The surrendered sword that gave birth to America returns to Virginia
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Though they cannot be absolutely certain,
experts think this was the sword that signified the end of the Revolutionary War, Morando said, a physical object that symbolized victory over British oppression after six years of bloody conflict.
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The sword is part of a new museum exhibition, 'Call to Arms: The Soldier and the Revolutionary War,' that celebrates the Army's 250th birthday Saturday and the nation's 250th next year.
The exhibition opened June 7 at the museum in Fort Belvoir, Va., about 15 miles south of D.C. It is set to run through June 2027.
The British surrender came as the forces of Washington and his French allies trapped the main part of Cornwallis's Army at Yorktown, a village on the York River in southeastern Virginia.
The exhibition includes a large collection of muskets, pistols — two of which belonged to Washington — exquisitely etched powder horns, rare uniforms, tattered battle flags, and mannequins clad in period garb that represent actual war participants.
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The latter include a life-size model of Native American soldier Daniel Nimham, of the Wappinger people, who served in the Stockbridge Indian Company. He, his son, Abraham, and 14 other Indians were killed in an ambush by British Loyalists in 1778, the museum says.
One of the faded flags is that of the 1st Rhode Island Regiment, which included a large contingent of Black soldiers, many of whom were enslaved and agreed to fight in exchange for their freedom. One of them was Cato Varnum, who is shown as a life-size figure wearing the regiment's white uniform and black hat. He joined the regiment at age 16.
Another flag, that of the German Ansbach-Bayreuth Regiment in the employ of the British, was the last banner surrendered at Yorktown, Morando said. The white flag bears the image of the Brandenburg red eagle under the Latin motto 'For the Prince and the Country.'
More than 2,000 hired German soldiers surrendered with the British, the museum says.
Morando has assembled artifacts from institutions around the country, as well as military museums in Britain, France, and Canada.
From Britain came the sword, which has been lent by the countess, who said her family has owned it for generations. She watched last week as it was mounted in a museum display case.
Morando said that there is no concrete proof that this was the Cornwallis sword presented at the ceremony but that there is 'a lot of supporting evidence.'
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In paintings depicting the surrender, the sword is 'just a simple British officer's sword. And that's what this is. There's nothing fancy. Just a standard English dress sword from that time period.'
'I honestly believe this is Lord Cornwallis's sword,' he said. 'Whether or not it was the sword that was presented, you can make arguments for and against. Looking at the research, looking at the documents, looking at the images, and paintings, you can make a strong argument that this indeed is the surrender sword.'
The countess said, 'It's never left the family.'
'It was always in my father's dressing room,' she said in an interview. 'Probably not being looked after in the way that it should have been looked after. It was in a coat stand with … umbrellas and stuff like that.'
'Even though he knew how important it was … it's always been much more of a sentimental item,' she said.
The sword, which is on loan for six months, is believed to have been given to Cornwallis in his youth by an uncle who was a general, she said. The sword dates to the 1750s.
By 1781, Cornwallis was 42 and a battle-tested leader when he surrendered his army at Yorktown.
The ceremony that Friday afternoon took place in front of thousands of soldiers — victors and vanquished. Washington was present. So was the French commander, Rochambeau.
Cornwallis was not. He was either too embarrassed or was ill, historian Jerome A. Greene wrote in his 2005 book 'The Guns of Independence: the Siege of Yorktown, 1781.'
Although the countess said, Cornwallis and Washington met privately later, the British general's absence at the surrender annoyed the Americans.
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'We are not to be surprised that the pride of the British officer is humbled,' wrote James Thacher, a doctor in Washington's Army, according to Greene.
'They have always maintained an exalted opinion of their own military prowess [and viewed] the Americans as a contemptible, undisciplined rabble,' Thacher wrote.
Cornwallis instead sent one of his subordinates, Gen. Charles O'Hara.
As the ceremony began, O'Hara tried to offer the sword to Rochambeau, even though O'Hara knew Washington was the allied commander, Greene recounted.
Rochambeau pointed O'Hara to Washington. But when O'Hara tried to surrender the sword to Washington, the latter directed him to one of his subordinates, Gen. Benjamin Lincoln.
If Cornwallis was sending a subordinate, he would surrender to a subordinate, Greene wrote. Lincoln took the sword, held it for a moment, and gave it back.
A few weeks after the surrender, a French soldier wrote his mother: 'I know now that I have been an actor in events which the world and history will never forget.'
