A look at the later lives of Wounded Knees' Twenty Medal of Honor recipients.

Wounded Knee, the Massacre, has been back in the news this past week due to wannabe "War" Secretary Hegseth determining that the review of the Medals of Honor awarded for action there is over, and the now long dead soldiers will keep their medals.  We posted on that here:

Lex Anteinternet: Today In Wyoming's History: Reviewing the Wounded ...: Today In Wyoming's History: Reviewing the Wounded Knee Medals of Honor. :  Reviewing the Wounded Knee Medals of Honor. Sgt. Toy receivin...

But, what happened to the Medal of Honor recipients from Wounded Knee?  

Most thinking people recall the incident with horror, inkling, frankly towards a genocidal view of the massacre, and not without good reason.  But at the time, the Army honored those who participated in the battle at an unprecedented rate.

What became of them?

Let's take a look.

• Sergeant William Austin, cavalry, directed fire at Indians in ravine at Wounded Knee

William Austin has the unusual distinction of having been born in Texas (Galveston) but having entered the service in New York City.

Austin left the Army in 1892 to enter the cotton business.  He served again in the Georgia National Guard during the Philippine Insurrection, and then returned to civilian life and ultimately had an automobile dealership.  He served again as a Reserve Quartermaster during World War One.  He was married three times.  His first marriage to an actress ended in divorce, and he outlived his second wife.

He lived in California in his later years and died in Palo Alto in 1929 at age 61 by which time he looked quite old by modern standards.  All in all, he had lead a pretty successful life.

• Private Mosheim Feaster, cavalry, extraordinary gallantry at Wounded Knee;

Feaster was a career soldier who served until 1914, having served at some point as a lieutenant..  He died in 1950 at age 82.

Oddly, for a very long serving soldier who was commissioned at some point, finding details on him is next to impossible.

Or perhaps it's not so odd.  His commission was probably a wartime one, and he was a career enlisted man otherwise.

He was born in Pennsylvania, and died in California.

• Private Mathew Hamilton, cavalry, bravery in action at Wounded Knee;

Hamilton was a Scottish immigrant and was 25 years old at the time of Wounded Knee.  He had not, like many Irish immigrants, immediately joined the Army upon arriving in the United States.  He also wouldn't make a career out of the Army, leaving it, as a Sergeant, in 1899, having served in the Spanish American War.  He took his discharge from the Army while in Cuba, and then went to work as a packer contracter to the Army in Cuba.

His ultimate fate is unknown.

• Private Joshua B. Hartzog, artillery, rescuing commanding officer who was wounded and carried him out of range of hostile guns at Wounded Knee;

Hartzog rose to the rank of sergeant but did not remain in the Army.  Following his time in the Army, he returned to his native Ohio and married in 1894.  He moved to Alabama with his wife thereafter, but his wife soon died.  He remarried in 1918, but divorced and remarried again in 1923.  He died in 1939.

• Private Marvin Hillock, cavalry, distinguished bravery at Wounded Knee;

Hillock was born in Michigan to an Irish American family (his father was a Canadian).  He left the Army soon after Wounded Knee and became a miner in Lead, South Dakota.  He contracted sort of a shotgun marriage soon thereafter but it did not last long, although that may have meant that his spouse died.  He married again, albeit unsuccessfully, and seems to have relocated to Ontario for a time and then disappeared.

• Sergeant Bernhard Jetter, cavalry, distinguished bravery at Wounded Knee for "killing an Indian who was in the act of killing a wounded man of B Troop."

Bernhard Jetter was born in the Kingdom of Württemberg and first joined the Army in 1883.  He left the Army in 1896 with a "special" discharge, probably indicating a service disability, and married for a second time in 1916.  Nothing is known of his first wife, other than that she had died.  He moved to Brooklyn and died at age 65.

• Sergeant George Loyd, cavalry, bravery, especially after having been severely wounded through the lung at Wounded Knee;

Loyd was Irish born and joined the Army in 1866, the year after the Civil War at which point there was a huge turnover in the Army.  He had been at the Battle of Little Big Horn.

He killed himself, while still a serving soldier, at Ft. Riley in 1892, at which time the 49 year old Loyd was regarded as an old soldier.

