Sometimes, I think about completely random things when I look at a piece of statuary. I’ll be walking around the cemetery, photographing things and considering what I might want to write about and – WHAM – out of nowhere, my train of thought will derail completely. I was reviewing my photos from Gettysburg, thinking deep weighty thoughts about bloody battles, when I suddenly realized what fabulous mustaches many of the statues had. I need help. But so do all of you, because you’re still reading. Anyway, since you’ve come this far, check it out and I think you’ll agree with me.
Posts Tagged ‘gettysburg’
Mustaches are in
Posted in Cemetery Sculpture, Statues, tagged battle of gettysburg, cenotaphs, civil war, gettysburg, gettysburg national military park, mustache, pennsylvania, sculpture, soldier, statues, veteran on April 22, 2012| Leave a Comment »
A Grave Concern: Pearl Harbor Wordless Wednesday
Posted in Dead Men Do Tell Tales, tagged gettysburg, gettysburg national cemetery, pearl harbor, pennsylvania, sailor, veteran, wordless wednesday, world war ii, wwii on December 7, 2011| Leave a Comment »
A Grave Concern: Alonzo Silsby
Posted in Dead Men Do Tell Tales, tagged 1st ohio light artillery, battle of gettysburg, civil war, cleveland, east cleveland, east cleveland township cemetery, gettysburg, history, ohio, pennsylvania, soldier, tombstone tales, veteran on October 11, 2011| Leave a Comment »
Alonzo Silsby served in the 1st Ohio Light Artillery, Battery I, also known as Dilger’s Battery after its commander. According to Nancy West’s To Dwell with Fellow Clay, Silsby died of wounds received at the Battle of Gettysburg. I have visited both Silsby’s gravesite as well as the monument at Gettysburg that marks the general area where the Battery took up position. Silby’s greatly eroded original tombstone does seem to mention the battle specifically, but he also has a newer government-issue monument.
A Grave Concern: Combatants 393 Non-casualty 53
Posted in Somewhere other than a cemetery, tagged 11th mississippi, battle of gettysburg, cause of death, cenotaph, civil war, confederate, gettysburg, history, pennsylvania, soldier, statues, university greys on July 3, 2011| Leave a Comment »
For me, there is no monument that more simply conveys the utter devastation wreaked on the Army of Northern Virginia by undertaking Longstreet’s Assault (what most people think of as Pickett’s Charge) than the one to the 11th Mississippi Infantry Regiment on Confederate Avenue at Gettysburg. The monument was just dedicated in 2000.
On this day in 1863 at the Battle of Gettysburg, Lt. General James Longstreet’s Division of the Army of Northern Virginia (commanded of course by General Robert E. Lee) marched across 3/4 of a mile of open farmland to attack the center of the Union line on Cemetery Ridge. The Confederate charge began with more than 12,000 soldiers and suffered over 50% casualties. As a young teenager, I walked Pickett’s Charge on a school trip – our group was assigned a Virginia regiment that I have long since forgotten. We learned to march in formation, and we each received a 3×5 index card with the name and a few details about a soldier of that regiment. I still recall very clearly that my soldier was William Norris, who did survive. As we marched across the field, the park ranger kept calling names where men fell – the student marching in the place of that soldier would fall out of line to walk behind the unit, and the rest of us would try to close ranks. Private Norris was one of the few to make it to the Union lines. I remember how very lonely it was to be one of the few still “charging,” and I was only playing pretend, not staring down the barrels of entrenched rifles and artillery.
The 11th Mississippi monument has a plaque that shows in stark, numeric terms the battle’s effect on them. The regiment ended up being the left flank, exposing it to enfilade fire. 86% casualties (round down) – 86% of the soldiers who began the charge under their colors were no longer available for combat at the end – killed, wounded or captured. 77% of the soldiers in the regiment were killed or wounded – 27% of the regiment killed outright or mortally wounded. Company A, the University Greys who largely came from the University of Mississippi, earned particular distinction by suffering 100% casualties. No soldier of Company A present on July 3, 1863 would have been able to fight if the battle continued on July 4. It’s very nearly unimaginable – the numbers are staggering.
A Grave Concern: Sacrifice of the 1st Minnesota
Posted in Somewhere other than a cemetery, Uncategorized, tagged 1st minnesota, battle of gettysburg, cause of death, civil war, gettysburg, history, pennsylvania, sculpture, soldier, statues, veteran on July 2, 2011| Leave a Comment »
On July 2, 1863, the Battle of Gettysburg was in its second day, and the Army of the Potomac was desperately holding to its ground, trying to prevent a rout like the one the previous day that had driven them through the town in panicked retreat. The Union line collapsed under bloody fighting in the Peach Orchard, and Confederates were pressing hard on the lines on Cemetery Ridge. When Major General Winfield Scott Hancock, Commander of the Second Corps, looked for reinforcements to throw against the advancing Confederate troops, only the 1st Minnesota Infantry Regiment was immediately available. Knowing the cost would be dear, Hancock ordered a charge, and the Minnesotans fixed bayonets and marched double quick down the hill against a force that was estimated to be 4 times larger than their own.
