Valor Medals For Four USMC “Silent Warriors”
In a rare public ceremony, four “Silent Warriors” from 1st Marine Special Operations Battalion, U.S. Marine Corps Forces, Special Operations Command (MARSOC), were recognized with the United States’ second- and third-highest valor medals. In December 2012 at Camp Pendleton, Calif., Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus and MARSOC commander Major General Mark A. Clark presented the Navy Cross to Sergeant William B. Soutra Jr. and awarded Silver Star medals to Major James T. Rose, Staff Sergeant Frankie J. Shinost and U.S. Navy Hospital Corpsman 1st Class Patrick B. Quill for extraordinary heroism during a 2010 combat mission in Afghanistan.
Mabus explained why MARSOC “Silent Warriors” rarely receive public recognition: “Most of their missions are classified; most of the time we don’t hear anything about them or the extraordinary actions they take on a daily basis.”
The 2010 combat action began when the four Marines, deployed with Company B, 1st Marine Special Operations Battalion (MSOB), and their Afghan commando partners set out to capture an insurgent bomb factory and disrupt enemy activity in Afghanistan’s Nahr-e Saraj district. After two days of brutal fighting, the violence escalated when an improvised explosive device blast triggered an insurgent ambush in which element leader Staff Sergeant Chris Antonik was grievously wounded.
Soutra and team corpsman Quill received Antonik’s distress call as they returned from another platoon’s position with ammunition resupply. Suddenly, their position was blanketed by insurgent machine-gun and mortar fire. Pinned down, their Afghan commando partner force became disoriented. Soutra immediately and boldly took charge, exposing himself to insurgent fire in order to direct the commandos to concentrate their fire on the enemy position. Soutra and Quill then rushed into the kill zone to find Antonik.
After moving 150 meters through intense machine-gun fire, the two men reached the blast site, where Antonik lay semiconscious beside a wounded Afghan commando. Under fire, Quill immediately attended to Antonik, shielding him with his body. Soutra applied tourniquets to the wounded commando’s legs, dragged the Afghan to cover and then returned to Quill. Antonik was too badly wounded to be moved, so Soutra and Quill stayed with him in the kill zone despite intense enemy fire.
Meanwhile, Rose monitored the situation on his radio. Since the ambush site’s dense vegetation prevented air support, Rose organized a quick reaction force (QRF) to attack the enemy pinning down Soutra’s commando…
Civil War Colt Navy Revolver
Recently, the U.S. Army Center of Military History Museum Support Center acquired a six-shot M1851 Colt Navy Revolver. Introduced in 1851, the Colt Navy, or “Belt Pistol,” proved a highly successful firearm widely used on the Western Plains and in the Civil War. The term “Navy” does not refer to a specific branch of service but denotes the revolver’s .36-caliber bore (in 1860, Colt introduced an “Army” model in .44 caliber).
Although the 1851 model Civil War “cap and ball” percussion-fire pistol is not rare, this particular revolver is – we know who carried it during the war and that the pistol and the trooper who used it saw extensive service in a number of important actions. Manufactured in 1862, the revolver was issued to John Myers of 6th Kansas Volunteer Cavalry Regiment, a unit that served from 1861-65 in the Trans-Mississippi Theater.
Born in 1834 in Germany, John Myers immigrated to the United States sometime before 1860 and eventually settled in Shawnee, Kan., where he took up the profession of painter, got married and had a daughter. In October 1861, he enlisted as a private and soon was promoted to first sergeant. When Myers joined 6th Kansas Volunteer Cavalry Regiment, the unit’s muster rolls noted that he had a “ruddy” completion, stood 5 feet 7 inches tall, and had brown hair and blue eyes.
Myers and 6th Kansas Volunteer Cavalry Regiment saw plenty of action, first as part of the Army of the Frontier and later as part of VII Corps. He and his unit served in numerous engagements, including Newtonia (September 1862), Old Fort Wayne (October 1862), Prairie Grove (December 1862), Honey Springs (July 1863), Camden Expedition (March-May 1864), Poison Springs (April 1864), and Marais des Cygnes (October 1864). At the end of his three-year enlistment in November 1864, Myers left the military. When he mustered out, he opted to keep his Colt Navy Revolver, for which the Army billed him $20.
