Expanding

I have been wanting to share information and knowledge on the battle of Gettysburg. Today, July 1, 2010, I had been trying to give pieces of information on Facebook. A few people read what I had posted, so I decided to create a blog to expand on the tidbits that were posted this afternoon and this evening.

To start; today marks the first day of the 147th anniversary of the battle of Gettysburg. Many of you have read about it, and I will not bore you with the tactics and the movements of armies on July 1, 1863. If you have not read anything about the battle, I still encourage you to read on.

I want to deliver to you a personal, and pure, view into the battle and it's hundreds of personal accounts that have been collected over the last 147 years. During the engagement, 160,000 men met on a field that covers roughly 25 square miles. 160,000 men who had names, families, friends, and most importantly, a life they remembered before war. Of those 160,000 men, 52,000 were killed, wounded, captured, or simply "missing"; either deserters or a gentle way of saying "unrecognizable", results of artillery fire and other disfiguring endings met on a battlefield. Below are some accounts of soldiers from July 1, 1863. It gives us a personal, singular view of the surroundings they describe, as if we are seeing this through their eyes. These accounts of sympathy and remorse remind us all that, even though most of these men had become accustomed to killing and seeing death around them, they still held on to the raw emotions of you and I.


July 1, 1863 - Private Joel A. Walker, 45th Georgia

Private Walker had been detailed as a part of a burial squad late on July 1. After burying a few corpses, Private Walker came upon an unusual sight. "[A] white hankerchief [was] suspended over the face of a dead man. We approached to find that in the hour of his death some kind friend had fastened this hankerchief to a few straws, which kept the sun from burning his face, and his death had been so calmly [sic] he had not broken down the frail canopy. He was from Charleston, S.C., and bore the rank of captain, but his name was nowhere to be found."

After completing this gruesome task, Private Walker lay down to sleep in the McPherson farmyard (McPherson's Ridge). Shortly after he fell asleep, a confused and hungry calf approached, it's mother apparently a victim of a bullet during the intense fighting that afternoon. Walker noticed that the calf, "evidently a pet of the household...[had] wandered about during the whole night, bleating and moaning piteously for its dam. There was not a sound on the earth except the weary stepping of its tired limbs, and when it came over to where I was lying and touched its cold nose to my hand I felt that it was indeed a cruel fate...it fell to the lot of a little calf to speak more eloquently than all the rest of war's sacrifices."