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National Geographic
2 hours ago
- National Geographic
Charles Lindbergh was a Nazi puppet—and his famous flight was overrated. Here's why.
Charles Lindbergh standing in front of his plane, the Spirit of St. Louis, which he used on his transatlantic flight. Photograph by Bridgeman Images The aviator was so impressed by German propaganda that he grossly overestimated Hitler's airpower. I have to declare a personal stake that shapes my opinion as I write this story. It has its origins in 1940, 85 years ago this month. I was seven years old, living near London. I watched the choreography of a great battle underway, etched in vapor trails high above in the crisp blue sky of summer, the combat that became known as the Battle of Britain. I wasn't scared. I watched with the detached excitement of a child unaware of how perilous those days were for us. That understanding would come later, from my work as a journalist, spending years discovering how closely fought that famous victory was. Had that battle been lost it is doubtful that Britain, then alone as most of Western Europe fell to Hitler, could have survived, as it did, until Pearl Harbor made American intervention inevitable. As things have turned out, one of my most unsettling discoveries has been that a man long hailed as an American legend, Charles Lindbergh, worked avidly with the Germans to undermine the chances of a British victory. Much has long been known about Lindbergh's alliance with American fascists between 1939 and 1941, and particularly his speech in Des Moines, Iowa in September 1941, in which he blamed three groups—the Roosevelt administration, the British and the Jews—for pressing the nation to confront Hitler. Much less known is the role Lindbergh played in England during the 1930s as Hitler's useful idiot, spreading the idea that Nazi Germany had become an invincible air power. The first Nazi to spot and exploit Lindbergh as an effective agent of German disinformation was Hermann Goering, Hitler's deputy and head of his air force, the Luftwaffe. Goering recognized that Lindbergh's celebrity gave him oracular authority on aviation—whether justified or not. Portrait of Charles Lindbergh Photograph by The Stapleton Collection, Bridgeman Images A decade after Lindbergh's epic solo flight across the Atlantic, on October 16, 1937, the Nazis made their master move, allowing him into their secret test field at Rechlin, near the Baltic coast. Virtually all the Luftwaffe's future aircraft were revealed to him. Credulous and convinced that no other European power rivaled Germany in the air, Lindbergh thereafter became a powerful influence on the 'peace at any price' factions in Britain and France. Lindbergh had no background in military aviation, but when he spoke on the subject of anything with wings, a lot of important people listened. There were numerous reports of Lindbergh pressing his views on leading European politicians, some of whom found them unnerving and demoralizing. For example, the British military attaché in Paris, seeing how rattled the French were by Lindbergh's assessments, reported to London, '…the Fuhrer found a most convenient ambassador in Colonel Lindbergh.' Limited Time: Bonus Issue Offer Subscribe now and gift up to 4 bonus issues—starting at $34/year. Lindbergh's impact in Britain was equally effective. In a single meeting he could turn a stern patriot into an abject appeaser. In 1938 a highly influential Tory, Thomas Jones, noted in his diary that before listening to Lindbergh he had been for standing up against Hitler but: 'Since my talk with Lindbergh I've sided with those working for peace at any cost in humiliation, because of the picture of our relative unpreparedness in the air…' (How the Battle of Britain changed the war—and the world—forever) Lindbergh also had a willing ear in the American ambassador in London, Joseph Kennedy. In 1938 he told Kennedy that Germany was then able to produce 20,000 military airplanes a year and gave a dark prediction of likely British defeat in the air. (In October 1938 Goering, on behalf of Hitler, awarded Lindbergh the Service Cross of the German Eagle.) In fact, Lindbergh's numbers were absurdly inflated. They were, literally, being used by the Nazis as a force multiplier. Moreover, Lindbergh's propaganda had masked a systemic weakness in the organization of German aircraft production. It was far from being a model of Teutonic efficiency. Production was dispersed among many manufacturers competing for resources and slowed by supply chain bottlenecks. In contrast, British aircraft production was far more rigorously directed and resourced from a central command. Charles Lindbergh receiving the Service