Every man realized in an instant what that order meant – death or wounds to us all, the sacrifice of a regiment to gain a few minutes’ time…
-Lieut. William Lochren, 1st Minnesota Infantry
Two hundred and sixty-two men charged. 215 fell as casualties, forty of those dead and never to rise again. The 82% casualty rate brought the 1st Minnesota an unfortunate recognition: a number of scholars have concluded it was the highest percentage loss of men to a Union regiment in the Battle of Gettysburg and the war. The sacrifice of the 1st Minnesota achieved its goal of buying the Union time to bring up reinforcements and strengthen the line.
A Grave Concern: Millage Wordless Wednesday
Posted in Dead Men Do Tell Tales, tagged epitaphs, gettysburg, gettysburg national cemetery, history, national cemetery, occupation, pennsylvania, soldier, tombstone tales, veteran, world war i, wwi on June 8, 2011| Leave a Comment »
A Grave Concern: D-Day
Posted in Dead Men Do Tell Tales, tagged d-day, gettysburg, history, national cemetery, occupation, pennsylvania, soldier, veteran, world war ii, wwii on June 6, 2011| Leave a Comment »
I will be the first to confess that I didn’t catch this one. My friends who were on vacation with me called this to my attention, and thanks to the power of the internet and a cell phone, we were able to confirm the date as being that of D-Day.
Byron Stanton was a member of the 116th United States Infantry who took part in the invasion of Normandy on D-Day. He died somewhere on those beaches and was later transported home to rest in the soil of his home state of Pennsylvania on a still-older battlefield.
A Grave Concern: Bivouac of the Dead
Posted in Cemeteries, tagged gettysburg, national cemetery, pennsylvania, poetry on May 30, 2011| Leave a Comment »
No rumour of the foe’s advance
Now swells upon the wind;
No troubled thought at midnight haunts
Of loved ones left behind.
Their shivered swords are red with rust,
Their plumed heads are bowed;
Their haughty banner, trailed in dust,
Is now their martial shroud.
And plenteous funeral tears have washed
The red stains from each brow;
And the proud forms, by battle gashed,
Are free from anguish now.
Nor war’s wild note, nor glory’s peal,
Shall thrill with fierce delight;
Those breasts that never more may feel
The rapture of the fight.
Like the fierce Northern hurricane
That sweeps the great plateau,
Flushed with triumph, yet to gain,
Come down the serried foe;
Who heard the thunder of the fray
Break o’er the field beneath,
Knew the watchword of the day
Was “Victory or death!”
Long had the doubtful conflict raged
O’er all that stricken plain,
For never fiercer fight had waged
The vengeful blood of Spain;
And still the storm of battle blew,
Still swelled the glory tide;
Not long, our stout old Chieftain knew,
Such odds his strength could bide.
Twas in that hour his stern command
Called to a martyr’s grave
The flower of his beloved land,
The nation’s flag to save.
By rivers of their father’s gore
His first-born laurels grew,
And well he deemed the sons would pour
Their lives for glory too.
For many a mother’s breath has swept
O’er Angostura’s plain,
And long the pitying sky has wept
Above its moldered slain.
The raven’s scream, or eagle’s flight,
Or shepherd’s pensive lay,
Alone awakes each sullen height
That frowned o’er that dread fray.
Sons of the Dark and Bloody Ground
Ye must not slumber there,
Where stranger steps and tongues resound
Along the heedless air.
Thus ‘neath their parent turf they rest,
Far from the gory field,
Borne to a Spartan mother’s breast
On many a bloody shield;
The sunshine of their native sky
Smiles sadly on them here,
And kindred eyes and hearts watch by
The heroes sepulcher.
Nor shall your glory be forgot
While fame her record keeps,
For honor points the hallowed spot
Where valor proudly sleeps.
Yon marble minstrel’s voiceless stone
In deathless song shall tell,
When many a vanquished age hath flown,
The story how ye fell.
Nor wreck, nor change, nor winter’s blight,
Nor time’s remorseless doom,
Shall dim one ray of glory’s light
That gilds your deathless tomb.
Stanzas from “Bivouac of the Dead,” a poem written by Theodore O’Hara in 1847, is on plaques around the National Cemetery at Gettysburg.
A Grave Concern: The Dental Corps?
Posted in Dead Men Do Tell Tales, tagged dental corps, dentist, gettysburg, gettysburg national cemetery, history, national cemetery, occupation, pennsylvania, soldier, tombstone tales, veteran, world war i, wwi on May 24, 2011| Leave a Comment »
In today’s edition of things I never knew, we have the Dental Corps. Both the Army and Navy had a Dental Corps by World War I, formally established by an Act of Congress in 1911 and 1912, respectively. This was not done out of altruism, but as a response to the need for a system of dental care for soldiers that had plagued the military since the Revolutionary War.