Hess Earl J. Field Armies and Fortifications in the Civil War: The Eastern Campaigns, 1861-1864

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8 Engineering War

skillful garrison are susceptible of a longer defence than was generally sup-

posed. They were attacked as ﬁeld works never were before, and were de-

fended as ﬁeld works never had been defended.’’

∞∑

As a ﬁeld commander in the Civil War, McClellan would practice much

of what Mahan had taught. His Peninsula campaign is a model of the ac-

tive defense, with the Federals entrenching before meticulously planning

offensive action. He was never able to entice the Rebels into launching an ill-

advised attack on his works, but McClellan also demonstrated in the Mary-

land campaign that he was quite able to launch ﬁerce attacks without pre-

liminary entrenching. It is difﬁcult to ﬁnd support for the argument that he

believed the Crimean War had demonstrated the inevitable shift to greater

use of ﬁeldworks. His years in the pre–Civil War army and his innate caution

probably accounted more for his use of ﬁeldworks than did his one-month

tour of the battleﬁeld outside Sebastopol.

Did McClellan, Mahan, and Halleck fail to discern revolutionary changes

in military affairs and therefore fail to teach Civil War armies how to ﬁght

better? That would be too harsh an accusation. The two most important

changes in military affairs, as they affected the Civil War, were the wide-

spread use of the riﬂe musket and the ﬁelding of huge armies that dwarfed

anything seen in previous American experience. If the riﬂe musket did not

alter the tactical picture, then the massed levies of poorly trained men and

ofﬁcers were the key change. Thousands of civilian soldiers could not possi-

bly be trained before the war, and after they enlisted, all that could be

expected of them was that they would learn the basics of drill and linear

formations. One of the key limitations of Civil War armies lay not in a lack of

understanding of the impact of new weapons or the feasibility of using ﬁeld-

works, but in the struggle of commanders to effectively manage large con-

centrations of troops over battleﬁelds that were covered with thickets, ra-

vines, and many other obstacles that wrecked neat lines. Field commanders

on both sides went into the Civil War with faith both in the tactical offensive

and in the use of ﬁeldworks. What had preceded their day—the French belief

in the direct offensive and Mahan’s concept of the active defense—was more

inﬂuential in their thinking than any theoretical musings about the future.

Manuals

Whatever there was of doctrine in the pre–Civil War army was conveyed

to cadets through Mahan’s classroom instruction. The military manuals

available to ofﬁcers both before and during the Civil War were primarily

technical treatises designed to convey detailed information about organizing

and drilling troops, deploying them on the battleﬁeld, and teaching them the

Engineering War 9

rudiments of how to perform their military duties. The same was true of the

handful of manuals that dealt with fortiﬁcations. Mahan’s manual was by far

the most important. It was to a large degree a distillation of Vernon’s manual

adapted to better suit the characteristics of the American military establish-

ment. Mahan’s was the primary treatise on fortiﬁcations in the U.S. army; all

other writers who dealt with fortiﬁcations in their manuals mostly restated

what he said.

Mahan deﬁned ﬁeld fortiﬁcations broadly: ‘‘All dispositions made to en-

able an armed force to resist, with advantage, the attack of one superior to it

in numbers, belong to the art of fortification.’’ Fortiﬁcation could be

achieved by creating a barrier on the surface of the ground from materials

quickly gathered from the local area (a breastwork), by digging into the

earth to create a trench and parapet (an earthwork), or by taking cover

behind existing features (such as a railroad grade, a stone fence, a sunken

road, or a building). Mahan insisted that the fortiﬁcation, no matter of what

type, should be effective as a physical barrier to the attacker and give an

opportunity to the defender to use his weapons most effectively. He brieﬂy

outlined his concept of the active defense in the manual and stressed that

any work should be defended ‘‘to the last extremity.’’ Mahan provided de-

tailed advice on how to attack and defend works. He recommended methods

of overcoming the physical barrier of the ditch and parapet and advised that

defending forces be packed in numbers behind a defensive work, with im-

provised grenades consisting of loaded and primed artillery shells handy to

roll into an attacker if he gained the ditch.

