Huge grey clouds moved in by noon. "This looks like a November sky," I told Andy in the morning, but temperatures went up instead of down.
"I think it will rain by 2 p.m.," he said, "but it's going to be drizzle, since weathermen predicted only a quarter inch for here by tomorrow morning."
Our first stop, Wilderness Battlefield, stretched over rolling hills of mature woods. But in May of 1864, the area, deforested and marred by soot and ashes from foundries, was a tangle of dense undergrowth and brambles. Two main roads pierced these thickets, scene of two days of intense grappling on May 5-6, that ended in a ghastly fiery stalemate, with soldiers on both sides caught in the inferno. We read the interpretive sign. It said, "On no American battlefield did the landscape do more to intensify the horror of combat."
Here Major General Ulysses S. Grant, promoted to general of the army of the U.S. after the war, told Major General George G. Meade, "Lee's army will be your objective point. Wherever Lee goes, there you will go also." Meade obliged, and the Wilderness was the first collision. The two-mile loop trail that incorporated much of Confederate Major General John B. Gordon's May 6 flank attack was for us a pleasant walk in an oak forest with mountain laurel and holly instead of a gloomy crawl through an overgrown thicket of bramble bushes. Some of the heaviest and most confused fighting occurred near Saunders Field. Here the Union repeatedly repulsed Confederate charges. Near the intersection of Brock Road and Orange Plank Road, General James Longstreet was injured by his own men during a flank attack, but the Texans saved Robert E. Lee's life just a short distance away. In the confusion of the Wilderness, only 12 cannon and Lee's staff separated Lee from Grant's forces. When Lee turned to lead the charge and meet almost certain death, Longstreet's Texans screamed, "Lee to the rear!" and wouldn't move until he complied.
"Wait for me," I called to Andy. I tried to read, photograph and walk at the same time. Fighting had swirled around the Catherine Tapp farm, now just a stone marker. Tapp, dirt poor, was worth barely $100 in total, with four cows and seven pigs. At the Higgerson farm, old Pernelia Higgerson berated Union soldiers as they marched over to Saunders Field and back. She said they wouldn't last.
Some time later, with the Confederate army dangerously split, Lieutenant General Ambrose P. Hill and General Thomas Ewing conferenced at the Chewning farm. A hole they cut in the roof allowed them to see Grant pull his forces out and head south. The stalemate was only a psychological victory for the Union. The soldiers cheered him, knowing that heading south was not retreat; there would be no turning back.
Both sides had almost won huge victories at the Wilderness, and both sides inadvertently missed opportunities to dominate in the end. We read later that one good set of walkie-talkies might have changed the whole outcome on either side. When the thickets caught on fire, the Wilderness became an inferno for all, and another year of war followed.
At Spotsylvania Court House Grant's law of attrition impacted Lee. "I'll wear him down," said Grant. At Bloody Angle, a bulge in the Confederate defense, Grant broke through by sending more and more soldiers on the offensive near the Mule Shoe Salient. Heavy fighting, some of the bloodiest in the war, swirled around the Neill McCoull farm on May 10, 1864, and again on May 12. Andy and I walked around the foundation. Quiet fields and groves of trees stretched in every direction from the small rise. McCoull had been away the day of the battle, and his three sisters hid in the basement. They emerged to carnage on May 10. Weeks later, 1,492 Union soldiers were buried in their front yard. Only a grassy knoll remains. In tact earthworks mark Heth's Salient where General Henry Heth repulsed Major General Ambrose Burnside's Union corps. Farther along the Fredericksburg Road Union soldiers held the lifeline to Fredericksburg. Lee tried repeatedly but failed to dislodge them. His biggest gain militarily was the death of the highest general killed in the war, General John Sedgwick. Admonishing his troops about the lack of danger from sharpshooters and their inability to hit anything, Sedgwick was shot through the head by a sharpshooter.
