LOOKING BACK

Sorry that my postings haven't been as frequent as of late. Lot of challenges going on behind the lines that I can't speak on at the moment. Always appreciate the visit and the words you all bring. "FayetteNam" is a lonely outpost. Life on the base can often be a very monotonous thing-the same physical training every morning, the drive to the base/office-I know it's the same back out in the world for a lot of folks -or maybe not that many because of the Dep(rec)ession. There's not a lot of Army video projects to do at the office. So one must practice the art of "nondoing" or "looking busy". The NCO's know this and frequently have to create things for us to do from the most mundane(sweeping/mopping/servicing the Hummvee) to soldier training exercises...it's truly a challenge many of days...The action seems to be out there on deployment... Anyway, last friday our commander took us out on a field trip to nearby Bentonville, NC where one of the last major Civil War battles was fought between the North/South. I was kinda resistant to the idea of going simply because we were going into Johnny Reb country and I wasn't in the mood to see some good ol' Southern pride flying in the sky bka the "Stars and Bars." It's bad enough to see that flag on license plates and stickers around the base. It reminds you that just because we wear all green, doesn't mean we're on the same team. So our unit goes to Bentonville where our Commander gives us a history lesson about the battle. This was the second Civil War battlefield I've been to. In 1987, I was a reenactor extra in the movie "Glory" that told the exploits of the all Black 54th Mass. Regiment. It was cool to have briefly participated in that movie but being a Civil War reenactor on the regular- representing the 54th wasn't my thing. Anyway, we were at the Bentonville battlefields and I felt a bit of some weird energy. Not as intense as I felt while filming Glory -where we camped out and filmed on the actual battlefields. Nevertheless, it was reminder of what Sherman once said, "War is Hell." The upside to the visit was the discovery of a photo in the Visitor's Center of a Union soldier with a young runaway slave.

The picture mentioned that the soldier, a volunteer from Connecticut, took the young brotha back with him to Norwich, Connecticut after the war. I wonder what became of them and the relationship that developed. I wonder if they have any descendants that are aware of this obscure Civil War footnote. Something for me to investigate at some point in time. Also I came across a piece of human remains near a burial plot. I took the bone fragment and put it in the bosom of an old tree before I left. I didn't want to bring back any more dead folks with me. I got enough following me already.