∞∏

But the vast majority of his treatise is devoted to the detailed technical

information needed to construct ﬁeld fortiﬁcations. This information is thor-

oughly and clearly explained, demonstrating Mahan’s mastery of the prin-

ciples of military engineering. Mahan dissected the earthwork into its com-

ponent parts and suggested how to make it most effective by building tra-

verses and shaping the parapet to shield defending troops. He favored the

construction of bastions in keeping with his attachment to historical French

principles and provided a formula for determining how many men and guns

would be needed to defend works of varied sizes. Mahan provided informa-

tion on defending mountainous terrain and bridge crossings. He spent a

great deal of time detailing the construction techniques for a wide range of

what he called ‘‘interior arrangements’’ inside a ﬁeldwork. Mahan paid at-

tention to the different kinds of revetments engineers could build to hold up

parapets and traverses. He described the various obstructions that could be

placed in front of works to delay and frustrate the advance of an enemy

force, what he called ‘‘accessory, or secondary means of defense.’’ Mahan

10 Engineering War

correctly deﬁned these as ‘‘artiﬁcial obstacles, so arranged as to detain the

enemy in a position where he will be greatly cut up by the ﬁre of the work.’’

Mahan detailed the duties of topographical ofﬁcers and provided instruc-

tions for the conduct of military reconnaissance. His treatise offered ﬁeld

ofﬁcers several options when constructing long trench lines that connected

detached ﬁeld fortiﬁcations. He also deﬁned the differences between perma-

nent fortiﬁcations and ﬁeldworks and provided a succinct overview of siege

operations.

∞π

Since Mahan was the author of the most widely used manual on fortiﬁca-

tions, his prominence in the theory and construction of ﬁeldworks in Amer-

ica was assured. Several other men wrote manuals that had far less inﬂuence

and more limited circulation. One manual writer, Egbert L. Viele, produced a

ﬁne volume titled Hand-book for Active Service: Containing Practical Instruc-

tions in Campaign Duties, for the Use of Volunteers. It was published in 1861,

when the outbreak of war created an enlarged demand for such instructional

books. Although derivative of Mahan’s, Viele’s book is detailed but insight-

ful. Viele did not like redoubts conﬁgured in circular outlines, as they were

more difﬁcult to build and did not lend themselves easily to ﬂank defenses.

Yet, they ‘‘enclose a greater space than any other redoubt with an equal

length of parapet.’’ He did not like berms, the narrow ledge of natural earth

left at the foot of the parapet to prevent the dirt from sliding back into the

ditch. Viele correctly pointed out that this ledge could offer an attacker a

foothold to get out of the ditch and up the outer slope of the parapet. He

thought berms were unnecessary if the parapet was no more than eight feet

tall or the quality of the dirt was ‘‘very adhesive.’’ It was not necessary to ram

the dirt of a parapet, thought Viele, as ‘‘loose earth resists the penetration of

shot just as well.’’ Like Mahan, Viele advocated the use of material to ﬁll in

the ditch when attacking a fort, but he also suggested the attacking force

approach in column and then spread out into a line when it reached the

ditch. Obstacles could be dismantled by the use of tools, and sharpshooters

should be posted as close as possible to the enemy work to keep the de-

fenders down. Viele even suggested that if the attack took place at night, the

line of approach should be delineated with stakes and the men should wear

distinguishable marks on their clothing to prevent confusion.

∞∫

Henry D. Grafton, a captain in the 1st U.S. Artillery, prepared and pub-

lished his own manual titled A Treatise on the Camp and March, With Which is

Connected the Construction of Field Works and Military Bridges in 1861. It also

was a distillation of Mahan, but with fewer new insights and less detail.

Grafton did, however, correctly note that ﬁeldworks do not have to be geo-

metrically correct, ‘‘for it is the ground upon which this work is to be situated

Engineering War 11

that must determine the shape.’’ Adhering to Mahan’s theory of the active

defense and the need to suit ﬁeldworks to the quality of the American mili-

tary force, Grafton suggested that a continuous line of trench between ﬁeld

forts would be best for raw troops. It offered more thorough protection as

there were no breaks in the line, but it inhibited the possibility of following

up a repulse with a counterattack. Grafton advocated placing veteran troops

in a line with breaks in it so they would have greater freedom of movement

on the battleﬁeld.

