Alcide ‘Met the Elephant’ – WARNING – Graphic Content

For some reason I was thinking about the other Van Landry out there.  I have a cousin with the same name as mine and I’ve never met him.  Thinking of that led me to thinking about our common ancestor Simon Alcide Joseph Landry.  He was known by the name Alcide.  Not that I ever knew him.  He died before my father was even born.  My dad was Robert Joseph Landry, Jr. and he was known by many people as Bob.  His father, of course, was RJL, Sr.  He was known as Rob. Rob was the son of Alcide.   So when I was thinking of what I would say to the other Van about our common ancestor, I remembered a story I read about Alcide from another cousin Thomas Richey.

Thomas Richey (let’s call him TR) actually descends from Alcide’s older brother Trasimond.  I descend from both of the brothers.  TR wrote a book about the experiences of our great great grandfather Trasimond during the Civil War.  Trasimond and Alcide were from southern Louisiana, so they fought for the Confederacy.  The name of the book is “Tirailleurs” and it is about the Acadians of Company H who were mainly from Brusly, Louisiana.  Of course, the main ‘star’ of the book was Trasimond.  But there were several stories about Alcide as well.  I don’t know where TR got all of the amazing details that are in the book.  He quotes old letters, diaries, and other writings from the time.  I’d like to meet him one day.  I’ll be quoting some of his book in this post.

The story I was thinking about occurred in the early morning hours of August 16, 1864, eight miles from the center of Atlanta, Georgia.  Young Alcide was sleeping in the trenches when he was startled awake by the shout of “Attaque!”  It was a trench raid and Alcide grabbed his Bowie knife.  “He looked up to see a Yankee lieutenant with his saber blade crashing toward Alcide’s head.  Alcide raised his arm to protect himself, his knife deflecting the saber stroke into the dirt.  The Yankee officer aimed a pistol in his left hand at the young Rebel private.  Alcide swung the Bowie knife and crushed the Yankee’s left hand.  He then pulled back the knife and plunged it into the Yankee’s belly.”  The knife was buried in the spine of the Federal who slumped forward, dead.

“Alcide stood panting and pale.  Sweat poured into his eyes.  This was his birthday.  He was nineteen years old – and still alive… Alcide had ‘met the elephant.’  He was no longer a new recruit…for the longest time, Alcide stared at the Union officer’s dead face.  He wondered why this poor dead Yankee would want to kill him.  He felt saddened and guilty over the man’s death.”  He reached over and pulled the cap down over the dead Yankee’s eyes and thought, “Meilleur vous que moi.” (Better you than me.)

What an intense story!  I can’t imagine facing such a situation.  We mostly live in a very peaceful time.  But during the Civil War, things could get pretty brutal.  Since I descend from Alcide, I am very pleased with the outcome of the confrontation.  Otherwise, I wouldn’t be here.  Like Alcide, I wonder about the story of the Yankee soldier’s life.  In this book told from the southern perspective, the Yankees are the anonymous others.  It reminds me of ‘Star Trek.’ When those unnamed characters with red shirts beamed down to the dangerous planet with Captain Kirk, you knew they weren’t going to last long.  Sure enough, the next scene would show some unforeseen threat take the life of the forever unknown crew member.

The Yankee soldier that Alcide killed shares that fate.  We don’t know who he was.  I don’t even know where he was from.  Could he have been from Massachusetts, where my mom’s Bucklin family lived for generations?  Or maybe he was from Pennsylvania, where her Phenice line was from?  I don’t think we’ll ever know.  I’m sure he was from a family, though.  There could be some other family historian looking at an old great uncle or cousin in their tree and wondering, “I wonder what ever happened to him?”  Oh, the woes of war.