Cross of the German Eagle from Hermann Goering on behalf of Adolf Hitler Photograph by SZ Photo/Scherl, Bridgeman Images More crucially, Lindbergh had no inkling of a game-changing technical leap in the deployment of air power that the British pioneered, the world's most advanced radar-based early warning system. Incoming waves of bombers could be pinpointed and tracked before they reached the British coast. Their size, direction and altitude were precisely plotted on a map in a central operations room, enabling the Royal Air Force (R.A.F) to deploy its precious hundreds of advanced fighters and pilots sparingly in the most efficient and deadly way. Britain's 'finest hour' At the outbreak of war, in September 1939, Germany did have a clear lead in numbers: 2,893 available front-line airplanes versus 1,600 in Britain. But by July, 1940, when the Battle of Britain began, the difference had narrowed. Britain had 644 front-line fighters to 725 German (with their time over England critically limited by fuel). By the end of September, when the RAF's famous victory was achieved, they had 732 fighters available while the Luftwaffe was reduced to 438. Weeks before the battle in the air began, Britain's expeditionary army in France had been nearly wiped out, saved only by the evacuation at Dunkirk. Few foresaw that its air force, the most scientifically advanced of its forces, was actually capable of saving the day. But—a point mostly overlooked by historians—Prime Minister Winston Churchill, fighting off a last-ditch resistance by appeasers, made his confidence in the R.A.F's strengths the bulwark of his case for carrying on the war. (Searching for the remains of two early transatlantic pilots) This is testament to Churchill's remarkable openness, at the age of 65, to technical transformation: As a young man he had served in the army, and had then twice served as First Lord of the Admiralty, in 1911 and 1939, running the Royal Navy. But, as much as he loved Britain's imperial-scale navy, he understood in 1940, ahead of many others, that the island nation's last line of defense was now in the air. On June 18, 1940, in one of his greatest speeches, Churchill warned, 'The whole fury and might of the enemy must very soon be turned on us…if we fail, then the whole world, including the United States, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age.' Yet, if Britain prevailed, the world would say, 'This was their finest hour.' The battle engaged remarkably low numbers of men in combat, only a few hundred on each side, almost like medieval knights, each alone in a cockpit. When it was over, Churchill made the indelible tribute to his airmen: 'Never in the history of human conflict have so many owed so much to so few.' Victory in the air ended any chance of Hitler carrying out Operation Sea Lion, his planned invasion of Britain. And it finally laid bare the pernicious extent of the disinformation spread by Lindbergh—swallowed whole by many, including Ambassador Kennedy. Even then, Kennedy, a hardened isolationist, had learned nothing. Unmoved by the victory, he said, 'The British have had it. They can't stop the Germans and the best thing for them is to learn to live with them.' (Charles Lindbergh's wife was a record-breaking aviator in her own right) It's important to note that Lindbergh's crossing of the Atlantic in 1927 was an act of superb airmanship—particularly of navigation—but it did nothing to advance the science of aviation. His airplane, the Spirit of St. Louis, was a one-off bespoke model built for only one purpose: for one man to safely cross the Atlantic. It was not in any way a precursor. The science necessary to carry passengers safely across any ocean was an American achievement, developed mainly in a wind tunnel at Caltech in California, where two companies, Boeing and Douglas, created the first twin-engine all-metal airliners. In fact, the need for a larger, twin-engine airplane to cross oceans was foretold by two British military aviators, Captain John Alcock and Lieutenant Arthur Whitten Brown, who were the first to actually fly across the Atlantic, 1,890 miles, from Newfoundland to Ireland, in 1919, in a converted World War I bomber. They landed, unheralded, in a field and came to rest, nose down, in a bog, not like Lindbergh on a floodlit runway with the whole world listening on radio. As a result, to this day few people realize who was first. It will fall to President Donald Trump to decide how the nation will mark the centennial of Lindbergh's 1927 flight from Long Island, New York, to Paris. This will confront America with a challenging moral judgment: Can a legendary human endeavor ever be celebrated if the 'hero' turns out to have been so deeply flawed?