∞Ω

This incomplete survey of manuals represents a devolution from the best

to the lesser. There was one manual speciﬁcally written for military engi-

neers, and it was superb. Capt. James C. Duane published Manual for Engi-

neer Troops in 1862. While Mahan dealt with the construction and use of ﬁeld

fortiﬁcations, Duane provided a manual to instruct the professional engi-

neer. He divided his book into sections called Ponton Drill, Rules for Con-

ducting a Siege, School of the Sap, Military Mining, and Construction of

Batteries. The book is devoted exclusively to practical information, how to

make and use things related to the profession of military engineering. Duane

also provided detailed information about how to manage troops who dig

works of all kinds.

≤≠

In terms of technical information about how to construct ﬁeld fortiﬁca-

tions, the prewar and Civil War ofﬁcer was well served by the several man-

uals available. Theoretical and doctrinal instruction about the relationship

between ﬁeldworks and the operations of ﬁeld armies, however, was ex-

tremely meager. Many of Mahan’s and Viele’s suggestions about how armies

should use ﬁeld fortiﬁcations were unrealistic, based as they were on theo-

ries untested on the battleﬁeld. Improvisation, therefore, would play as great

a role in determining the conduct of operations as suggestions found in the

manuals. While these books provided essential information of a technical

nature, they had little impact on directing commanders who had to use

ﬁeldworks either offensively or defensively.

Yankee Engineers

The Corps of Engineers and the Corps of Topographical Engineers, like

the rest of the U.S. army, were woefully unprepared to ﬁght the Civil War.

There were only forty-eight ofﬁcers in the Corps of Engineers, and eight of

them resigned at the outbreak of war. More than half the ofﬁcers in the corps

were on duty at coastal forts, and several were at various locations attending

to administrative duties or public works projects. The lone engineer com-

pany was mostly at West Point training cadets, except a detachment of thirty

men that was working on the Paciﬁc coast. The Corps of Topographical

12 Engineering War

Engineers had only forty-ﬁve ofﬁcers, who were scattered around the coun-

try, and no enlisted men.

≤∞

Efforts were immediately made to enlarge the size of both corps, but

Congress hesitated due to ﬁnancial constraints; engineers, both ofﬁcers and

enlisted men, received a higher rate of pay than other soldiers. But the shock

of First Bull Run convinced congressmen that this was going to be a longer,

more complicated war than imagined. The legislature authorized six new

ofﬁcers in each corps and three additional companies of enlisted engineers,

plus a company of enlisted men for the Topographical Engineers. Congress,

however, refused to authorize the ofﬁcers to hold commissions at higher

ranks. As a result, the engineers would constantly feel embarrassed at hold-

ing positions of great importance in the huge ﬁeld armies while having

commissions that reﬂected service in the tiny prewar army.

Ofﬁcers were barely able to recruit enough troops to make up the addi-

tional engineer companies. Company A had been created in May 1846, at the

start of the Mexican War, although engineer troops had been organized for

both the War of Independence and the War of 1812, only to be disbanded

when no longer needed. Company B was recruited in Portland, Maine; Com-

pany C was formed in Boston; and Company D was created in 1862 by

transferring men from Companies A, B, and C. In the ﬁeld, these four com-

panies were designated the U.S. Engineer Battalion. The one company of

enlisted men authorized for the topographical engineers, however, never

materialized.

≤≤

The Engineer Battalion was used mostly to construct bridges and roads,

although in a few cases it was pressed into duty on the battle line as infantry.

As historian Philip Shiman has noted, it was ‘‘merely a collection of com-

panies’’ without proper staff ofﬁcers. This put pressure on company ofﬁcers,

who had to assume staff duties for the daily administration of the battalion.

Since service in the battalion offered little chance of promotion, it did not

appeal to ambitious engineer ofﬁcers, who preferred positions on the staffs

of corps and army leaders. Starting with Capt. James C. Duane, the battalion

had six commanders during the war, and a total of twenty ofﬁcers saw

service as commanders of its four companies. In addition, the battalion

hardly ever ﬁlled its ranks. By late 1863 it had less than half its authorized

strength.

≤≥

Ambitious engineer ofﬁcers also sought commissions in volunteer regi-

ments as a way to gain higher rank, more pay, and greater opportunities for

fame. Many of them even tried to retain their commissions in the Corps of

Engineers to ensure they would have a place in the army when the volun-

teers were disbanded. The chief engineer resisted this ploy because it would

Engineering War 13

have prevented him from having a full complement of working engineers.

