Sandusky crayon factory

In 1941, the Confederate success of Operation Blackbeard reaching Lake Erie stalled outside Sandusky by stiff U.S. resistance centered on a crayon factory. It was too big and too well sited to bypass and had to be taken. It fell to Colonel Tom Colleton's regiment to do the job. He first called in an airstrike by mule dive bombers. While suffering losses from U.S. fighters, their bombing reduced the structure to ruins but withering gunfire greeted the Confederates when they tried to advance. Colleton called for the Yankees to surrender but they refused. Colleton responded with an artillery barrage that included poison gas. This time his soldiers managed to gain a foothold and then cleared out the ruins with hand-to-hand combat as fierce as any trench raids during the Great War. The casualties his regiment took reminded Colleton of Pyrrhus of Epirus' victory.