For some Veterans coming home from war doesn't always mean the war is over. For some Veterans it…read moremeans a new battle begins. During one of our visits to Washington, D.C. we visited this heart-felt and sadly little-known Battleground National Cemetery to solemnly, humbly and reverently pay our respects to our Fallen Brother Warriors who gave their today for our tomorrows. It is the resting place of Union Soldiers and Union Marines of Fort Stevens and the Invalid Corps / Veteran Reserve Corp Veterans of July 1864.
Battleground National Cemetery is a U.S. military burial ground, located along Georgia Avenue near Fort Stevens, in Washington, D.C.'s Brightwood neighborhood. The National Park Service manages this historic cemetery. We highly recommend a visit and to read all the informational signs there. If you bring children or teenagers, it is a cemetery so make sure they do not run nor play nor shout here, as one never does in any Veterans cemetery, for all Veterans' cemeteries are sacred and hallowed ground.
The Invalid Corps was created in 1863 to allow able Union Soldiers and able Union Marines to be sent to the Civil War front lines. It was composed of disabled Union Soldiers and disabled Union Marines who had received Honorable Discharges and those deemed too disabled to Serve on Active Duty during the Civil War. The term "invalid" is a historical term which meant "a person made weak or disabled by illness or injury" or "to remove someone from active service in the armed forces because of injury or illness." The title "Veteran Reserve Corps" was substituted for that of "Invalid Corps" by General Order No. 111, dated March 18, 1864.
A similar corps had existed in Revolutionary times between 1777 and 1783.
The Invalid Corps / Veteran Reserve Corps make up included Union Army and Union Marine Corps men who were Service-connected disabled "by wounds or by disease contracted in the line of duty - men missing limbs, and eyes, those with rheumatism, epilepsy, bullet injuries, those with what we now call PTSD", and men with many other Service-connected disabilities.
"Confederate General Jubal Early is at the gates of Washington DC. The city is in panic. Almost every able-bodied soldier from the Union has already been sent south with General Grant for the siege of Petersburg."
To stop the Confederates, the men of the Invalid Corps were put outside Fort Stevens to defend the fort, in trenches they and only they themselves had painstakingly dug. "One of the members of the Veteran Reserve Corps, Captain James O'Bierne, had suffered an injury from a bullet ricocheting off his head, had a second bullet in his leg, had been shot in his chest and had a paralyzed right arm. He was detailed to the Provost Marshall's Office and put in charge of getting the arms and the ammunition for the men who fought at Fort Stevens. He also took care of the wounded, buried the dead, oversaw the care of prisoners and was assigned to chase General Early and his command after the attack on Fort Stevens." James O'Bierne later helped the Union track down John Wilkes Booth, the murderer of President Abraham Lincoln, and then Veteran O'Bierne went on to become the Assistant Commissioner of Immigration at Ellis Island, New York.
The Invalid Corps were the Wounded Warriors, along with the small Fort Stevens and its minimum number of troops who saved Washington, D.C. in July 1864 when they successfully held off 15,000 Confederates.
The Veteran Reserve Corps completely ceased to exist in March 1869.
https://invalidcorpsfilm.nrbrown.com/video/
