RLL 58: Memorial Day 2021

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You're listening to Radio Looks Lucid episode 58 and the title of today's episode is

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Memorial Day 2021. Well, hello everybody, I'm Steve Matthews. Thanks for joining me for this latest episode of Radio Looks Lucid.

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Today's program is going to be a little bit different than most of the other programs that I do.

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I usually do a fair amount of commentary on ongoing political or things that I think are of interest to Christians and I think just to people in general.

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But today I'm going to do things a little bit differently. I've got a little different program just because it is

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Memorial Day. I mean, this is Memorial Day weekend and today is, in fact, I'm recording this on Saturday, May the 29th.

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So it's Memorial Day weekend and I hope all of you have been having an enjoyable Memorial Day weekend here so far.

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It's a long weekend, an opportunity to take a little bit of a break from our routine and maybe also to remember some things that we ought to remember as well.

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And I'm going to talk a little bit about that. You know, it's one thing that's kind of interesting so far today about this

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Memorial Day weekend is how cool it is here in Cincinnati. Our high was 55 degrees today, which is really unusually cool for this time of year.

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I mean, generally speaking, you know, we get in to this time of year and you're looking at, you know, temperatures probably at least in the 70s.

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I mean, that's pretty typical, but it was gray out, it was rainy kind of overnight and even on Friday, and now here today we've got this cool weather again.

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So I'm wondering if, you say, it doesn't really feel much like a typical Memorial Day.

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It doesn't really look like a typical Memorial Day. And you know, the other thing too is I've talked a lot here recently about the cicadas.

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We've got our big 17 -year cicada invasion going on and we really actually started to really kind of get into the meat of it this past week.

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Those darn cicadas, they get pretty loud when you get thousands and thousands and thousands of them up in the trees in your backyard and they get to, they can crank it up and it's pretty loud.

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It can be sometimes hard to have even a conversation depending on where you're standing. The sound from those things is so loud.

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But you know, the funny thing is I guess apparently they are very temperature sensitive because I was out working in the yard today, you know, mowing the grass and then doing all that type of thing, and I didn't hear a peep out of so much as one cicada.

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I mean, they were completely silent. So I guess the cooler weather maybe made them a little less energetic.

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I was supposed to start warming up tomorrow, I think it's supposed to get in the 60s and then back on Monday we'll be back in the 70s.

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So I guess they'll probably be back to make it some noise again. But today they were pretty quiet, pretty quiet indeed.

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So anyway, so I wanted to talk some here about Memorial Day. And as many of you know,

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I mean, certainly if you're from the United States, you're well aware of Memorial Day. It's an

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American holiday and it's usually one here in the United States we consider to be a sort of the unofficial start of summer because it always falls right at the end of May.

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And you know, that's usually when, at least when I was a kid anyway, that's when school got out. Although I think,

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I don't know, it seems like some schools are getting out earlier now than what they used to and they go back earlier too.

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But anyway, we always went to school, you know, usually like into the first week of June.

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But Memorial Day was always kind of a marker. That was really like when summer actually began.

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And when Memorial Day first started, of course, it's something that started back right after the end of the

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Civil War in the 1860s. And they called it Decoration Day when it began.

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And Decoration Day, it was called that because people would go out and they would put flowers on the graves of fallen soldiers.

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And this was how that custom got its start. And over time, it became more of a, it wasn't so much specifically the

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Civil War, it became more of a thing with, you know, anyone who, remembering those who had fallen in any war regardless of what war it was.

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And the modern Memorial Day, was actually made official and regularized by Congress in,

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I think it was 1971. So that's really where Memorial Day comes from.

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And what I wanted to do is talk a little bit today, since it is Memorial Day. And since it, of course, it is about remembering,

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I wanted to talk a little bit about my family and tie in my family's history with Memorial Day.

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I hope this will be something that will be interesting to you. These are some men that I'm going to talk about here,

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I think who are well worth remembering. And they're people I'm certainly honored to claim as my forefathers.

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So it's my great privilege to be able to talk about some of these things. And the first two gentlemen

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I'd like to talk about here are William and Henry Bailey. They were brothers.

