2 SEPTEMBER 1862
President Lincoln reluctantly restores Union General George
B. McClellan to full command after General John Pope's
disaster at Second Bull Run on August 29 and 30. McClellan,
commander of the Army of the Potomac, saw much of his
army transferred to Pope's Army of Virginia after his failure
to capture Richmond during the Seven Days' Battles in June
1862. Pope, who had one chance to prove his leadership at
Second Bull Run against Confederate General Robert E. Lee,
failed miserably and retreated to Washington. He had not
received any help from McClellan, who sat nearby in
Alexandria and refused to go to Pope's aid. After a summer
of defeats, the Union forces in the east were now in
desperate need of a boost in morale. Even though McClellan
was, in part, the architect of those losses, Lincoln felt he was
the best available general to raise the sagging spirits of the
men in blue. The president recognized McClellan's talent for
preparing an army to fight, even if he had proven to be a
poor field commander. Lincoln wrote to his secretary John
Hay: "We must use the tools we have. There is no man in the
Army who can man these fortifications and lick these troops
into shape half as well as he. If he can't fight himself, he
excels in making others ready to fight." There was little time for the Union to dawdle after Second Bull Run. Lee's army lurked just 25 miles from Washington, and had tried to cut off the Union retreat at Chantilly on September 1. Even as Lincoln restored McClellan's command, the Confederates were starting to move northward. McClellan was soon on the road in pursuit of Lee's army. [1861 portrait of McClellan by Matthew Brady]
2 SEPTEMBER
At the start of the Battle of Agincourt, the French shouted to the
English that after they were defeated, they promised to cut the
middle finger off every longbowmen captured so they would
never be able to draw another arrow... knowing that it required
two fingers to get the maximum draw or “pluck” as the English
called it, due to the sturdy resistance of the wood used in
making the longbow: from the English tree called ‘yew’. The
French however, lost and as the survivors prepared to withdraw,
the longbowmen all raised their middle fingers and cheered at
them in defiance.
When word of this act reached England it spread like wildfire and
quickly became a popular gesture to express disdain or anger
towards someone, often with the phrase “pluck yew”. Over time,
the raised finger somehow became related to a male sexual
organ and ‘pluck yew’ evolved into… well, you know! The rest is…
as they say, history.
BTW, pluck off!
Sincerely yours, Mars
TODAY IN MILITARY HISTORY
2 September
◆31 BCE Battle of Actium: Octavian defeats Antony & Cleopatra.★
◆1628 Battle of Wolgast: Wallenstein's Imperialists defeat Christian of Denmark.
◆1789 Although the United States Treasury Department was founded on September 2, 1789, its roots can be traced back to the American Revolution.
◆1862 President Lincoln reluctantly restores Union General George B. McClellan to full command after General John Pope's disaster at Second Bull Run on August 29 and 30. McClellan, commander of the Army of the Potomac, saw much of his army transferred to Pope's Army of Virginia after his failure to capture Richmond during the Seven Days' Battles in June 1862.★
◆1863 Dahlgren, flying his flag in U.S.S. Weehawken, took the ironclads against Fort Sumter late at night following an intensive, day-long bombardment by Army artillery.
◆1864 The forces of Union General William T. Sherman march into Atlanta, Georgia—one day after the Confederates evacuate the city.
◆1898 Battle of Omdurman: Lord Kitchener retakes the Sudan for Egypt & Britain.
◆1918 Navy ships and crews assist earthquake victims of Yokohama and Tokyo, Japan.
◆1940 Following the agreement made in July and later detailed negotiations, a deal is now ratified between Britain and the USA by which Britain gets 50 old destroyers, veterans of World War I, but desperately needed for escort work, in return for bases granted to the United States in the West Indies and Bermuda. Considerable modification will be necessary to make the ships ready for service.
◆1944 Allied landings amount to 190,000 men with 41,000 vehicles and 220,000 tons of supplies.American elements of US 7th Army approach Lyons. French forces are brought forward to be the first into the city.
◆1944 The US 12th Army Group experiences shortages as a result of supply problems.
◆1944 Navy pilot George Herbert Walker Bush was shot down by Japanese forces as he completed a bombing run over the Bonin Islands. Bush was rescued by the crew of the U.S. submarine Finback; his two crew members, however, died.
◆1945 V-J DAY: Aboard the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay, Japan formally surrenders to the Allies, bringing an end to World War II. By the summer of 1945, the defeat of Japan was a foregone conclusion.★
◆1945 Hours after Japan's surrender in World War II, Vietnamese communist Ho Chi Minh declares the independence of Vietnam from France. The proclamation paraphrased the U.S. Declaration of Independence in declaring, "All men are born equal: the Creator has given us inviolable rights, life, liberty, and happiness!" and was cheered by an enormous crowd gathered in Hanoi's Ba Dinh Square.
