OneManGang
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Tennessee vs The Maxims vs Missouri
Alas, this year's version of Our Beloved Vols are like the old nursery rhyme about “The Little Girl With the Little Curl.” When they're good they are very good but when they're bad they're horrid!
Saturday's tilt with the Mizzou Tigers was an unmitigated disaster. Coming off a stirring win last week against the highly-touted MildKats, on these very pages, your Scribe noted that there remained, “(t)wo opportunities to prove Saturday and the earlier victory over Auburn were not flukes but a brightening of the Eastern sky heralding a return of Our Beloved Volunteers to football prominence.”
The Vols squandered their opportunity to build on the KY win. Vandy remains as the sole opportunity now for redemption.
That leaves one question vexing the fans wearing Orange PMS151: which version of the 2018 Vols will show up in Nashville?
* * * * * * * *
Alpha and Omega: 1915 and 1918
Charlie had been born in London but his father chose to come to the United States to study for the Ministry in the Episcopal Church. Rev. William Loring Clark eventually became Rector of St. Paul's Episcopal Church in Chattanooga. When England declared war in 1914, his son Charlie – Charles Loring Clark – left his studies at Sewanee Military Academy to travel to Canada and join the Canadian Army, which, as part of the British Empire, was sending troops to France.
This was not a move to be taken lightly as to go serve in a foreign army meant the possible loss of one's U.S. Citizenship. Charlie went anyway.
The law was eventually changed and some 16,000 Americans saw service in the Canadian Army.
After initial training, Charles Loring Clark was commissioned as a Lieutenant and assigned to command a platoon in the Toronto Rifles. The Toronto Rifles were re-designated the 3rd Battalion, Canadian Infantry and sailed for England in late 1914 for advanced training.
The 3rd Battalion deployed to France in the Spring of 1915. Young Lt. Clark was disappointed to be left behind. Armies, even at this point in the war, had learned to leave behind a core of men to reform the shattered remnants around after service in the front lines. Still, Charlie was anxious to get into action. In one of his letters home he wrote, “(The) wounded tell wonderful tales of the gallantry of some of our officers.”
Leftenant Clark got his wish in June of 1915. He was finally at the front. On 16 June the 3rd Battalion was part of the second Canadian effort to capture the village of Givenchy. Lt. Clark's company was assigned to capture an otherwise totally meaningless objective – huge shell crater known as the Duck's Bill. The British artillery barrage lifted early and the Germans were able to re-occupy their positions and the Maxim machine guns virtually annihilated the Canadian attackers. Lt. Clark was among the badly wounded.
He died in a Canadian field hospital the next day.
Leftenant Charles Loring Clark of Chattanooga was most likely the very first Tennessean to be killed in the Great War. His brother Harry would deploy with the 117th Infantry in 1918.
With typical Great War perversity, it was agreed that the War would end on a schedule. The fighting would cease at “the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month” of 1918. News of the impending Armistice had already gone out but the Allied commanders: Foch, Haig, and Pershing, all agreed that pressure must be maintained on the Germans right up to the last second and so attacks went in all along the front.
The doughboys of the 321st Infantry, 161st Brigade, 81st Division had just reached the front line area on 9 November. This would be the division's first action. An order to advance to jump off positions was received at 0230 on 11 November with the assault scheduled to begin at 0600.
Over in M Company of the 321st Private Oskar Ryder of Knoxville moved out with his mates and waited anxiously for the whistles to sound, the signal to go “Over the Top.” At precisely 0600 the whistles blew and the doughboys advanced into thick fog toward the village of Grimacourt. Company M was on the far left of the whole regiment. The American artillery preparatory fires had alerted the Germans and they fired both artillery and machine guns into the likely lines of advance.
In spite of this, by 0730 the doughboys had taken the village and advanced into the open fields beyond. As they advanced, the fog cleared and, at about 1030 German machine guns opened up from the right and stitched their way down the line. Doughboys fell like hay before a mower. Fifty six men of the 321st were killed and over 300 wounded. At some point between 1030 and 1100, less than a half-hour before he could have stacked arms and returned to Knoxville, Private Oskar Ryder fell dead, a line of 7.92mm bullet holes across his body.
It is likely that Pvt. Ryder was the last Tennessean to fall in the Great War.
He had died in a useless assault on a meaningless objective in the final minutes of a war that settled nothing. Private Ryder rests in the National Cemetery in Knoxville.
Pvt Oskar Ryder, M Co, 321st Infantry, KIA 11 November 1918. (Knox County in the World War)
There is a reason all parades and ceremonies on Veterans Day pause at precisely 11:00 AM.
*********
In another thread on this board, a poster was oinking that HeadVol Pruitt seemed detached and uninterested during the coach's show on Sunday.
My own take is that he was trying mightily to avoid saying what was actually going through his mind.
Had he done so, my feeling is the repartee between he had Kesling could easily have gone …
Kesling: “Well, Coach, it was a losing effort on Saturday, what are your thoughts on the game?”
HVP: “Well, since you asked I think that it was a beeeeeeeeeeep the beeping beep beeping beep. And further more if those beeeeeeeping beep beeping beep beeps don't start looking better I'm going to have them run the beeping beeeping steps at the stadium until beeeping it I get tired. Beep the beep beep it.”
And there you have it.
So how did the team do compared to the Maxims?
1. The team that makes the fewest mistakes will win.
2. Play for and make the breaks. When one comes your way … SCORE!
3. If at first the game – or the breaks – go against you, don’t let up … PUT ON MORE STEAM!
4. Protect our kickers, our quarterback, our lead and our ballgame.
5. Ball! Oskie! Cover, block, cut and slice, pursue and gang tackle … THIS IS THE WINNING EDGE.
6Press the kicking game. Here is where the breaks are made.
7Carry the fight to Missouri and keep it there for sixty minutes.
As you will note I have dispensed with the usual write-up of the Vols' efforts in light of the Maxims. Due to the tardiness of this report, I feel that others have already dissected Tennessee's manifest failures Saturday and see no need to add to the post-mortem.
MAXOMG
© 2018 Keeping Your Stories Alive
Suggested Reading
Captain Reese Amis, Knox County in the World War
Cpl. Clarence Walton Johnson, The History of the 321st Infantry Regiment
Joseph E. Persico, 11th Month, 11th Day, 11th Hour
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