behind AotW

A clipping from the San Antonio Daily Express of 12 October 1910, online thanks to The Portal to Texas History.

Mentioned as the youngest attendee was Frank E. Yates. In addition to his history with the Zouaves, Yates was a First Lieutenant and Acting Signal Officer on the Maryland Campaign of 1862.

Joseph L Bartlett is seen in the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies as a Captain in the Confederate States Signal Corps at both Manassas in August 1862 and near Harpers Ferry in September. He was surely a signalman, but it is more likely he was actually a Private in both places.

There are very few records of him, but I did find this voucher he signed when he bought a condemned CSA horse in May 1863.

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I first heard about Bartlett in a 2005 email conversation with David Winfred Gaddy, retired NSA cryptanalyst and historian, who clued me to the fact that he probably wasn’t actually a Captain as the Official Records compilers assumed.

I am sorry to have just learned that Dave passed in 2015; I think he would have been amused to see this scrap of paper.

Here he is on temporary duty in Vietnam in 1960, with NSA cryptologist Gene Raymond, in a photo from the 2017 edition of his translation of A History of the Cryptographic Branch of the People’s Army of Viet Nam, 1945-1975 (1994), online [pdf] from the Center for Cryptologic History, National Security Agency.

A clipping from the front page of the Seneca (NY) County Courier-Journal of 25 May 1916, online from NYS Historical Newspapers.

The Major in the center, John H. Fralick, was a Lieutenant and Acting Signal Officer on the Maryland Campaign of 1862, detailed from his regiment, the 34th New York Infantry.