** Please check out my tribute page to two of my Civil War relatives who never made it home **

Monday, November 4, 2013

November 04, 2013



One thing that amazes me most about Gettysburg is that sunrises and sunsets are unpredictable. Some nights you have beautiful pink and orange and purple skies, and some nights the colors go in a totally different direction. The photo above was taken in late February of this year. While I’m absolutely certain it wasn’t, it looks as if the trees in the distance are on fire, their brutal reds and oranges lighting up the sky like some eerie bonfire.


I’m also absolutely certainly the man in the foreground isn’t real, though at a distance it’s sort of hard to tell . . . especially after dark. This is the 2ND Massachusetts Sharpshooters monument perched precariously alongside Sickles Avenue just past the Wheatfield. It’s hard to believe this fellow has been guarding his post for one hundred and twenty-eight years. The barn at the right of the photo is the infamous George Rose farm where many Confederates were laid to rest before being sent South almost a decade later.

 
**HONORED TODAY**

PVT. ORLANDO S. CAMPBELL
Co. K, 111TH Pennsylvania Infantry

Born October 1838 --- Died July 03, 1863 at age 24


Pvt. Campbell enlisted in December 1861, bidding farewell to wife Martha. By the following December he had a baby daughter named Irene who would never know her father . . . he was killed at Gettysburg, felled by a bullet to the head at the age of twenty-four. He currently lies in the Gettysburg National Cemetery.


(c) 2013 Skies of Blue and Gray

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