Battle memories

 Spanish-American War Memorial, not all it seems

*Information gathered from the University of Idaho Library’s Special Collections.

He stands day after day, year after year, guarding the Administration Building. He never sleeps, never speaks and never budges from his place.

Emily Lowe | Rawr

This resolute soldier is a tribute to the ordinary soldier who fought and died in the Spanish-American War.

UI and the war

The University of Idaho has a strong military history and a significant tie to the Spanish-American War.

In May 1898, 39 of the 248 students enrolled at the university volunteered for the war. UI had the largest proportion of volunteers to students out of all colleges and universities in the U.S., said Ben Bridges, a history undergraduate who recently wrote about the old guard. Of the 39 students, only two died in the war.

Ole Gabriel Hagberg enrolled in UI’s Military Science program in 1895. He was a Norwegian immigrant who came to the U.S. to live the American Dream, and when the opportunity arose, he readily volunteered to serve his adopted country. He died in the Philippines of typhoid fever in 1898.

Paul Draper came to UI from Iowa in 1893 and was in the Military Science program, as well as served in UI’s Company D, which Hagberg was also enlisted in.

Draper was originally posted with the 16th Infantry Regiment in Cuba. He took part in the Battle of San Juan Hill, which was led by Teddy Roosevelt and his Rough Riders. Afterwards, Draper and his unit were sent to the Philippines where Draper drowned trying to save his fellows after their raft capsized in a river in 1900.

The statue and a whispered rumor of inaccuracy

There is some debate on the model of the Idaho Volunteer. Some say the original artist looked at photos of Hagberg and crafted the statue after him, others say the statue is modeled after a young man named Clem Herbert in the early 1900s.

The statue, whomever it was modeled after, was erected on campus in 1901 and dedicated to the soldiers who fought in the war. Some people believe the monument is what is known as a “Hiker monument,” which were sculptures created for the common everyday soldier, rather than cadets dressed in their parade uniforms. Hiker monuments were originally made for soldiers of the Spanish-American War, the Boxer Rebellion and the Philippine-American War.

During the early 1970s, protestors of the Vietnam War vandalized the statue. His hands and his gun were smashed off and his hat was just a fraction of what it originally was.

In 1984, Lewiston sculptor Bud Washburn removed and restored the statue. It was rechristened at a ceremony in 1985.

For the last 113 years the “Silent Guard” stood at his post even without hands or the proper weapon.

Claire Whitley can be reached at [email protected]