81 years ago today, June 18 1945, the highest ranking American officer to die by enemy fire in all of World War II was killed on Okinawa. His name was Simon Bolivar Buckner Jr., and his story goes all the way back to a Civil War surrender.
He had gone forward to watch his Marines push the Japanese off Ibaru Ridge, about 300 yards from the enemy. A flat trajectory shell, probably from a 47mm gun, slammed into a coral outcrop right next to him. The blast threw shards of rock and steel into his chest.
They carried him back on a stretcher to an aid station. He died on the operating table within minutes. The Battle of Okinawa was declared won just three days later. He never got to see it.
Now here is the part almost nobody knows. His father was also named Simon Bolivar Buckner, and he was a Confederate general. In 1862 the father surrendered Fort Donelson to an old West Point friend named Ulysses S. Grant. That surrender is where Grant earned his nickname Unconditional Surrender Grant.
The two men had history. Years before the war, Grant was broke and stranded in New York and could not pay his hotel bill. Buckner Sr. quietly covered it. So when Buckner surrendered to him at Donelson, Grant offered him the use of his own purse to get through prison. Friendship survived the war they fought on opposite sides of.
When Grant died in 1885, Simon Bolivar Buckner Sr. was one of his pallbearers. A former Confederate general helping carry the man who beat him, because the friendship mattered more than the flag.
And then 60 years after Donelson, the son of that Confederate general died wearing the uniform of the reunited country, leading an American army in the Pacific. Congress made him a full four star general in 1954, almost a decade after his death.
One Buckner gave Grant his first great victory. The other gave his life for the nation Grant fought to keep whole. Two generations, two wars, one family name. Worth remembering today.