Indianapolis Star
5 hours ago
- Indianapolis Star
Doyel: A box comes in the mail. Turns out, you didn't know your dad as well as you thought
They told me about that first birthday – the first one since he died. They said it would hit like a train. They were right. My dad would've turned 80 on Sunday, July 27. It has been nearly nine months since he died, and for nine months there has been grieving. But this is also true, what they say: It gets better with time, the hurt – the shock – that Robert Leon Doyel, my dad, the hero of my childhood, is gone and not coming back. It is the way of the world for all of us, losing a parent or someone else we love, but your pain cannot lessen mine. Nor can mine lessen yours. The things people tell you, they're true. Everyone grieves in their own way. My way has been gutless, hiding behind the gratitude – it was and still is real – that his suffering is over, and hiding some more when I chose not to fly to Florida to attend his service. His memorial was held several months after he died on Nov. 1, and by then I'd moved onto something like denial: He's gone, he's not coming back, and I'm doing OK up here in Indiana. Dad's last decade was not pleasant, starting with a car accident that left him with an uncountable number of broken bones – doctors found new, healed fractures for years – shortly after he retired. The years got worse, and his final 18 months were full of physical pain and emotional confusion. It was heartbreaking, hearing him cry on the phone in pain or mental torment, certain that everyone was out to get him, wondering why I wasn't coming to Florida to rescue him from the hospital where he was being held against his will. My dad was a lawyer, then a judge. He had a brilliant mind, legal and otherwise, and he had an argument to make on behalf of his freedom, if I would just get him before the proper authorities. Why wasn't I coming? Well, Dad, I was there last week. Do you remember? He'd start crying. No, I wasn't going to Florida to attend that service, several months after he died. It was going to hurt too much. It was safer up here in Indiana. It really does get better with time. Everyone tells you that. Nobody told tell me about the box in the mail. Nobody told me about that. From October: Rose's death stabs at my childhood, but rekindles my Dad's forgotten love language Obituary from November: He desegregated youth baseball. Veteran, teacher, judge. I called him dad. He never told me about the sniper fire at Da Nang. My dad was a U.S. Navy cook at Vietnam. That's what he told me – that's what he was. And he was proud of his service, overseeing the galley at Tien Sha Peninsula, on an old French army camp at the foot of Monkey Mountain. Dad was responsible for the feeding of 10,000 soldiers and other personnel every day. He told me that. He never told me about the time the North Vietnamese knocked out power in the galley, or about his decision to utilize charcoal grills and other temporary power sources to feed thousands of soldiers, some on floating galleys on the river, while sniper fire was coming from the jungle. He didn't tell me about receiving a Navy Achievement Medal with the Combat V, or the citation written Dec. 9, 1969, that congratulates my dad for his 'ingenuity and resourcefulness' at Da Nang and ends like this: Lieutenant (second grade) DOYEL's exemplary professionalism and devotion to duty were in keeping with the highest tradition of the United States Naval Service. E.R. Zumwalt, Jr. Vice Admiral, U.S. Navy Commander U.S. Naval Forces in Vietnam It was in the cardboard box, that medal and letter. Don't remember seeing the letter before now, but I remember the medal. As a boy I played with it – never noticed that little 'V' – and with his other Navy service stripes and medals, pins and cufflinks. Didn't know what any of it meant. Look, I was 7. This was Norman, Oklahoma, in the 1970s. Dad and I talked about OU football, about Barry Switzer and Lee Roy Selmon and Billy Sims. We didn't talk about Da Nang. From 2017: The Christmas when Gregg Doyel learned the truth about Grandma, and Dad The box showed up three days before his birthday. I knew it was coming – his wife of 35 years, Chelle, had told me to be on the lookout – but it sat on my floor for 24 hours before I had the guts to open it. What's another thing people say? Something about some doors being better left unopened. Same goes for boxes. But not this box, as it turns out. The tears came, sure, along with fresh salvos of shock and sadness. Nine months, Dad? Some days it feels like it's been just a few weeks. Other days, feels like years. You form a callous, and along comes a time capsule that peels it off, teaching you about the man you thought you knew so well. And I did know my dad well. Knew his strengths, and his weaknesses. Faults? Oh, he had faults. I could write a book about mistakes he's made. Could write a book about mine, too. This box didn't have any of his faults. Don't be afraid of it, G-Pistol, Dad could've told me, using the nickname he gave me as a kid; this box won't hurt you. These were papers and pictures and, sure, awards he'd saved over the years. His military file is in here. So are his academic records. Top 5 percent of his class at the University of Oklahoma – and the OU law school? Didn't know that. When he took the bar exam in Georgia in 1987, he received the highest score in the state? Didn't know. Here's his diploma from the University of Oklahoma College of Law. Didn't know he was managing editor of the Oklahoma Law Review. A busy man, my dad. What did I know of him being busy? He played catch in the backyard whenever I asked, which