Col. J. W. Cavendar, a Casualty of the Great War. Who was he?
The September 28, 1918 Casper Daily Press in which we learn a fair amount about Joseph J. Cavendar. What we don't actually learn from this paper is the true circumstances of his death.
From the Wyoming newspapers of September 27, 1918, we learned that Col. J. W. Cavendar had become a casualty of the fighting on the Meuse Argonne. He was the commander of the 148th Field Artillery, one of the units formed out of Wyoming National Guard infantrymen (as well as the Guardsmen of other regional states, or at least the state of Utah.
But who was he?
It's pretty hard to tell.
What we know, or thought we knew, from the Cheyenne papers of the day is that he was an attorney, and they report him as a local attorney, and hence the problem.
Lawyers may rise to the heights of great fame during their lifetimes, and certainly the ascendancy to high positions has been common, including in a prior era to the command of Federalized National Guard units. But after they are dead, they are almost always completely forgotten. The fame of lawyers follows them into the grave.
From what we can tell, the Cheyenne papers that reported him as "local" were a bit in error. He was a Georgia born attorney who had originally apparently been a shopkeeper. According to the Casper paper set out above, he came to Wyoming at first to enter ranching, but that must not have worked otu as he returned to Georgia and entered the law. After that, he came back to Wyoming, was admitted to the bar here, and then practiced for a time in Carbon County before relocating to Park County. In 1912, as the newspaper above notes, he was elected as Park County Attorney.
A little additional digging reveals that he'd been in the National Guard for awhile. In 1911 he'd been elected, as that's how they did it, as the Captain of the infantry unit in Cody. His wife was asked to speak for Spanish American War pensioners as late as 1921, in hopes they'd claim their pensions, so his memory remained that strong at least to that point. Perhaps more interestingly, given that he was born in 1878, that raises some question of whether he'd served in the Army during the Spanish American War. He would have been old enough to do so.
He was in command, at least for a time, of the Wyoming National Guard troops that were mobilized for the crisis on the Mexican Border and was a Major in the National Guard by that time.
So we know that Col. Joseph W. Cavendar was a Georgia born lawyer who had relocated to Wyoming twice. He'd started life as a merchant, and then switched to ranching, then went back to Georgia and became a lawyer. After that, he came back to Wyoming and ultimately ended up the Park County Attorney. At some point he'd entered the Wyoming National Guard. Given his age, he was old enough to have been a Spanish American War veteran and it would be somewhat odd, given his obvious affinity for military life, if he had not been.
At the time of his death he was fifty years old. Not a young man. And there's a ting, maybe, of failure to his life. It's subtle, but it's sort of there. The law was his third career and Wyoming was his second state of practice.
But perhaps that's emphasized by what we later learn.
Cavendar killed himself.
Indeed, what we learn is that on the very first day of the Meuse Argonne Offensive the Army found the fifty year old Park County Attorney, former rancher, former merchant, wanting and informed him that it was relieving him of his command and giving him the choice of returning to the United States to be mustered out of service or to be reduced in rank to Captain and return to service in that capacity. Instead he walked over to the hotel where he was staying and killed himself with a pistol. The Army, no doubt wanting to save his reputation, or perhaps worried that the relief of a National Guard officer (from a state in which powerful U.S. Senator F. E. Warren was. . . Gen. Pershing's father in law, was from) reported him killed in action.
Cavendar had been in front of a board that was reviewing National Guard officers and finding more than a few of them wanting. Some were higher ranking that Cavendar. By the time the true story broke, following the war, the sympathies were clearly on the relieved National Guard officers side and the action regarded as an outrage.
Was it? That's pretty hard to say. Cavendar had been in command of his unit for a good five months at the time he was relieved. But that doesn't mean that his service had been perfect or that there weren't better officers, and potentially younger ones, coming up behind him. On the other hand, the Regular Army was legendary for containing officer that had a strong, largely unwarranted, animosity towards the National Guard. Indeed, elements of the Army had openly opposed making the Guard the official reserve of the Army in 1903, an action which if they had been successful in would have lead to absolute disaster during World War One. Nonetheless, as late as World War Two the Army seemed to retain a strong animosity in some quarters towards National Guard officers and relieved many of them with no clear indication as to why. No doubt some, perhaps many, warranted removal, but the Army seemed more zealous in its actions than facts warranted.
Whatever happened, apparently Cavendar couldn't bare what he regarded as the shame of it, or perhaps other things combined to push him over the edge. Whatever it was, he shouldn't have done what he did. Indeed, followers of the blog on Canadian colones in the Great War would note that many of them were relieved and went on to be highly regarded. Relieving officers in wartime isn't unusual, it's part of the service.
Well, anyhow, now we know more about Cavendar than we did, sad story though it is.
