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Date Posted: 04:40:09 11/20/01 Tue
Author: Steve Balthrop
Subject: Re: My observations and reflections
In reply to: Corn 's message, "My observations and reflections" on 20:04:23 11/19/01 Mon

This was undoubtably the best Texas event I have been to. The
location was wonderful and the skirmishing in the thickets really
gave it an authentic flavor that spectator battles never will.
Posting the relief on the picket line at 4:00 AM during the
shooting star show was exceptionally memorable.

I didn't see a farb in the field until the general battle. If I
had my druthers, I wish we could have foregone the shoot-em-ups,
but even that it wasn't so bad 'cause us immersion folks both
blue and gray stood out in the crowd like purebreds amongst
mongrels.

Being able to capture prisoners was a new experience, and I even
didn't mind being a prisoner myself (although it would have been
a terrible thought to know I was headed for, say, Camp Douglas!).

As far as improvements, I know I sure need to improve my first
person but figure that like all things in this hobby it is an
ongoing process and I think that this might be everyone's biggest
problem. I believe I have learned that it's something that
definitely has to flow naturally from everyone else it just ain't
gonna sound right. If it's forced it sounds real hokey and yahoo-
esque.

One high point for me personally was falling in again with Don
Smith and getting to meet the other 15th Texas fellers-Phil,
Danny, and Ryan. (an aside-did you yanks actually make the last
two fill in your sinks?:) )

I also enjoyed meeting and marching with Tim Martin, his son,
Russell (?) Johnson, and the boys from Company I of the 9th. Good
men all and I hope to fall in with all of them again some time.

Things like posting pickets 24hr. a day, being formed up for a
fight that never materialized, irregular sleep, mud etc.-fellers,
this is where REAL "Civil War Moments" happen! Thank the Lord, we
will never know the horror and death of their battlefield, nor
the pain and sickness, nor the grief and sadness from seeing
friends killed and maimed, nor will us Southrons see our country
and way of life shattered. What we can do is embrace the tedious
and the rough ordinary life of the ordinary soldier. We can
subsist as they did and feel the cold, the wet, the hunger, the
fatigue. At times I'm cold, tired, and/or wet it is as though the
good Lord favors me with a quick glance at one page in the book
of the common soldiers' life. It is then I think about all those
men on both sides and what they put up with for 4 years-if they
lived. It is then I know why I pursue living history.

Liendo this year gave me a moment or two like that.

Jeremy, Tom-y'all done real good.

Yonder
humble but proud member of the Immersion Mess

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