On Distant Shores
A new plaque in Cherbourg marks the site of the only Civil War battle site outside the United States. Off the coast of this French town, the CSS Alabama took on the USS Kearsarge and lost.

Last fall, a delegation from the Civil War Preservation Trust landed in France to unveil a plaque naming Cherbourg, France, the only Civil War battle site outside U.S. territory. The battle, of course, was the 1864 naval duel between the CSS Alabama and the USS Kearsarge, seven miles off the coast of Normandy.

In response to the North’s blockade of the South’s ports, the Confederacy created swift cruisers to wreak havoc with the Union’s merchant fleet. The most successful was the Alabama, which sailed around the world, capturing or burning 65 Union vessels. Soon after it docked in Cherbourg for an overhaul, a Union man-of-war appeared off the coast. Capt. Raphael Semmes sailed the steamer into the English Channel and engaged the Kearsarge in combat. The Alabama was outgunned and sank after an hour and a half of intense combat.

— Erik Svane

K Rations Inventor Dies

Ancel Keys, the man who invented the K rations consumed by millions of soldiers in World War II, has died at the age of 100. Keys, a University of Minnesota public health scientist, also discovered that saturated fat was a major cause of heart disease and studied the health benefits of the Mediterranean diet. Keys got a government assignment at the start of World War II to design a lightweight but nutritious meal for the troops. The K ration, named for him, originally was made up of items from a Minneapolis grocery store—hard biscuits, dry sausage, hard candy, and chocolate.

Deserter Sentenced

One of the Army’s longest desertion sagas has come to an end. Sgt. Charles Robert Jenkins, who defected to North Korea in 1965 while serving in the DMZ, was found guilty of desertion by an Army court in Japan and given a dishonorable discharge. Jenkins, frail and ailing at 64, served less than his 30-day sentence.

Jenkins pleaded guilty to desertion, saying he had wanted to avoid hazardous duty on the Korean peninsula and Vietnam. He also pleaded guilty to aiding the enemy by teaching North Koreans English in the 1980s.

He turned himself in after moving to Tokyo last year for medical treatment with his Japanese wife, Hitomi Soga, and two children. Japan lobbied for him to come there because of public sympathy for Soga, who had been kidnapped in 1978 to help train North Korean spies.