◆1951 The 2nd Infantry Division attacked enemy positions on Bloody Ridge.
◆1951 Twenty-two F-86 Sabre jets clashed with 40 MiG-15s in a 30-minute dogfight over the skies between Sinuiju and Pyongyang. The air battle resulted in the destruction of four MiGs.
◆1969 President Ho Chi Minh of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam dies of a heart attack in Hanoi.
◆1972 Phuc Yen, 10 miles north of Hanoi, and one of the largest air bases in North Vietnam, is smashed by U.S. fighter-bombers. During the attack, a MiG was shot down, bringing the total to 47 enemy aircraft shot down since the beginning of the North Vietnamese offensive. At this point in the war, 18 U.S. planes had been shot down by MiGs.
◆1991 - President Bush formally recognized the independence of the Baltic states of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia.
◆1993 The United States and Russia formally ended decades of competition in space by agreeing to a joint venture to build a space station.
◆1996 The US launched cruise missiles at selected air defense targets in Iraq to discourage Sadam Hussein’s military moves against a Kurd faction.
◆2003 Secretary Ridge announces the “One Face at the Border” initiative to unify the border inspection process.Medal of Honor Citations for Actions Taken This Day
HERRON, LEANDER
Rank and organization: Corporal, Company A, 3d U.S. Infantry. Place and date: Near Fort Dodge, Kans., 2 September 1868. Entered service at: ------. Birth: Bucks County, Pa. Date of issue: Unknown. Citation: While detailed as mail courier from the fort, voluntarily went to the assistance of a party of 4 enlisted men, who were attacked by about 50 Indians at some distance from the fort and remained with them until the party was relieved.
LEE, DANIEL W.
Rank and organization: First Lieutenant, U.S. Army, Troop A, 117th Cavalry Reconnaissance Squadron. Place and date: Montreval, France, 2 September 1944. Entered service at: Alma, Ga. Born: 23 June 1919, Alma, Ga. G.O. No.: 14, 4 February 1946. Citation: 1st Lt. (then 2d Lt. ) Daniel W. Lee was leader of Headquarters Platoon, Troop A, 117th Cavalry Reconnaissance Squadron, Mechanized, at Montreval, France, on 2 September 1944, when the Germans mounted a strong counterattack, isolating the town and engaging its outnumbered defenders in a pitched battle. After the fight had raged for hours and our forces had withstood heavy shelling and armor-supported infantry attacks, 2d Lt. Lee organized a patrol to knock out mortars which were inflicting heavy casualties on the beleaguered reconnaissance troops. He led the small group to the edge of the town, sweeping enemy riflemen out of position on a ridge from which he observed 7 Germans manning 2 large mortars near an armored half-track about 100 yards down the reverse slope. Armed with a rifle and grenades, he left his men on the high ground and crawled to within 30 yards of the mortars, where the enemy discovered him and unleashed machine-pistol fire which shattered his right thigh. Scorning retreat, bleeding and suffering intense pain, he dragged himself relentlessly forward He killed 5 of the enemy with rifle fire and the others fled before he reached their position. Fired on by an armored car, he took cover behind the German half-track and there found a panzerfaust with which to neutralize this threat. Despite his wounds, he inched his way toward the car through withering machinegun fire, maneuvering into range, and blasted the vehicle with a round from the rocket launcher, forcing it to withdraw. Having cleared the slope of hostile troops, he struggle back to his men, where he collapsed from pain and loss of blood. 2d Lt. Lee's outstanding gallantry, willing risk of life, and extreme tenacity of purpose in coming to grips with the enemy, although suffering from grievous wounds, set an example of bravery and devotion to duty in keeping with the highest traditions of the military service.
2 SEPTEMBER 31 BCE
The Battle of Actium was the decisive confrontation
of the Final War of the Roman Republic. It was a
naval engagement fought between the forces of
Octavian and the combined forces of Mark Antony
and Cleopatra VII. The battle took place on the
Ionian Sea near the city of Actium, at the Roman
province of Epirus vetus in Greece. Octavian's fleet
was commanded by Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa,
while Antony's fleet was supported by the ships of
Queen Cleopatra of Ptolemaic Egypt.
Octavian's victory enabled him to consolidate his
power over Rome and its dominions. To that end,
he adopted the title of Princeps ("first citizen") and some years after the victory was awarded the title of Augustus by the Roman Senate. This became the name by which he was known in later times. As Augustus, he would retain the trappings of a restored Republican leader; however, historians generally view this consolidation of power and the adoption of these honorifics as the end of the Roman Republic and the beginning of the Roman Empire.
