Our tour was at 08:30am, and on time our guide arrived, a
very pleasant chap named Chuck Burkell. He’s a licensed tour guide, and had spent
about 15 years in Federal service before becoming a guide. He has to undergo a test to qualify, as he has
to be able to authoritatively inform guests and answer almost any question
asked of him.
So we got in our car (he drove, which we all were happy
with), and started off to the north of the town. We were very lucky to get a
perfect day and it could not have been better for our tour.
We started where the confederate soldiers and the union line
first skirmished, on the Chambersburg road into Gettysburg (almost all the
towns around here are suffixed with –burg!) In fact all around the town and
site there are monuments and markers, not just where an action took place but
right down to regiment or company level, so almost all sites are marked where a
unit stood and fought. It’s incredibly well recorded.
From there we drove down past the Lutheran seminary (that
gives Seminary Ridge its name) past where the confederate armies were camped in
the treelines and to the famous peach orchard, devils den, and Little Round Top
where Day 2 saw some of the most desperate fighting take place.
Then we drove to the angle and saw the ground across where what
is now knows as ‘Pickett’s charge’ took place on Day 3, and which saw the end
of the Confederate hopes to win or force a negotiated settlement. One can hardly imagine what took place as
thousands of confederate troops marched across wide open ground into the
waiting guns of the Union defenders.
This was a really great experience – having Chuck describe
the events and the actions, as well as give deep historical background to the
characters involved really brought this to life, and it was a real treat and privilege
to see and walk the same ground as those troops did all those years ago. In
fact last year was the 150th anniversary of the battle and this was
still being noted around the place. As I mentioned before, almost all parts of
the battlefield, all round the town, are marked with monuments or markers
showing where individual units stood and fought. All the cannon pieces are
arranges as they would have been at that time of the battle, so the attention
to accuracy is astounding. In fact the US National Parks services is even
buying land to try and restore it to the condition it was in 1863!
So after the tour was over, we bid our farewells to Chuck
and went into Gettysburg for one final look around and a quick lunch before we started
ion the road to Washington DC.
The drive to Washington was quick, only about an hour and a
half, and we found our Hotel (Phoenix Park Hotel) quickly. There were some road
works and a bit of congestion, but nothing that took us off our track.
The Hotel was a delightful place, quite an old one, with
very small but beautifully appointed rooms – so we dumped our gear then returned
the rental car to Union station.
That night we had dinner at the Dubliner, a pub attached to
the Hotel that has one of the best ranges of Irish Whiskies I’ve ever seen! In
fact it was so good we nicked one of the menus for future reference.
That marked our last night in Washington in the end of the
first stage of our journey – tomorrow it’s catching the Amtrak for a trip to
New York.
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