was every day in Norman and Oxford, Mississippi, where we kicked field goals at Vaught-Hemingway Stadium and shot baskets at Tad Smith Coliseum. More of the same in New Glarus, Wisconsin, and then Macon, Georgia, for my high school years. Baseball, basketball, soccer. He had all the time in the world. When did he have the time to earn 1976 Jaycee of the Year with the Norman Jaycees? When he did he have time in 1983 to earn a Doctor of Juridical Science from the law school at Wisconsin? To be on a legal team in Georgia that argued before the U.S. Supreme Court in November 1986? That was my junior year of high school. The Supreme Court? From 2018: Youth baseball in Oxford, Miss., was segregated in 1978. Here's what Dad did. From 2020: Celebrating Father's Day in a sports world getting smaller and smaller He moved to Florida the next year, leaving me in Macon for my senior year of high school. I was supposed to live with a friend's family, but when that fell through my dad showed some of his ingenuity and resourcefulness by finding a furnished apartment and putting me there for the year. I was playing soccer and baseball and working two jobs in Macon while he was in Florida, working as a lawyer. Here in the box is a plaque from the Polk County Criminal Defense Lawyers Association, recognizing him for serving as president from 1990-91. He became a circuit court judge in 1995, and here in the box is a commendation from the chief justice of the Florida Supreme Court, Harry Lee Anstead, 'for exemplary service (and) providing leadership within Florida's Court System in the area of Domestic Violence.' Did he ever tell me he was president of the local defense lawyers? Or honored by the Florida Supreme Court? I knew he was a charming rascal. Did I know someone had given him a desk nameplate that confirmed it? Bob Doyel Charming Rascal No, I didn't. But I knew he cared deeply about victims of domestic violence. Bench assignments in Florida's Tenth Judicial Circuit rotated every few years – Felonies, Civil and Family Law – and nobody wanted to work in Family Law. But there was no getting out of it, and when Dad was assigned Family Law in 1997 he was miserable about it, unsettled to hear about the suffering of so many women and children. But he found his calling. When it was time to rotate bench assignments a few years later, Dad asked to stay where he was in Family Law. His colleagues were more than happy to leave him there. Here in the box is a plaque from his fellow judges in the Tenth Judicial Circuit: In grateful appreciation for your dedication and distinguished service as Chairperson of Polk County's Domestic Violence Task Force Another plaque: In appreciation to Bob Doyel for your dedicated service as president of the Ritz Theatre 100, 1990-99 Ritz Theatre? Really, Dad? In his retirement my dad wrote one book about domestic violence that was published, and dictated a work of fiction – dictated it; think about that – that should've been. Apparently he was a prolific writer of letters to the editor, too; they're in the box. He clipped them, along with stories I'd written for the IndyStar that were picked up by the Lakeland Ledger. He even clipped a rebuttal letter in the Ledger from a woman who disagreed with his letter arguing for 'free long-acting, reversible contraception (LARC) to reduce teen pregnancies and abortions.' Here's something else, but not a plaque. More like a pin, a trinket. Wait, is this... A key to the city of Winter Haven, Florida? This is how I'm spending what would've been the weekend of his 80th birthday, digging through military files and pins and papers he'd been saving for 50 years – learning about a U.S. hero on the Tien Sha Peninsula, and the hero of my childhood. Find IndyStar columnist Gregg Doyel on Threads, or on BlueSky and Twitter at @GreggDoyelStar, or at Subscribe to the free weekly Doyel on Demand newsletter.
New York Post
17 hours ago
- New York Post
At least 3 killed and others injured in train derailment in southern Germany
BERLIN — A regional passenger train derailed in southern Germany on Sunday, killing at least three people and seriously injuring others, authorities said. Federal and local police said the cause of the crash near Riedlingen, roughly 158 kilometers (98 miles) west of Munich, remains under investigation. Photos from the scene showed parts of the train on its side as rescuers climbed atop the carriages. 6 Rescue workers at the scene of a derailed passenger train on Sunday. 6 The regional express RE55 derailed in the Biberach district between the districts of Zweifaltendorf and Zell. 6 Federal and local police said the cause of the crash near Riedlingen, roughly 158 kilometers (98 miles) west of Munich, remains under investigation. It was not immediately clear how many people were injured. Roughly 100 people were onboard the train when at least two carriages derailed in a forested area around 6:10 p.m. (1610 GMT). Storms passed through the area before the crash and investigators were seeking to determine if the rain was a factor. 6 Storms passed through the area before the crash and investigators were seeking to determine if the rain was a factor. 6 Four rescue helicopters in a field near a train derailment. 6 Germany's main national railway operator said in a statement that it was cooperating with investigators. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, in a post on social platform X, said he mourned the victims and gave his condolences to their families. Deutsche Bahn, Germany's main national railway operator, said in a statement that it was cooperating with investigators. The company also offered its condolences.
