Life in Memory Gardens Cemetery: Day 11--Damn that Heroic Son of a Gun!

Have you ever thought you knew someone and when you started looking, you discover you didn’t know them at all?

(Note to reader: this entry isn’t about someone I met in Memory Gardens. Since I’ve been writing about so many “dead” people, I’ve been thinking about this man for quite some time; and I feel I need to write about him.)

More than eighteen years ago I wrote a novel about the Rough Riders; it centered around the officers and soldiers of Company A: men such as their captain, William “Buckey” O’Neill, and the “heart” of Second Squad—Sergeant Henry W. Nash.

It was a project, I added to, read and re-read, and edited with love and care. The first draft was 535 pages long—which somehow, I miraculously started and finished in a mere 10 days—a feat I’ve never duplicated while writing my other 19 novels. At one time in a fit of literary frustration, I took out so much of the plot it ended up being an anorexic 370 pages. Nonetheless, the manuscript has ebbed and flowed until I told myself, no one will ever want to read it and abandoned it on a disk, a computer and a soft-covered manuscript like pieces of garbage strewn along a rarely travelled highway. I thought of the novel as a craft project I generally finished but didn’t frame; a quilt I had spent years sewing only to have no one want to use it on a winter’s night.

Over the years, I molded and rounded off some of the sharp edges of many of the soldiers as I learned bits of information about one or another (I had used the names of real men and real events in order to make my “great American novel” as “authentic” as I could).

One of my favorite characters was Sergeant Henry W. Nash. In spite of searching every written source available to me in Utah and beyond (remember, there wasn’t an Internet and huge megabyte data bases online in the 1990’s when I did most of my research for this particular novel), so who this man, in truth, was eluded me. That meant I had to make up a backstory for the non-commissioned officer—had to create a realistic man from what I had in the dozens of pads of notes I had in my home library as I typed on a blue-screened computer now considered so old it was a step up from an electric typewriter.

While I crafted the first draft, I often “heard” his Midwestern voice that was interwoven with a western twang. We would “communicate” for hours, until I came to love him as a friend, admire his intelligence, his common sense, and self-sacrifice he had for the men he led and loved like brothers. But when I “saw” Hank (I called him that but now I know friends and family preferred “Harry” which I don’t like that much) in my mind since I never found a photo of him, I saw an older man, tall, in his early forties; a man quick to laugh, but not quick to settle a problem with a gun.

Perhaps because he had such commendable qualities, I naturally thought only an older man and not a younger one could have such wisdom which originated from so many life experiences—experiences which built him, which he exuded like a sweet smelling after-shave I remember from the old-time barber shops with the red-white swirling contraptions outside their doors and big, bay windows to advertise their occupations.

Since I was becoming so good at looking up people on genealogical sites due to focusing on my blogging, finding sites with more information than I could get in ten history books, I thought, “Why the hell not look up Henry Nash; you like him, so do it.”

After an all-afternoon search, I found information I would have loved to have gotten my hands on at the time I was researching for my "magnus opus."

The first piece of info I gleaned was his death—1902—which ironically fit with the plot to the sequel of the Rough Riders’ Snake Eyes entitled Debt of Honor. In that story I dramatically and poignantly killed Henry Nash at the evil hands of the Klu Klux Klan in Arkansas.

Henry actually died in Globe, Gila County, Arizona. His occupation listed in the 1900 census as “miner”—not unexpected since I knew he had gone through many occupations—from gunman, cowboy, stage coach shotgun and coach driver, wrangler, farmer, grocer, etc.—all before becoming a member of history’s famous all volunteer cavalry unit.

By 3:30 p.m. I got access to his military and pension records which were difficult to navigate to since they are controlled by the government. When I saw the digital records with its too familiar greying envelope adorned with his name, I about cried. There it was—the enlistment sheet, his pay stubs—even a medical note which informed me he had been absent at roll call at Camp Wilkoff due to an illness—“a malarial fever” he had picked up in Cuba. I also found facts I already knew—like all the action he had seen on that hot, tropical island—Las Guisimas, the Kettle Hill engagement, and action at Santiago. There were also succulent tidbit--entries when he became a corporal—May 4, 1898—and when he had been promoted to sergeant, on May 14 in San Antonio where most of the Riders’ war training occurred—their form of “boot camp.”

The most important material the “jacket” had was his age—29 9/12 years. It floored me! The guy I saw in my head as this wise, well-versed almost white-haired sergeant—the man who had kept out of trouble, yet had seen enough of life to give me sage counsel, the man who comforted me when I got frustrated with the research, the writing and the editing—the man who whispered “Don’t worry, missy, it’ll be awright, trust me” was younger than I was in 1995.

