Monkey Island 1864; History; Cameron Parish, Louisiana
Submitted by Kathy LaCombe-Tell
Source: W. T. Block, Historian
Submitted: July 10, 2004

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HENRY  KNEIP  AT  THE  BATTLE  OF  CALCASIEU  PASS
By  W.  T.  Block

	When Henry Kneip arrived back home at the end of the Civil War, 
he was a bearer of bad news that he had to tell to his mother, but he 
was proud that finally he had participated in some combat action. Henry 
and his siblings  were German immigrants, who had accompanied their parents
to their new home near Lagrange,  Fayette County, Texas. Henry had gone to 
school before he left Germany and had learned to write in the Old German 
script,  a style of penmanship that the German schools soon abandoned 
when they adopted Latin script.

	Kneip's parents raised cotton until 1862, when Confederate Capt. 
Creuzbauer passed through the county, enlisting soldiers to become 
cannoneers in his new 6th Texas Battery. The parents did not want either 
Henry or his brother William Kneip to enlist, but like all 20-year-old 
youths, they regarded the war as a frolic, and could not wait to join 
General Lee in Virginia.
 
	Instead of being Virginia-bound, Creuzbauer's Battery was assigned 
to Fort Brown, near the Rio Grande River at Brownsville.There were nearly 
100 cannoneers in his battery, and Henry and Willi were assigned to a 
12-pound cannon, one as a powder monkey and  Henry as barrel swabber. 
They also had 7 mules assigned to them to pull the gun caisson and the 
ammo wagon.

	Time passed so slowly at Fort Brown with no combat action occurring 
during that first year. Creuzbauer resigned early in 1863 to accept a 
promotion, and Lt. Welhausen was promoted to replace him.

	In 1863 the battery was transferred to Virginia Point, across the 
bay from Galveston, and Henry thought surely that the Yankees were planning 
to recapture the island city; but still no combat action transpired. In 
March, 1864, Henry noted that many neighboring units were being transferred 
to Gen. Richard Taylor's command in Central Louisiana. But again Welhausen's 
Battery was transferred to another defense position, the newly-constructed 
Confederate Fort Manhassett at Sabine Pass.
 
	On May 1, 1864 a horseback rider arrived from Leesburg, La. to tell
of two brazen Yankee gunboats that had dropped anchor near the Cameron 
courthouse. Some Navy Bluejackets had even burned the bridge over Mud 
Bayou, over which Confederate troops would have to pass en route to 
Calcasieu River.
 
	Only 49 men of the original cannoneers were available when Welhausen's 
Battery received orders  to march to the Calcasieu River on May 4, 1864. 
Only 2 small steamboats, the "Ace" and the "Dime," could navigate Johnson's
Bayou so it took them all day  to transfer 350 Confederate infantry, 
artillery, and cavalry; 35 horses and mules, 4 guns and caissons, wagons, 
and even a wagon loaded with a pontoon and lumber to rebuild the bridge.
 
	The Confederates took up the line of march to Calcasieu River on 
the afternoon of March 5th, and they soon lost 2 hours as the carpenters 
replaced the Mud Bayou bridge.  As the first arc of daylight appeared, 
revealing 2 dark gunboats at anchor before them, Corporal Von Rosenberg 
prepared gun No. 1, a 12-pound cannon, for the fight. 

	They had only fired a couple shells, when suddenly return fire 
from the gunboat "Wave" arrived, and it was deadly accurate. One 32-pound 
shell exploded only a few feet from Gun. No. 1, mortally wounding Henry 
Foesterman, Ferd Fahrenthold, John Lynch, and Willi Kneip. Henry Kneip 
was shocked when he saw his brother's ankle hanging by a thread of skin, 
and elsewhere a long piece of shrapnel had hit Willi at the top of his 
thigh, both wounds bleeding profusely. Henry tried to put a tournaquet 
around his brother's leg, but with little success.

	Henry and all the unwounded gunners had to continue the fight, and 
they put 65 exploding shells into the "Wave" during the next 90 minutes.  
After the battle ceased, Henry Kneip returned to his brother, only to learn
that he was dead, along with the three other cannoneers. 

	Henry fell on his brother's body and began sobbing uncontrollably, 
wondering too how he would ever be able to tell his mother. The corporal, 
however, soon reminded him that there were 14 Confederate bodies to be 
buried, 4 from his own battery. So Henry took a shovel from a wagon and 
dug the grave, but before lowering his brother's body, he wrapped it  
in a wool blanket, and then backfilled the grave.
 
	Kneip then took 2 white pickets from a nearby fence, and fashioned 
them into a cross. But in his heart he knew that his brother's gravesite 
would soon be lost. And today, as the raucous flocks of sea gulls shatter 
the ominous silence above Monkey Island, the earthly remains of Willi Kneip 
and 21 other  Confederate and Union Navy victims of that battle lie reposed
in total anonymity in the salt grass prairies beneath.

	Henry Kneip's long 3-page history of the Battle of Calcasieu Pass 
lay for half a century in an old trunk and when it was finally found, there
was no one arround who could read the outdated Old German script in which 
it was written.