Gettysburg 4th of July 1913 Reunion Between Yankees & Rebels

100 years ago today. We are creatures of time and time is a kind of amnesia. Most of what falls into the past is lost to us while that which is recalled becomes filtered through the present. Baz Luhrmann's 2013 movie The Great Gatsby is an example. With its modern-music sound track the film seeks to please modern sensibilities rather than lead viewers into how the world was seen then. For some, TV commercials and movie stars are the way the world is, without question, without doubt. Yet we are descended from ancestors whose stories and lives are unknown to us--from 1861 to 1865 mothers, fathers, sons, daughters, lost over 700,000 loved ones in the American Civil War.  Their world was fragile, not to be trusted.  It is a war that defined the United States of America and today its citizens go about their daily business without knowing whence they came.

Americans In The Egyptian Army

In 1865, after Lee signed the surrender to Grant at Appomattox, after Johnny Reb turned, dusty, tired, to wend his way to farms and villages in Mississippi, Georgia, or Alabama, after Billy Yank trudged wearily back to Iowa, Ohio, or New Hampshire, the war was not over for some officers on both sides. No, they were not ready to fight again. Rather, they liked soldiering, it was all they knew, and the United States was not the place for it--not unless they wanted to spend dreary years at some wilderness outpost on the plains or in the desert, waiting the next sutler's wagon with salted beef and whiskey to wash it down, helping them forget where they were--as they waited for some excitement such as the next hunt for Indians, who were rarely found.

Some had other ideas. Pick up and move on, they thought, but not toward the Western horizon, and instead across the waters to where the sun arose. Not to them just the East, but in those days the far, far East. Over there somewhere somebody could use a good soldier, tested in battle. One was Thaddeus Mot and he wound up fighting in the Egyptian army. You might say that he got there because Cotton was King in the South. With the War of The Rebellion, as it was then called by Northerners, cotton exports to Europe dried up. Europe turned to Egypt for her supply, and the Egyptian economy boomed. Cotton became King in Egypt, and when it was deposed the way was paved for Mot and his fellow soldiers. Here is the story.

Soldiers of Fortune: Americans In The Egyptian Army

Soldiers of Fortune: Americans In The Egyptian Army

In 1865, after Lee signed the surrender to Grant at Appomattox, after Johnny Reb turned, dusty, tired, to wend his way to farms and villages in Mississippi, Georgia, or Alabama, after Billy Yank trudged wearily back to Iowa, Ohio, or New Hampshire, the war was not over for some officers on both sides. No, they were not ready to fight again. Rather, they liked soldiering, it was all they knew, and the United States was not the place for it--not unless they wanted to spend dreary years at some wilderness outpost on the plains or in the desert, waiting the next sutler's wagon with salted beef and whiskey to wash it down, helping them forget where they were--as they waited for some excitement such as the next hunt for Indians, who were rarely found.

Some had other ideas. Pick up and move on, they thought, but not toward the Western horizon, and instead across the waters to where the sun arose. Not to them just the East, but in those days the far, far East. Over there somewhere somebody could use a good soldier, tested in battle. One was Thaddeus Mot and he wound up fighting in the Egyptian army. You might say that he got there because Cotton was King in the South. With the War of The Rebellion, as it was then called by Northerners, cotton exports to Europe dried up. Europe turned to Egypt for her supply, and the Egyptian economy boomed. Cotton became King in Egypt, and when it was deposed the way was paved for Mot and his fellow soldiers. Here is the story.

Egypt's ruler, the Khedive Ismail had plans for his country. With money in his coffers from huge cotton exports during the American Civil War, he wanted to modernize Egypt. Not just for its own sake, but because the Khedive wanted to free Egypt from the Ottoman Empire, and to build Europe into a nation equal to European countries. His uncle Saïd had begun construction of the Suez Canal and Ismail finished the project. As money flowed to Egypt, Ismail tossed it on projects, especially the Suez Canal, finished at immense cost. The Canal's cost weakened his economy and opened the door to English and French influence in Egypt; he had fallen to their suasion.

The Khedive had a new problem, how to strengthen Egypt against their influence. An obvious answer was to build up his army, modernize it, and then use it to rattle his saber, the louder the better, and to fight wars, a disastrous one with Abyssinia. The Nile flowed quietly into the Mediterranean as it had to, the sun baked the pyramid at Cheops as it had since the time of the Pharoahs, and from afar Ismail had watched something new, a war in what was called the New World. This was a different kind of war, with fresh inventions and tactics. Gatling guns, armor plated warships, and men trained on the battlefield. The Khedive was interested in it.