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They were Virginians way back in the day, and this was before the, ever the United States was.

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This was back in Colonial Virginia. And they were two veterans of the

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Battle of Great Meadows, or sometimes it's known as the Battle of Fort Necessity. It was fought on July 3rd, 1754.

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And it was generally considered to be the first major battle of the

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French -Indian War. And the French -Indian War was a substantial conflict. It was basically the

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French and the English fighting it out for control over North America.

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So there was a lot at stake for both countries. And the battle itself, it was, as I said, it was fought on July 3rd, 1754.

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It was fought in what's today southwest Pennsylvania, near a town called

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Farmington. And without going into a lot of detail on this, there was a force of about 300

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Virginians, and it was also about 100 or so regular

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British troops that came from South Carolina. And they were all under the command of a rookie colonel, a young guy, with just kind of getting his start by the name of George Washington.

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And this was actually Colonel Washington's first battle as the commander, as the one who was running the show.

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And among those Virginians were two brothers, as I mentioned, William and Henry Bailey.

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Now in that battle, they actually fought... I had the opportunity last summer in August of 2020 to actually go up there with my dad and mom.

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And we went up to the battlefield. There's a park. It's like a national historic battlefield there.

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And they have a visitor center and the like. And they've actually had a reconstruction of the fort. And it's kind of interesting. The fort that they built, they built it on fairly quick order.

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It was kind of a rush job. They put this thing together, and it was a round fort, interestingly enough.

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And a lot of people didn't realize that. I guess in past times, they've tried to have reconstructions of the fort, and they always kind of built it as a square fort, kind of something you maybe more typically think.

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But the fort, and in fact, this goes back to even eyewitnesses that were there at the time, although they were ignored for a long time.

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And it was also in part from, I guess, some archaeological excavations they did.

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They did determine that it was a round fort. And they have a replica of the fort that Washington built there,

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Washington and his men. It was very interesting to go up and to see this. And the fight took place.

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So there were about 400 or so British and American, together, about 400 or so British and American troops there under the command of George Washington.

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And they were opposed by a force of approximately around 700 or so French and their

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Indian allies. And the French and the Indians got the better of the

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British and the Virginians. And the next day, on July 4, 1754, the

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French offered them terms of surrender, and Washington accepted, and they marched off.

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Well, during the battle, I mentioned there were these two Virginian brothers who had come up, William and Henry Bailey. Well, William was killed in battle, and Henry was injured, but he lived.

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And in fact, Henry came back the next year, and there was a battle the following year that took place.

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And this time, it was under the command of General Edward Braddock, who was a British general.

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And the British got crushed again by the French in that next battle.

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And Henry was wounded in that second battle in 1755. And apparently, that was the end of his military career.

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I don't think he went back and fought after that. I guess he'd gotten the worst of it in two battles, and maybe enough was enough for him, which is certainly understandable.

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But William was killed. And when I went up to the historical site last

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August, there's a visitor center there, and there was a plaque that was made. And this was back in the 1930s, and it listed all the names of the men who had been killed and buried on the premises.

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And in one of those was William Bailey. And I'm going to explain to you in a minute why that's important for my family.

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Now, although William was killed, he was survived by a son by the name of Josephus Bailey. And about 20 years later,

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Josephus served under George Washington, only this time, it was General George Washington of the

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Continental Army. So Josephus Bailey was a Revolutionary War soldier. And he died in February of 1777.

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Now, I've seen there's a, oh, it's a,

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I guess, a copy of some kind of official army record that shows his date of death and the like.

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So he died in February of 1777, very early on in the American Revolution. And we don't know at this point what the nature of what caused that.

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I'm going to guess here, I don't know this for sure, but it would seem likely that it probably was not a combat death.

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Most soldiers back in the day, and I know this is even true into the Civil War, and probably up until, you know, maybe the last hundred years or so, a pretty, even most deaths in war were actually not due to combat.

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They were due to, you know, illness and, you know, various other, you know, things that happened to people in war situations.

