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Gettysburg Festival - 150 Years

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  • Gettysburg Festival - 150 Years

    Gettysburg is charging ahead in celebration of the 150th anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg. According to the Gettysburg Convention and Visitors Bureau, 400 events will take place between Friday, June 28, and Sunday, July 7. Attending every event, of course, is impossible. General inquiries can be directed to the Gettysburg Convention and Visitors Bureau at 800-337-5015.

    Major festival events spanning 6/28-7/7 are available at the link below.

    10 days of activities to commemorate 150th anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg
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  • #2
    I know one of the re-enactors who's going to be there. He lost a leg in a car accident a few years back and now, he plays a wounded BGen who's getting amputated in a field hospital. He makes a great show, screaming and hollering as they took off his leg.

    Very funny man. Before he lost his leg, he had this girlfriend who was loud and obnioux. She was banned for life in this pub but Andy was still allowed in. Great guy and great stories. Well, he disappeared for few months and then he showed up. He told the bartender that he knows his girlfriend has been banned for life but since she just died, can she come in for a last toast? He was carrying her urn.

    Everyone, including the bartender were on the floor, litterally. I think ribs were bruised from all the laughing.

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    • #3
      Also, while people will have a good time and I do wish them to enjoy it. There is nothing to celebrate about a battle that saw 40,000+ dead and wounded.

      Present Arms.

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      • #4
        Originally posted by Officer of Engineers View Post
        Also, while people will have a good time and I do wish them to enjoy it. There is nothing to celebrate about a battle that saw 40,000+ dead and wounded.

        Present Arms.
        I agree wholeheartedly with the Colonel. Enjoy yourselves, but never forget the horrendous price exacted.

        The ten day extravaganza will chiefly focus on different aspects of Gettysburg history, battle reenactments, and commemoration ceremonies.

        There will be festivals and entertainment available, the proceeds of which help defray the costs associated with the above presentations.
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        • #5
          Originally posted by Officer of Engineers View Post
          I know one of the re-enactors who's going to be there. He lost a leg in a car accident a few years back and now, he plays a wounded BGen who's getting amputated in a field hospital. He makes a great show, screaming and hollering as they took off his leg.

          Very funny man. Before he lost his leg, he had this girlfriend who was loud and obnioux. She was banned for life in this pub but Andy was still allowed in. Great guy and great stories. Well, he disappeared for few months and then he showed up. He told the bartender that he knows his girlfriend has been banned for life but since she just died, can she come in for a last toast? He was carrying her urn.

          Everyone, including the bartender were on the floor, litterally. I think ribs were bruised from all the laughing.
          Sounds like a true Gentleman. Good for him.

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          • #6
            Originally posted by dave lukins View Post
            Sounds like a true Gentleman. Good for him.
            Know any place that Tankie is barred from? We're going to make a tour ... might take a few months but I want to see Europe again.

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            • #7
              To quote the inimitable Shek, I would rather shave the back of my thighs with a rusty cheese grater than be anywhere near the place during the 150th festivities. It's full of amateurs who drive me nuts, the roads are horribly crowded and they all crowd into a central square (one reason why First and Eleventh Corps lost so many POWs) and too many TWGs (tubby white guys). There were no fat guys in the Civil War below the grade of colonel in the combat arms.

              I am planning to do an in depth tour of the entire campaign next year when the dust settles.

              Colonel, I agree with you sentiment....but we need to remember them. Lincoln said it best later that year on 19 November.
              “Loyalty to country ALWAYS. Loyalty to government, when it deserves it.”
              Mark Twain

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              • #8
                CBS gathered some nice galleries (at least for a non American):

                The Battle of Gettysburg - 150 years later

                Gettysburg: Then and now
                No such thing as a good tax - Churchill

                To make mistakes is human. To blame someone else for your mistake, is strategic.

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                • #9
                  In 1913, at the 50th anniversary of Gettysburg, thousands of black veterans were excluded from the ceremony, while white Union and Confederate veterans mingled in a show of regional reconciliation, made possible by a national consensus to ignore the plight of black Americans.

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                  • #10
                    Julie the 50th Celebration was for veterans of the battle. No USCT fought at Gettysburg.


                    While your comments are factual and reflect the attitudes of the times the USCTs have certainly gotten their due in current times.
                    “Loyalty to country ALWAYS. Loyalty to government, when it deserves it.”
                    Mark Twain

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                    • #11
                      Healing side of history comes to light at Gettysburg
                      July 5, 2013

                      GETTYSBURG, Pa. -- The moans of dying and wounded men called to Elizabeth “Sallie' Salome Myers from inside the walls of St. Francis Xavier Church. The 21-year-old schoolteacher who lived nearby on West High Street couldn't stand the sight of blood, but she went anyway. Dozens of injured men lay on the pews and across the floor. The putrid smell of death and human excrement filled the air. Myers went to a man by the door and asked what she could do to ease his suffering. Sgt. Alexander Stewart of the 149th Pennsylvania Volunteers returned her gaze with mournful eyes. “Nothing,' he said. 'I am going to die." Such stories were repeated time and again across the ravaged fields of south central Pennsylvania. Official estimates say 7,058 dead men and one woman “in rebel uniform' lay strewn across 25 square miles, writes Gregory Coco, author of the haunting “A Strange and Blighted land,' on the aftermath of battle. About 20,000 wounded were packed into every available building and grove of trees as the town of 2,400 struggled to cope, recover and rebuild.

