U.S. Engineers

[Toccoa101506]

Group of men from companies C and D, U.S. Engineer
Battalion

 

[John Hartwell]

The guy sitting on the right chose a strange place to pin his Engineers hat badge.

 

[Patrick H]

Dig the pipe stem that guy lounging in the center is sucking! I will also add that he looks like he just crawled out from under a supply wagon or worse, whereas the rest of the boys managed to look fairly presentable for their group portrait.

 

[Ray Ball]

Group of men from companies C and D, U.S. Engineer
Battalion

View attachment 43978

We reenact Co. A and while I've seen this photo a bunch, I really like the colorization here. Nicely done!

 

[Ray Ball]

The guy sitting on the right chose a strange place to pin his Engineers hat badge.

They were pretty liberal with their branch badge. They were one of the few branches that wore them early and often. It was a pass to get through pickets to get to work until, I believe, McClellan told them to stop due to abuse of the privilege (can you imagine). The Regular Engineers also devised a sort of a chest pin to use. I'll see if I can get a photo of one- Its on this computer of mine somewhere.

 

[Toccoa101506]

We reenact Co. A and while I've seen this photo a bunch, I really like the colorization here. Nicely done!

Thank you very much!

 

[Billy1977]

Beautiful! I'm pretty sure you got the chevrons right too. I've read that the engineers had gold-colored chevrons like they are in your colorized photo. Dumb question but I'm just wondering if there was any confusion with the cavalry who also had gold (or yellow?) chevrons. Was there a difference in the shade of it, with the cavalry chevrons being more bright yellow and the engineers' being darker than the cav, more "gold looking" of a shade? Or did they have truly identical chevrons and the main way you could tell them apart was by the cavalry of course being on horseback and the engineers generally being on foot?

 

[Ray Ball]

Beautiful! I'm pretty sure you got the chevrons right too. I've read that the engineers had gold-colored chevrons like they are in your colorized photo. Dumb question but I'm just wondering if there was any confusion with the cavalry who also had gold (or yellow?) chevrons. Was there a difference in the shade of it, with the cavalry chevrons being more bright yellow and the engineers' being darker than the cav, more "gold looking" of a shade? Or did they have truly identical chevrons and the main way you could tell them apart was by the cavalry of course being on horseback and the engineers generally being on foot?

Thanks for the compliment. Your question is not a dumb one at all. We get it often. The colors are the same between the two branches and the stripes are identical. I know we sometimes get people confused with them at reenactments but usually because they don't look for the castle or forget we have frocks and sack coats rather than shell type jackets. In all respects we were dressed as foot soldiers rather than mounted services so that would also present a difference. Unless you look for those things the mistake is easy to make.

I added a pic of some folks from our unit a couple years ago as they stand by a cavalry soldier to illustrate the similarities and differences. The 1SG of Engineers is far left. You can see his trouser stripe in yellow, then me, the Capt. of Engineers. The young man in the center is in a cavalry shell and the far right is a Capt. of Infantry. Hopefully that will help make the uniform differences a bit clearer than my words might. There are plenty more on our website and our FB page if you care to look.

 

[Michael W.]

Nice photo grouping of a branch of the service you don't see as often.

 

[Billy1977]

Thanks Mr. Ball, I'd always wondered about that ever since I found out that engineers had that color of chevrons. You're right, while the chevrons are the same there are other noticeable differences that show they're engineers rather than cavalry, like the castle badge, the cut of the jacket etc.

 

[RebelCause]

Group of men from companies C and D, U.S. Engineer
Battalion

View attachment 43978

Great colors.

 

[Toccoa101506]

Thank you very much, everyone! I wish I could continue to do more colorizations but I have been so busy with school lately to do more.

 

[Union_Buff]

Awesome job on this photograph - thanks for posting it!

 

[Seduzal]

Your work is awesome! The background colors of the wagons and the men standing behind the trees bring out the full colors of the overall picture. Thanks for sharing.