Myers returned home to Kansas, resumed farming and had three more children. Although during his Army career he never reported to the hospital or missed any duty, apparently hard service had ruined his health – he suffered from lung disease and died of tuberculosis in 1884. Myer’s Civil War service is commemorated in his surviving revolver, now part of the U.S. Army’s core collection of historical artifacts.
– Submitted by Colonel (Ret.) Robert Dalessandro and Roderick Gainer, Curator, U.S. Army Center of Military History.
For information about the National Museum of the U.S. Army, slated to open in 2015, visit armyhistory.org.
Civil War “Valhalla”
Dating from 1836, the Laurel Hill Cemetery in Philadelphia not only is one of the oldest Victorian garden cemeteries, it also was the leading final resting place for the city’s elites during the second half of the 19th century. Indeed, the large number of well-known military figures interred at Laurel Hill makes the cemetery a Civil War “Valhalla” – an American Civil War version of the gathering place of the honored dead of Norse mythology.
The Army is represented at the cemetery by 42 Civil War generals, including George G. Meade, victorious Union commander at Gettysburg; Charles Ferguson Smith, Union commander in the West prior to the Battle of Shiloh; Joshua “Paddy” Owen, of the Philadelphia Brigade; Robert Patterson, a major general in both the Mexican-American War and the Civil War; Patterson’s two general officer sons, Francis (New Jersey Brigade) and Robert Emmet (115th Pennsylvania Regiment); and John C. Pemberton, the Philadelphia-born Confederate commander who surrendered Vicksburg to General Ulysses S. Grant July 4, 1863.
The Navy boasts a number of admirals, commodores and captains who rest at Laurel Hill, including Admiral John Dahlgren, famed for his naval ordnance work. U.S. Marine Corps Civil War veterans at the cemetery include General Jacob Zeilin, 7th Marine Corps commandant (1864-76) and the Corps’ first general. Zeilin also helped design the “Eagle, Globe and Anchor” Marine Corps emblem, which is proudly displayed on his memorial obelisk.
Six Civil War Medal of Honor recipients are buried at Laurel Hill: USN Master’s Mate Robert Kelly; Captain Frank Furness, 6th Pennsylvania Cavalry; Sergeant George Pitman, 1st New York Cavalry; Sergeant John Story, 109th Pennsylvania Volunteers; USMC Sergeant Pinkerton Vaughn; and Brevet Brigadier General Henry Bingham, 140th Pennsylvania Volunteers.
Other military notables buried at the cemetery include Commodore Isaac Hull, captain of USS Constitution during the War of 1812; Colonel Ulric Dahlgren, killed in the 1864 Dahlgren-Kilpatrick cavalry raid on Richmond, Va.; Colonel Charles Ellet, of the Vicksburg campaign Mississippi River ram fleet; USMC Major Levi Twiggs, killed in the 1847 Battle of Chapultepec during the Mexican-American War; George Alfred Townsend (pen name “Gath”), the most famous war correspondent of the Civil War period; and battlefield nurse Mary Morris Husband.
Some of the Union Soldier, Sailor and Marine veterans from the Civil War are interred in Laurel Hill’s Grand Army of the Republic burial plot of Meade Post #1, including Lieutenant William Tyrrell, a hero of Gettysburg. Most, however, are scattered throughout the cemetery, resting in honored glory – some yet to be identified.
For more information about Philadelphia’s historic Laurel Hill Cemetery, including directions and upcoming events, visit thelaurelhillcemetery.org.
– Submitted by Anthony Waskie, PhD, Temple University and General Meade Society of Philadelphia (generalmeadesociety.org). Visit armchairgeneral.com to read an expanded version of Waskie’s Laurel Hill Cemetery article.
Originally published in the September 2013 issue of Armchair General.
