- Joined
- Feb 20, 2005
- Location
- Ocala, FL (as of December, 2015).
EXCELLENT thread, gentlemen!
Please, PLEASE continue.
Sincerely,
Unionblue
Please, PLEASE continue.
Sincerely,
Unionblue
EXCELLENT thread, gentlemen!
Please, PLEASE continue.
Sincerely,
Unionblue
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...
You were leading the company to our right at p.c. i lay down and fell asleep during the canonade.
Man i had never seen so many confederates in my life. Or yanks for that matter.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.
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:… 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.
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.
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.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.