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And I remember a few years ago, I went up to the, it was Valley Forge, and I took a tour of Valley Forge, where Washington wintered, one winter,

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I think it was 1777, 1778, I think it was that winter. And, you know, one of the things they talked about was that, you know, a lot of these guys that were there didn't even have shoes.

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I mean, can you imagine trying to survive the winter in an army camp in Pennsylvania, where it's cold and snowy and nasty, with no shoes?

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And that just is astounding to me, but apparently that was fairly common. And you can see why men would die in circumstances like that, because, you know, probably the sanitation wasn't great, but then you had severe lack of supplies as well.

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And just things that you and I would consider to be very basic, they didn't have. So, whatever the circumstances were,

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Josephus died in February 1777. But he was survived by a daughter by the name of Marianne.

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And Marianne Bailey married John Matthews of Amherst County, Virginia.

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My family, you can probably get from the last name there, this is family here, my family were

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Virginians as well. The Matthews were Virginians. They go way back in the day. And again, the

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Matthews family came to the United States before there was a United States.

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But Marianne Bailey married John Matthews of Amherst County, Virginia. And John and Marianne Matthews are my five times great -grandparents.

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So that's my connection. I'm actually a direct descendant of a veteran of the French Indian War and also the

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American Revolution. And interestingly, those are two generations of the Bailey family that fought under the command of George Washington.

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So, you know, that's when I think about that, that's quite an honor to have. And I'm, you know, that it's always interesting sometimes when you hear, you see how your family sort of relates to history.

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And I think I've talked about that before. I know several months ago, I did have a chance to talk about that on a podcast, but I thought it'd be something to talk about here again and again, just because this is

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Memorial Day. And, you know, we want to remember the efforts of the

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Bailey boys in this case. It was William Bailey and Henry Bailey and William's son

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Josephus. You know, William and Josephus paid the ultimate price in defending what, you know, in defending the country even before, in William's case, even before there was a country.

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So we want to remember and honor the work that they did. Now, the next man

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I want to talk about here is Hiram Bennett Matthews. Now, Hiram Bennett Matthews is actually the grandson of John and Mary Ann Matthews.

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And Hiram Bennett Matthews is a Civil War veteran.

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He was fought on the Union side and he was 15 years old when the war broke out in 1861.

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And he tried to join up and I guess they kicked him out because he was underage and he went away for a little while.

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He came back and he joined up again. He was still underage, but I guess they took him the second go round.

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And at the time the family was living in Hendricks County, Indiana. Now Hendricks County, Indiana is just a,

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I believe it's the county immediately west of Indianapolis. And the regiment that he served in during the

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Civil War was the 1st Indiana Heavy Artillery. And it's kind of interesting. It was known, it was known as the 1st

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Indiana Heavy Artillery, but the regiment he was in was also known as the Jackass Regiment. Now it's not what you're thinking.

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The reason they called it that isn't because the men were jackasses, but it was because of the mules that they used to haul their guns.

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Remember this is back in the 1860s and there wasn't a whole lot in the way of mechanized transport. I guess obviously they had railways, but in terms of hauling heavy guns across fields and roads and this kind of thing, well, you didn't have a

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Jeep or some kind of a vehicle like that that you could do that with.

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You had to do it by some other means. And in this case, they used mules for this.

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In fact, let me, I've got a picture here and I'd like to go ahead and to share that with you here.

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Here's a picture actually of the 1st Indiana Heavy Artillery. And I don't know, for all

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I know, maybe Hiram Bennett Matthews is in this picture. I don't know that for sure one way or the other, but this was his regiment.

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And this is a picture taken in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. And that's where they served. They kind of served on the sort of the

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Western side. You know, a lot of times you hear about some of the famous battles in the Civil War. You know, it's always places like Gettysburg or various battle sites in Virginia, what have you, but Bull Run.

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But this was a particularly, but he wasn't in that theater. So he was over, you know, down in the kind of the,

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I guess, well, I've been in the Southwest part of the theater, the war theater.

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So this was a photo taken in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. And there's a second picture that I have here too that I thought

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I'd share with you. This is a picture, and you can see here, view of the Indiana Artillery, Port Hudson, Louisiana.

