Remembering

Honoring all the veterans who served in peace and war.  And a special nod for the fast passing generation of WW2 vets who spent their time in the less well known campaigns; slogging up the Italian peninsula in 1944-45, at the Hurtgen Forest in the fall and early winter of 1944, in any number of island campaigns in the Pacific, in those final endless months of the fighting on Luzon.

And for those who went through the final two years of stalemate in the Korean War or the countless small and forgotten actions in Vietnam.

As a Civil War Roundtable member, I'll add this account from a Union veteran who survived the war.

From the Civil War memoir of Private William Fisk of the 2nd Vermont, recounting his experience at The Bloody Angle at Spotsylvania Court House.

But the most singular and obstinate fighting that I have seen during the war, or ever heard or dreamed of in my life, was the fight of last Thursday [May 12] . . . The rebels were on one side of the breastwork, and we on the other.  We could touch their guns with ours.  They would load, jump up and fire into us, and we did the same to them . . . Some of our boys would jump clear up on to the breastwork and fire, then down, reload and fire again, until they were themselves picked off. . . . I visited the place the next morning and though I have seen horrid scenes since this war commenced, I never saw anything half so bad as that.  Our men lay piled one top of another, nearly all shot through the head.  There were many among them that I knew well . . . On the rebel side it was worse than on ours.  In some places the men were piled four or five deep, some of whom were still alive . . . I have sometimes hoped, that if I must die while I am a soldier, I should prefer to die on the battle-field, but after looking at such a scene, one cannot help turning away and saying, Any death but that.

After returning from the war, Fisk became a Congregational minister.