In honor of the 150th Shiloh coming up on us, let me regale you with a story from the
last time I went to Shiloh.
With my faithful traveling partner, “Goomb”, we struck out on a 680 mile journey
to Shiloh. We met up with a caravan. There was Keith, Hal, Bill, Happy and a few other
dwarves I can’t recall at this moment. It was a long treacherous trek taking us
through frightening places like Atlanta and Eastabooga. Not once did we get lost as we had
the guidance of the Comet Hyakutake, or was it Hale–Bop? Nevertheless, it was bright
in the sky when we arrived. Little did I know that would be the last time I saw the sky
that weekend. The event hosts must have thought little of us when they chose our camp to
be the furthest away from everything – an up a fair little slope. Today we are all
grateful to them as it turned out to be the very best of sites. The reason? You see, it
began to rain shortly after we got our tents up and our trucks parked. It rained all night
and most of the next day. And all that water ran right through Keith's tent and down
to the bottoms where the very best camps got all full up with water.
We formed up for battle that morning just like you'd expect. There we were,
soaking wet, ready to whup up on some Yanks when this here fellow comes riding up and
tells us the event’s been cancelled because the general forgot to bring his boat. I
don’t know who said it, but I distinctly heard, “You better find someone for us
to fight or we’ll go shirts and skins, and fight amongst ourselves!”.
About then, someone noticed that there were some Yankees in their camp packing up to go
home. They must have forgot their boat too. We decided we should ought to give them
a proper sendoff. The Battalion marched over and formed a beautiful line 50 or 60 yards
out. And then we shot them. Over and over again. We poured volley after volley into their
camp. Before long a few came out from behind their pick up trucks and started firing back.
Then they managed to get up a good company. It wasn’t long and we had a full growed
battle going on. I looked around and spotted Steve Burke just as he complained that nobody
was taking any hits. Then he jumped spread eagle into ankle deep mud. “How’d it
look?”, he asked. “Fine Steve, it was the best hit on the field – the only
hit, but still the best.”
While we were shooting and whooping and having a fine battle, I look back behind us and
saw the North Carolinians coming up. “Them Palmetto boys aren’t going to have
all the fun!” And behind them Georgia was taking the field. And then the artillery
began firing. They weren’t shooting at anything in particular, but must have figured
if we were going to fire our guns, they would too.
We eventually went back to camp where we spent the rest of the day watching people get
stuck in the mud. That one fellow must have appreciated our display of regard when he fell
down while pushing that little car. He bowed in salute but went over so far his pants came
down. I wouldn’t have thought for a moment that I’d see a comet and a full moon
in one weekend! I guess you just never know.
