Confederate Gray…

A story was told to me of a battalion of officers & enlisted men, lost during the battle of Gettysburg. These men all from the south, strong, righteous in their beliefs and battle hardened, would be hard to just kill and bury or hide from site.

Nonetheless they were lost, totally, nothing ever found of them again…until…

Camping at Gettysburg, 200 years after the Civil war, during a reenactment of the great battles fought there, we were eating dinner outside the camper, as it was hot inside.  We were cooking hot dogs over the fire on a beautiful star lit night, when a mist descended over our place of refuge. Out of that mist came four men, all in Confederate gray, sporting muskets of the time, uniforms clean and well arranged, men themselves quite clean shaven and as clean as a military man can be during the horrors of war…

They came over to our fire stating in a deep southern drawl, how good our food smelled and we offered them some, no problem, there was plenty, want some water too? They gladly accept our contribution of water, told us they had a chore down the road apiece and would return to accept our hospitality in a short time.

Off they went, then fireworks we thought we heard, in the direction they went, we just paid it no mind, this was a time of rejoicing, many had brought their own fireworks…

These four men never did return to accept the food we offered. We thought they came upon their friends and stayed the night with them and gave it not another thought. During the time of their visit however, a boy friend of one of our kids, who had accompanied us on our trip here this year, was also an excellent sketch artist. He had been sitting at the dinette inside the camper and had been sketching, as was his habit, wherever it was he went. The four men had their uniforms sketched, as he was better at uniforms and clothing than faces and like that. He also made sure to sketch their military insignia to check on later when he got to talk to the actual re-enactors he would meet the next day…

The next day came, and off we went to look through the museum, talk to the men doing the actual re-enactment and so on. Brian, as his name was, brought his sketch pad, again his habit and was showing the sketches he had done up to that point. When he showed the sketches of the men that had visited our campsite the prior night, no one could identify the epaulets and insignia the men wore. The actual historian that oversaw the re-enacted battles was called in to identify them…

No insignia’s such as those have been ever worn, since the loss of the battalion from the south. In honor and respect no one ever did wear them again, in any form since the 1860’s. This intrigued us, and the historian still checked with ever man jack in the re-enactment, none of whom wore that insignia, as to respecting the lost battalion…

Where did these men come from? Were we visited by men from the lost battalion? Did they accept our water just before the battle that killed them or took them away or how ever they were permanently lost?  Were the fireworks we heard, really gunfire, as they defended themselves on the other side of this reality against a real aggressor of some kind?  All good questions, none able to be answered, in this lifetime, by us, maybe by God, or the aggressor that took these men to their own reality…

Note: that this story was told and retold, as many have come upon these men, always offering them food or water or something in return for their visit…go, maybe you will meet them like did the person passing on this story to me…

                        ©ed – 3/25/04