A Walk in the Battlefield Woods

On Memorial Day I raised the Old Flag (the same style that flew over Fort Sumter) over our castle and headed
off to hike another section of the Monocacy Battlefield. I chose the Thomas Farm trails because the area they cover is where most of the battle was fought. My first stop was the Visitor’s Center. As they do every Memorial Day they had covered the front lawn with US and Confederate flags – apparently one for each battle casualty.

One must prepare for arduous substitute Appalachian Trial hikes. On my feet were my pair of surplus 3LC Tan Desert Mil Spec Boots and I carried a homemade hiking stick that I converted from my former reenacting dog tent ridge pole. The stick has been christened the “Shaft of the Union” or SotU. The SotU proved very useful for footing since the trails meander up and down some steep hills along the river. I hope to get the SotU signed up for a Visitor Center movie. The audience will see it pointing to various parts of the field as the narrator intones what happened there.

Reenactors would, uh, reenact the battle. If the same folks who did the Antietam visitor’s center film are still around to do this one, it could be great! Otherwise we will get the guy who perpetrated the Classic Images 125^th videos and go for the unintended comedy effect.

Monocacy is an unusual civil war battlefield in that there are very few monuments and not very many interpretive signs (explanations that this happened here). When one is hiking the “self-interpreting trails” (i.e., get the free brochure or buy one of the inexpensive but excellent booklets about the battle and we hope you don’t collapse out there cause no one will find you!) one is out there in the woods with no indications that anything out of the ordinary ever took place. In fact most times I have gone solo hiking the trails I have not encountered anyone else on them.

Yesterday however I ran into two people whom I took be a couple out walking their dogs. As I got up close I could see they were two women and seemed indeed to be a couple – not that there’s anything wrong with that. I nodded. One studiously ignored me and the leader nodded back. That was the extent of the humanity I met on the Thomas Farm portion of the Monocacy Battlefield.

Our dachshund Max is recovering from back surgery he had on March 13. He actually walks most of the time now. Dachshunds it seems are high maintenance dogs and one in four will experience what max suffered. I am glad we had the $$ for the surgery. After the doctor explained the options – basically surgery or permanent paralysis – and told me the cost of the operation, I nodded and told him I’d play the odds (85% success) and to go ahead. So $6700 and two months and two weeks later, it looks like we won. Was it worth it? Yes; we have had several dogs put down because there was no treatment to reverse their conditions (usually old age related) and so no hope. This was different.

Besides not having to have my beloved dog put down, this positive report means I could probably go to the commemoration of the 150^th anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg, a somewhat more famous affair than Monocacy. Will I? Likely not. The flesh is weak and the spirit is waffling. Still, it is a 150^th, so…

Adios!

 

 

 

I have previously discussed my participation in a reenactment of the Battle of Chancellorsville on May 4, 2013. Well, I have caught the 150^th anniversary event fever and  I am organizing a 150^th anniversary of a little known battle. It was the ONLY action of my new (as of 2014) CW reenacting unit, the 37^th Iowa volunteer infantry.

A summary of the battle is as follows:

… the regiment was called upon to furnish the guard every other day for the provision train from Memphis east to LaGrange, Tenn., and from there south to Holly Springs, Miss. The country was infested with roving bands of the enemy, making the duty of guarding the trains both dangerous and difficult. It was while in the performance of this duty that the Thirty-seventh Iowa came into conflict with the enemy, and sustained a loss of several men, killed and wounded. 

The “Gettysburg of the west” occurred on July 5, 1864. I plan to organize a reenactment of it in nearby Wheaton Regional Park. They have a train that is appropriate to the period (see photo) the C. P. Huntington. While not full sized, it looks cool and we will not need thousands of reenactors; 20 or so on each size will do I think. I suspect we will provide strong competition, but a welcome alternative, to the boring annual reenactment of Gettysburg!

I was recently lamenting the lack of good chambray shirts on the market, L. L. Bean and Lands End offer expensive and really unacceptable versions of shirts they call chambray. Bah! My mind drifted (intentionally this time) back to the Seafarer brand shirts of my Navy days. So of course I Goggled Seafarer dungaree shirts and found the company is still in business, more or less. The Navy changed its utility uniform in 2009 to a sea-camo BDU affair. (My nephew, a Navy Lt., informs me that sailors circa 2013 think it great fun to lie down on the decks of their ships, which are also painted in a sea-camo pattern, and have their photos taken.) Seafarer is selling its stocks of “irregular” chambray shirts at about $7.00 a copy. I am now the proud owner of enough to constitute a lifetime supply. Thank you Al Gore, for giving us the internet! But Al, you could have spared us the carbon credits scam.

