up and offer her services. She was turned away by every recruiting officer she approached. So she found another way. Dr. Walker signed on as a volunteer nurse, and she worked on the front lines at the first Battle of Bull Run. And then later that year, as an unpaid volunteer surgeon at Indiana Hospital.
Ben [00:46:34] Yeah. And like you said, there was it was pretty common for there to be women nurses, especially even on the battlefield. Right. Even if it was just to, like, bring cold water and ice to, like, wounded men or or. To identify people for the stretcher teams to come pick up. That was very common. But surgeons, a woman surgeon, the only one I know of is is Dr. Walker.
Pat [00:46:59] Yeah. So her M.O. is I'll just show up where her people are dying and see if maybe I can fix them for free. She volunteers at the Battle of Fredericksburg in 1862. She's performing frontline operations, and she took control of a medical train that was ferrying wounded men back to Washington. And her skills at surgery were so good and her reputation was so good. Word got around. And Union General Ambrose Burnside heard about this. He nominated her for a commission. And. Okay. At first, Dr. Walker met with the usual resistance. Like, okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Same old, same old, same old. But thanks to General Burnside's recommendation, she finally was commissioned as an assistant surgeon in the 52nd Ohio Volunteer Infantry. She was issued a US Army surgeon's uniform, and she was sent to Tennessee to help treat wounded and dying men during the siege of Chattanooga as a surgeon rather than just a nurse. Now, what did the job of a Civil War surgeon actually entail?
Ben [00:48:11] So like we said, with with nurses, it's a lot of triage, make tourniquets, clean wounds, change dressings, things like that. But for a surgeon, it is very intense work, kind of as we've been saying with the quote you mentioned at the beginning and some of the other things we've been talking about, there's brutal wounds that are happening to people during the Civil War. You have artillery canister, fire cannon balls. I mean, those are extremely damaging to the human body. And in a lot of cases, those kind of just kind of deal death rate. But the majority of the Civil War surgical cases were from gunshot wounds. The problem with this type of bullet is that it kind of mushrooms on impact and it is heavy and it hits hard. And so it breaks bones on impact, kind of shatters bones. And I mean, picture like a fluorescent light bulb being hit against a brick wall. Like, that's kind of what the mini ball does to the human femur. Well, perhaps that was too gruesome of a description, but that is how it works. So, I mean, this is that is how it works that we got to talk about. Yeah, you know, it it ruptures blood vessels and organs and all of these important things that people keep inside their skin. And in a lot of cases, the medical technology does not exist to effectively treat these wounds. So if you got shot in the bone with a mini ball, sometimes the only way to prevent and you're in this kind of situation and we've been describing these very bad hospitals situation is, you know, not a lot of sanitization happening, not sanitizing their tools, barely like it's like just throwing a little bit of water on the table between patients. There's a big risk of infection. And gangrene is a big problem at this time.
Pat [00:49:56] Yeah. Yeah.
Ben [00:49:57] You know, with a lot of these, you know, maybe they can dig the dig the ball out, but that that leg or that arm is not going to recover. The bones are broken beyond repair. And for some of these surgeons, the only option was to cut the appendage off. And you hear about this a lot, right, when they say that, you know, there's no organ transplants, there's no internal surgeries, there's no blood transfusions. And they say that if a soldier got hit in the head, Chester abdomen, he had a 90% chance of death. And you could just give him a little bit of morphine and water and a shady tree for him to sit under.
Pat [00:50:32] Is his last moment.
Ben [00:50:33] Fray and wounds to the arms and legs. You had better odds. Yeah, but three quarters of the operations being performed in these hospitals is amputation.
Pat [00:50:42] And if you got shot in one of your limbs, you had maybe about 48 hours to get that amputated with a hacksaw, which, remember, is unsterilized because people hadn't really figured out the whole sterilization thing yet. And you're as the doctor, you're working in whatever conditions you're in, which might be the kitchen counter of some a family's home. And so standard procedure was that if you were a good surgeon, you could perform this operation in under 10 minutes and you'd do it dozens of times in a row, bam, bam, bam, And all while the city is being pounded with artillery shells and stray bullets. And one nurse at the Battle of Antietam recalled working on a guy in the hospital, a tent, and then having a stray bullet pass through the tent and through the sleeve of her dress and then kills a patient right in front of her, which may have been a more humane way to go. It was a pretty grim situation. About 25% of people who underwent amputation surgery ended up dying from infected wounds. And amidst all this chaos, Dr. Mary Edwards. Walker continues to save human lives, and it's under hellish conditions, and the techniques are kind of barbaric. But she does her best, and she just keeps working as a front line surgeon throughout the three day battle of Chattanooga. So she's on a trip to Georgia to aid sick and injured civilians. She was ambushed by Confederate pickets and they found her in her union uniform. She was carrying two pistols. They arrested her as a spy. And this is a detail that may or may not actually have been true. We can't prove it either way. But her captors noted in their report that she argued, quote, enough for a regiment of men. They recommended sending her to a lunatic asylum for being a woman doctor, because, of course, that's the craziest thing anyone could imagine. And but instead, she was sent to Richmond and thrown into a jail for federal prisoners of war. She spent four months in the prisoner of war camp. You can imagine what that was like. She was then sent back to Yankee Lines as part of a prisoner exchange, and she she was traded for a male Confederate surgeon. And she confessed later that she was very proud of that trade and gave her the credit, recognized her as a battlefield surgeon.