The small size of the corps and the drain of its few ofﬁcers to other duties

created a constant need for more trained engineers. Reluctantly, the corps

tried to address this by hiring civil engineers on contract. Their training often

was haphazard, mostly acquired on the job in civilian life, and thus an af-

front to the high sense of professionalism that characterized the Corps of

Engineers. But necessity dictated tolerance, and the civilians were often

hired to work on less vital installations far behind the lines.

≤∂

Brig. Gen. Joseph G. Totten ably headed the Corps of Engineers during

the ﬁrst three years of the war. Seventy-three years old when the war broke

out, he had been the tenth graduate of the U.S. Military Academy in 1805.

Totten had served in the War of 1812 and was chief engineer at the siege of

Vera Cruz in the Mexican War. He had headed the corps since December 7,

1838, and his chief concern was the construction and maintenance of the

coastal forts. During the war, he sought to maintain the administrative inde-

pendence of the corps. He effectively ran the engineering establishment until

pneumonia suddenly took his life on April 22, 1864.

≤∑

The Corps of Topographical Engineers, however, did not maintain its ad-

ministrative independence. Col. John J. Abert, seventy-two years old when

the war started, was well past his prime. A graduate of the West Point class of

1811 and a veteran of the battle of Bladensburg in the War of 1812, he retired

on September 9, 1861. Yet his replacement, Col. Stephen H. Long, was unable

to handle the demands made on his understaffed agency by the war. The

maps on ﬁle when the war broke out were relevant mostly to coastal defense

and frontier exploration, not to conducting major campaigns into the south-

ern states, and the agency’s ofﬁcers often were drawn off to a variety of

engineering duties other than cartography. The corps also failed to recruit

the one company of enlisted men Congress had authorized in August 1861.

≤∏

Merging the two corps into one and pooling their available manpower

and resources seemed to be the best solution. McClellan strongly urged this

course of action in the middle of his Peninsula campaign. He had a number

of engineer vacancies to ﬁll in the Army of the Potomac and constantly had to

deny the request of ofﬁcers in the Engineer Battalion for commissions in

volunteer regiments. Merging the two corps would add a substantial number

of new engineer ofﬁcers to the available pool of candidates. He called the

situation ‘‘embarrassing’’ and noted that his engineer ofﬁcers were badly

overworked. Totten resisted the merger. He thought topographers were not

true engineers and that adding them to his beloved corps would dilute its

effectiveness. But most younger subordinates of both corps strongly sup-

ported the merger. Congress ﬁnally abolished the Corps of Topographical

14 Engineering War

Engineers on March 3, 1863. It also created a new rank, brigadier general, for

the head of the enlarged Corps of Engineers. Higher ranks were opened for

subordinate ofﬁcers, too, including four colonels, ten lieutenant colonels,

twenty majors, thirty captains, and forty lieutenants. Although 105 ofﬁcers

were authorized in the corps, it seldom had the opportunity to ﬁll every slot

with qualiﬁed men.

≤π

The record of these Federal engineer ofﬁcers was superb. They performed

their varied tasks admirably, displaying a high degree of professionalism that

often was sorely lacking in the volunteer service. Their duties while serving

on the staffs of ﬁeld units included scouting terrain, drawing road maps,

locating campsites, and directing subordinate units along prescribed routes

of march. When needed, they laid out lines of ﬁeldworks and supervised the

digging by infantrymen.

As the primary ﬁeld army in the East, the Army of the Potomac enjoyed

ﬁrst choice in allocation of engineer ofﬁcers. John Gross Barnard was its ﬁrst

chief engineer. Born in Massachusetts in 1815, he graduated second in the

West Point class of 1833 and gained wide experience in varied construction

projects before the war. He was given a commission as brigadier general

of volunteers in September 1861 and ably directed the construction of the

Washington defenses. His astute handling of engineering tasks in the Penin-

sula campaign was fully documented in his report, which could easily have

served as a model for how engineer ofﬁcers should record their activities.

Barnard was McClellan’s chief engineer from the summer of 1861 to Au-

gust 1862, but his place was ﬁlled by equally capable ofﬁcers. Cyrus Ballou

Comstock, although holding rank as lieutenant and captain and hindered by

sporadic bouts of illness, served as chief engineer in late 1862 under Ambrose

E. Burnside and in early 1863 under Joseph Hooker. Gouverneur K. Warren

held the post in the summer of 1863 under George G. Meade, while James

Chatham Duane ably ﬁlled it from October 1863 until the end of the war.