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So there was a siege that they were part of, a siege of Port Hudson.

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And this is the first Indiana heavy artillery. You can see over here, if you can see that at all on the live stream, there's one of the guns.

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They call them Parrot Rifles, by the way. And I looked up Parrot Rifles. And sometimes you think of a rifle, you know, you think of maybe something you hold in your hand, but in this case, it was rifled artillery.

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So they had the rifling inside the barrel of the gun. And what that does, you know, what the rifling does is it imparts a spin on the shell when it shoots it out.

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And that spin makes it more accurate than if you didn't have that spin on it.

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That's what a rifle is. It's got that twist on the inside of the barrel that imparts a spin to, you know, whether it's a or maybe a bigger gun like these, like what they used.

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And they were called Parrot Rifles. And I looked this up one time. And I guess one of the things that was noteworthy about the

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Parrot Rifles, you can't see it as well here in this picture, but there's like a heavy band that they learned how to manufacture these,

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I guess you'd call it a cannon. Maybe that's not the, I would think that's a reasonable term to use it for it.

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But these heavy artillery pieces, they would put this heavy band around the outside of the gun near, down near the breech.

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And what that did, apparently, is it strengthened the artillery piece, probably allowed them to use a bigger charge.

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And it kept the gun from blowing apart. And I guess it gave more integrity just to the structure of the gun.

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So it's kind of a, it was at the time anyway, it was a new and somewhat revolutionary way of constructing artillery pieces, but they use these heavy

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Parrot Rifles. And they hauled them around on mules. So that was

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Hiram Bennett Matthews' war experience. And what I understand,

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I've been told this, I don't know if this came down to the family or what, but the first Indiana heavy artillery mustered out in January of 1866.

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And when Hiram Bennett Matthews mustered out, he walked all the way back to Hendricks County, Indiana on foot.

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So, you know, he didn't hop on a train, didn't ride a horse, apparently, he walked most, if not the whole way.

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And I think about that, and that just blows my mind. That's an amazing thing. One of the things about Hiram Bennett is he lived to be a pretty old age.

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He lived into his 90s. And what's kind of remarkable, my dad, who's still alive and good health, praise

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God for that. But my dad was born in 1939. And I think Hiram Bennett was, if I remember correctly,

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I believe that he died, I think maybe in 1938. So he almost lived up to the time of my father, which is kind of a remarkable thing.

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I see Hiram Bennett, he lived to be well in his 90s. And he's actually buried out in Iowa. And I remember a number of years ago, my dad found out that I guess the grave out there was unmarked.

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And he contacted, there was some organization, I want to say maybe it was the, maybe the

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Department of Defense, something like that anyway. And they provided a headstone.

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So they've reinstalled a headstone out there for him. And so there's actually a, because he was part of the

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Army. So that's an interesting bit of family history there too.

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So Hiram Bennett Matthews is another name that I'd like to remember. And someone who's my great, great, great grandfather.

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And I'm honored to be descended from him. He was a brave man and did some truly extraordinary things.

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So that's a name that I want to definitely want to remember here. Now the third person, the third name that I would like to remember is another family member here.

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And this is Paul Maurice Matthews. Now, Paul Maurice Matthews was my great uncle.

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He's my grandfather, Matthews. He was his younger brother. And he was in the

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Army Air Corps during World War II. And he was a pilot. I believe when he started the, when he started in the

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Army Air Corps, he was flying B -25s, which was a medium bomber. And then he somehow,

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I don't know what it was, but somehow he switched over and he began flying a cargo plane. In this particular case, it was a

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C -47. And I'm going to show you a picture here if you've got the live stream. Yeah, here it is.

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It was a C -47, I guess they called it a Skytrain. And it was a two engine, two engine and a transport.

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It was actually based on the DC -3. The civilian version of it was the DC -3 and the military version, they called it the

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C -47. And he flew what's known as the Burma Hump.

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And I've got a picture of it here on the live stream here. And the Burma Hump, you can see down here, this is the

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Bay of Bengal down here. And the Burma Hump, it flew from, they flew from Eastern India over the

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Himalayas and into China. And the purpose of the Burma Hump was they were supplying

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Chiang Kai -shek's army, as well as the,

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I guess there was an American US Army Air Corps contingent there as well.

