Claremont COURIER/Friday, April 21, 2017 13

Author with local roots makes case for military history

ment while immersed in the Florida

C
hris Bray loves two
things most in the
world. The first is his
family. The second is digging
through archives, feeling his-
tory come to life as he sifts
through old papers and arti-
facts.
Mr. Braya 2002 Pitzer graduate,
onetime COURIER reporter and au-
thorbegan diving into the latter pleas-
ure in 2008. He was in Worcester,
Massachusetts, working on a project at
the American Antiquarian Society,
when he decided to take a walk. One of
the buildings he passed was labeled
Massachusetts Military Archive.
I thought, what the heck, Ill go see
whats in there, he said. I started ran-
domly flicking through stuff and came
across a bunch of courts-martial.
Mr. Bray spent the afternoon poring
through records that were just incredi-
ble. One of his finds, mixed up with
the Massachusetts papers, was the
record of an 1817 Rhode Island court-
martial.
It involved a man named Robert
Cranston who, when called upon,
served as captain of the Artillery Com-
pany of Newport. In his personal life he
was a social climber, moving from one
elected position to the next. So when he
was asked to throw an unofficial dock-
side reception for the governor of
Rhode Island, he agreed.
Mr. Cranston borrowed a US Army
band and asked them to play a Rhode
Island favorite as the governors ship
pulled into the harbor. The band didnt
know the tune. When the captain urged
them to play anything with a military
flair, the drummer began beating the
signal for a military retreat.
Mr. Cranston quickly requested a
more appropriate tune, but the damage
had been done. With an election for his
office looming the next day, the Feder-
alist governor decided the band had
played a refrain of defeat to mock him,
under the direction of a Republican
captain.
Called before a court-martial, Mr.
Cranston insisted the gaffe was inad-
vertent, and noted the incident took
place when he was out of uniform. A
man is a private citizen until the mo-
ment he is in the role of soldier, he as-
serted.
At that time, every white man be-
tween 18 and 45 could be conscripted
Photo by Jennifer Manley
Author and former COURIER reporter Chris Bray.
by the militia at any time. Given that pages, still carry an emotional charge.
reality, Mr. Cranston argued it would They tore through the paper with
set a dangerous precedent for him to be their pen, they wrote so hard. Theyre
tried as a soldier. defending their honor, Mr. Bray said.
In theory, at least, every man who This man stayed up all night writing,
owed an occasional militia duty could and you get to hold it in your hands and
see his entire life brought under the read it. That, to me, has always been an
threat of military punishment, Mr. incredible privilege.
Bray wrote in his 2016 book, Court- Mr. Bray had planned to become a
Martial: How Military Justice Has professor, and expected to adapt his dis- Massachusetts
Shaped America from the Revolution sertation into a scholarly monograph, to given the duties of unskilled orderlies
to 9/11 and Beyond. be published through a university press. despite being trained medical techni-
The court took Mr. Cranstons point After receiving his doctorate in 2012,
and dismissed the case. This court-mar- he even taught a few classes at UCLA
tial embodies a question that has arisen and at Pitzer College.
throughout the history of US military I looked at the craziness of the aca-
law: Where does the soldier begin and demic world and decided to run away
the private citizen end? from it, he said. Its an insane culture charge, organizations like the fledgling
The Cranston case was just one of and I dont want to be a part of it. The
countless intriguing courts-martial letter the students at Pomona College
records lodged at the Massachusetts wrote to David Oxtoby is a perfect ex-
Military archives. There was so much ample of it. So are students preventing
going on there, such a saturation of ma- Heather Mac Donald from speaking
terial, and no one was looking at the and students preventing Charles Mur-
records. So I threw out my dissertation ray from speaking at Middlebury and
and started writing about that. attacking a professor for hosting him.
Mr. Bray, then a doctoral candidate at Mr. Bray has done a considerable
UCLA, returned several times to the amount of writing over the years, from
Massachusetts Military Archives. He book reviews for the Washington Post
also haunted archives in Rhode Island, to op-ed pieces for the Los Angeles
New Hampshire and Connecticut as he Times and the Wall Street Journal. His
put together a thesis about the early first shot at journalism, however, was
militia in New England. helming the city desk at the COURIER
In those days, a defendant couldnt for an eventful eight months in 2003. I
address the members of a court-martial loved that moment, he said of his
during the proceedings. At the end of tenure at Claremonts newspaper of
the trial, the defendant was asked to record.
write a defense statement to be turned The gig was sandwiched between his
in by the next morning, which an offi- first term of military service and gradu- a book
cial would read to the court. Those de- ate school at UCLA.
fenses, many as long as 30 handwritten It was the end of the Irvin Landrum
shootingall that winding down and
being settled. Those were the waning
days of the Glen Southard period. It
was a moment when a bunch of old-
line folks on the city council were
booted out of office.
Mr. Bray decided to extend his thesis
into a commercial book about the his-
tory of US courts-martial and he gar-
nered interest, and a modest advance,
from W.W. Norton & Company.
He resumed examining historical
records, and describes one thrilling mo-
state military archives.
These very old judicial records are
folded in fours and then bound with
string. I pulled the string on a quarto,
and the string crumbled into dust, he
recalled. The paper was dark orange
on the outside, but when I cracked it
open it was creamy white on the in-
side.
Mr. Bray relished writing for the
general public. Theres nothing Ive
ever hated more than the way academ-
ics are expected to write, he said.
Free of academic jargon, Mr. Bray
has created a vivid account of military
judicial proceedings that echo, and
sometimes precede, wider societal
movements.
Some cases he describeslike the
courts-martial that followed the My Lai
massacre and the 1944 court-martial of
future Dodger Jackie Robinson for re-
fusing to move to the back of a military
busare relatively well-known.
The book touches on myriad courts-
martial, however, that will be new to
the readercases involving everything
from desertion to sexual misconduct to
murder.
In one 1945 case, black members of
the Womens Army Corps assigned to a
military hospital were
cians. The women went on strike, with
four maintaining their stance even after
being threatened with execution.
When they were sentenced to a
years hard labor and dishonorable dis-
NAACP and ACLU sprang into action.
Between their protests, unfavorable
press coverageand concern about a
potential widespread decline in morale
among black servicementhe military
court dismissed the sentences.
Mr. Brays book also contains
records of a post-Colonial culture,
where one Federalist officer refused to
cut his powdered coiffure, and Civil
War courts-martial where officers ar-
gued that common soldiers couldnt be
punished for dueling because dueling
was a gentlemans occupation.
Mr. Bray lives in Los Angeles with
his wife Ann, a TV writer, and their 9-
year-old daughter Madeline. He plans
to follow up his literary debut with
shorter books focusing on individual
courts-martial. He is currently pitching
about the four World War II
WACs who made a brave stand against
discrimination.
I think its such fascinating stuff and
no one else is writing about it, Mr.
Bray said. I read an interview with a
journalist 20 years agohed won
some prizeand he said his only ad-
vice to journalists was to go to a place
no one is talking about and say some-
thing about it.
Court-Martial is available on Ama-
zon and through most commercial book
retailers.
Sarah Torribio
storribio@claremont-courier.com