He was born in Indiana, a place called Mt. Sterling—but no longer exists. “Hank” or “Harry” as his men called him was born sometime in September 1869, the youngest of two, his older sibling was a sister named Carrie Louise—named after her mother Louisa Walden Nash, who married George Welding Nash (after his father) on December 30^th, 1863. “G” was born in Delaware, Ohio. Henry Nash’s birth-state had plagued me for two decades. I kept thinking—he was born in Ohio, Illinois, Indiana—some place like that, but since I couldn’t actually find his specific place of birth, finding his information had been impossible!

At 11, Harry lived in Vevay, Switzerland County, Indiana and between 1880 and 1902 lived the western life he had told me about late at night when I lay in a darkened bedroom in Orem, Utah in 1995 missing my momma who had recently died and cried that the novel wouldn’t be good enough representative for men such as Sergeant Nash, Corporal Cade Jackson, Private Tom Freeman, Private William Wallace and their leader who I had fallen head over heels in love with like a teenager with a schoolgirl crush—Captain William Owen “Buckey” O’Neill.

Nash lived in Globe with his sister and her husband John Henry Thomas (on January 1, 1887 in Yavapai County—where he had met Buckey who been sheriff of that county when Henry had been a boy. Buckey had taken the younger Nash under his wing and considered the “young” man a good friend—which is why Henry became a Rough Rider—because Buckey had formed the unit and Henry was determined to go in order to watch over his friend).

Uncle Harry had a room next to his sister’s two daughters, Louisa and Ellen. Carrie had given birth to five children by 1900, but only the two girls had lived. It bothered me that such a great man like Nash had not married according to that record. When he died in Globe at the very young age of 30, I cried. He died from injuries sustained in a mining accident, but that ugly malarial fever raised its pernicious head and complicated his health, which worsened until he succumbed on July 5^th.

It’s so typical of Nash to help me find all this personal information like a flash flood then leave me with a mystery after all was read, written down and done.

In 1930, a man by the name of Velasco C. Murphy, (an interesting combination of Spanish and Irish uh?), who I couldn’t find anything on, requested the U.S. Government to give Henry W. Nash’s unmarked grave a headstone, which they did in 1933—this is noted on Harry’s military jacket by the way, along with a mysterious name—“Nina Nash Burger.”

(An interesting side note: I used the name of “Burger” as the tormentor (step-father) of my serial killer in Snake Eyes, because all good novels need a well-rounded “bad” guy.)

This mystery “Nina Nash” resided at 1602 N. Edgemont Street, Los Angeles, California—this address was accompanied by an odd notation—10-25-65.

Who is “Nina”? As far as I knew Henry never married. He didn’t have a brother who would have given her the “Nash” part of her name. And Carrie didn’t marry a second husband who would have added the “Burger.” So who is she?

The romantic writer in me would love to create a lover for Henry. He did live in a mining town with its many unofficial brothels—was Nina’s mother a lady of the evening? Or perhaps her mother was a young lady, maybe 18, who fell for a handsome older man who was once a famous Rough Rider.

And who the heck was Velasco C. Murphy?—a local citizen whose altruistic bent just made him want to see Henry W. Nash receive the recognition a hero deserved?

It is just like Nash to do this to me: give me information which will bother me until I go back and edit the two novels I wrote with “Hank Nash” as an essential character; then leave me with two names with mysterious relationships to him which, of course, will annoy me more than smart students who won’t do their homework.

If I could, I’d slug you in the arm as hard as I could Henry Nash, even as you laugh at my discombobulation. It’s times like these I wish I’d never met you.

Alright, that’s a lie.

I’ll get you back for this Nash! I don’t know when or how, but I’ll get you back. Think you’re so funny, don’t ya, you cowboy, soldier, minor—hero. Urggha!

At camp in Tampa Bay, Florida

Above--after the charge up Kettle Hill then in support of the U.S. Army Regulars up San Juan Hill. TR looks real smug while everyone else looks tired of having to pose for yet another Roosevelt photo and are glad just to be alive--don't you think?

Cleaning weapons--Krag/Jorgensons--not the best weapons to have in combat--they tended to jam and were slow to load and fire. Ironically the U.S. Govt. wouldn't let the Riders bring the Browning's automatic machine guns--which are such good weapons Navy S.E.A.L.s still use the .45 automatic today. The Riders couldn't have them because they would have killed the enemy "too quickly."