Andover in the Military Historical Overview

Andover in the Military A Historical Overview

by David Chase

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ndover’s tradition of military service dates to its founding. From the first, alumni, faculty, staff and students have served honorably in all branches of the military in war and peace, as officers and enlisted men. A great number fought—and fight—in the nation’s battles.

Others contributed their skills as engineers, chaplains, doctors, scientists and lawyers. At least 43 have achieved the rank of brigadier general, rear admiral or higher. One has served as Secretary of War; two as Commander in Chief. Eight have received the Medal of Honor (www.andover.edu/Alumni/connect/Military/Pages/ Medal-of-Honor-Recipients.aspx). Hundreds of alumni in the military have given their lives for their country.

In recounting this brief history of Andover in the U.S. military, it should be noted that Phillips Academy has schooled a number of students who have made distinguished careers under foreign flags: among them Chinese Admiral Wu Yingke, Class of 1880, honored for conspicuous bravery at the Battle of Yalu River in 1894, during the SinoJapanese War; and Lieutenant General Sir John P.B.C. Watts, Class of 1948, a British special forces commander who became the Royal Army of Oman’s Chief of Staff.

In April 1778, when the school opened with thirteen students, Americans had been fighting for independence for three years. One of the original Phillips Academy trustees, the Reverend Jonathan French (a veteran of the French & Indian War) served as a field medic at the Battle of Bunker Hill in 1775. In that year the school’s founder and the first schoolmaster—Samuel Phillips Jr. and Eliphalet Pearson—began manufacturing gunpowder at a site on the Shawsheen River for Washington’s troops. Among the thirteen pupils studying in Andover’s first rude schoolhouse in 1778 were at least four veterans of the Revolution. One, Levi Hutchins, marched as a fifer with his father’s militia company in 1775, then enlisted and fought for a year as a private in the Continental Army at age fifteen. He attended Andover briefly, leaving to become a crewmember on a privateer searching for British ships to capture. Other Revolutionary War veterans came to Andover in the 1780s, among them Joseph Leland, a minute man from Grafton, who fought at Lexington in 1775; he continued in the Army until the Revolution was won in 1783. Leland was 27 when he matriculated. John Brown

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Bayonet drill on the Great Lawn (Pease House & Phelps House in background), Phillips Academy ROTC Battalion, winter 1918

Cutting, Andover’s highest ranking Revolutionary War alumnus, had been Apothecary General of the Army from 1777 to 1780. In the 1790s, Cutting served as a special agent in London for Thomas Jefferson, successfully gaining release of American sailors impressed by the British.

Impressment was one cause of the War of 1812. William King, Class of 1781, was a militia officer during the War of 1812 and later became the first governor of Maine. His heroic portrait stands in the United States Capitol’s Statuary Hall. Levi Konkapot of the Class of 1799, the first Native American to attend Phillips Academy, enlisted with the Stockbridge Indian Company during the War of 1812. As was true during the Revolution, many American servicemen died as captives during this second war with Britain. One, Abraham Burnham, Class of 1810, a Navy surgeon, died aboard a British prison ship at Liverpool.

William King, Class of 1781

All these alumni were citizen-soldiers. The first Andover alumnus to make a career in the military was William Gates, Class of 1800.

He graduated from West Point in 1806 with just fourteen classmates.

An artillery officer during the War of 1812, Gates fought in Canada, participating in the capture of Toronto.

During the 1830s, he was engaged in Florida’s Seminole Wars. In the 1840s, Colonel Gates led troops in the Mexican-American War, then ruled as military governor of Tampico. Officially retired in 1863, after 57 years in uniform, it was wartime again and Gates continued to command troops until 1867, when he was 79. James Thompson Gerry, Class of 1806, captained Navy vessels. He was lost with all hands in 1854 when the sloopof-war Albany sank in a Caribbean hurricane. Thomas Stanhope English, Class of 1807, the first alumnus in the Marine Corps, also made the military his career. His duties included diplomatic missions as well as combat. Dashing George Horatio Derby, Class of 1838, an Army topographical engineer who conducted surveys of newly acquired territory along the West Coast during the 1850s, made a name for himself as a humorist, cartoonist and prankster.

His published satirical works include The Squibob Papers.

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he Civil War was the nation’s bloodiest; more Americans died in that conflict than in World War II. At least 65 Andover alumni were killed in battle, died of wounds, died of disease, or as

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William Gates, Class of 1800

Ellsworth Guards

prisoners of war in notoriously lethal Confederate prisons. Hundreds of Andover alumni took part in the Civil War, the vast majority serving the Union, but some with the Confederacy. When war broke out in April 1861, Andover students mobilized, organizing their own militia company, the Ellsworth Guards, shown below marching on the Great Lawn. Isaac Ingalls Stevens, Class of 1838, a West Point graduate who gained distinction during the Mexican-American War, was appointed the first governor of Washington Territory in 1853. At the outset of the Civil War, Stevens reentered the Army with the rank of major general. He was killed at the Battle of Chantilly in 1862. Army engineer William Chase, Class of 1816, designed coastal fortifications, including Fort Pickens at Pensacola. Although named commandant of West Point in 1856, Colonel Chase, a Southern sympathizer, declined. He resigned his commission, went into business in Florida building railroads and in 1861 joined the Confederate cause.

