It was a perfect night to lay beneath the stars, but for being July,
he was abnormally cold. He didn't feel his legs, but he didn't feel any
pain either. He DID feel moist and sticky. He couldn't move his head.
Staring face up in a Pennsylvania meadow on a hot Summer night, he
should have been listening to crickets chirping. But the black stillness
was broken by a cacophony of desperately horrific wails, groans, screams,
cursing, sobbing, calling for Mother, calling for Jesus, begging for help,
begging for death....
The air smelled of gunpowder and guts.
He wanted a cool drink of water from the spring behind his home in Mississippi.
He hoped there was a heaven.
He feared there was a Hell.
He prayed that General Pickett was proud of him!
July 1st thru the 4th marks the 150th Anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg.
If the South would have won this altercation, they would have been able to
march on Washington DC about 70 miles away. Pickett's Charge was the "High
Water Mark" of The Confederacy. 11,000 brave men started the charge, and
within the next few hours 6000 lay slaughtered on the open field. The wailing
and despair forever etched in the hearts of this small rural town.
The South would fruitlessly fight on for another two years....
But on this day, The Union was preserved on this hallowed soil..!!
10 comments:
I'm reading Michael Shaara's historical novel 'The Killer Angels' ... about the Battle at Gettysburg.
Now that's a book I would read Helen.
used to go walk those battlefields every couple weeks when we lived about 30 minutes away...pretty stirring...
Yeah Brian, I've been to Gettysburg about 4 times. It's the most haunted place in America!
My dream vacation would not be a tropical paradise. I would love to visit Washington D.C. for the war memorials.
I want to visit the Little Bighorn, The Washita Massacre site here in Oklahoma, and all the battle sites of the Civil War. Even Normandy.
Love this post, G!!!!
You brought tears to my eyes. So many of those soldiers were just babies.
I can't imagine what those men endured...seriously...cannot imagine it.
it is one of the few places I have been that I know are truly sacred, and not because my great grandfather left an arm there.
Your words conjur up such a sad picture. :(
The number of dead is horrific as are the particulars of their dying. Thanks for this.
I've been to Gettysburg and would love to go again. I'd also like to visit the Little Bighorn.
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