#de kalb

[unteriors]

Martin Luther King Drive, De Kalb, Texas.

[kodachrome-net]

Egyptian Theatre, De Kalb, Illinois, March 2024

[teenagedirtstache]

[marmarinou]

Dawn at De Kalb by Moffat Road on Flickr.

“The colors of early dawn are cracking to the east, silhouetting the old steam-era concrete coaling tower still spanning the Chicago & North Western’s main line through De Kalb, Illinois, on March 25, 1995. With headlights blazing, a westbound C&NW intermodal train blasts through town, and underneath the imposing structure.” Photo by Mike Danneman

[thephantomofthelibrary]

Worse news followed. In mid-June, 1780, Horatio Gates, the so-called hero of Saratoga, took command of the Southern Department and, against the advice of baron de Kalb, sent 3,000 untrained Patriot troops to Camden, South Carolina, to face Lord Cornwallis’s legendary British cavalry. The British sliced through the American lines and sent the Patriots fleeing in panic - except for Kalb’s contingent of infantrymen on the right flank. At Gates’s insistence, Kalb ordered his men to hold fast. Infuriated by their audacity at refusing the option to withdraw, Colonel Banastre Tarleton ordered horse troops to slaughter the stubborn Americans. The ensuing massacre left nearly 900 Patriots dead. Among the last to fall was the gigantic Kalb, Lafayette’s old friend. After his wounded horse collapsed beneath him, Kalb slashed wildly at the piercing thrusts of British bayonets until, finally, a series of blows to the head by enemy rifle butts sen the great soldier of fortune to his knees. A few more stabs assured his end in the South Carolina much. Kalb had come to America plotting Washington’s overthrow and met his end loyally defending him.

Harlow Giles Unger, Lafayette, (2002) p.115

[yesterdaysprint]

The Daily Chronicle, De Kalb, Illinois, December 14, 1934

[marq-de-laf]

'Dying in a shameful bed after having excap'd some more honorable occasions in the field,' Lafayette declared, unconscious of the grandiloquent anticlimax, 'would have been for me the most cruel disappointment.' But others were not so greatly perturbed as he thought. Dekalb, who was in charge of a division at Fishkill, did not fear that the end had come, though the doctors had condemned his friend to bed for a long time. On the contrary, it was Lafayette's anxiety to get up and move on that the baron thought would do greater harm than the fever. ...[Washington] did, however, take good care of his protégé, again ordering his personal physician, Dr. John Cochran, to attend him; and 'Dr. Bones,' as Lafayette came to call Cochran, did everything in his power for his patient. Following a four-hour hemorrhage of the nose, Lafayette began to recover. After a few more days he was reported better and out of danger, though very weak. Dr. Thacher, an American army surgeon, who had heard he was dangerously sick, went to see him and found him sitting up and able to converse 'in broken English.' Thacher, although he found Lafayette 'not very elegant in form,' was impressed with his height, broad shoulders, high forehead, long and large nose, prominent eyebrows, fine animated eyes, and accomplished manners. The newspapers soon announced that the marquis was well again.

Lafayette In America, Book 2, pg. 305. Cochran was the original ‘Bones’ for all you Trekkies. Why a nosebleed helped, I don’t know. That will always confused me, but if it relieved some sort of pressure, more power to it. November of 1778. ‘Not elegant in form’ is yet another way of saying that Laf was a bit chubby.

[unteriors]

Martin Luther King Drive, De Kalb, Texas.