BIG GUNS AT KMI

"Thomas Jefferson Evans IV Memorial Cannon"

Sitting at the entrance to the main campus area in Lyndon is a 105mm Howitzer, a solitary reminder of the military school that once existed on the grounds.  The cannon, known to some former cadets as the Thomas Jefferson Evans IV memorial cannon, has remained silent since the fall of 1956.

As I think back on that fall day, I can remember only about five minutes of the entire day, but those memories are as vivid 47 years later as if they had happened today.  Jeff and I were members of the Guard Detail, he was the Corporal of the Guard and I was the Private of the Guard.  During the afternoon, we argued about who would fire the cannon during the Retreat Ceremony.  Finally, someone suggested that we flip a coin to decide the question.  It seemed to be a reasonable solution, so we flipped a coin and  Jeff won. 

As the Battalion assembled for dinner formation, Jeff and another member of the guard detail left for the flagpole.  I collected the reports from the formation and returned to the Guard House.  I seem to remember that the cannon was to fire and then the bugle call "To the Colors" was sounded as the flag was lowered.  The cannon shot was late and when we finally heard the report, it did not sound normal.  Within seconds, Jeff came running around the corner of the Edison building toward the Guard House.  His actions were strange, he should have been lowering the flag.

Jeff burst through the Guard House door holding his left arm and screaming.  His hand was badly mangled and bleeding profusely.  I pulled out my handkerchief and wrapped it tightly around his left arm in an effort to stop the flow of blood.  Someone yelled for me to get Maw Fowler.  I covered the distance between the Guard House and the Infirmary in near record time.  I met Maw as she was the leaving the infirmary for the mess hall.  I told her that Jeff had been seriously injured and she rushed off to the Guard House.  The rest of the evening is a total blank.  Jeff eventually lost the middle finger on his left hand and much of the mobility in the fingers that remained.

Jeff related two different accounts of the accident because  I doubt that he actually knew what happened.  The Howitzer used a simulator loaded with a blank 12-guage shotgun shell to supply the sound.  The simulator was placed in the muzzle of the cannon and the lanyard went down the barrel and out the breech.  When the lanyard was pulled, the simulator fired.  On this particular occasion, the simulator misfired.  In an effort to clear the stoppage, Jeff reached up and pulled the simulator out of the barrel with his left hand.  Whether he bumped the firing mechanism while removing the simulator from the barrel or the lanyard caught on the breech and released the firing pin is a question for which we will never have an answer.  Whatever caused the simulator to fire, it discharged it's full force into the palm of Jeff's hand.

To my knowledge the cannon was never fired again.  It took a swim in the lake a few nights after the accident, an act of revenge by those who had no other way to show their frustration and anger. After numerous other late-night excursions around the campus, school officials anchored it in place.  I never see the cannon without thinking of Jeff and  wondering what if that coin had landed differently.

Note: During  his senior year, Jeff was one of the Color Sergeants responsible for raising and lowering the flag every day. 

Tommy Young
KMI Class of 59
     

Thomas Jeff Evans, IV 04/05/41 - 03/28/01 KMI Class of '59	Miss Evelyn "Maw" Fowler, R.N. with Jeff in the KMI Infirmary.
John R. Stork, KMI '69 photograph 2010
John R. Stork, KMI '69 photograph 2010
John R. Stork, KMI '69 photograph 2010
John R. Stork, KMI '69 photograph 2010
The Civil War Cannon story: 1935 Herald-Post collection, University of Louisville Photographic Archives. (As told by Joseph Henry Terstegge, a 1926 KMI Sophomore cadet.) They had a Civil War Cannon on wooden wheels on campus at Kentucky Military Institute.  His friends were having a bull session one afternoon.  If you were 16 or over, with your parents’ permission you could smoke a pipe at school.  One of them had a water pipe.  They would share a one pound can of tobacco and smoke it each week.  They looked over at the cannon by the academic building and thought it must’ve been tough to fight with that thing.  It was full of gravel at the time.  They wondered if they cleaned it if it would work, so they decided to try it.  They thought it would be a good prank to shoot off a gun at Halloween, thinking it would make a racket, but otherwise be harmless.   So the boys went to work on it after taps every night for a week, there were four of them.  They raked it out, removed all the grass, leaves, twigs and gravel and got it clean.  The touch hole was plugged, but one of them thought to drill it out.  Bits wouldn’t be long enough and metal drills wouldn’t work, but a carpenter’s drill would work.  So it meant an extra week of work, but they hand drilled through it.   They got a pound of black powder and some dynamite fuse, put the powder in and saved some to prime the touch hole.  They took some wadded newspaper, using a pole to tamp it in place.  Then wet newspaper and then rags.  They had hidden everything and it was ready to go off at midnight.  Grandad was sick in bed when Halloween came and confined to bed with a cold when his friends took off.  It must have been five after 12 when he heard footsteps and cautious sounds and doors close, when he heard Kablam!!!  The blast could’ve been heard in Louisville.   What did they do?  The next day they went to class.  They marched into the academic building – first class was English.  They had to go down stairs into semi-basement in the middle of the school room was the cannon.  The brick wall of the academic building was with it.  How’d this get in here, everyone asked.  The recoil shoved it through the wall.   Joe talked to the guys who had done it, it turned out they had loaded the cannon to the muzzle.  The blast picked it off the rotten wood carriage and whoomp it went right into the academic building.  They had used a long fuse so they were able to get back into their room in time before the thing blew.  They thought for sure they would get kicked out, but the administration never did find out who did it. 05/21/2024 I am conducting research into my family history and, in particular, my paternal grandfather, Joseph Henry Terstegge. According to family documents and notes, Joseph was enrolled in KMI sometime around his 16th birthday, in 1926. Unfortunately, he apparently got into a bit of trouble and was expelled. Do you know if there may be any records available relating to his enrollment, grades, expulsion, etc.? I'd also be very interested in any information relating to a Civil War cannon that was apparently blown through the wall of one of the buildings around that time. According to his account of the incident in his later years, some of his friends wanted to set the cannon off at midnight on Halloween as a prank, but the prank went awry when they overloaded the cannon with black powder.  Unfortunately, I can't find any accounts of this incident in any archived newspapers and would love to know if any other records might remain. Any assistance you could provide would be greatly appreciated. Thank you, Teddy M. Terstegge
1928 Saber Yearbook M1916 37mm gun The M1916 37mm gun was developed by the French and used primarily by French and American forces in WWI for destroying machine gun emplacements. It was fairly good at this under fluid, mobile conditions, but inferior to mortars for static trench warfare. It was still in limited service by World War II, but generally relegated to training and use as a sub-caliber addition for larger guns. Ammunition was of two types initially, a 1-pound solid steel shell and a high explosive round. The solid round was found to be largely ineffective, and replaced with a bursting shell of cast iron and filled with black powder. Mounting for the gun was either a fixed tripod or wheeled carriage. Mechanically, the M1916 used a rotating breechblock and hydraulic recoil absorber coupled with a spring recuperator. In addition to use as an infantry gun, the M1916 was also mounted in the early US M1917 Renault tank.