≤∫

Despite efforts to keep the engineer ofﬁcers devoted to their duties, many

of them obtained commissions in the volunteer service and commanded

troops in battle. While some led regiments, a total of thirty-three engineer

ofﬁcers or former members of the Corps of Engineers held commissions as

generals. Eight of them commanded ﬁeld armies, and ten led corps. In con-

trast, eight Confederate generals had formerly been ofﬁcers in the U.S. Corps

of Engineers. All told, eleven engineer ofﬁcers or former members of the U.S.

Corps of Engineers were killed in battle.

≤Ω

While the needs of the Army of the Potomac were met by its overworked

engineer ofﬁcers, the same cannot be said of the army’s meager contingent

of regular engineer troops. Congress had not authorized enough of them.

Engineering War 15

These four companies were supplemented with volunteer units that were

recruited for engineer duties. At ﬁrst this was resisted by Congress, which

did not want to spend the extra money engineers normally received. State

governments took it upon themselves to raise these units, and Congress

ﬁnally agreed to accept them in October 1861. Three regiments and a com-

pany served, although the men did not receive the extra pay normally ac-

corded engineers. The 1st New York Engineers was raised in New York City

and was led by English-born Col. Edward W. Serrell. It served primarily

along the Atlantic coast during the ﬁrst half of the war. The 15th New York

Engineers and the 50th New York Engineers constituted the Volunteer Engi-

neer Brigade in McClellan’s Army of the Potomac. A company of engineers

was raised in Pennsylvania in the summer of 1862. It worked on the defenses

of Washington, D.C., and later on the bridges at Harpers Ferry. The Pennsyl-

vanians remained in service, obscurely, until June 1865. Another regiment,

the 2nd New York Engineers, was authorized but never fully recruited. Its

men were transferred to the 15th New York Engineers in October 1863.

≥≠

The volunteers attached to the Army of the Potomac did superb duty in the

ﬁeld. They greatly outnumbered the small regular engineer companies and

were instructed by them in the technical aspects of their specialized duties.

The Volunteer Engineer Brigade was led by Brig. Gen. Daniel P. Woodbury, a

forty-nine-year-old graduate of West Point who had served in the Corps of

Engineers before the war. He had been a topographical engineer at First Bull

Run before promotion to his general’s rank. Woodbury commanded the vol-

unteers until his transfer to Key West, Florida, in March 1863. He was re-

placed by Brig. Gen. Henry W. Benham, who also had served in the Corps of

Engineers after his graduation from West Point. Benham was a good engi-

neer but had little facility for commanding troops. He demonstrated both

traits in the Western Virginia campaigns of 1861, earning enough recognition

to achieve promotion to brigadier general. But his handling of men in the

battle of Secessionville, near Charleston, in the early summer of 1862 left a

great deal to be desired. He was relegated to engineer duties and then given

Woodbury’s brigade. Benham led it as an administrator; he never accom-

panied it under ﬁre to act as infantry in battle and thus turned in a respect-

able performance throughout the remainder of the war.

≥∞

In addition to the volunteer regiments raised as engineers, ﬁeld com-

manders sometimes assigned line units to a speciﬁc engineering project or

designated them to devote their energies toward engineering work for a

given length of time. McClellan dedicated the 5th New Hampshire, 64th New

York, and parts of the Irish Brigade to bridge building on the Chickahominy

River during the Peninsula campaign. This sort of duty was given line units

16 Engineering War

more frequently in the western armies, where there were far fewer engineer

troops and a great deal more work to be done as well.

≥≤

In addition to the regular and volunteer engineer units, and the line units

dedicated to engineer duties, commanders of the Army of the Potomac orga-

nized detachments of pioneers at least as far down the chain of command as

the division level. These company-sized units consisted of men detailed from

the ranks and were used mostly to remove obstructions and repair roads

during a campaign. The pioneers also buried the dead after an engagement,

although there were too few of them to complete the job after a major ﬁght.

At times black laborers were hired to do pioneer work as well.