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So his, you know, what they were doing, they were the critical supply line for the forces that were fighting there in Western China against the

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Japanese. And the last mission that he flew, he, and I'm talking to my dad about this, who's researched, apparently he went, they had an extra heavy load, a much heavier load than what they normally would.

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And when they would drop their loads, what they would do, apparently, is they would come in low and they'd push this stuff out the side of the airplane.

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So they'd just shove this stuff out. And when they were loaded to the ground, they were take, they took some, as I've been told, some, some ground fire.

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And the ground fire knocked out one of the engines. Well, they were already over, probably, you know, overloaded as it was.

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And then knocking out one engine, the other engine, it was a two -engine plane, couldn't keep the aircraft in there and they crashed.

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And the, and Uncle Paul was killed, Paul Maurice Matthews, he was, was killed in action, flying the

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Burma Hump. And the co -pilot survived. And I don't know if there were any other crewmen that survived as well, but I know that, that, that he was killed.

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So that's, that's very unfortunate, but, you know, and that's, that's something that, you know, you, you realize, you know, the cost of war.

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You really do. And, and that, that drives that home very clearly.

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Yeah. I think about that a lot, you know, and, you know, I never knew Uncle Paul. I mean, he was killed, goodness, over 20 years before I was born.

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But, you know, still though, I mean, you think about that. I remember seeing a picture of him one time,

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I guess it was taken here in Cincinnati. It was with his, I think it was with his girlfriend at the time.

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And, you know, sometimes I've thought about that and, you know, I mean, they were never married and, but you wonder what, you know, what might've happened for them had, had he lived.

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I mean, there's a whole, whole branch of the, of the Matthews family that's, that's missing, you know, because of that.

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And that's sad to think about, but it really does drive home for, you know, when we talk about Memorial Day, it's especially about remembering those who have fallen.

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And, and certainly Paul Matthews is, is one of those, you know, he was, was a young man.

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He was in his, I don't recall his exact age right now, but he was in his early twenties and he had his whole life ahead of him.

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And, and he didn't come back. Now I know that that's not probably the cheeriest way to, to end a podcast, but again, we talk about Memorial Day and it is a very serious time.

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You know, sometimes we think of it, oh, it's, oh, it's a three day weekend and all these things. And it is that, I mean, and look,

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I like to have a three day weekend as much as anybody, but we also do want to remember why it is we have

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Memorial Day and what it is we're remembering. And that's certainly something that, that strikes me.

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Now I know I've got some people here that are talking about, they're not getting any sound on the live stream and I can see that for some reason it's acting a little bit funny and I don't know how to get the sound back.

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Looks like I've got good sound here, but for whatever reason, I don't know, it's, it's not coming through and I'm not sure

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I may not be able to get that back on the live stream. So we're just going to have to go with what we've got here. So anyway, in closing here,

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I wanted to talk a little bit about just, just my thoughts about Memorial Day.

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You know, it's, it's always been, you know, as I said, it's always been a day about remembering the fallen.

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So, I mean, that's why I wanted to talk about those, those gentlemen that I mentioned there to you. And, you know, when

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I think back on, you know, on, on the, the sacrifices they made, when

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I think back on the lives that they led, you know, it really gives me a strong sense of connection to this country, you know, and I'm a patriot and I don't mind saying so.

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You know, the Matthews family has been in this country for some 300 years, before ever there was a

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United States. You know, this nation is my heritage. It's, it's my patrimony. And I'm honored to have that as my patrimony.

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You know, America is a nation, as Abraham Lincoln put it, is conceived in liberty. That's an exceedingly rare and precious gem.

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And I'm so grateful to God to have that. But, you know, along with that sense of honor,

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I also feel a tremendous obligation to speak out against some of the, the really evil stuff that's going on in our own time and the evil men who are spreading lies about our nation and trying to overturn and to destroy our remaining liberties.