This tumultuous battle embodied the horror of civil war. "It shocks me," said Andy, "how little the generals valued the lives of the soldiers." Grant needed a decisive victory for Lincoln and kept sending in more troops. Lee denied him but lost thousands in the process.
Our weather deteriorated as we walked to Old Salem Church from the parking area. With bullet holes still visible, the red brick church on the corner stood as a symbol of refuge and peace. When battle swarmed around it, the church of about 100 members--20 of them black--sheltered wounded from both armies. Years later a larger congregation donated the building to the federal government as part of the National Military Park when they built a larger sanctuary across the street. The interpretive sign explained how the church remembered the suffering of families. Soldiers from both armies during the Civil War helped themselves to anything they could consume or carry from the small farms in the area. Most of these operated with two or three slaves working alongside the masters. With masters gone to war and slaves emancipated, only women, children, aged and infirm were left to keep farms operating. No wonder the South took years to recover!
Our weather deteriorated as we walked to Old Salem Church from the parking area. With bullet holes still visible, the red brick church on the corner stood as a symbol of refuge and peace. When battle swarmed around it, the church of about 100 members--20 of them black--sheltered wounded from both armies. Years later a larger congregation donated the building to the federal government as part of the National Military Park when they built a larger sanctuary across the street. The interpretive sign explained how the church remembered the suffering of families. Soldiers from both armies during the Civil War helped themselves to anything they could consume or carry from the small farms in the area. Most of these operated with two or three slaves working alongside the masters. With masters gone to war and slaves emancipated, only women, children, aged and infirm were left to keep farms operating. No wonder the South took years to recover!
Traffic around Salem Church lined the road bumper-to-bumper. "Isn't Presidents' Day a big shopping time?" asked Andy. At noon everyone looked for bargains at Central Park Plaza and Sears.
The wind picked up as we drove north toward Washington, D.C. "Twenty-five m.p.h." predicted the weathermen, but temperatures held warm in the 50's, so the wind was only a nuisance. "Still no snow, Sue," said Andy. "No sign of snow today." And the heavy grey skies were not going to give us any either. At 12:21 p.m. rain pelted down. The leading edge of the front was at hand, and it was time to plug Little Red's front passenger window with tissue.
The National Museum of the Marine Corps pleaded for donations of $52.6 million to complete all the displays at the complex in Triangle, Virginia. But the galleries already completed presented an incredible life-size picture of Marine "core" values--honor, courage and commitment--and Corps history since the founding on November 10, 1775.
That was when the Continental Congress authorized Captain Samuel Nicholas, usually considered the first commandant of the corps, to organize two battalions. He recruited at Philadelphia's Tun Tavern, and recruits earned the nickname Leathernecks because of their leather collars. From Day One, Nicholas recruited all able-bodied men without discrimination, and the first Black Marine joined in 1776. 
In addition to collections of objects like weapons, uniforms, letters and 8,000 works of art, life-size action displays invited visitors to feel a part of the scene in what English author Rudyard Kipling called, "The savage war of peace." Displays ranged from an early mission in October 1857 to free hostages taken by John Brown at Harpers Ferry to hand-to-hand combat in Bellau Woods, France for halting the 1918 German advance on Paris to Khe Sanh Hill 881 in 1968 Vietnam, when Marines said, "It was all one big battle" and "We lived like moles." Those Marines learned to stuff socks in their mouths to avoid burst eardrums from exploding bombs."Did you see all the planes?" asked Andy.
"What planes?" I asked. High overhead every display hovered an aircraft typical of the era. I had so involved my senses in the immediate action, I hadn't looked up. Together Andy and I browsed the gallery about Operation New Arrivals when between April and November of 1975, 50,000 refugees from Vietnam, 38 percent of them children, immigrated to the U.S.
Upstairs, the museum included a cafeteria and Tun Tavern, a replica of the Philadelphia bar from 1775. We chose two stools at the far corner and ordered two glasses of blush wine and a triple chocolate caramel brownie sundae to share. "The Marines never had it so good!" said Andy.
"Ooh-rah!" I echoed in response.
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