With the "U. O. Battalion" at 125th Gettysburg, July, 1988

One of the things I most remember from the first day was that when the Iron Brigade had reached the position where the engagement was to begin, we had quite a bit of time to kill. Looking behind us, you could see the yellow, boiling clouds of dust that were easily 15 feet high. They were from units still forming up back in camp. As we marched past the Bucktail regiments, someone yelled "three cheers for the Iron Brigade!" Gentlemen, all of us were suddenly 9 feet tall and our feet no longer touched the ground!
The bearded man on the left end of the photo above got somewhat overcome by heat, dust, allergies, grime, etc. He was in a bad enough way that he was trying to get through to his dad on a pay phone to get a plane ticket back to California. My parents brought their travel trailer to town and were staying in one of the local campgrounds. I convinced him to stay with them one night. Out of the heat and dust, with a shower and a decent nights sleep he was a new man.
 
My most fond memory of the Bucktails was at (I think) 125th Spotsylvania. There was a tactical in the woods and they "thought" that they would just hammer that small company they could just see. Problem was, it was the extreme right the the entire 1st NC Battalion and command saw them coming. We pulled a Chamberlain and the entire left wheeled and we opened fire from front and the Bucktails right flank in enfilade. Couple of the boys were singing a ditty on the way back to camp about the Pennsylvania "Road Kill". :byebye:

The big events are special critters as far as reenactments go but there's great memories of camp goings on. Don't remember exactly which event this was at but we were in camp and one guy started in about his reading of Ivanhoe and the lack of chivalry among the soldiery. I knew this guy and something was definately afoot. He got up, strung a piece of pine bark across his face that had a knot hole he could see out of, grabbed an empty flag staff and looking the part of a backwoods knight, jumped on the back of another guy and proceeded to proclaim that he was Sir Beefalot astride his trusty steed Seabuiscut on a holy quest to restore chivalry and honor. The two of them started to joust anything in blue while filling the air with vituperative vitriol about the blue belly knaves. One of the other guys started playing the part of the fair maiden and graced the "lance" with a token (snotty handkerchief) of "her" affection while another started playing matador with a blue greatcoat. You spectated at your peril whilst the knight errant was mounted and many were the ribs that were soundly painful for the next few hours. Another fun thing to do was Mail Call, done after the spectators have gone. The guy with the mail would look through it and proclaim it mostly junk mail and toss it into the fire but there would be that one or two letters addressed to certain people and those letters would be read publicly. The prose might be high falutin' or homespun but always quite entertaining, think along the lines of a roast. From what I've read in first person accounts, some of the shenanigans we were up to were done back then so there really wasn't anything new, just different time. Amazing the stuff that comes back to mind.

Back to 125th of Gettysburg, it was hot the entire time and I emptied the canteen multiple times keeping some water on the back and neck to stay cool. Ice was a valuable commodity. At many reenactments, drill might involve 30-40 troops. At that event, we drilled in groups of 100+. It was a real eye opener for the officer types to try to remember Hardee's while determining when and where to give a command to move that many men at once. We, of course, as dumb privates, just did what we were told and marched into tents, trees, bushes, other formations, all the while laughing at the officers. Sometimes we even deliberately screwed up when a command was given as we had quietly passed along the predetermined action amongst ourselves. That was best done when some 1st Lieutenant was demonstrating his grasp of drill to a higher officer. It's rather amusing to watch the Lieutenant wonder aloud if he really did just say "left face" instead of "right face". We had a couple guys who were the cooks and they were on point at Gettysburg and we ate pretty darn good. Nothing quite like blackeye peas, pork and fo real butter fried cornbread hot off the skillet.
 
A friend passed us a parcel of brown paper tied with string. I wasn't in camp at the time, and she didn't know the other guys in the unit. Literally she'd asked her way through the Federal infantry til she found someone who knew me. Several of my pards suspected it was a former girlfriend with whom I'd had an unpleasant breakup. Turned out the parcel was a cornbread. My comrades made me eat a piece, then observed my behavior for a couple hours before deciding it was safe to consume. We didn't figure out the truth until we returned to California.
 
EXCELLENT thread, gentlemen!

Please, PLEASE continue.

Sincerely,
Unionblue

Not exactly a proper continuation, but I tried scanning this photo taken before Pickett's Charge and this time I fiddled a bit with the settings on my scanner and got a satisfactory result! It was taken on Sunday morning under a tent fly soon before Pickett's Charge:

Image (11).jpg
 
Thanks James! I am in the second to last photo in the origanal post. Two guys to the left of the standard bearer.
lol this was my first event so many years ago. The Uadf, jeff, tim weitzen rocky sawyer...
 