• Sergeant Albert McMillain, cavalry, while engaged with Indians concealed in a ravine, he assisted the men on the skirmish line, directed their fire, encouraged them by example, and used every effort to dislodge the enemy at Wounded Knee;

McMillian is very unusual in that he was a school teacher, the son of a U.S. Senator, and had attended Princeton prior to his enlistment in the U.S. Army.  He seems to have been what some would refer to as a soldier of fortune.  He was court-martialed for using vile language towards a woman in 1892, and left the Army at the end of his enlistment.  He moved to  St. Paul, Minnesota and entered the University of Minnesota where he earned a Bachelor of Law degree in 1894, that being a "law degree" before reformist elements in the law converted the basic degree to a doctorate.  He worked for West Publishing Company, the premier legal publisher even today, thereafter as an editor.  He suffered a nervous breakdown at that time and his fortunes declined thereafter.

McMillian was likely a sensitive man, and he's  a 19th and early 20th Century example of PTSD.  He likely couldn't overcome what he'd witnesses, and had been awarded a medal for, at Wounded Knee.  He served as a Red Cross driver in World War One.

After Wounded Knee he requested that he be reduced to the rank of Private.  His request was refused.

• Private Thomas Sullivan, cavalry, conspicuous bravery in action against Indians concealed in a ravine at Wounded Knee;

Sullivan was an Irish immigrant who moved to the US at age 28 and immediately entered the Army.  He made a career of the Army and retired as a First Sergeant after 23 years of service, which would indicate that he likely retired early due to medical reasons.  He served in the Spanish American WAr and the Philippine Insurrection.

Sullivan married after he left the service and took up various employments, including policemen.  His wife Ellen was also an Irish immigrant.  He died in 1940 at age 80.

• First Sergeant Jacob Trautman, cavalry, killed a hostile Indian at close quarters, and, although entitled to retirement from service, remained to close of the campaign at Wounded Knee;

Trautman was a German born Civil War veteran who retired from the Army in 1891.  He died in 1898 of a stroke at age 58 while living in Pennsylvania, which is where he had originally entered the service from, first serving in a Pennsylvania cavalry unit.

Information on Trautman is hard to find, but an interesting aspect of this is that his first and last name are most commonly associated with people of the Jewish faith.  That doesn't mean he was Jewish, but a person has to wonder.

• Sergeant James Ward, cavalry, continued to fight after being severely wounded at Wounded Knee;

Ward was a first generation American from an Irish family in Quincy, Massachusetts.  He was the second of seven children.  He left a bricklaying job to join the Arm in 1876 and had been first stationed at Ft. Laramie.  His last enlistment, the one he was on during Wounded Knee, was short, indicating that he was discharged for medical reasons.  He married after he left the service but his health continued to decline leading first to his paralysis, and then death in 1901.

• Corporal William Wilson, cavalry, bravery in Sioux Campaign, 1890;

Cpl Wilson is particularly unusual as he was black.  He was known as a marksman and for wearing a non regulation black leather coat and a broad brimmed hat.  He is the only black soldier to have won the Medal of Honor at Wounded Knee and the last black soldier to win it on American soil.

He deserted the Army in 1893, with  his rifle, after being detailed to a rifle match.  Desertion wasn't that big of deal at the time, and he returned to Maryland, where he married and had seven children.  He died in 1928 at the age of 58.

Desertion in the 19th Century Army was extremely common, although taking your firearms was regarded as bad form.

• Private Hermann Ziegner, cavalry, conspicuous bravery at Wounded Knee;

Ziegner was born to Hugo and Lena Ziegner in Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach and emigrated to the United States when he was 14 years old.  He enlisted in the Army in 1889. He left the Army after eight years of service and married, but served again in the Spanish American War where he was a sergeant and later the first sergeant of Company E, 71st New York Infantry. He went up San Juan Hill in the famous charge.  He died of service induced malaria in 1898 at age 34, his family being reduced to poverty as he suffered through it.

Whatever his service at Wounded Knee entailed, his service in Cuba was clear, and he, and his family, suffered for it.  Curiously, his tombstone notes only his service in the Indian Wars and his rank, at the time, of private.