So, my work wardrobe has been given to Goodwill and replaced with smaller sized jeans, cargo pants and “surplus chic” shirts and field jackets. My OD M65 field jacket arrived yesterday (this is it) and it completed my collection M65 field jacket collection. The Woodland Camo pattern version is the best. Life, which after all is but a vapour, is at the moment good; or so I thought until last night when...

I got a call from the son of a late friend who found a copy of my unpublished military memoirs among his "parent's effects." Seems his mother died last year. His mom and dad were among my closest friends in the 1970s through 2003 when his father died although we were losing touch at that point. Now she is dead too, both from smoking related illnesses. So much is ending these days and yet there is the grandkid to remind me life goes on; with or with out me.

Adios!

I participated, after a fashion, in a reenactment of the Battle of Chancellorsville on May 4, 2013 – which fell within the span of the150th anniversary of the battle.

The “battle” (the reenactment of it that is) started at 1:30 PM, so of course my battle-tested comrades and I left Springfield, VA at 10:20 AM for the hour or so drive down to Spotsylvania Courthouse, VA. Naturally it was necessary to stop on the way and get lunch before we could later, as did John Kerry at th3 2004 democrat convention, stand before a cheering throng (for us our reenacting unit), give a lame salute, and announce we were “reporting for duty!” Lunch being happily consumed (for the record, I allowed myself an Angus burger deluxe and fries) we departed for the impending faux blood and destruction at about 12:20 PM. We were cutting it close. Our reenacting brethren and sisteren already on site were no doubt putting on accouterments, falling into ranks, and preparing to march to their assigned places. As we soon discovered, had they but waited a bit, they could have taken the bus!

As for us, anyone familiar with “Thomas the Tank Engine” stories will recognize their constant phrase that so aptly describes much of Thomas’ and everybody else’s day-to-day life; and then there was trouble! We got lost. But this is the 21^st century after all. An iPhone V and Google Maps soon had us heading in the right direction – although we were incredulous at how far off course we were.

The 18 or so minutes to the event site were surreal. Two of us, Wes and I, didn’t care if we made it in time for the battle or not. Chris was getting more and more frantic that we would miss it and was trying to urge us on.

We arrived with moments to spare, got registered, serendipitously found a prime legal parking space in front of the museum, and asked directions to the battle. We were told by one of the ever helpful event staff that walking to the site, which meant crossing the battlefield, was strang verboten and we would have to take the shuttle bus. The funny thing was the apologetic “I am only following my orders” manner in which he told us this.

Hey, no problem dudes! This was terrific. We were suited up (after changing into uniform by the car on a public street – the reason I always wear running shorts under my street clothes to these things), got the souvenir medallion, were now legally registered, and we were not going to get to the battle in time to participate. We could watch the show and there would be no musket cleaning later at home. This was terrific!

But we did, make it into the battle I mean. After debarking from the bus and well behind the spectator line, we wandered over to watch the show. We saw the Union army formed for battle. As I gazed at the ranks we would NOT be in, I noticed the flowing beard and mane of our beloved corporal and mused aloud “I think that’s our unit.” Poor Chris, we were so close and yet so far. Filled with compassion at his disappointment, I asked the three young event staff ladies if we might slip under the yellow tape and mosey over to that passel of Yankees yonder as we were supposed to be with them. “Sure!” they cheerily assented only we should mosey rapidly as the shooting was about to start.

We did. Fell into line amid the joyous cheers of our comrades like: “Oh great, now the count is all messed up!”

To sum up the battle: I did the same thing on the same ground last year. Then it was the Battle of Spotsylvania Courthouse. Next year, being the 150^th anniversary of that battle, there will likely be another reenactment with a battle indistinguishable from its two predecessors, and it will probably be the Battle of Spotsylvania Courthouse again.

As soon as the shooting was over we decamped from our unit and the festivities and toured the civil war real battlefields – there are many in that area. The significance of seeing places like “the bloody angle” is a sobering contrast to the perilously close to farcical nature of a reenactment of it, or almost any battle for that matter. And so on Sunday, while the diehards at the event were doing it all again, I was mowing the lawn and, yes, cleaning my musket.

I am registered for the same type of thing with Gettysburg in late June. I will go – unless I don’t; it is very much TBD at this point.

I am plagued with recurring dreams that I am back at my old workplace. Everyone around me knows I was “retired” via a Reduction in Force (RIF) and am not supposed to be there. In the dream I am sad that I am no longer employed and an “outsider.” In waking life, getting RIF’ed and getting a generous severance package was a great blessing. The mind is a strange thing and mine is stranger than most.