Thanks James! I am in the second to last photo in the origanal post. Two guys to the left of the standard bearer.
lol this was my first event so many years ago. The Uadf, jeff, tim weitzen rocky sawyer...

Dave, you mean the one showing the colors of the 28th Mass.? It's interesting we were together in the same unit, if only briefly!
 
Why not tell us some more of what you remember about this event when you were awake!
Man i had never seen so many confederates in my life. Or yanks for that matter.
Did the friday event but remember little of it.
Saturday morning the cav did their thing. A buddy and me snuck into some woods to watch and bumped into a small mix of troops from both sides there to watch the fight. Tense at first but all called a truce. Alot of cav in a smallish dirt field, dust obscured alot but i felt like i was there.
Saturday's fight was incredible. We fielded an 80 man company if i remember correctly. Never saw that again. Died for the first time. The noise was deafening. Got into that bubble, that reenacter thing where the real world is temporarily gone, for the first time.
Sunday was great. the quiet after the canonade woke me up. We fired volley after volley. The rebs did there thing. The battle ended the crowd cheered.
Changed my life.
 
Man i had never seen so many confederates in my life. Or yanks for that matter.
Did the friday event but remember little of it.
Saturday morning the cav did their thing.
A buddy and me snuck into some woods to watch and bumped into a small mix of troops from both sides there to watch the fight. Tense at first but all called a truce. Alot of cav in a smallish dirt field, dust obscured alot but i felt like i was there.
Saturday's fight was incredible. We fielded an 80 man company if i remember correctly. Never saw that again. Died for the first time. The noise was deafening. Got into that bubble, that reenacter thing where the real world is temporarily gone, for the first time.
Sunday was great. the quiet after the canonade woke me up. We fired volley after volley. The rebs did there thing. The battle ended the crowd cheered.
Changed my life.

Thanks, Dave; I reread recently in an old 1988 Gettysburg issue of Blue & Gray Magazine figures of upwards of 13,000 reenactors and 100,000 spectators. It's good to hear something about the cavalry battle because as you indicate, as a rule they go off to do "their thing", I suppose so they hopefully won't hurt anybody else in the process! I think some Union cavalry were still around when we finally made it to the field on the first day of the 1998 event, but my memory of that is pretty dim too.
 
Iirc the dirt field the cav fought on was supposed to be wheat. It was the wheatfieild of july two but dirt. When the cav fought it was a dirt cloud. Unsure where they would have fought if it grew.
 
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I turned 17 at the 125th anniversary of Gettysburg and had this photograph taken of me. I believe the photographer's last name was Kirsch, or something. I was part of an artillery outfit and spent the whole time absolutely enamored by the sheer size of the event. I had done Shiloh's 125th, but I'll never forget the Gettysburg event- absolutely amazing!

The heat was certainly different from what we were used to in Mississippi. I sunburned much easier in Pennsylvania- pretty bad too. We surmised that it might have been because of less humidity or something.

Being the youngest in my outfit, I spent many hours at night up at that barn where they showed silent films and stuff. I wonder if anybody else remembers it. Anyway, There were a lot of younger reenactors who hung out there, to the dismay of the older, hardcore reenactors in my group. But it was fun. Barely got any sleep!!
 
Many great stories here. Quite interestingly enough I remember many of the moments mentioned above as I was a member of the 28th Mass Inf Regt "Irish Brigade" as a drummer boy during the 125th era. (Anyone remember hearing our regiment shout “Faugh-a-Bellagh” for every 50 ft we moved??)

Being field musicians we typically saw the battles from a point of view that a lot of folks didn't. We weren't spectators on the sidelines seeing everything from afar but right in the action just not "on the front lines" per se. Our perspectives were up close but behind the action.

Yes I do remember the whole "Gettysburg week" being quite hot and dry. This was my second year reenacting so it wasn't my first go around. And every so often kids will be kids... The first days battle "McP's Ridge" was my only time "getting shot". Field musicians didn't typically take "hits" because we were typically behind the lines. But this one time I pretended to get "shot" falling backwards (being the 12 yr olds we were goofing around) and one of the doctors thought he'd make a good scenario for the spectators near by and bandaged me up. All the while my fellow drummers, fifers, etc... were all off to the side trying to cover their mouths laughing.

The next two days worth of battles were just as equally hot, dry and long. My memories are of as much dust blowing around as there was gun smoke. Nights didn't seem to cool off much either!

