I think this adorkable Medal of Honor-winning professor from Maine has been submitted once before, but he’s really worth talking about again.
Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain taught himself Ancient Greek at the age of twenty to get into Bowdoin College, and later became a professor of rhetoric there. He went on to teach every subject they had (except science and maths) and was elected the Professor of Modern Languages as he was fluent in nine languages other than English.
Not content with being this awesome, he encouraged his students to enlist in the civil war that happened to be going on, then when the college refused to let him sign up himself, he applied for a two-year sabbatical to study languages in Europe. Then he signed up anyway.
Joshua L. was offered the post of Colonel of the 20th Maine Regiment, but turned it down for the opportunity to work his way up from Lieutenant Colonel in the same regiment (part of the Army of the Potomac).
Eventually he became Colonel, just in time to become renowned for his performance at the Battle of Gettysburg. Joshua L. was sent to defend Little Round Top with 300-odd men. This hill was at the far left flank of the entire Union army. Confederates charged the hill and were shot down, but the 20th Maine were running low on ammunition (they had to take it from their dead fellow soldiers) and men. In a brilliant and textbook manoeuvre, Joshua and his men charged down the hill, with his left flank swinging in like a hinge, meaning that the Confederates were being attacked from two sides. 101 of them were captured and Little Round Top, an important strategic position, was successfully defended.
Joshua L. sustained two injuries (although one was a bruise on the thigh, come on) and was taken off active duty for a while afterwards due to the malaria and dysentery he had contracted before the battle. He was known as “Lion of the Round Top” from then on, and awarded the Medal of Honor thirty years later. He later became a Major-General after a battle in 1865 very near the end of the war. Overall, he participated in twenty battles during the war and was cited for bravery four times.
After the war, he was elected Governor of Maine four times, refused to enforce Prohibition very much, went back to Bowdoin College for twelve years and attempted to enlist in the Spanish-American war. Did I mention that was when he was 70? AND he helped found the Maine Institution for the Blind.
Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain died of remaining war wounds in 1915, aged 85. Unfortunately the word “AWESOMESAUCE” was not carved on his gravestone.
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