HARD-EYED ACTION BRINGS A FORT TO LIFE

Heat & Hardtack RELIVING THE SOLDIER'S LIFE AT FORT VERDE

Bob Munson stands under a gray sky in the middle of the parade ground at Fort Verde, the state historic park he manages, talking about the time he stepped back into the last century. "I became a 'ground-pounder,' an infantryman. I walked from here to Phoenix. Figure 85 miles." Munson squints out at distant hills that once ran with Apaches. He has a beard out of the Bible and a voice like reveille. "It was May. I wore a regulation 1870s' woolen uniform. Woolen underwear. It was not a pleasure hike." For most men, such behavior would qualify as crazy. But Munson is a devotee of "living history." It isn't just that he was curious about what a forcedmarch was like. He had to know. So he carried an 8.5-pound Springfield rifle-musket and 20 rounds of ammunition. He had a canteen, bedroll, and haversack. He slept on the ground and ate hardtack, a rock-solid brick of flour, salt, and water. You smash a piece off the brick with the butt of your rifle and pop it into your mouth, Munson explained. When it achieves the consistency of wallpaper glue, you chew it up and try to swallow. Fancy eating consisted of frying salt pork-troopers called it embalmed beef - and pouring the grease over the hardtack. Munson followed period routes. The trek took four days. "It was one foot in front of the other, very tough," he says. "But if I'm going to interpret the lives of the people who served at this fort, I have to live like they did. There's no other way."

Manned in late 1865, was located three miles away where Beaver Creek joins the river. It was later called Camp Lincoln for the recently assassinated president. Then in 1868, the name of the camp was changed to Verde to avoid confusion with other Army camps named after the martyred president. But the Beaver Creek post proved too small for the military's expanding role, and the nearby creek was a breeding ground for "intermittent fever,' later known as malaria. In mid1870, the Army moved the camp to a higher, broader spot on the west bank of the Verde. Construction at the present site began in 1871. At its completion two years later, Fort Verde consisted of 22 buildings spread over a flat grassy plain. The fort became an important outpost in the war against the local bands of Yavapais and Western Apaches. Troops from Verde fought under Gen. George Crook in what historians call his Winter Campaign of 1872-1873. Crook had defeated a band of

(CLOCKWISE FROM LEFT) Visitors to Fort Verde can tour such historically restored and meticulously appointed areas as an officer's office and the commander's house, including a quiet corner and a nursery.

Yavapais using tactics that had never been employed in Indian fighting. After running them ragged for eight months and destroying their food caches in a series of swift strikes, Crook accepted the Yavapais' surrender on the front porch of Verde's commanding officer's house. That building still stands. So does another house for officers and the surgeon's quarters, each finely appointed in period decor. In all, four of Verde's original structures remain, making it the best preserved of Arizona's Territorial forts.

It's midafternoon on a blustery April day. A hard wind howls across the bluff, and the big American flag shakes and snaps above the old fort, now alive with activity. A group of Phoenix school kids stands mesmerized before Dennis Lockhart, a park ranger and one of a group of reenactors called the Fort Verde Volunteers. He's in full uniform beside his horse, a Morgan named Sonny.

Suddenly another soldier rides up. He's volunteer Garrett Roberts, an actor who played a member of the Red Sash gang in the film Tombstone. The kids are taken with his woolen uniform. He's carrying a .45-caliber Colt Peacemaker and wearing a white canvas helmet. Someone asks if he's British. Roberts glares down at the questioner, and in his best actor's voice sniffs, "I'm an American soldier." "Infantry?"

He juts out his chin and says, "Cavalry," and as if on cue, his mount sidesteps and lets out a siren call of a whinny. As this is going on, three women in long dresses, one shaded by her parasol, stroll under the cottonwood trees lining the dirt lane beside the parade ground.

Such displays of camp life are commonplace at Verde, a part of Munson's concept of living history. He is 53, and was raised near Sedona. He read his first book of history at age five. In high school, he taught himself to read and write in 12th-Dynasty Egyptian hieroglyphics. After that he read all 10 volumes of the Grolier Encyclopedia, cover to cover. He enjoyed it, except the four pages about concrete. "That part was a little slow," Munson says.

He came to embrace living history the hard way. In 1974, when he was director of the Bisbee Mining and Historical Museum, Munson gave a talk on "spoke shaving," theart of carving wood to make a spoke for a wagon wheel. At the end, a man in the audience said, "Sure, but how do you know all that?" Munson cited the books he'd read and the sources he'd used. "But you've never really done it, have you?" the man persisted.

Having never done what he was talking about, Munson realized his questioner was right. "My credibility was cut off at the knees. I vowed that was never going to happen to me again."

Since then Munson has done virtually everything that troops of the Indian wars period did, from cutting wood with a buck-saw and making adobe bricks, to rolling cartridges and sewing frayed uniforms.

"You can surmise from book study all you want," says Joe Meehan, a friend of Munson's and director of the Arizona Historical Society office in Flagstaff. "But until you live on hardtack, you don't know what that's like. Bob probably knows more about life at Fort Verde than any man alive, and he knows because he's done it."

Heat&Hardtack

Munson stands in Verde's museum explaining one of his passions: coming upon the name of a soldier and digging through post records until the bare skeleton gives way to the flesh and blood of a man.

"My latest project is Pvt. John Witt. Old John," Munson says, shaking his head sadly. "He must've suffered tremendous pain in his last years."

