Good evening friends, This may be a short post as I have a lot of pictures taken today and it's late. Spent the entire day driving around the Gettysburg Battlefield. So much to see and so much information. This may be a 2 or 3 day post. Nothing will be in chronological order as I'm not that organized, especially at this time at night.

On July 2,1863 163,000 soldiers descended upon Gettysburg. I can have more details tomorrow as we are going on a tour of the battlefield with a licensed guide in our truck. Some of the happenings in the town, the Farnsworth House, now a Tavern, (great food), was occupied by the confederates. They placed a sharpshooter in the uppermost window. You can see all the bullet impacts on the building from the Union soldiers trying to shoot him from who knows how far away. The impacts were colored white at one time so you could see them.

A Young Ladies Seminary was hit by an unexploded artillery shell. It is in the outside wall of the second floor just right of center. You can see the small black dot by the 3rd window from the right.

 
 The story of this happening can be seen on the History posted by the sidewalk.

I hope you can blow these up so you can see them better. If not, let me know and I'll try to do better.



Some info on the battlefield, sad but true. So many young men lost their lives. In one area, near the Historic battle of Little Round Top, lies the area called the Wheat Field. Not a large place, and the field has a lot of large rocks in it. I asked Jean how they could grow wheat with all those rocks there. After a moment of silence, I said, it must have been stone ground wheat. Sorry, I couldn't help myself. During the battle that took place in that field and nearby woods, control switched hands 6 times, and at the end of the fighting, 4,000 soldiers lay dead or wounded.

The Battle of Little Round Top was another very bloody fight. The Union soldiers controlled the top of this hill, very rocky. They had cannon, and some rifleman and sharpshooters. The Confederates attacked from an area called the Devils Den, Slaughter Pen and Valley of Death. All three areas were small and easily defended by the Union. In the picture, the Devils Den is the area of big rocks on the left. Confederate sharpshooters were hiding there. With scopes on their rifles, they were capable of hitting targets at 1000 yards. Little Round Top was only 500 yards away. Union soldiers had to crawl around so not to be a target. The area to the left of the rocks was Slaughter Pen, and the Confederates were sitting ducks there. The Valley of Death is to the right of the rocks, and again the Confederates were easy targets there.

 

One more view from the top of Little Round Top

In this 3 day battle of 163,000 men, total casualties (killed, wounded, captured, and missing) were 23,000 for the Union army and as many as 28,000 for the Confederate army.

More tomorrow.....