From Black Creek to Kiel

Lieut. General Nathan Bedford Forrest was over 6 ft. tall, with curly hair and beard, a voice like a bull's, a heart like a tiger's, and he was the best damn cavalry commander in the American Civil War. (At least, that was what his men all said.) At Thompson's Station, Tenn. he drove a Federal battery and mounted troops from the field, made 1,500 men surrender to his inferior forces. At Black Creek, in 1863, after five days marching and fighting, he captured the Union's Colonel Abel D. Streight with all his artillery and 1,200 men. So disruptive were his raids that General Sherman once said that Forrest must be taken "if it costs 10,000 lives and breaks the Treasury." Forrest never was taken. At the war's end he weighed a plan to escape with his men to Mexico and go on fighting from there, but rejected it as a fool idea. At Appomattox, General Robert E. Lee was asked who was the greatest soldier under his command. Answered Lee: "A man I have never seen, sir. His name is Forrest."

General Forrest's name was carried down through father and son to his great-grandson, Brigadier General Nathan Bedford Forrest of the U.S. Army Air Forces. Last week, in a curt communique, the Army announced that Brigadier General Forrest was missing from a raid over Kiel. When last seen, his bomber was spiraling down, still under control, but with one motor smoking and its tail half shot off. Eight parachutes were seen to drop from it; one might have been General Forrest's. If he was not among those saved a great name had died out, for 38-year-old General Forrest was the last of his line.

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