A Tribute to My Favorite Old Soldier

This 1902 photograph from the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division (Washington, D.C. 20540 USA) shows Civil War veterans participating in a parade in Trenton, New Jersey. I believe visits to my father's school by veterans from this war had an influence on his choosing the military as his career.

Permit me, if you will, this brief diversion from usual topics of discussion to pay homage to the man who started my interest in Civil War history, my father, August J. Rach, Jr., LTC USAR (Ret.)

Tuesday would be my father's 98th birthday, and he had vivid recollections of Civil War veterans coming to Girard School in Trenton, New Jersey, to participate in Decoration Day observances. Perhaps something in their speeches inspired him or the simple, straightforward military look of them subconsciously influenced his choice of the military as a career.

Before joining the military, my father worked as a grocery clerk, a shoe salesman and as a clerk for the New Jersey Department of Motor Vehicles. He also drove New Jersey Governor Harold Hoffman for a few years, which was the job he talked about most often after his military service.

World War II was the defining moment in my father's professional life. Despite strong (STRONG) objections from my mother and his, he joined the Army in 1942. Twenty-two years and numerous duty stations later, he retired because he could not envision continuing his career, which may have included a tour of duty in Viet Nam, with his infant daughter (me) and his ever-patient wife at home.

Among my father's favorite assignments was his tour as the head of the disciplinary barracks at Aberdeen Proving Grounds in Maryland. The location offered easy access to Washington, DC, and Arlington National Cemetery.  Dad would eagerly join his fellow officers for tours of Civil War battlefields led by a man who had studied the campaigns in enough depth to be able to set the scene down to day-of-battle weather conditions for those fortunate enough to have him guide them.

Dad would also organize the neighborhood kids into walking tours of Arlington that my sister still remembers today, some 55 years after her last walkabout on the grounds.

Dad was anxious to join me on a Smithsonian tour of Gettysburg in November 1993, led by the amazing Ed Bearss. Unfortunately, I made the trip alone as Taps sounded for my father in June of that year. His ashes rest in a niche overlooking the Pacific Ocean at Fort Rosecrans National Cemetery near San Diego.

In all the times my father and I discussed the Civil War, I never asked the most obvious question: Why was he interested in this particular war? I did, however, follow right along beside him in being interested in it.

Perhaps I was fated to have a Civil War interest from birth. I am the only child of my parents who was born during my father's military career, and I came into the world at Ft. MacArthur Military Reservation near Los Angeles. My birthplace and my parents' final resting place are both named for Civil War heroes, which is not as easy to accomplish in California as it is in other parts of the country.