Faded Glory: A Century of Forgotten Texas Military Sites, Then and Now by Thomas E. Alexander and Dan K. Utley (review)

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In Faded Glory authors Thomas E. Alexander and Dan K. Utley provide both heritage tourists and armchair travelers with a practical guide to forgotten historic military sites in Texas. As a person who enjoys prowling the byways of the state, this is just the kind of book that I like to add to my personal reading list.

In their new work, the authors tell their readers about lesser known historic military sites that abound across Texas. The work covers locations associated with the War with Mexico, and it continues through the Indian Wars, Civil War, Spanish-American War, the Mexican Revolution, World War I, and World War II. After recounting the stories about the places, the authors then give readers directions on how to visit the actual sites of the events. They have illustrated the text with historic engravings, lithographs, and photographs together with current photographs showing what the places look like today. Following each chapter is a helpful list of suggested readings. One might argue that more recent conflicts could have been included, but this was a matter of judgment for the authors. However, this could have made work too long and unwieldy to serve as a practical guidebook.

For each site the authors explain the events that transpired at the location. The texts read smoothly and are designed for lay readers who come without particular knowledge of military history. I found the stories to be engaging. I already knew about some of the locations, but others were new to me. I especially enjoyed the section on the Spanish-American War, a part of the Texas military past that I did not know much about.

Alexander and Utley do more than just tell their readers where to go in order to visit the sites. They also explain the background that makes the places worth seeing. My mind goes to Camp MacArthur and Rich Field, World War I training bases that operated in Waco. I taught at Baylor in Waco for several years and drove by these locations scores of times, but I never appreciated their actual significance as places for military training during the Great War. I realized, for example, that the Heart of Texas Coliseum was in the center of a large parking lot, but only after reading Faded Glory did I discover that this big open area was undeveloped because it was where the aircraft runways had been for the Rich Field aerodrome.

For me it was intriguing to see the variety of ways in which later Texans have commemorated the places in their state’s military past. In some instances there is no acknowledgment at all, while in others the designations are puzzling at best. The location of Thornton’s Skirmish, an early engagement in the U.S. Mexican War in 1846, for example, is marked today by a monument and the tube from a more recent 1850s cannon. This is despite the fact that this particular cannon did not even exist at the time...