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Braddock is Mortally Wounded

As you drive on Braddock Street Winchester Virginia today especially where it intersects Cork Street, take a quick glance at the Braddock Cannon left behind in 1755 and moved from Alexandria to Winchester in May 1915.


Today General Braddock was mortally wounded. Maybe by panicked friendly fire. Maybe by the Indians. He dies July 13th 1755 from that wound. A 60 year old man.


The most accurate depiction of the beginning of that fateful defeat is a picture by Gary Zaboly.


That man waving his tricorn in the center? He is the French leader. Captain Daniel de Beaujeu. He is killed in that moment. And yet the French and the Indians with no clear centralized leader, act on their own in invisible concert flanking a freaked out English army. The Virginia Blues were praised later in that panic.


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The Braddock Cannon

The cannon at George Washington's Office Museum that's pointing towards Pittsburgh? That's one of the cannons left behind in Alexandria in 1755. In 1915 that cannon was moved to Winchester. Then an Apple Blossom size parade was held to inaugurate its placing here. A Conrad, son of the one who made Handley Library happen, spoke to the crowd about Braddock. He was describing of Braddock what would be become of him 3 years later in the last offensive of WWI, Meuse Argonne. The speaker of that cannon commemoration was shot in the head and died later in the trenches on the day "Sgt" (really Cpl) York captured a 132 Germans "single handedly." BTW on the day that Braddock cannon was inaugurated, a German dirigible floated over Southhampton England blithely dropping bombs.



Braddock Assassinated?

In all the panic and confusion of bravery and cowardice, there's one man who claimed he shot Braddock, shades of the fragging incidents in Vietnam, where a grenade was thrown at a commander. An article published in The Roanoke Times on 15 April 1951, claims that Braddock was shot dead by an American soldier called Benjamin Bolling. There was also another American who claimed for years to have assassinated Braddock in the panic -- Tom Fawcett (many different spellings of that name).




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