Road Trip Update: Antietam

(Note: Click any of the images below to make them larger)

If nothing else, visiting Antietam is a humbling yet fascinating experience. Constantly faced by the irony of the horrors seen here contrasted with the natural beauty of the landscape...



It was littered with monuments to the various regiments who fought here as well as various artillery pieces:



As well as visual information signs that explain what happened here along Antietam Creek:



And some of the significant buildings that were involved, farm houses, and Dunker Church shown here:



There were also information signs that noted the locations of the various regiments and their movements throughout the battle. The battlefield is huge... fortunately it has a road winding around it to see everything... it'd be a hell of hike otherwise.

Here are a few of the information signs and the area they were describing:





The battlefield is full of otherwise innocuous areas that were the scene of true horror... like this spot in the woods:



As the sign there notes... 2300 men were dead or wounded within 15 minutes of fighting here (and that was just on the Union side):



This spot is called "bloody lane"...



In the picture on the left here you can see why... after the battle it was literally filled with Confederate bodies up and down it:



That building at the end of bloody lane is the observation tower that was erected to view the battlefield from above...



Lots of famous folks have been up to the top... including Patton and Eisenhower if I heard the ranger correctly... so that gets another feet picture:



A view of bloody lane from above:



Some other views of the battlefield:







Would have taken more shots up there but the high school kids raided the tower shortly after I got up there...

Here's some of them next to the Irish Brigade monument. They didn't seem impressed by the big names who had stood at the top of the tower... the general consensus was that "it sucked" but hopefully there was at least a few who appreciated it...



Here's Burnside's Bridge... where General Burnside was under orders to get his men to the other side at any cost... unfortunately his men had to charge from open field to a narrow shooting gallery to do so... with Georgian riflemen picking them off from the high ground:





You can see they had effective cover for their sniping while the Union guys had nothing but prayer on their side... which apparently ain't bulletproof...



The last view of many men trying to cross:



The last view of those who ran faster:



The regiment that finally got across was apparently promised whiskey if they made it... what a man will do for booze... yeesh.



There's some bitter irony behind the story as well... as a Confederate pointed out... Antietam Creek ain't all that deep... they could have crossed pretty much anywhere else and only got their britches soaked.



And sure enough... it's still only a foot or two deep even in the middle of the creek:



Remember that Harpers Ferry battle I talked about in the last post? It's what allowed Lee to invade the North and make his stand at Antietam undistracted from the rear... and after Harpers Ferry fell, reinforcements were able to arrive to deter the Union army from chasing him down (something that cost the Union general his command afterwards)...



Here's a few views of the area of the final assault (from left to right) chasing down (technically up this hill) the Confederate army under Lee until Hill's reinforcements arrived:







And a very humbling end stop:



For such a sad place it was a truly beautiful one:







"Not for themselves, but for their country..." the inscription on the statue reads:



A great deal of the graves are unknown soldiers... some unknown as to whether they were on the Union or Confederate side... they were marked by their location and a number... just a number...





The view out behind the cemetery...





This one seemed to catch the mood fairly accurately... all this beauty stained by war...



After this it was time to come back home...

Though I must admit it was hard to go west instead of east when I came to the interstate... one way took me home... the other way meant more road tripping to Washington D.C... but I'll go back there again some other day.

Now it's time for some rest and rehabilitation... my boots feel so small walking in all these big footsteps.