≥≥

There sometimes seemed to be less distinction between engineer troops

and line units than one would think. When one considers the varied amounts

of engineering work to be done for a ﬁeld army, either in camp or on the

move, the number of engineer troops was far too small. One veteran esti-

mated that details from infantry units performed most of the engineer work

of the army; only about one-ﬁfth of it was done by the organized engineer

units. Only tasks that demanded specialized skills, such as pontoon work and

laying out major forts, had to be done by the engineers. Other tasks, such

as building small bridges and laying out simple earthworks, could either

be improvised by experienced amateurs in the ranks or be directed by engi-

neers who quickly gave directions and then went off to other duties. In an

army with few trained specialists, improvisation was a common mode of

operation.

≥∂

The engineer troops sometimes lent a hand in ﬁghting as well, although

their specialized skills meant that ﬁeld commanders pushed them into harm’s

way only reluctantly, and then for short periods of time. The U.S. Engineer

Battalion acted as infantry at Malvern Hill and in the Union advance to

Shepherdstown following the battle of Antietam. It guarded Westminster,

Maryland, against Confederate cavalry during the Gettysburg campaign.

These few experiences, however, did not allow the engineer troops to gain a

battle record, for they were brief and did not result in signiﬁcant ﬁghting.

Fortunately for the sake of the engineering establishment, these troops were

only used in emergencies to ﬁll space until other troops could be brought up.

They were far too valuable and few in number to waste as combat troops.

≥∑

Rebel Engineers

Stonewall Jackson believed that the Yankee engineers were better than

the Rebel engineers. They had, he believed, found a gap in the Confederate

line at the battles of Groveton and Fredericksburg. This offhand opinion,

given to his topographical engineer in April 1863, indicates only one thing:

Engineering War 17

Jackson was tightly focused on what the engineers could do for him on the

battleﬁeld. Combat engineering hardly existed in the 1860s, at least when

compared with what it would become by World War II. The vast majority

of an engineer’s labor in the Civil War was devoted to support services

rather than aiding line units to ﬁnd better ways to attack the enemy on the

battleﬁeld.

≥∏

Jackson failed to give the Rebel engineers their due. The truth was that

Confederate engineers were every bit as competent and knowledgeable as

their Northern counterparts, and they served the needs of Rebel ﬁeld armies

equally well. The Confederates received a few engineers at the start of the

war when eight of the ofﬁcers in the Corps of Engineers resigned; Maj. G. T.

Beauregard was the most prominent of them. Seven ofﬁcers from the Corps

of Topographical Engineers also resigned. Each of them received commis-

sions one or two ranks higher in the Confederate army.

≥π

The Confederate government created a Corps of Engineers on March 7,

1861, consisting of ﬁve captains, four majors, and a colonel, with a company

of sappers, miners, and pontoniers. Skimpy even for a peacetime establish-

ment, it was less than adequate to meet the demands of war. Congress

increased the corps in May 1861 by adding a lieutenant colonel, ﬁve more

captains, and one more company of sappers and bombardiers. That brought

the total number to twenty ofﬁcers and 200 enlisted men, still far too few to

meet the needs of Confederate ﬁeld armies. In addition, Congress allowed a

meager budget for the Engineer Bureau, which was created within the War

Department to handle the administrative needs of the ofﬁcers and troops. It

received $1 million in September 1861, compared with $3.5 million for the

Ordnance Bureau and $12 million for the Commissary General’s Ofﬁce.

≥∫

The ofﬁcers who ﬁlled available slots in the Confederate Corps of Engi-

neers were, like their Union counterparts, West Point graduates. The ranking

engineer, Maj. William H. C. Whiting, was too busy in the ﬁeld to run the

bureau. After achieving the highest set of grades ever accumulated at West

Point, Whiting served in the U.S. Corps of Engineers until Fort Sumter led

him to resign. He was chief engineer in Gen. Joseph E. Johnston’s army and

facilitated its transfer from the Shenandoah Valley to victory at First Manas-

sas. In his absence from Richmond, Maj. Josiah Gorgas, chief of ordnance,

was expected to double as chief engineer. He disliked this assignment be-

cause it took too much attention from his ordnance duties.

≥Ω

Whiting was promoted to brigadier general and given ﬁeld command

after First Manassas, opening the way for a permanent replacement as head

of the Engineer Bureau. Maj. Danville Leadbetter was chosen. Graduating

third in his West Point class of 1836, Leadbetter had served in the U.S. Corps