Indeed so many great memories of reenacting back in those days. Even as youngsters, all of us musicians had a great level of appreciation for what the original fighters and all of us as reenactors endured.
 
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… Being field musicians we typically saw the battles from a point of view that a lot of folks didn't. We weren't spectators on the sidelines seeing everything from afar but right in the action just not "on the front lines" per se. Our perspectives were up close but behind the action...

Indeed so many great memories of reenacting back in those days. Even as youngsters, all of us musicians had a great level of appreciation for what the original fighters and all of us as reenactors endured.
Welcome to the forums, @Oledrummerboy ; glad you liked the thread! Here are a couple of photos from ten years later depicting the field music of the Frontier Battalion at the Gettysburg 135th's "Wheatfield" scenario:

135th 20.jpeg


And below, the Frontier Battalion's field music at a very soggy 135th Shiloh we dubbed "Mudlo":

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Many great stories here. Quite interestingly enough I remember many of the moments mentioned above as I was a member of the 28th Mass Inf Regt "Irish Brigade" as a drummer boy during the 125th era. (Anyone remember hearing our regiment shout “Faugh-a-Bellagh” for every 50 ft we moved??)

Being field musicians we typically saw the battles from a point of view that a lot of folks didn't. We weren't spectators on the sidelines seeing everything from afar but right in the action just not "on the front lines" per se. Our perspectives were up close but behind the action.

Yes I do remember the whole "Gettysburg week" being quite hot and dry. This was my second year reenacting so it wasn't my first go around. And every so often kids will be kids... The first days battle "McP's Ridge" was my only time "getting shot". Field musicians didn't typically take "hits" because we were typically behind the lines. But this one time I pretended to get "shot" falling backwards (being the 12 yr olds we were goofing around) and one of the doctors thought he'd make a good scenario for the spectators near by and bandaged me up. All the while my fellow drummers, fifers, etc... were all off to the side trying to cover their mouths laughing.

The next two days worth of battles were just as equally hot, dry and long. My memories are of as much dust blowing around as there was gun smoke. Nights didn't seem to cool off much either!

Indeed so many great memories of reenacting back in those days. Even as youngsters, all of us musicians had a great level of appreciation for what the original fighters and all of us as reenactors endured.

Where you from the New England 28th or the DC/VA 28th? I reenacted for a number of years with the 28th in New England.
 
Where you from the New England 28th or the DC/VA 28th? I reenacted for a number of years with the 28th in New England.
Neither - if you read my account you saw that my original group was from North Texas and I'd met Colonel Moore at the 125th anniversary of the battle of Corinth, Miss. https://www.civilwartalk.com/thread...-and-corinth-oct-3-4-1987.127850/post-1402835 where he invited me and our Union infantry to be a part of his U. O. Battalion at Gettysburg. I think the 28th Mass. was actually from Massachusetts and formed possibly the largest - or at least one of the largest - individual "companies" within Moore's battalion, around 120 men as I recall. It was only by happenstance that my smallest company of around 30 or so and Jeff Grezelk's Floridians of about 80 wound up temporarily "brigaded" with the 28th for the Wheatfield scenario on Saturday afternoon. That occasion was my only real contact with them and it lasted such a short time I don't really remember anything about them.
 
Awesome thread, I make some of the hardcore reenactors roll their eyes when I say one should be more respectful to "mainstreamers" and I do so because of the assertion you made in the beginning that reenacting has a history of its own.

Some of these pictures help me visualize the stories I've heard over the years from many other older reenactors. Its funny you have a picture of the infamous Jack King as I listened to an interesting conversation over the past weekend about him. I always heard he was good guy until he was up on a horse and became General King who was ruthless! I've heard many, many horror stories of him over the years.

I thought I had never met him, until one of my mentors when I started reenacting (I was an artilleryman back then), told me recently I had at the first Pleasant Hill event I attended. Apparently while I was doing something else King rode up and ordered me to hold his horse while he went to the porta-john or something and I not knowing if he was a real officer or just some spectator dressed up like a General told him no as I was busy and I got chewed out afterwards, and supposedly I jumped back at him. The whole episode is a blur to me as I was getting sick at that time, and later that Saturday had to leave because of it for hands down the sickest I've ever been in my life and only time I've ever been bedridden. Who knows perhaps my disposition wasn't very good at the time because of the oncoming illness, but it was a rough ride home as when I layed down it was a week for I could get up and about again. Its just interesting me as I'd thought I never met General Jack King, and just found out that I apparently got in a yelling match with him when I first got into reenacting, I forgot but someone else there didn't. I kinda feel bad I got in a yelling match with him.
 
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