Civil Warriors

. . . the Wilderness and Spotsylvania again (with apologies to CCR)? 

You know you must have done something right if it is nearly 70 degrees on a December staff ride in Virginia.  That was the case when I traveled again to Virginia a week or so ago to help out the good folks at Fort Lee on their end of course staff ride of the Wilderness and Spotsylvania Campaign.  Accompanying me to Petersburg from Fort Leavenworth this time around were Brad Wineman and Mark Gerges, while Chris Stowe and Bob Kennedy of the Fort Lee teaching team, and Chris Keller from Fort Belvoir’s team rounded out the instructional team.  We did have a little rain early on the day of the ride, which we did on Monday the tenth, but it was a very small price to pay for the great weather we enjoyed most of the day.  Then, of course, our flight back to Kansas City the next day was cancelled due to the ice storm, leaving my travelling companions and I sitting around Dulles Airport for six hours waiting for the next flight.  But we all made it back, with Brad and Mark not only having enjoyed the ride, but taking advantage of the flight delay to further familiarize themselves with the culinary delights offered by Five Guys.

Posts have appeared here on this ride twice already this year here and here, and there is not too much to add.  We followed the same basic series of stands as we did the first two iterations this year, with one significant change at the end due to a salutary development at the park.  These were Ellwood, Saunders Field, Tapp Farm, Brock Road intersection, Laurel Hill/Sedgwick Monument, Doles’s Salient, and walk from Bloody Angle parking area to Landrum Ridge to Mule Shoe apex to Bloody Angle.  The change came at the end, as we discovered on the recon on the ninth that the road to “Lee’s Last Line” was now open, with a parking area near where the park service has erected a replica of the log breastworks along a short section of the line.  So instead of doing the last stop of the ride at the McCoull House, we did it there.  As you can see by the photo above on the left, the park service has done a pretty good job on this—and that it was rather late in the day when we got to the last stop.  The photo on the right is of my (obviously unimpressed) daughter in front of the display we found at the National Air & Space Museum last month that contains Lee’s and Grant’s chairs from the McLean House and the remnants of the famous “Bloody Angle” tree.