Soon after the fall of Fort Sumter, David Birney, Class of 1839, organized a company of Pennsylvania troops at his own expense. Birney became one of hundreds of civilian-soldiers to make flag rank. Like many Andover students of the day, Reuben Mussey, Class of 1850, was a staunch abolitionist. He was a leader in the campaign to elect Lincoln president in 1860. When war broke out in 1861, he volunteered.

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Isaac Ingalls Stevens, Class of 1838

An advocate for allowing African Americans to serve in the Army, Mussey became colonel of the 100th Colored Infantry. Indian tribes displaced and maltreated for decades by the federal government were recruited to the Southern cause, among them the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma. Washington Webster Thompson, Class of 1860, joined the South’s Cherokee Mounted Rifles.

Willie Grout, Class of 1859

John William “Willie” Grout, Class of 1859, a lad from Worcester, was seventeen when he enlisted in 1861. He was killed six months later at the Battle of Ball’s Bluff.

Henry Washburn wrote a poem, “The Vacant Chair,” in his memory; soon after, George Root set the poem to music and it became one of the most popular ballads of the Civil War. The chorus begins: We shall meet, but we shall miss him.

There will be one vacant chair…

At our fireside, sad and lonely, Often will the bosom swell, At remembrance of the story, How our noble Willie fell.

How he strove to bear our banner, Through the thickest of the fight, And uphold our country’s honor With the strength of manhood’s might.

We shall meet, but we shall miss him.

There will be one vacant chair…

Sullivan Ballou, Class of 1848, a Rhode Island lawyer and politician, was killed in July 1861 at the First Battle of Bull Run. His last letter home became part of the narrative of Ken Burns’ great PBS Civil War documentary series. “My very dear Sarah,” it begins, “The indications are very strong that we shall move in a few days—perhaps tomorrow. Lest I should not be able to write again, I feel impelled to write a few lines that may fall under your eye when I shall be no more.” The letter concludes: “O Sarah...I shall always be near you; in the gladdest days and in the darkest nights...always, always. And if there be a soft breeze upon your cheek, it shall be my breath....Sarah do not mourn me dead; think I am gone and wait for thee, for we shall meet again.”

Unlike Sullivan Ballou, Francis Holt, Class of 1853, has been forgotten. A shoemaker from Bradford,

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Sullivan Ballou, Class of 1848

Massachusetts, Holt enlisted in September 1861, serving with the 22nd Massachusetts Infantry. He was captured by Confederate forces and starved to death in August 1864 at Georgia’s Andersonville Prison. Some 13,000 Union troops died at Andersonville.

Archie Bush, Class of 1867

In the late 1860s, Andover welcomed Civil War veterans to campus. After military life, adjustment could be difficult. The most famous student veteran here in the late 1860s was Archie Bush, Class of 1867, perhaps the greatest baseball player of his era. In the spring of 1867 Bush cut classes in order to watch a professional baseball game in Boston. He was expelled before graduation to set an example, and Headmaster Taylor refused a recommendation to Yale. So Bush went to Harvard. With Bush as captain, Harvard’s baseball team beat Yale for the next four years.

Archibald McClure Bush and his cousin James G.K. McClure were the founders of baseball at Andover

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ith expanding economic clout and a press and people thirsting for a larger role on the world stage, the United States fell easily into the Spanish-American War of 1898–99. Many thousands swelled the ranks of the U.S. military, Andover alumni among them. Several volunteered for Teddy Roosevelt’s Rough Riders, including John Campbell Greenway, Class of 1892, a mining engineer who went on to become a leader in the development of Arizona. His statue occupies a place of honor in the United States Capitol. Lieutenant Walter Pinchback, Class of 1893, one of a small number of African American students at Andover in the late nineteenth century, lead a segregated company of black troops fighting in Cuba during the war.

John Campbell Greenway, Class of 1892

Although America demobilized quickly after the Spanish-American War, global responsibilities required a much larger standing army than in earlier decades. With that came increasing need for a better organizational structure, including a Quartermaster Corps.

General Henry Granville Sharpe, Class of 1876, author of treatises on military supply, helped organize the Corps and served as Quartermaster General at the outset of World War I.

