February 17, 2011
By Staff Reporter
You know now you are about to face the famed Irish Brigade and at its heart the 69th Volunteers from New York. It is this moment that you wish you were somewhere else, far from here.
It is Sept. 17, 1862, a place called Antietam in Maryland, not much more than a cannonball shot from the town of Sharpsburg. The bloodiest day in American history is unfolding and for the Fighting 69th it will be a day to remember for all time.
The story of the Irish soldier in the American armed forces is a sprawling epic reaching back to the Revolutionary War, stretching across a continent and beyond the oceans.
But no matter where it goes, and who it names, the story always seems to reach back to the 69th, as an individual unit under its own name or as part of a larger formation.
It comes as little surprise then that when Hollywood decided it was time to put James Cagney in a uniform for a big screen portrayal of American fighting spirit, it was the 69th that was summoned for duty on the Warner Brothers lot.
Was all this fame an accident? No more so than the success story of the Irish in America.
The 69th was first formed in October 1851. Most of its initial members had escaped the ravages of the Great Hunger in Ireland, so the soldier’s life doubtless seemed a decent enough option.
Many of them were Fenians eager to lay hands on a musket and gain some military training for possible, well, unofficial action.
Initially known as the 69th New York State Militia, the regiment had managed to miss the war against Mexico and its officers and men doubtless felt that their uniforms, muskets and swords would be most used to impress the ladies.
But history was brewing a cataclysm, the first shots of which would be fired a mere decade after first muster.
Four months after the April 1861 attack on Fort Sumter, the 69th — now the 69th New York Volunteers — was one of three New York regiments that were joined together in the Union Army’s newly forged Irish Brigade.
The brigade was led by Brig. Gen. Thomas Francis Meagher, a Young Irelander who inculcated in his men the idea that duty to America and duty to Ireland were one and the same.
The birth of the Irish Brigade was in large part due to the heroism of the 69th earlier that year at Bull Run when its members had engaged in hand-to-hand fighting with advancing Confederate troops on a day when all too many Union soldiers simply ran.
The 69th would share the glory and burdens of the Irish Brigade with the 63rd and 88th regiments. Later in the conflict, the brigade would be boosted by regiments from Massachusetts and Pennsylvania.
But it was to be the 69th alone that would lay claim to the accolade “Fighting.” Nobody, blue or gray, was going to argue with the nickname. It was assigned to the regiment by Robert E. Lee.
The end of the war would see the regiment take part in the Grand Review in Washington. Parades are formal affairs, so the thousands who watched the endless lines of infantry, artillery and cavalry were casting their admiring glances at the 1st Regiment, Irish Brigade, 2nd Corps, Army of the Potomac. The 69th’s fighting days were done, if only temporarily.
The regiment saw action in the Spanish American War, but it would be the waning months of World War I before it would face overwhelming danger again.
When it came, the 69th would not be found wanting.
When people think of the 69th they more often than not envision James Cagney leading the charge across No Man’s Land in the 1940 movie “The Fighting Sixty-Ninth.”
Hollywood might have done its best, but the film was never going to fully live up to the real story of the 69th when, in its renamed form of the 165th Infantry, 42nd Rainbow Division, it fought its way across the Ourcq River and battled the Kaiser’s army at St. Mihiel and the Argonne Forest.
Still, if Cagney is the classic Hollywood face of the 69th, Fr. Francis Duffy is the real life version.
As chaplain to the regiment, the Canadian-born Duffy achieved fame for his physical as well as spiritual heroism on those bloody fields of World War I France.
Duffy would bear close witness to the courage of a new generation of Irish-born and Irish-American soldiers. Future spy chief William “Wild Bill” Donovan would win the Medal of Honor with the regiment, while the poet Joyce Kilmer would take his last breath in its uniform.
No U.S. regiment saw more action in 1918 than the 165th, so it was no surprise that its casualty rate soared to 644 killed and nearly 3,000 wounded. And in the middle of all the fighting was “Front Line Duffy” dispensing God’s forgiveness and winning as he did so both the Distinguished Service Cross and the Croix de Guerre.
Five years after Duffy’s death, at age 61 in 1932, Wild Bill Donovan assigned himself a mission. In time, a statue of Father Duffy was unveiled in Times Square. The 69th could claim one more legendary name, one more landmark on its march into history.
In more recent years the regiment became best known to New Yorkers for its marching, especially on St. Patrick’s Day. Irish Wolfhounds to the fore, the 69th is the traditional leader of the parade up Fifth Avenue. Now called the 1st Battalion, 69th Infantry (Mechanized), New York Army National Guard, the Fighting 69th was enjoying a peaceful spell.
That would end on Sept. 11, 2001. In the aftermath of the terror attacks on America, the 69th was called to active duty, first in its home city of New York, later in Iraq.
The 69th is in the front lines again and a famed Irish sunburst is greeting every desert dawn.