THE OLD WARRIOR WHO DIED AT SEA - Col. James A. Thomas, Jr.
For more than two-thirds of his life, this old warrior served his state and his nation in local and national guards as well as the United States Army. Growing up in Macon, Cochran, and Dublin, Col. James A. Thomas, Jr. heard his father’s stories of his years as a teenager while he was trying to whip the Yankees and send them home in the waning years of the Civil War.
James Adrian Thomas, Jr. was born on March 10, 1870 in Macon, Georgia. His father, James A. Thomas, Sr. - a native of Dublin and son of Superior Court Clerk, Francis Thomas - served in the Georgia militia while still a teenager. His mother, Josephine Augusta Corbett, was a native of South Carolina. In his autumn years, the elder Thomas became very active in the governance of the United Confederate Veterans. Thomas rose in the ranks to serve as the Commander of the Eastern District of Georgia to Commanding General of the National UCV in 1925. During his tenure in command, General Thomas played an integral role in the construction and dedication of the carving on Stone Mountain. General Thomas was one of only five people who were presented the first minted Stone Mountain commemorative silver half dollars.
Thomas began his military career at the age of fifteen in 1885, when he joined the Southern Cadets, a Macon based drill team under the command of Col. James Roff. As a sergeant, Thomas, a star drill team member himself, led the 24-man drill team, which thrilled crowds and won blue ribbons in almost every competition they entered around the country.
In the 1890s, Thomas joined the Macon Light Infantry, a local militia unit. During the Spanish American War, 1st Lieutenant Thomas served under Col. Lawton of the First Georgia Volunteers. Lt. Thomas always regretted that he was not able to get in on the fighting in Cuba in the very short war.
After transferring to Second Regiment after the war, Captain Thomas was promoted to adjutant. In 1906, Thomas was again promoted to the rank of major in 1906. When Col. Walter Harris was promoted to general in 1913, Thomas was given command of the Second Georgia regiment.
When the United States and Mexico clashed along the border of Texas and Mexico in 1916, the 121st Infantry Regiment was formed from the 2nd Georgia Infantry Regiment and assigned to the 31st Division under Thomas’s command. The 121st was assigned to the 61st Infantry Brigade of the 31st Division when World War I began. During the border war, Thomas trained many Macon and Central Georgia men as members of the 151st Machine Gun Battalion at Camp Wheeler, in East Macon.
As the ship carrying Colonel Thomas and his staff approached England, the Colonel succumbed to a severe bout with pneumonia. He died on October 16, 1918 at the age of forty eight and just three weeks and five days before the armistice was signed in France - another war missed.
Although reports of other members of the unit’s safe arrival, no mention was made as to the status of the Colonel. Nearly two weeks elapsed before a Western Union telephone operator called the Thomas home in Macon. Upon hearing the fateful news, the Colone’ls widow, Mrs. Fannie H. Thomas, collapsed and lay in a near comatose state for nearly an hour. Other family members received telegrams, including brother-in-law, Herbert Smart, the namesake of the city airport in East Macon.
Major H.P. Stickley, in command of Thomas’s old unit at Camp Wheeler, was shocked and sorrowed by the news of his former commander and dear friend.
Colonel Thomas’ body was placed aboard a west bound ship and returned to the United States at a port in Hoboken, New Jersey. From there his casket was shipped by rail back to his home in Macon.
After spending one final night in his home at 117 Culver Street, Thomas’s body was escorted by a battalion of soldiers, who escorted their beloved commander’s body to Riverside Cemetery in one of Macon’s largest ever funeral processions. Major J.O. Semans, Major V.M. Kimbrew, and Captain William C. Oaten led the contingent of more than 1000 soldiers dressed in full uniforms and equipment as if they were marching into battle. A sole soldier led Colonel Thomas’s horse with the stirrups thrown over its back with the late Colonel’s boots, toes turned in, strapped over the saddle. Also in the parade line were at least fifteen surviving members of the Colonel’s old Southern Cadets corps. Because there was no caisson available, the Colonel’s flag draped coffin was placed in a hearse.
The procession entered the cemetery gates as evening shadows were approaching the city. An estimated 20,000 persons assembled to salute the old soldier in his final military parade. A three-gun salute was fired as Rev. I.P. Tyson and Rev. R.E. Douglas performed the funeral service.
As the melancholy darkness descended, the enormous crowd disbursed back to their homes. A once shining light of service to their community and their nation had been extinguished. But, in the years to come and the century which followed, the spark which had been ignited by Colonel James A. Thomas, Jr. was reignited. The old soldier never made it to the battle lines, but in an ironic way, Colonel Thomas paved the way for thousands of future soldiers to fight and die for our country.
The following September, the 121st Infantry became an official unit of the current National Guard system. Co. A, which was originally located in Dublin, and several years later moved permanently to Macon, became the first National Guard company to be organized in the Southeastern United States.
Throughout the 1920s and 1930s, the guard regiment served around the state in disaster relief and quieting riots. During World War II, the 121st, known as the “Blue Bonnet Regiment,” served in France. Ironically, the regiment’s commander, Colonel Lewis C. Pope of Dublin, Georgia, whose military career was nearly identical to that of Col. Thomas’s, died before his regiment saw any fighting.
After the war, the 121st regiment was disbanded. Other units took its place in Dublin, Macon, and around the State of Georgia. Today, the 48th Georgia Infantry Brigade including Dublin’s company, a descendant of Thomas’s 121st regiment, is at this very moment preparing to deploy to Afghanistan in our nation’s longest war - a century to the date after the lamented Colonel’s death.
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