‘We shall not see your like again.’ Farewell to a 104-year-old UK legend.
On April 12, Kentucky and the nation lost a historical treasure with the passing of Charles Pierce Roland, alumni professor of history emeritus at the University of Kentucky, who died four days after celebrating his 104th birthday.
Born in Maury City, Tenn., in 1918, while “The Great War” was raging overseas, Roland came to appreciate the adage by Paducah humorist Irvin S. Cobb that “a Tennessean is merely a Kentuckian born away from home.”
From the moment he arrived in Lexington in 1970, Roland relished life in the Bluegrass. And the region embraced him. Among his many honors was being elected and reelected president of the Kentucky Civil War Round Table, whose hundreds of members can attest that he was a storyteller almost without equal.
On April 8, 2018 some 200 relatives, friends and admirers gathered on the UK campus to celebrate Roland’s centennial. They marked the occasion with testimonials, proclamations and a robust rendering of “The Army Goes Rolling Along.”
It was a fitting tribute to the scholar, teacher and World War II veteran who was acknowledged as a leading authority on the Civil War. His fascination with the nation’s bloodiest conflict came naturally. He grew up just miles from the battlefields of Shiloh. As a boy he heard accounts of the war from those who fought in it. “There were quite a number of veterans of the Civil War living in that area,” Roland remembered. Not surprisingly, his first major book was a biography of Gen. Albert Sidney Johnston (1964), who died in that battle. Roland was also the author of “An American Iliad: The Story of the Civil War” (1991) and “Reflections on Lee: A Historian’s Assessment” (1995).
Roland’s knowledge of World War II was even more intimate. He was drafted into the Army a few weeks after Pearl Harbor. By early fall 1944, his unit, the 99th Infantry Division, was ordered overseas to the European theater. Now a captain, he served as operations officer of the 3rd Battalion, 394th Infantry Regiment. On Dec. 16, Roland and his men suddenly found themselves fighting not only the harshness of the Ardennes winter but a massive attack from the Panzer Corps that signaled the beginning of what came to be called the Battle of the Bulge. “The flash and roar of exploding shells was incessant as the enemy artillery blasted the approaches behind us and our own artillery blasted those in front,” Roland wrote. “In all directions the landscape was a Dante’s inferno of burning towns and villages.” For meritorious service at Elsenborn Ridge he received a Bronze Star; he also earned a Purple Heart for a wound sustained in action. Long after the war, Roland, always the raconteur, would hold audiences in thrall as he recalled his experiences in combat. His talk, “GI Charlie,” later formed the basis for his engaging autobiography titled “My Odyssey Through History: Memoirs of War and Academe” (2003).
On two occasions he served yearlong stints as a visiting professor at West Point where Roland’s students were exposed not only to his masterful lectures but also to his mischievous, often self-deprecating, sense of humor. One day, for example, Roland, then in his early seventies, wore his BDUs to class. He delighted in the quizzical looks on the faces of cadets who saluted as he passed. “They must have thought I was the oldest captain in the US Army,” he would say with a laugh.
For 70 years Roland’s late wife Allie Lee was his talented and gracious helpmate, the matriarch of an ever-expanding family they both adored. As one of the Rolands’ friends noted on their golden anniversary, “I have rarely known a couple who seemed so blissfully happy together. Even the most casual observer realizes that Allie Lee Aycock and Charles Roland have achieved the most successful merger since Sears and Roebuck.”
Well done, Captain Roland. We shall not see your like again.
Thomas H. Appleton Jr. received his doctorate under Charles Roland. He is Foundation Professor of History Emeritus at Eastern Kentucky University.
This story was originally published April 19, 2022 at 8:51 AM.