Tuesday, February 14, 2006
Alphabet Soup
As regular readers know, I have been to some pretty amazing places, but the place we visit this week in Alphabet Soup, in the "v's" is the only place, including great cathedrals, they involuntarily hushed me. It's the Civil War battleground in Vicksburg, Mississippi.Upon entry, one simply senses that you are entering a place of great suffering and sacrifice, a place of honor and a place of sorrow.
The thing that stunned me most, I think, was the physical proximity of enemies. The current monument/battleground is almost littered with markers of all sizes, shapes and adornment, marking the location of various units on both sides of the seige and battle. Here you look from marker to marker for artillery units. THESE ARE FAIRLY FAR APART! Infantry placements were terrifyingly close, you really could "see the whites of their eyes."Suddenly all those phrases about "brothers killing brothers" took on a horrifying aspect I had never before considered. It was literally possible to have to look your brother or cousin recognizably in the eye and pull the trigger. There was no "covering fire" or "over the horizon" you were shooting a man, often a man you knew, as sure as if he was standing in a room with you. Small ravines, just yards wide, defined battle lines in some places.
Silence was the only possible response. I thought of my northern upbringing, but my beloved southern family and wondered, "Could I have pulled the trigger if I saw cousin XXX over there?"
Amidst the awe and solemnity, there was one thing that grabbed the engineer in me and excited him in so many ways. That is what you see here -- the carcass of the ironclad "Cairo." I thought of the picture of the battle between the Merrimac and the Monitor that was in probably a half-dozen history books I had studied in school and never dreamed I would see one of them. The Cairo was the first ship ever sunk by an electriclly activated mine, sunk not far from this battleground in the Yazoo river. It was raised after 100 years and what they could get now rests here.The historical wonder is soon replaced again with awe as one walks the decks of this ancient warrior. So cramped, so claustrophobic, it was amazing anyone could serve aboard them. Protection from guns and boilers and other machinery was virtually non-existant. This was not the glamourous duty I imagined from the pictures in my history books. I could not help but think it was almost as easy to get killed by the duty as the enemy.
But my engineer's excitment was easily muted. All one had to do was turn his head to catch this sight. The cemetary may be the most sobering sight of all. You see here but a small, small portion of it -- it seems to go on forever. So many dead.You cannot help but be silent...respect demands it.
Related Tags: Vicksburg, Civil War, ironclads, battlegounds, awe, silence, reverence, respect
