January 2011

Douglas L. Wilson’s “A Most Abandoned Hypocrite” (February/March) includes a document that may have been written by Abraham Lincoln. When I read the word plat in a certain passage from the document I was carried back in time to my childhood in the 1930s.

Back then, I and all my EnglishScots-Irish relatives and neighbors used the word plat (pronounced as it is spelled) to mean “plait” or “braid” to talk about something we did to our hair to keep it smooth and tidy, or to strips of rags, vines, or leather to make rugs, mats, animal halters, and other items to be used around the house or farm. Later I became aware that plat was never used by my teachers or in the books and magazines that I read to mean “braid” or “plait,” so I forsook plat for “braid,” although I continued to use it in reference to land drawings.

Re: The Lincoln photograph, recently found, as a young man. It is authentic, to my amazement.

Turn the photos upside down for comparison (this eliminates the “aging") and the physiques are identical! To further prove this, compare the photos sideways—again identical!

It’s not Lincoln.

Marvelous research has gone into the daguerreotype ("Is This the First Photograph of Abraham Lincoln?” by Harold Holzer, February/March issue), it has excellent provenance, and the computer wizardry is most impressive. But if ever it were true that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, it is in this image. Though the ears, hair, hands, and all may match, it simply does not look like Abraham Lincoln.

Perhaps no face is so firmly etched in the American mind. We love him and we know what he looks like—and he doesn’t look like this. The computers could be right, but even if this is Lincoln, it’s not Lincoln.

I thoroughly enjoy your magazine, but you left yourself somewhat exposed in the December issue regarding Artzybasheff’s painting of the Gee Bee R-I racer in the 1932 Cleveland Air Races ("The Winter Art Show"). In your caption, you call the Gee Bee airplane “dangerous” (which it was), and the painting “utterly accurate.” However, Artzybasheff has mistakenly rendered the aircraft with a curved windshield frontpiece, when in fact the R-I was actually fitted with an angled plate of flat, high-strength glass in front of the cockpit to protect the pilot from oncoming debris or disintegrating engine parts. The modification was performed by the Granville Brothers Aircraft Company following the death nine months earlier of superpilot Lowell Bayles, who was driven into the ground at Michigan’s Wayne County Airport when the gas cap from his Gee Bee “Z” racer rattled loose and shattered the regularstreneth. curved windshield.

I was interested to open the December issue to “The Winter Art Show” and find Robert Henri’s portrait The Failure of Sylvester . We were thrilled to be able to purchase it in a Christie’s sale this past May, and Tennesseans have been enjoying it in its permanent home at Cheekwood Museum of Art ever since. The painting has been an important addition to our holdings, especially now that our collecting policy focuses on “The Eight,”and we certainly invite your readers to come visit Sylvester; we think it is worth the trip to see not only this Henri but the rest of our collection.

On August 2, 1905, Pvt. John Yates of the 4th Calvary—stationed then at Wawona (now within Yosemite National Park, California)—drowned while trying to save Mary Garrigan, who had fallen into Yosemite Creek. He is buried in Wawona Pioneer Cemetery with early residents of the area.

Through the years, Albert Gordon, a fourth-generation Wawonan and descendant of a Forty-niner, attempted to have the neglected cemetery shown respect and kept free of debris. When the officials of the National Park Service finally decided to dedicate the cemetery in 1993, Albert wrote to General Sullivan about possible Army participation. The general responded with a heartwarming letter and promised to send a color guard from the Fourth Cavalry. On Dedication Day these men, with Capt. John L. Gifford in charge, made a most impressive show that we all watched with pride and gratitude.

So it was with delight and further gratitude that I read the interview with General Sullivan in your December issue: it is a fine portrait of a lovely man who implemented a lovely deed.

Roger Spiller’s interview with Gen. Gordon Sullivan in the December issue, “Hope Is Not a Method,” should be required reading for any Army recruit or ROTC student, both for his personal guide through his lifelong Army career and for his wonderful explanation of what is expected of soldiers and officers. The goals of our military are always changing with world conditions, and our servicemen should be constantly educated to what these goals are.

I could not help but think of the World War II drawings by Bill Mauldin as the counterpart to those of Thomason. In Mauldin’s own words, “My business is drawing, not writing,” but in their drawings the two men have captured the action and reaction of the infantry soldier under combat conditions. The different backgrounds and military orientation of each artist undoubtedly shaded their styles. Thomason’s gung-ho attitude as compared with Mauldin’s more cynical one is well illustrated in their comparable drawings of an American soldier guarding a line of defeated German soldiers. I would hope someone could do a more detailed comparison of these two unique individuals who had such an uncanny ability to show in line so much of how it was.

In the interest of military accuracy, I believe the 5th Marines were part of the 4th Marine Brigade, not the other way around as Morris wrote of Thomason’s outfit. In the First World War, American divisions consisted of two brigades of two regiments each. The 6th Marines were the other regiment in the 4th Marine Brigade.

Fix Bayonets! was my first introduction to what my father did in World War I. I purchased a copy of — and a Few Marines when I attended Basic School at Quantico in 1959. Just a couple of weeks ago, I called the Marine Corps Association (703-640-6161) for any other titles of Colonel Thomason and they told me they only carry Fix Bayonets! . The Military Bookman (212348-1280) found a copy of Jeb Stuart and Ameron Publishers (516-298-5100) has reprinted Lone Star Preacher . Now if I could only find Salt Winds and Gobi Dust and Red Pants and Other Stories . What a great discovery for anyone who has not read Thomason. Thank you, Donald Morris.