August 22-24, 2008
This was an "interesting" event. It was an encampment, but it was in a peculiar place...more on that later.
This was a fun event with the 20th Maine. Apparently, unbeknowst to me (not a Maine native), Joshua Chamberlain who was entangled with the 20th Maine at Gettysburg especially, lived in Brunswick, ME and every year the town has a weekend celebration. It was very nice and an exceptional way to get in touch with the public. The best times for us to talk to people seem to be Ft. Knox and now this event. They seem less afraid of us if we are not either robbing them of their fine jewelry (their fine women, too) or shooting at the Yankee's in traditional encampment which requires people to be walking distance over a contorted field, that is definitely not handicapped accessible.
Well, what struck me about the site was that it was on this median strip between the road and it was literally in the center of town. The street lights took a little out of the camping experience, but hey, we had access to a real bathroom. Which leads me to another conundrum, we were camped across the street from Joshua Chamberlain's house...and behind the statue... Now logically one would think the 20th Maine would want to camp there, but after seeing the foot traffic, I think they had more visitors than us, and they had more of the larger tents so they would not have fit where we were, we barely fit!
Our camp. Do you see?!?! We had very little room to work with!!
Joshua Chamberlain's house. I highly recommend the tour. The house is an amazing piece of architecture!
The locals were a scream! All weekend we had people shrieking out the car windows, one person shouted "The British are coming!" as he went by, another made a pirate sounding "Arrgh." I guess the 20th Maine had some teenage kids walk into their camp on Saturday night & they very loudly wondered if there were people in the tents. Well, the one who opened a tent and found a Union soldier staring back at him was more than a little surprised. Brings new meaning to the words, "Restless Natives."
Here is our darling young Miss Kate spinning wool thanks to Sandy's Spinning Wheel. I could not do half the things this girl can do at her age.
Here is the 15th at Chamberlain's statue. We behaved.
This was fun, the 15th and the 20th Maine had a Prisoner exchange on Saturday. You know people just have such a good time at these small events. The Captain's of the companies were socializing a little as the prisoners were exchanged (our soldier was a little more beat up than their man...) and making some jokes about things.
Well, once we got our badly beaten comrade back to camp, Surgeon Nulle treated him/her. Methinks Deb(2) needs to work on her acting because she was trying really hard not to laugh throughout the experience and kept saying this funny little "ow. ow, ow, ow. ow" It was the cutest thing!
Practice on the lawn.
On to the next Post!
Dave & Captain Pratt reloading.
Captain Pratt was wounded (once again) in battle and carried back to camp to be treated by the Major Nulle.
Dave shoots at some Yankees.
Here are some members of the 20th Maine who were kind enough to pose with Joshua Chamberlain's statue after the fight.
On Sunday we held a Memorial service at the grave of Joshua Chamberlain. It was very nicely done and actually one person wondered what Chamberlain would think of re-enactors from both the 20th Maine and the 15th Alabama coming to honor his continued effect upon American History.