                      At the center were the women who cared for the wounded and dying as the war went on and the fighting men marched away. Their stories always have been there -- sewn into the fabric of history in the homes, streets and field hospitals of Gettysburg. But only now, 150 years after the great battle, are their stories being shared with a wider audience. “The people who wrote about the war were men, the veterans, the historians,' explained author Gerald Bennett. “Since, it was a male experience, the war, the fighting, the pulling of triggers, and so very few women got involved ... that portion was never included.' It was only this year that the Women Behind The Walls project, which highlights the role of about 100 of Gettysburg's women, started to come together. Placards now hang in the windows of dozens of Gettysburg homes detailing their stories.

                      At least 160 field hospitals sprang up around Gettysburg during and after the battle, said Cindy L. Small, director of marketing and communications for the Gettysburg Foundation. Churches, houses and even groves of trees became makeshift medical centers.
                      Surgeons had learned a lot in two years of war and when the fighting reached Gettysburg, they were adept at extracting bullets and amputating limbs. They were learning that cleanliness was important. But modern medicine was in its infancy. “Antiseptics weren't (used) until after the war,' said Charles Teague, a Gettysburg National Military Park ranger. There was terrible cross-contamination by doctors and surgeons working on the thousands of injured. In recent years, those hospitals have been getting renewed attention and interpretation by the park's Civil War experts.

                      The George Spangler Farm behind Union lines west of the Baltimore Pike was opened to the public just in time for the 150th anniversary. Seven to nine surgeons cared for about 2,000 men there, Teague said. Among them was Confederate Gen. Lewis Armistead, who famously led the last Rebel attack at Gettysburg with his hat on the end of his sword. But now, battlefield visitors can not only see the summer kitchen where Armistead died, they can learn about the Spangler family -- George, his wife and their four children -- who gave up all but one room of their home when the soldiers and surgeons arrived. The story goes on for generations, as the Spanglers and other families rebuilt their lives. But the scars of war would always be part of their stories.

                      Weeks after Sallie Myers held Sgt. Stewart's hand in that church during the battle, she received a letter from his brother, the Rev. Henry Stewart. The two met, fell in love and married. But in the fall of 1868, he too died of wounds he'd received in the war.
                      Sallie gave birth to their only child, Henry Alexander Stewart, months later. Henry would carry on the family tradition, becoming a physician and a founder of Gettysburg's Annie Warner Hospital. And he would help establish the Adams County Historical Society, which still carries on Gettysburg's historical tradition today.
                      Source: The Reporter

                      This facet of Gettysburg greatly resonates with me. My sister served in the IDF Medical Corps (trauma surgeon).
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                      • #12
                        I got to visit the memorial of the 43rd New York at Gettysburg several years ago. It is located on Wolf Hill on the extreme right flank of the battlefield and is on private land. The owner is very gracious and his wife gave me a jar of peach preserve made from peaches from the Peach Orchard. The farm had been in the husband's family since 1827. They showed me around the house and showed me the blood stains in the hardwood floors from when the house was used as a hospital. They were most moved by the story of a young 2nd lieutenant who had been commissioned 30 days prior to the battle and was shot on 2 July. He was brought into the house and bled to death. It so happens I had some of the letters of that officer I shared with them. They told me stories passed down within the family of how the family took care of the wounded and showed me his grave site...he was later moved to the National Cemetary.

                        When I returned to Gettysburg on my next trip several months later I was able to give them a framed photo of that lieutenant taken not long before the battle.

                        I need to do a write up on the civilians and the results after the battle...I see that as my task of the week.
                        “Loyalty to country ALWAYS. Loyalty to government, when it deserves it.”
                        Mark Twain

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                        • #13
                          I was at Gettysburg on June 27th, just before the crowd showed up. There were people but not an unbearable number. I read up the synopsis of the battle on Wiki just prior to the trip. Seeing the battle field makes everything so much more coherent.
                          "Only Nixon can go to China." -- Old Vulcan proverb.

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                          • #14
                            There's something about that battle which stands apart of so many...

                            Like Kursk eighty years later it was a culminating event of epic proportions. Nothing would be the same afterward.
                            "This aggression will not stand, man!" Jeff Lebowski
                            "The only true currency in this bankrupt world is what you share with someone else when you're uncool." Lester Bangs

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                            • #15
                              That's funny Gunnut. I was there that same day. I wish I could have stayed longer to smell the black powder.

                              I also visited Antietam battlefield two days before.

                              I came across this interesting article, giving much of the credit to Custer

                              http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politic...?src=soc_fcbks

                              ZF-

                              Attached Files
                              Last edited by Zad Fnark; 13 Jul 13,, 15:10.

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