The 1st Tennessee had a contingent of five,
larger than last year, although Winston went civilian this time, dressing as
Jefferson Davis. We fell in with the 5th
Kentucky, rather cramped up into a little corner.
It was a good weekend.
Even though all battles were street fights, it seemed more appropriate
since this was the actual location of a skirmish 150 years ago, when the
Federal forces burned the village to the ground.
The weekend did not start so well for Cpl Jeff Carte, who
had somehow managed to forget the entire wood frame for his tent. But being creative rebel soldiers, we
managed to scavenge Cpl Kletzli’s fly.
Cutting the wood for his fly down to size, Carte managed to use the
canvas for Kletzli’s fly as his tent.
He was fortunate that I had also brought my dog tent, so that the ends
of his tent could be covered. When
done, with the odd dimensions of about 12 feet by 5 feet, Kletzli christened
the tent Jeff’s Weiner Dog tent.
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| Jeff's Weiner Dog Tent |
It was probably just as well that Kletzli had to give up his
fly. It felt like there was hardly any
space to move. I imagine, though, that
if we have any more numbers, we’ll be sure to get sufficient space.
Zack Carte got into some kind of motivated work mode that
Friday evening. He made two trips to
the wood pile, loading up a good portion of the bed of his truck each
time. We had more wood than we knew
what do to do with. Winston even had a
tough time using up the wood while he attempted to signal the Soyuz capsule
down.
They did feed us well, with breakfast (biscuits and sausage
gravy) and lunch both days. Lunch on
Saturday included vegetable soup, which everyone thought was good, though I was
not fond of, but I am not much for vegetable soup. Sunday lunch was hot dogs, with chili sauce, which was more to my
liking. No supper was served, so we
were on our own. Fortunately I had my
trusty jowl bacon and eggs I had planned for breakfast, and included frying a
brick of oatmeal.
Saturday brought us a disappointing battle, although we did
have HK Edgerton join us as our flag bearer.
The colonel had the 5th Kentucky wait to one side for the
Yankees to pass, then we were to enter the street and join the battle, where
they would eventually surrender. The
problem was that the Yankees never pushed far enough to get past us, and so we
would have missed out on the battle completely. I looked around and thought that if we ran down the street we
could enter at the far end of town and at least get a fair showing. I had no sooner finished this thought when
Capt. Steiner ordered us at the double-quick down the street, as if he had read
my mind.
The Sunday battle did go much better. We entered the battle at a good point and
made a glorious death.
The one turn-off of the day was about an hour before the
battle, there was a scenario where a group of Yankee prisoners were to be marched
out of town. Since they were short the hundred or so Yankees they needed, they
asked us to galvanize as prisoners for the scenario. I had my navy vest and black slouch hat on, so all I had to do
was take my coat off and I passed for a Yankee (go figure). But most of the rest of us had butternut or
gray kepis, so it was a little more difficult to pass them off as Yankees. Plus it all just felt weird. It seemed to me that they would have been
fine with the smaller numbers. They did
offer us the opportunity to bow out, but I think most of us just went with the
flow, not really thinking about it.
Overall it was a great weekend. The weather could not have been better, even though it was late
in the year. It was a bit nippy during
the early morning hours, but during the daylight hours it was warm enough that we
did not need our greatcoats. Kletzli
has expressed his dislike for street battles, but at this event he gave an approving
nod, since it was in line with the history of the location.
It was an excellent way to end the season.
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