Memorial Day 2008

Memorial Day commemorates the fallen soldiers of long ago who died in the battlefields and meadows of Manassas Battlefield Park, Manassas, Virginia.  The 42^nd Virginia Infantry Regiment Re-enactors and the 14^th Brooklyn Company provided the audience a glimmer of the past where brothers from the opposite realm suffered insurmountable defeat and casualties both in body and spirit. It is in this day soldiers from the past are remembered for their selfless acts so a nation that was once separated by ideology can be sewed together into a single weave of fabric which is now the present day United States of America.

On this beautiful spring day, Civil War re-enactors extolled the bravery these young men from the North and the South faced and endured in the 1^st and 2^nd Battle of Manassas. Several thousand lives were lost. These fields were once littered with either dead or dying young men whose bodies were later interned in mounds of mass graves.

Approximately two hundred visitors attended this annual event. Bristowenews.com had the opportunity to sit down with the 42th Regiment re-enactors and discussed the war provisions issued to soldiers at that time. For instance at the beginning of the Civil War, the confederate soldiers were not as well- equipped as the Union soldiers in matters of soldier uniforms and other provisions at the time. According to James Fletcher, it was difficult for a Confederate Officer to distinguished friend from foe. As a result of this lack of uniformity, hundreds of men were killed by friendly fire. Soldiers carried approximately about 40-50 lbs of provisions ranging from ammunition to kitchen utensils. And during the course of the battle, soldiers carried only what was necessary to engage in fighting i.e. bullets, food, blanket, and photographs of loved ones.

This formal military salutation included short verses read by the 42th Regiment describing the bravery and urgency of matters important at the height of the battle followed by the firing of three round blanks of gun powdered shots to the East, and finally the firing of the Ten Pound Parrot Rifle Cannon.

Date Published: 2008-05-28 07:16:08

Section: Holidays 2008,