Thaddeus Mot found his way to Turkey and became a familiar of those in power. In 1868, Mot, a Union colonel and a favorite of the Turkish court, met the Khedive Ismail in Constantinople, now Istanbul.

He impressed the Khedive, and was soon commissioned as a major general in the Egyptian army.

Mott quickly convinced Ismail to add more American veterans to the Egyptian staff. With the Khedive’s blessing he returned to the United States, and with the help of General of the Army William T. Sherman, began enlisting recruits. One of them was Confederate Major William Wing Loring, one-armed veteran of the Mexican war.

The situation presented a new chance for dozens of Civil War veterans. About fifty former Union and Confederate officers would make the three-week journey to Egypt. In addition, at least four active U.S. officers were given leaves of absence, allowing them to gain experience in Egypt. All of these men accepted actual commissions in the Egyptian Army, agreeing to fight for Egypt in any war, except one against the United States. One of then would become chief engineer in erecting the Statue of Liberty, originally proposed for the mouth of the Suez Canal.

Some stayed for only a few months (or even days), while others remained for years. Several Confederate luminaries, including P. G. T. Beauregard, Joseph Johnston, and George Pickett considered going, but declined.

More at Americans In The Egyptian Army. Also see A Confederate Soldier in Egypt, and An American Pasha's Neglected Tomb, among others.

Silas Weir Mitchell: Civil War Amputees and Pain from Phantom Arms

A Phantom Arm and A Bizarre Experience

Union Army Amputees
US Civil War

My right leg seems trapped in time and space, at a day and place long ago. Along the leg runs a large scar that always tingles in the background of my consciousness, and which tightens into fear whenever I focus attention there. Yes, it is unmistakable fear, in memory of the event itself, and it is localized at the scar. How can fear be in a scar? I don't know. I can only tell you that's where it is. If anything touches the scar, my leg wants to pull away from the touch. This occurs and over-rules my reason. It simply happens. It is all a phantom of the mind.

Such phantoms are not unique to me. People have experienced them for thousands of years, but they received a name only in the Nineteenth Century. The Civil War was a gruesome conflict. My ancestor, Captain David Stewart, 28th Iowa Volunteer Infantry, spent part of the war as a field surgeon. He reached a point when he could no longer look at another gangrened leg, or another soldier quite literally biting the bullet to keep from screaming in pain as a limb was sawn through. Preferring being shot to cutting off another leg, Captain Stewart asked for a transfer to combat. I understand why. I have seen the saw he used for amputation. Its teeth could as easily cut through a tree limb.

After the Civil War, tens of thousands of soldiers had amputated limbs and told doctors of strange experiences. Silas Weir Mitchell, a Philadelphia physician, coined the phrase "phantom limb" shortly after the conflict, and did so to explain the phantoms that the veterans described. Fearing ridicule from colleagues, he published anonymously in a popular magazine, Lippincott's Journal, wherein he described the phenomenon. In the century and a half since, phantom limb syndrome has become part of medical and psychological literature.

Older medical journals contain hundreds of fascinating case studies. Some of the described phenomena have been confirmed repeatedly and still need an explanation. In one case, a patient experienced a vivid phantom arm soon after amputation, which is normal, and in a few weeks he developed a peculiar, gnawing sensation in his phantom, which is not normal. He was quite puzzled by the these new sensations and asked his Army doctor about them, but the physician couldn't help. The veteran finally asked, "Whatever happened to my arm after you removed it?" The doctor told him to ask the surgeon.

The veteran did just that. The surgeon replied, "Oh, we usually send the limbs to the morgue."

The man asked the morgue and asked, "What do you do with amputated arms?" They replied, "We send them either to the incinerator or to pathology. Usually we incinerate them."

"Well, what did you do with my arm?" They looked at their records and said, "You know, it's funny. We didn't incinerate it. We sent it to pathology."

The man asked the pathology lab. "Where is my arm?" They said, "Well, we had too many arms, so we just buried it in the garden, out behind the hospital."

They took him to the garden and showed him where the arm was buried. When he exhumed it, he found it crawling with maggots and exclaimed, "Maybe that's why I'm feeling these bizarre sensations in my arm."

He took the limb and incinerated it. His phantom pain disappeared permanently.

For a man who had a phantom orgasm in his foot read Mind Shadows on Wilder Penfield and Brain Maps 22 April 2009. Read about the clever method VS Ramachandran used to rid a man of relief from phantom arm pain, 14 February 2012. Also read about Ramachandran who tells of a man who, after his leg was ampuated, felt sexual sensations in his phantom foot.