Member Photos

[thesummerqueen]

I went to the Battlefield today. It's been a loooong time since I went tramping around there. Used to be dad, a hard army yank, would let us have a run there with the dog while he'd try to regale us with military strategy.

The place would be almost desolate if there weren't tours and hikers and the traffic on the roadways. It's miles of hills covered in waving grasses, until you hit the patchwork of forests that continue on into the Shenandoah mountains.



I came up on this marker:


and then I went down into the tree line myself. It was like being inside a bowl, and you have to try to charge over the lip without quite knowing what was there.


It's different because it's nearly winter here now, but in the summer this place is a stifling area to hide in. Even in late fall the bracken can be difficult to move through and in a hot, humid month, with wool uniforms and full gear and still air inside the trees it can get murderous.


Stonewall Jackson's monument in the far distance up the hill


You crouch down in the grass and you see how men were able to sneak around fields or crawl around maybe undetected - as long as it was a month where the grass was living and the rain hadn't matted it down, it would ripple in the wind and no one would be the wiser for the movement.


The house on "Henry House Hill"

Henry House Hill is a location near Bull Run in Virginia. Named for the house of the Henry family that sits atop it, the hill begins near the road of Centreville, Virginia, after Warrenton, Virginia, to the today's U.S. Route 29, the Warrenton Turnpike. It is a slow, constant rise toward the south over a length of approximately 730 meters. This hill was an important site of the battles of First and Second Bull Run (also known as First and Second Manassas) in the American Civil War. The battle raged on the north side of the hill in predominantly open grass country; the south side was relatively closely covered with trees. The hill received its name from Dr. Isaac Henry, who lived with his family in a house on the plateau of the hill. On July 21, 1861, the house was inhabited by his widow, Judith Carter Henry, and their two sons. The 85 year old woman was bed-ridden and unable to leave the house. Mrs. Henry was mortally wounded when a projectile of the Union artillery crashed through the bedroom wall and tore off one of her feet and inflicted multiple injuries, from which she died later that day.

Their graves


Maybe because I'm used to sweeping Gone With the Wind type ideas, the cramped interiors of Civil War era houses always amuse me. How did women manage in those hoop skirts?

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Old bayonets...and a reflection of my trusty chucks...




So I'm trying to get pictures of some of the instruments used in artillery, and dude behind the display looks like he's straight pissing in the waterfountain.

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Then we move to the other side of 29. First, I'd like to introduce you to the intersection that stole most of my life when I lived here:



Guaranteed at least 45 minute wait on a good day. Hour and a half on a bad evening.

But here at the intersection is the famous Stone House that was turned into a field hospital. In the lower left hand corner you can see a big dude taking pictures. This is a displaced Person of Wal-Mart. When I went to take pictures of the front of the house, he was bent over with his ass hanging out of his pants. He also mistook my car for his (they were both silver, but his was an Asian make and mine is a busted Ford coup so...).





Looking back across 29 where I had been:


Also, went to dad's - horses, dogs, football, old farts reminiscing about their college days (it was the OSU vs Michigan game. And then VA tech slaughtered UVA [smug look] I love my Hokie boys).