2 SEPTEMBER 1945
JAPAN SURRENDERS: Aboard the USS Missouri
in Tokyo Bay, Japan formally surrenders to the
Allies, bringing an end to World War II. By the
summer of 1945, the defeat of Japan was a
foregone conclusion. The Japanese navy and
air force were destroyed. The Allied naval
blockade of Japan and intensive bombing of
Japanese cities had left the country and its
economy devastated. At the end of June, the
Americans captured Okinawa, a Japanese
island from which the Allies could launch an
invasion of the main Japanese home islands.
U.S. General Douglas MacArthur was put in
charge of the invasion, which was code-named
"Operation Olympic" and set for November 1945. The invasion of Japan promised to be the bloodiest seaborne attack of all time, conceivably 10 times as costly as the Normandy invasion in terms of Allied casualties. On July 16, a new option became available when the United States secretly detonated the world's first atomic bomb in the New Mexico desert. Ten days later, the Allies issued the Potsdam Declaration, demanding the "unconditional surrender of all the Japanese armed forces." Failure to comply would mean "the inevitable and complete destruction of the Japanese armed forces and just as inevitable the utter devastation of the Japanese homeland."
On July 28, Japanese Prime Minister Kantaro Suzuki responded by telling the press that his government was "paying no attention" to the Allied ultimatum. U.S. President Harry Truman ordered the devastation to proceed, and on August 6, the U.S. B-29 bomber Enola Gay dropped an atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima, killing an estimated 80,000 people and fatally wounding thousands more. After the Hiroshima attack, a faction of Japan's supreme war council favored acceptance of the Potsdam Declaration, but the majority resisted unconditional surrender. On August 8, Japan's desperate situation took another turn for the worse when the USSR declared war against Japan. The next day, Soviet forces attacked in Manchuria, rapidly overwhelming Japanese positions there, and a second U.S. atomic bomb was dropped on the Japanese coastal city of Nagasaki.
Just before midnight on August 9, Japanese Emperor Hirohito convened the supreme war council. After a long, emotional debate, he backed a proposal by Prime Minister Suzuki in which Japan would accept the Potsdam Declaration "with the understanding that said Declaration does not compromise any demand that prejudices the prerogatives of His Majesty as the sovereign ruler." The council obeyed Hirohito's acceptance of peace, and on August 10 the message was relayed to the United States. Early on August 12, the United States answered that "the authority of the emperor and the Japanese government to rule the state shall be subject to the Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers." After two days of debate about what this statement implied, Emperor Hirohito brushed the nuances in the text aside and declared that peace was preferable to destruction. He ordered the Japanese government to prepare a text accepting surrender. In the early hours of August 15, a military coup was attempted by a faction led by Major Kenji Hatanaka.
The rebels seized control of the imperial palace and burned Prime Minister Suzuki's residence, but shortly after dawn the coup was crushed. At noon that day, Emperor Hirohito went on national radio for the first time to announce the Japanese surrender. In his unfamiliar court language, he told his subjects, "we have resolved to pave the way for a grand peace for all the generations to come by enduring the unendurable and suffering what is insufferable." The United States immediately accepted Japan's surrender. President Truman appointed MacArthur to head the Allied occupation of Japan as Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers. For the site of Japan's formal surrender, Truman chose the USS Missouri, a battleship that had seen considerable action in the Pacific and was named after Truman's native state. MacArthur, instructed to preside over the surrender, held off the ceremony until September 2 in order to allow time for representatives of all the major Allied powers to arrive.
On Sunday, September 2, more than 250 Allied warships lay at anchor in Tokyo Bay. The flags of the United States, Britain, the Soviet Union, and China fluttered above the deck of the Missouri. Just after 9 a.m. Tokyo time, Japanese Foreign Minister Mamoru Shigemitsu signed on behalf of the Japanese government. General Yoshijiro Umezu then signed for the Japanese armed forces, and his aides wept as he made his signature. Supreme Commander MacArthur next signed on behalf of the United Nations, declaring, "It is my earnest hope and indeed the hope of all mankind that from this solemn occasion a better world shall emerge out the blood and carnage of the past." Ten more signatures were made, by the United States, China, Britain, the USSR, Australia, Canada, France, the Netherlands, and New Zealand, respectively. Admiral Chester W. Nimitz signed for the United States. As the 20-minute ceremony ended, the sun burst through low-hanging clouds. The most devastating war in human history was over. [Pictured is the surrender ceremony taking place on the deck of USS Missouri]