So Many Soldiers

In re-reading my stories published as Stones from the Creek (http://www.amazon.com/Stones-Creek-Rick-Levine/dp/149447641X/ref=sr_1_1_bnp_1_pap?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1388592168&sr=1-1)
I realized that there were a surprising number of military characters, especially considering that I have never served in the military.  Of historical protagonists there are Henry Ossian Flipper, the first Black graduate of West Point; Mingo Sanders, the hero of the Cuban War who was discharged by Roosevelt after the Brownsville, Texas Affair; Alchesay, the decorated Apache scout who became the leader of the White Mountain Apaches; and Smedley Butler, the Marine major general who became an antiwar activist.  Then there is the fictional Ezekiel Payne, a former Black cavalryman who marries a Creek Indian woman.

Why so many military men?  I think a large part of the answer rests in the extreme violence of US social relations at the turn of the twentieth century.  The country was amassing an overseas empire with so-called "small wars" in China, the Philippines, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Honduras, and Nicaragua, along with the big imperial war in Cuba.  Historians like to declare the massacre of unarmed Lakota Ghost Dancers at Wounded Knee, South Dakota in 1890 to be the last Indian "battle," but troops continued to be called in to put down Indian resistance throughout this period.  In the Creek Nation alone, troops were called up against the followers of Chitto Harjo in 1901 and 1909.  And in the history of industrial relations it would be folly to attempt to list here the number of strikes that were countered with federal or state troops during this period.

The personal is important, too.  When I realized early on in my writing that I had two soldiers who were unfairly discharged I really had to reflect on why I was identifying so strongly with their stories.  It shouldn't have taken me as long to figure this out as it did.  As principal of a school with a "B" grade I received, at the end of the academic year, two lengthy critical evaluations from my superintendent.  Understand that the position of superintendent had been downgraded to a part-time gig, and that they were forbidden to enter schools on their own initiative.  I liked my superintendent and had invited her to come visit earlier that year.  She got a stricken look on her face and politely declined.  It was only later that I learned of another district superintendent who had been disciplined with a letter to file for visiting a school.  So when she did show up, it meant that I was a "person of interest."  (The deputy chancellor's phrase!)  And then after I had finished running summer school I was politely asked to leave… or else.  It would be too much to believe that this experience didn't have anything to do with my choosing to write about H.O. Flipper and Mingo Sanders.

The final reason that I have found for choosing all these military characters was my desire to connect stories of resistance from widely-separated sections of American society.  The Apaches' successful attempt to substitute tribal for individual enterprise?  African American resilience in the face of the convict lease system?  Alchesay and Mingo Sanders served together in the Apache Wars.  Mingo Sanders fought side-by-side with Teddy Roosevelt in Cuba so a personal letter from the former to the latter is not unimaginable.  There were other ways of linking apparently distant characters, but military service was one good one.

I think these characters stand up as being real.  That was always my attempt.