• Musician John Clancy, artillery, twice voluntarily rescued wounded comrades under fire of the enemy.

Clancy is hard to find dentils on.  He was a New Yorker who joined the Army at aged 19 and he left the Army in 1894.  He died, oddly enough, at the home of the cavalry, Ft. Riley, in 1934 at age 64.

• Lieutenant Ernest Garlington, cavalry, distinguished gallantry;

Garlington was a West Point graduate who received accelerated advancement, at a time in which Army appointments were very much by regiment, due to the losses at Little Big Horn.  He served as inspector general in Cuba during the Spanish–American War and participated in the Battle of Santiago de Cuba, obtaining the rank of Lieutenant Colonel.  He was retired from the Army as a General in 1917 due to age.  He died in 1934 at age 81.

• First Lieutenant John Chowning Gresham, cavalry, voluntarily led a party into a ravine to dislodge Sioux Indians concealed therein. He was wounded during this action.

Gresham was a career soldier who retired as a Colonel in 1915, and then had a position in the California National Guard during World War One as a ROTC instructor.  He died in 1926 at age 74.

• Second Lieutenant Harry Hawthorne, artillery, distinguished conduct in battle with hostile Indians;

Hawthorne is perhaps the most eccentric of the Wounded Knee MoH winners as he was a Naval Academy graduate who after a brief hitch in the Navy, transferred to the Army.  He served in the Spanish American War and was the military attache to Japan from 1909 to 1911.  During World War One he served as the  Inspector General in the Panama Canal Zone and was awarded the Purple Heart (oddly) and a Silver Star. He retired as a Colonel in 1919 after World War One and died in 1948 at age 88.

• Private George Hobday, cavalry, conspicuous and gallant conduct in battle;

Hobday was an English immigrant who enlisted in the Army in 1868 and at the time of Wounded Knee was a very old soldier, being 48 years of age.  He died of pneumonia in 1891 while still a serving soldier.

• First Sergeant Frederick Toy, cavalry, bravery; 

Toy was a career soldier with an exemplary service record.  He served as an orderly to President Theodore Roosevelt and was recalled from retirement as a training officer during World War One.  He died in 1933 at age 67.

• Corporal Paul Weinert, artillery, taking the place of his commanding officer who had fallen severely wounded, he gallantly served his piece, after each fire advancing it to a better position

We know know that this fire may have resulted in many innocent deaths, including that of women and children.  Weinert probably knew that at the the time and stated upon being informed that he'd be awarded the Medal of Honor that he had expected to be court-martialed..

Weinert was a German from Frankfurt, he served two hitches in the Army, the second one during the  Spanish American War.  He died in 1919, at age 49.

So what can we draw from all of this?

Well, perhaps not much, but we can glean some interesting facts and make a few conclusions.

One thing is, and we'll start with the Weinert comment, at least some soldiers appreciated right at the time that the battle had turned into a massacre.  Weinert's comments showed that he appreciated that the "battle" had taken unnecessary lives and had descended into a massacre.  McMillain's request to be returned to the grade of private says something similar, as does his difficulties in life thereafter.

Not all of the soldiers, however, seem to have been bothered by what they experienced, which in spite of our modern assumptions to the contrary, if fairly common, and franky disturbing.  We'd like to think that we'd appreciate the horror of a thing right from the onset of it, but many people frankly don't.

The number of career soldiers who won the MoH is surprising. That is, it's surprising so many of them were career men.  Most soldiers in the Army have always been sort of passing through, but many of these troops were not and stayed in for as long as they could.

That might partially be because so many of these men were immigrants, eight out of the twenty, and several more were first generation Americans.  The Army had been a haven for immigrants, and in particular Irish and German immigrants.  These awards show that.

Some disappeared.  It'd be difficult for a Medal of Honor recipient to do that today, but as we've noted, the Medal of Honor was not as rare then, as it is now, being the only medal the U.S. awarded.

We'd like to think the men were haunted by their roles in what is now widely regarded as an atrocity.  But, most don't seem to have been.  The number who left the service and then returned for later wars suggests that they retained either a loyalty or some sense of fondness for military life, in spite of the horrors they'd participated in.  Only McMillain seems to have been the exception.