Truth can be difficult to divine from fiction in stories of the wild west. But there have been many, over the years, who purported to witness the demise of outlaws, such as Billy the Kid and members of his notorious band of rustlers. And those stories tend to illustrate a simple rule- men who lived by violence, often died by violence.
In August of 1918, as the armies of Europe neared exhaustion, American troops of the 28th “Keystone” division were thrown into a nearly forgotten battle that fully represented the horrors of the War to End All Wars.
Of the vaunted ironclad warships of the US Civil War perhaps the mightiest and most terrifying was the confederate ram Tennessee. On August 5, 1864, she would be put to the test in the largest naval engagement of the war, an engagement that defined the divided loyalties of the War of the Rebellion.