Don't forget...today marks the start of two savage battles

[Rami]

Good afternoon,

To make sure the importance of history is not lost on us, remember that today marks the beginning of two bloody and savage battles.

1) The Battle of the Somme began on this day, exactly one hundred years ago: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/0/te...-of-the-somme/

2) This also marks day one of the Battle of Gettysburg, which was one of the most pivotal battles of the entire American Civil War.

[rwatson]

Salute to men of honor. I visit Gettysburg and Antietam yearly. As a Veteran of Vietnam I stand in awe of their dedication to their beliefs.

[Blood_Hawk23]

When my dad was stationed in Virginia, I was able to go to Yorktown and Williamsburg. Definitely a different breed back then.

[MaskRider]

I grew up in Northern Virginia. Falls Church. My Dad, who passed back in 2013, and I loved nothing better than to jump in the car and drive to one of the many Civil War Battlefields that were just part of the landscape around there. That always included every couple of years a trip to Gettysburg to tromp around and explore some odd corner of the battlefield. My old man was from Massachusetts, a little town called Beverly. My Mom from a little town name Lagrange, GA. The grounds of the house that she grew up in backed onto the RR tracks and the house itself was used as a hospital during "the war" treating wounded evacuated south from Chattanooga and other points north. I had kin who fought at Gettysburg. The old family "retainer", the women who more or less raised my mom and took care of the house was the daughter of a slave, named Ola Cameron. Anyway, I wax nostalgic.

When ever we would go to Gettysburg we'd always make a point to stand at the North Carolina Memorial on Seminary Ridge, look across over to the copse of trees on Cemetery Ridge and my Dad would recite from the following (from William Faulkner's "Intruder In the Dust":

“For every Southern boy fourteen years old, not once but whenever he wants it, there is the instant when it's still not yet two o'clock on that July afternoon in 1863, the brigades are in position behind the rail fence, the guns are laid and ready in the woods and the furled flags are already loosened to break out and Pickett himself with his long oiled ringlets and his hat in one hand probably and his sword in the other looking up the hill waiting for Longstreet to give the word and it's all in the balance, it hasn't happened yet, it hasn't even begun yet, it not only hasn't begun yet but there is still time for it not to begin... yet it's going to begin, we all know that, we have come too far with too much at stake and that moment doesn't need even a fourteen-year-old boy to think This time. Maybe this time.... ”

― William Faulkner, Intruder in the Dust

I've often imagined myself that 14 year old boy.

MR

PS: Also, standing at "The Angle", to this day, brings a lump to my throat.