Let Them Fight: A Comedy History Podcast · Jacob Trimmer and Tim Groeschel

Ep. 596 Thomas Plunkett

·1 hr 38 min·5 clips

A shell at Fredericksburg nearly severs Plunkett’s right arm and shreds his left arm while he holds the colors.

1. Let Them Fight: A Comedy History Podcast covers Thomas Plunkett, a Massachusetts soldier whose Civil War service centered on Fredericksburg. 2. Tim and Jacob host the episode, with Jacob telling Plunkett’s battlefield story and Tim reacting to the Civil War details and battle names. 3. The episode asks what happens when a Union sergeant becomes the flag carrier at the worst possible moment. 4. Thomas Francis Plunkett was born in Ireland in 1839, lost his mother five years later, and moved with his father and brothers to Boston. 5. By the start of the Civil War, Plunkett was working as a boot maker in West Boylston, Massachusetts, and was engaged to be married. 6. He enlisted in Company E of the 21st Massachusetts Volunteers and trained at Camp Lincoln in Worcester. 7. The regiment later joined Major General Ambrose Burnside’s Coast Division and fought operations on North Carolina’s coast in early 1862. 8. At the Battle of Chantilly in summer 1862, Plunkett earned an early reputation for gallantry by capturing a Confederate picket while looking for his wounded friend Louie Moot. 9. Moot survived with a thigh wound, and Plunkett received sergeant chevrons for taking the prisoner and bringing him back. 10. At South Mountain in Maryland, Plunkett gave water to a wounded officer from Ohio and then returned to the fight. 11. The hosts connect that wounded Ohio officer to Rutherford B. Hayes, who later served as president. 12. At Fredericksburg, Burnside’s army attacked Marye’s Heights across open ground and suffered devastating casualties under artillery and infantry fire. 13. The episode quotes a Confederate soldier on the wall saying he “forgot that they were the enemy and only remember that they were men.” 14. When Color Sergeant Joseph Collins was killed, Plunkett picked up the regiment’s colors and advanced toward the stone wall. 15. A shell burst near him, killed three men around him, nearly severed his right arm, and shattered his left arm while a book in his waistcoat deflected part of the shrapnel. 16. Plunkett shouted, “Don’t let it fall, boys! Don’t let it fall!” before being carried back and later amputated by doctors. 17. Clara Barton helped care for him at the makeshift hospital and later secured a strong pension after the war. 18. Barton called him the “hero of four words,” and the hosts note that she and members of the 21st Massachusetts saluted him before he was shipped north. 19. The tone stays bawdy, argumentative, and detail-heavy, with Tim and Jacob mixing battle history with jokes and side chatter. 20. Listeners who like Civil War stories, battlefield heroism, and dark comedy will get the most out of it; listeners wanting a short, serious biography may skip it.

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