On July 4, 1919, The Chattanooga Daily Times reported on the return of the 6th Cavalry from World War I to Fort Oglethorpe the following Saturday morning. The report on the 568 enlisted men and 38 officers appeared on page seven of the 12-page newspaper.
On the front page of the Times were 22 stories, the top of which was Jack Dempsey's startling upset of heavyweight champion Jess Willard.
Remembering My Hero
Limited tickets and tables for the fundraising banquet are still available. They can be purchased online at 6thcavalrymuseum.org. Guests can choose to attend just the dinner or an additional reception with Waters, who will share personal stories of his grandfather during the event.
"6TH CAVALRY COMES HERE" was the first of three headlines on page seven. The other two also helped tell the already fabled regiment's story: "Regiment Now Quartered at Oglethorpe" and "Spent 16 Months in France – Col. Foltz in Command – Nearly All Officers Have Been in Action."
The 6th Cavalry moved back into the Oglethorpe Army Post, located on 815 acres next to Chickamauga National Battlefield, 14 days after returning to the country on June 16. The unit had spent 16 months in France as part of the Allied forces. The 6th Cavalry was based at the post until the start of World War II.
The celebrated history of the 6th Cavalry is now preserved at the 6th Calvary Museum on Barnhardt Circle, historically the home of the unit's officers, in Fort Oglethorpe.
Keith Hardison, executive director of the Charles H. Coolidge National Medal of Honor Heritage Center in Chattanooga, said that history is part of an important contributor to the area's economy of today.
The National Park Service reports that Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Military Park alone had a cumulative benefit to the local economy of more than $69 million in 2017, helping to support 883 local jobs through the park's nearly 1 million visitors.
The 6th Calvary's highly decorated history will be the subject of the related museum's "Remembering My Hero" fundraising banquet at 7:30 p.m. on May 18 at the St. Gerard Parish Life Center in Fort Oglethorpe. George Patton Waters, the grandson of Gen. George Patton, is the featured speaker. The 6th Cavalry served as part of Gen. Patton's Third Army in World War II.
"They were called the 'Fighting Sixth,' because in most cases they were in the thick of things," said Hardison, who came to Chattanooga in the fall of 2018 on what he describes as his final stop in a 36-year career as a museum director and a lifetime passion for military history. "They took a lot of casualties because they were stubborn fighters.
"I think one of the most astounding things is that the unit had 56 Medal of Honor recipients starting from the Civil War forward. That is an unusually high number for one unit."
Another thing that makes the 6th Cavalry unique is that it served under two of the most legendary Army commanders in U.S. military history: Gen. John J. "Black Jack" Pershing, whom Hardison calls the "equivalent of Eisenhower of World War I," as well as Patton. Additionally, the different iterations of the 6th Cavalry from the Civil War through today make the unit unique, said Hardison.
"The 6th Cavalry was involved in the transformation from a cavalry unit in the traditional sense to becoming a mechanized unit that paved the way for the future of the military today," he said. "They were involved in all kinds of testing for the military, from motorcycles to testing Bantam cars, what we now call jeeps."
Hardison, who started studying military history in the Chattanooga region when he and his parents would pass through on vacation, said preserving history like that of the 6th Cavalry is part of the area's heritage tourism economy. The opening of the Medal of Honor Heritage Center in February 2020 will be a significant addition to heritage tourism.
"The 6th Cavalry Museum adds to the critical mass of things here," Hardison said. "If you are interested in military history, you can go so many places and find nothing. Here [in the Chattanooga area], military history is all over the place."
Contact Davis Lundy at davislundy@aol.com.