Ben [00:53:12] There you go. Right. And I think that, again, I think that surgeon was a colonel or something to say That's not bad.
Pat [00:53:16] Yeah. So she was sent back to the Union Army and she was attached to General Sherman's army during the Atlanta campaign, after the Battle of Atlanta. She was appointed chief surgeon at a women's military prison in Louisville, Kentucky. And there she served until the end of the war. After her service, she collected a well-deserved Army pension. She wrote a couple of books. She became a women's suffrage activist and got arrested a couple of times for wearing pants instead of a dress.
Ben [00:53:46] Yeah. And one thing I do want to mention with Mary Edwards, Walker, is that we have spent a lot of time talking about, like the gruesome details of Civil War battlefields, surgery. But Mary Edwards, Walker did not perform amputations. She didn't like it. She thought it was barbaric and medieval. And she was really against the practice. So she would do what she could to help people. And she was performing some surgeries, but she was really opposed to these kind of hold the guy down and amputate his arm with the saw thing. So she you know, there weren't a lot of other options available at the time, but she did a lot of work to try to come up with some new strategies, some new ways to treat patients, because she just thought that this was was too brutal. And to and like I said, you know, medieval. And so I think that that is an interesting detail about her. She was you said before her time. And I think that there's a lot of truth to that because she was really interested in trying to find a better way of dealing with with these these types of injuries.
Pat [00:54:52] Yeah. During her time in the Union Army Doctor Mary Edwards, Walker had been recommended for promotion both by General George Henry Thomas and also by General William Tecumseh Sherman. But she was not technically a uniformed service member, and so these requests for promotion could not be granted. But but she did receive recognition. She was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor in 1866. And over the years, over the decades, there have been 1.8 million women who have served in the U.S. military. She's the only one to ever receive this award. And when the federal government changed the guidelines for the Medal of Honor in 1917, they actually tried to go back on this and, you know, and get from her. They restricted the Medal of Honor by stipulating that it could only be awarded for actions that occurred in combat. And that's why retroactively about 900 people got theirs taken away from them. And that included Doctor Walker. And she didn't stand for this. She just told me to go get bent. And.
Ben [00:56:05] You know, I'm not giving you.
Pat [00:56:07] Quite those words, but, you know, that attitude of, you know, this is not you know, she wore the medal until her death in 1919, and it was actually officially reinstated by order of President Jimmy Carter in 1977.
Ben [00:56:24] So even though it had been revoked for 60 years, it's no longer revoked. And she is the only woman in U.S. history to receive the Medal of Honor.
Pat [00:56:35] Yeah. Yeah. So that's our three Medal of Honor, American Heroes for today's episode.
Ben [00:56:42] Yeah. So three really good stories, American heroes, Medal of Honor recipients. Just kind of a very patriotic 4th of July stuff happening on the show today. And we are going to well, we have some something interesting planned for the next couple of episodes, because the next two episodes for the rest of, you know, for the next two weeks in July, we are going to talk about some I don't know how should we say this less fondly remembered American badasses. As Americans, but perhaps not quite as patriotic as as the three we talked about today. So, yeah, I think we're going to leave it with that. And thank you guys so much for listening. And we are going to see you next week with another one.
Pat [00:57:32] Badass of the Week is an iHeart radio podcast produced by High Five Content. Executive producers are Andrew Jacobs, Pat Larash, and Ben Thompson. Writing is by Pat and Ben. Story editing is by Ian Jacobs, Brandon Fibbs and Ali Lemer. Mixing and music and Sound Design is by Jude Brewer. Consulting by Michael May. Special thanks to Noel Brown at iHeart. Badass of the Week is based on the website BadassoftheWeek.com, where you can read all sorts of stories about other badasses. If you want to reach out with questions or ideas, you can email us at badasspodcast@badassoftheweek.com. If you like the podcast, subscribe, follow, listen and tell your friends and your enemies if you want, as we'll be back next week with another one. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio App, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