Munson is a bear of a man, a commanding presence. As he begins to speak, a group of tourists gathers to listen. Off he goes with the tale of the bad-luck private, a laborer from Cincinnati who couldn't wait to depart that life for adventure in the West.

Private Witt's good time amounted to taking a slug through the right lung at the battle of Big Dry Wash in 1882. The shot was fired from an Apache's rifle 300 to 400 yards away.

"I'll bet anything the Indian who got him wasn't aiming at him," says Munson. "It was just a piece of flying lead, wild luck. Most of the combatants in the Indian wars, on both sides, couldn't hit a thing."

In the post-Civil War years, the Army's budget was so pitifully low that ammunition was considered too precious to waste on target practice. It wasn't unusual for a soldier to serve five years without ever firing his rifle. Because the soldiers helped to build Fort Verde, the majority were far more conversant with a shovel than a rifle.

The tourists seem shocked. They've watched too many movies in which a marksman levels his repeating rifle and blasts an Indian off a rock from 500 yards. Munson delights in exploding such falsehoods. The picture he and his staff offer, in oral presentations and reenactments, is hard-eyed and real, with none of the burnish of Hollywood.

Heat&Hardtack

watched too many movies in which a marksman levels his repeating rifle and blasts an Indian off a rock from 500 yards. Munson delights in exploding such falsehoods. The picture he and his staff offer, in oral presentations and reenactments, is hard-eyed and real, with none of the burnish of Hollywood.

With the tourists looking on, Munson rattles off a number of common misconceptions, including the notion that a fort must be a stockade. In fact, of the 42 forts in Arizona Territory, only Fort Whipple was built stockade-style. There simply wasn't enough wood.

And despite common belief, no fort in Arizona was ever attacked by hostiles. At Fort Apache, snipers once fired a few rounds at the post, but nothing more dramatic than that.

Big engagements of the kind depicted in John Wayne movies were rare, and no soldier dared wear a yellow bandanna. Nobody wanted to stand out at the end of an Apache's gunsight, lousy shot or not.

soldier dared wear a yellow bandanna. Nobody wanted to stand out at the end of an Apache's gunsight, lousy shot or not.

Yellow bandannas came on the scene in 1939 when movies first used color. Directors thought they'd make the soldiers look dashing.

Lethal combat was uncommon. After 25 years, Verde's cemetery held 52 graves, and one of those was an eight-year-old boy who drowned in the river. Of the remaining 51, only 13 are confirmed combat deaths.

A soldier's life mainly consisted of finding ways to escape the drudgery. Typical entertainment involved baseball, singalongs, picnics, and footraces.

Movies often show soldiers galloping to nearby saloons to guzzle beer and dance with anything that smelled better than they did. But anyone discovered off-post without permission could be court-martialed for desertion. Still, once in a while, soldiers from Verde would make their way to Mrs. Horn's saloon, a few miles away. Munson knows about her, too: “She stood five feet two, weighed 300 pounds, and there are some who believe she wasn't above selling her charms.” It's the people that fascinate Munson. He tells another story, this one about Joseph Wright, a 25-year-old corporal whose luck ran out on June 2, 1870.

Wright was sent to guard the fort's horses. His relief found him right where he said he'd be, a quarter-mile from the post, dead.

He'd been set upon by marauders, probably Yavapais. They put three arrows in his back, bashed his brains in with a rock, and stripped him naked. His killers melted back into the hills and were never caught.

“Camp life was galling drudgery,” says Munson. “But if you weren't careful, you could wind up very dead.” He stops a moment. He has a far-off look. It's 1870 all over again. “Corporal Wright's estate totaled $23. I need to find out more about him. Maybe I'll dig up the muster rolls.” Then his eyes brighten, and he says, “What do you say we fire an 1863 Springfield rifle-musket?” The wind is still lashing the flag as late afternoon shadows descend over the fort, creating a blood-red sky. Darkness is not far behind.

The tourists, maybe 10 of them now, gather around as Munson emerges from his office carrying his .58-caliber muzzleloading weapon. Working with the crispness of someone who's done it a hundred times, he begins to load it. Biting the flap off the cartridge pack, pouring the powder into the barrel, squeezing the ball down the barrel, and using the ramrod to seat it.

A Civil War veteran could get off a shot, reload, and be ready to fire again in 20 seconds. Munson can match that, maybe with a second or two to spare. He fits the stock tight against his shoulder and lowers his head, drawing a bead on some distant target. Two onlookers cover their ears.

WHEN YOU GO

The big rifle-musket tosses out a billow of blue smoke. Its thunder echoes across the empty parade ground, a fitting tribute to the soldiers of Fort Verde.

Tucson-based Leo W. Banks had never fired a Springfield rifle-musket before researching this story. Edward McCain, who also lives in Tucson, was surprised at Bob Munson's detailed knowledge of life at Fort Verde and enjoyed firing one of the black-powder weapons.

Fort Verde State Historic Park is located two hours north of Phoenix in the heart of the Verde Valley in the town of Camp Verde. For current activities and living-history programs at the park, call (520) 567-3275. The park is open daily except Christmas from 8 A.M. to 4:30 P.M. Admission is $2, adults; $1, ages seven to 13; free, age six and under. For more information on historical and archaeological sites, recreation, and accommodations in the Verde Valley, contact the Cottonwood/Verde Valley Chamber of Commerce, (520) 634-7593, or the Camp Verde Chamber of Commerce, (520) 567-9294.