Oh and as a follow up to that last post, it only went downhill from there.
Flash forward to the afternoon, and I was still a Yank (still with a somewhat black face), and we're doing the afternoon battle. Our battalion was sent out on the flank while the artillery did their thing, and after marching through knee deep mud, (real glad I went farb and bought some "cavalry" boots as some folks were losing brogans), and we reach our point at a relatively open stand off woods, stacked arms and let everyone shake off the mud. Directly in front of us across an open field about 400 yards off was a Confederate artillery position and the ground pounders in charge of protecting them was, you guessed it, the same Dismounted Dip****s (forgive me I've never cared too much for Dismounted Cav. and ever sense that weekend and all the other normal shenanigans over the years I developed a little bit of a bloodlust). The artillery position was supposed to be firing at the main US force, but then after a short time we noticed they changed direction, and as I had a spyglass handy, I went up and with our Lt. Col. took a closer look at what was going on.
We're trading the glass looking trying to figure out what was going on, and too our astonishment it looked like the CS artillery position was deliberately aiming their guns at the CS dismounted cavalry! I was still a little hotheaded over the morning dose of blackpowder to the face, and the Lt. Col. said "Why are they doing that?" to which I replied, to the laughter of the whole battalion, "Its the Dismounted Cav. no likes them." To this day I still don't know for sure what that little Confederate on Confederate action was lol.
Moving on, It came time for us to launch our flank attack, which we marched through a swamp of mud to do, (good times), and as we neared the position dismounts were running tree to tree in the woods firing off at us while falling back. They then started falling back into the open on their left, with us crossing a creek in pursuit. As they fell back their path took then to the top of a small hill, and our Lt. Col. had his back to them while facing us barking orders and getting our line formed back up. Now our Lt. Col. is a collector of swords, and he is not in the habit of using the cheap India made knockoffs most officers opt for, and that weekend he was carrying an original Napoleonic French sword, a curuassier sword if I remember right. Back up on the hill one of the dismounts pulls his bonna fide cavalry saber, (it was a bayonet of a WW2 Japanese Type 38 rifle), and breaks ranks and charges down the hill waving his Jap bayonet like a fool, charging our Lt. Col. directly while his back was turned. We were loading our muskets, and when we saw it, several of us immediately yelled out to our Lt. Col. to watch out, which he couldn't here us, and through peripheral vision he saw the nut running up behind him and instinctively he turned and swung that sword as hard as expected. The dismounted idiot barely got his cute little polished WW2 bayonet up to his head in time to avoid it being cut off. After this happening our Lt. Col. knocked the idiot to the ground and held the sword to his face and told something to effect of "You dumb SOB this ain't no toy! I almost cut your stupid head off!" as I recall as we marched past him more than a few of us had choice words for him.
By the way in case no one noticed I don't care for Dismounted Cav. anymore. Used to I was live let live, so what they'll learn their lesson one day, but after years of them not learning to behave and that weekend, yeah myself and a few other showed a LOT of restraint in not running through they're camp at 2 a.m. with torches. If someone reading this is a dismount and doesn't like what I've said, I'm sorry, but it was experience that taught me.