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I take this very personally. This is not something that, that I take lightly. You know,

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I think back on, on William Bailey and Henry Bailey and Josephus Bailey. I think back on Hiram Bennett Matthews.

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I think back on Paul Matthews. And I think back on, on the sacrifices that they made.

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This is just my own family I'm talking about here. And, you know,

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I feel a true sense of outrage when I hear the kinds of things being said about my nation that are being said.

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And, you know, I'm thinking here of especially some of the so -called woke types, you know, the critical race theory types, the, the socialists who want to destroy our economic liberties, the, say the, the wokesters who want to, to say that our nation is conceived in racism and that it's filled with terrible people who've done terrible things and that are, are some of the most terrible people who've ever existed.

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I don't buy that for a minute. It's not a perfect nation, not even close. But it's, it's a nation that was conceived in liberty.

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It's a nation that is a product of the Protestant Reformation. And I think

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I even heard one time that Patrick Henry, when he went to sign the Declaration of Independence, he said that the, the rule of, of political

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Protestantism has begun. And you can really see that in, you know, just, just as the

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Protestant Reformation set men spiritually free, it also set men free politically and economically as well.

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And you saw that really come to, to full flower with the founding of the

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United States of America. And I'm so honored to be a part of that and to have had those who have gone before me be a part of that as well.

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And, you know, here we are, you know, we sit in the year 2021 and, you know, I'm, I've never served in the military.

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Interestingly, the last few generations of my family haven't. My grandpa, you know, I talked about Paul Matthews, that was my, my grandpa

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Matthew's brother. My, my grandpa Matthews was of age to have served. He was 27 when the war broke out and World War II broke out, but he was a machinist and he wasn't drafted because of that.

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He was considered a war -critical industry. My dad had a medical deferment for Vietnam.

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Thankfully, in my case, there wasn't a war going on at that time. Although I do remember having to go over and register for the draft.

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When I was, was 18 years old, I still remember going to the post office and I had to go out and fill out the draft registration card, although I was never, never drafted.

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You know, I've never served in the army, in the military of any sort, but, you know, you and I, whether or not we're actually part of the military, you know, you and I are in a battle as well.

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And our battle is a Christian battle. You know, we're soldiers of Christ. And, you know, we think about, you know, think about what the

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Apostle Paul said. I mean, the Apostle Paul used that very powerful image in Ephesians, what's that,

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Ephesians chapter six, where he talks about putting on the whole armor of God. You and I are in a battle that's every bit as real as any of those fights that were going on that my forefathers were a part of.

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You know, whether it was Great Meadows or the Civil War or the Burma Hump or any of these types of things, you and I are in a fight as well.

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We're in a spiritual battle. And, you know, we're in a battle of ideas.

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I mean, this country is really battling for its very existence, and you and I are in a battle of ideas.

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And I feel just a tremendous obligation to preach the gospel of the

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Lord Jesus Christ, the gospel of justification by faith alone, because that's the only thing that frees men spiritually.

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And you have to be free spiritually before you're ever going to be free politically and economically.

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I feel a tremendous obligation to refute from the pages of scripture all this nonsense, whether it's critical race theory, whether it's socialism, whether it's big government in any sense of the term.

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These things need to be refuted. These ideas are unchristian, and they are destroying our freedoms of speech, our freedoms to move, to speak, to act, to do, to live our lives.

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There are so many people out there who want to take away our liberties, our

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God -given liberties, and I feel so strongly about pushing back against this stuff, of refuting it, and refuting it from the

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Word of God. This is my battle, and this is your battle. This is the fight you and I are in.

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But you and I know this too. I mean, we may lose some battles, but we know in the end we're going to win the war, because as Martin Luther said, the right man is on our side, and he must win the battle.

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So that's all for today, and I want to say thank you so much for listening. It's always a pleasure to do this.

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I apologize to those people who are watching the live stream. I know several of you have given me notes that you're not getting any sound, but I know the podcast recorder is going, so I know that this has been been captured as a podcast.

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So that's about all for this week. Tomorrow, I wish you all a blessed Lord's Day, and until the next time we speak, may the

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Spirit of truth guide you in all truth as you read and study God's Word. Good night, everybody.