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Walter Pinchback, Class of 1893

Henry Granville Sharpe, Class of 1876

Phillips Academy ROTC Battalion in formation on the Great Lawn, winter 1918

The United States entered World War I in 1917. Suddenly, with patriotism rampant, Andover’s campus was in uniform. A cadet battalion drilled in marching, riflery and bayonet tactics, dug trenches and performed academic and extracurricular activities in uniform. A few students dropped out of school to serve. Harold Buckley left for France in April 1917 with the Andover Ambulance Unit before graduating. By December, Buckley was a pilot assigned to the 95th Aero Squadron, and soon earned the title “ace” and the Croix de Guerre for his success in combat. In November 1918 Buckley was promoted to captain. Of the twenty aviators who started with him eleven months before, only four survived. More than 2,000 Andover alumni joined the armed forces during World War I; 85 died.

Their names are carved into the granite base of the Academy’s Memorial Bell Tower beneath a line from Horace: DULCE ET DECORUM EST PRO PATRIA MORI.

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Henry Stimson, Class of 1883

George Bush, Class of 1942

or the United States, World War II began on December 7, 1942 with the attack on Pearl Harbor.

Andover’s involvement in the war was unique, for Henry Stimson, Class of 1883, was Secretary of War throughout that conflict and also president of Andover’s Board of Trustees.

Colonel Stimson, as he preferred to be addressed, attained that rank as an artillery officer in World War I. But his military experience went back to 1912, when he served as President Taft’s Secretary of War. He was later Hoover’s Secretary of State. Knowing that bipartisanship would be required to successfully participate in World War II, Franklin Roosevelt crossed party lines to appoint Stimson his Secretary of War in 1940. Stimson built an army of 270,000 into an army of eight million, and would remain Secretary of War until hostilities Isabel Arms, ceased. At age 78, he was one of the oldest men directly involved Abbot Class of 1932 in the war. More than 3,000 alumni joined the war effort; 142 died.

For the first time, Abbot graduates were in the military. Among them, Isabel Arms, Class of 1936 (shown pistol in hand, guarding a Navy payroll) joined the WAVES. George Bush, Class of 1942, became the youngest pilot in the Navy. Steve Hall, Class of 1934, an Army captain and OSS operative behind German lines in the Italian Alps in 1944 and 1945, trained partisans and sabotaged German defenses before being captured, tortured and executed. Archie Roosevelt, Class of 1913, a son of Teddy Roosevelt, volunteered for World Wars I and II and was severely wounded in both conflicts. Lieutenant General Richard Sutherland, Class of 1911, Chief of Staff to Douglas MacArthur, oversaw the Japanese surrender in August 1945.

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Richard Sutherland, Class of 1911

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ince World War II, the American military has been active around the world.

The Korean Conflict, as it was long known, came on the heels of World War II and was one of the hottest contests of the Cold War. William Wilbur, Class of 1950, was the first of eight alumni to die in Korea. U.S. efforts to keep South Vietnam from becoming communist began in the late 1950s and culminated in the debilitating war that took the lives of more than 40,000 American military personnel.

Hundreds of Andover alumni served during the Vietnam War; eight died. One, Marine Lieutenant David Hackett, Class of 1961, who was killed in combat in 1967, is honored through the Academy’s David Spencer Hackett Prize.

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A decorated veteran of the Vietnam War, General Barry McCaffrey, Class of 1960, was a division commander during the 1991 Gulf War. Admiral Charles Abbot, Class of 1962, a graduate of Annapolis and a Rhodes Scholar, led the Theodore Roosevelt Battle Group during the Gulf War and later commanded the Sixth Fleet. And that young World War II Navy pilot, George Bush, as 41st President of the United States, was the Gulf War’s hands-on Commander in Chief.

In the present century, many Andover alumni served and continue to serve in the armed forces, including Navy Top Gun Becky Dowling Calder, Class of 1994, and USMC Second Lieutenant Karl Novick, Class of 2007. To date, one Andover alumnus has died in service during the 21st century: Navy SEAL Erik Kristensen, Class of 1991, killed in action in Afghanistan in 2005. Total commitment and selfless loyalty—we honor all who have served and continue to serve.

Becky Dowling Calder, Class of 1994

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At the 1922 groundbreaking ceremony for the Memorial Bell Tower, Andover chaplain (and former Army chaplain) Mark Stackpole offered these words in tribute: We give thanks to Thee from whom come good and perfect gifts, for all soldiers, faithful, true and brave, of every generation of men, and especially for that noble company of the sons of this school who through more than a century have answered the country’s stern call.

We give Thee thanks for the desire also to keep in lasting remembrance their names and their influence, and in particular those who went forth to return not, that we may the better cherish the example of their devotion and valor.

Especially we think with affection and gratitude, with pride and yet with unhealed sorrow, of those...manly boys whom many of us have known and some of us have taught, who in days not long ago and in distant lands, upon shell-scarred slopes, found their rendezvous with death. At the going down of the sun and in the morning we will remember them.

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