Incredible Sacrifice: Civil War

Some good friends invited our family to a Civil War battle reenactment at Ft. Stevens State Park (Oregon) on Saturday. Its a great hobby for a lot of people. You get to relive history, meet a lot of friends, enjoy the camaraderie of fellow members, and wear era clothing. It's a lot of fun.


For me, though, it hit a sensitive spot. As I was looking over the reenactment; feeling the gigantic boom from the cannons; hearing the spattering of black powder rifles; watching the clouds of smoke sift through the battlefield as men and some women stood vulnerable to their enemies within a few hundred feet; listening to the bugles and the drums cheering on their respective teams. As the drama intensified, you would see soldiers drop from the crowd: sometimes as random individuals disappearing from the midst or often as clumps melting from the crowd of soldiers--usually after loud booms and pops from cannons or group fire. This is where it got me.


As the scene played out before me, I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that this is demonstrating something that happened in real-life. Suddenly empathy for those who lived the real nightmare kicked-in. Fellow United States Citizens, brothers, fathers, faced off in close battle knowing they were more than likely not going to live through it. I could feel the paralyzing fear and anxiety they must have felt as these, often very young men, were thrown-in to possibly face their last moments alive. I could imagine the adrenaline-powered actions as they concentrated on the technical process in operating their guns and acting in faith to the commands of their military leaders, trusting that their efforts, even if short lived, would be most effective.


Then I could imagine the intensity of the moments as some of your best friends fall silent beside you or vainly cry-out in pain--yet you keep your focus on the survival task at hand while in the back of your mind you wrestle with a hurricane of emotion: fear, sadness, anger, despair, helplessness, heart-crushing emotional agony...yet you keep going through the actions of battle, because there is no time to rest.


Towards the end of the reenactment, as motionless bodies lay scattered across the battlefield, with the, much fewer, pops of random gun fired in the distance, a lone bagpiper played a slow, thoughtful version of "Amazing Grace." When the battle was over, provided you survived intact or wounded, ...then, I could imagine, was the time for that hurricane of emotion to break free as the reality of what just happened sank-in. You relive the battle in seemingly slow motion, agonizing over what happened at each moment: what should have happened, and why did it happen this way. I could only imagine that the women who tagged along, just to be with their husbands and, perhaps their sons, were left haunted with a permanent scar for the rest of their lives.



As the reenactors and the audience drained from the battle stage, the vacancy was filled with a solemn feeling of respect, admiration and sadness. The courage the soldiers must have had to act through their fears and face death time and time again. The conviction and the faithfulness to things greater than themselves they must have had to be so willing to trade their lives for it. The sadness that war was the attempt of settling disagreements. Sadness that so many brothers and sisters died in the battles or as consequence of the battles.


In the real Civil War, more than 3 million people fought, 2% of the population (more than 620,000) died in the war. At least in the scripted war I saw on Saturday, those who 'died' were able to get up at the end and continue to enjoy a life that was influenced in one way or another by the real Civil War.


I pray we will all be grateful, and have a lot of respect for the incredible sacrifice our ancestors made in the Civil War and the other great Wars.