DAY 15

Thursday October 1, 2009

Woke to a bright sunny morning. Popped a few Toaster Scramblers in the toaster for breakfast and then we were off to Shiloh National Military Park about 20 miles away. Roads are narrow and winding so it takes a while to go anywhere. The woods are very dense and beautiful. Many varieties of oak trees. Fall colors must be incredible here. The marina once again let us use their courtesy van, along with an auto tour cd of the park. We were joined by Diane for the day. She is another Looper from the boat Noah Genda. If you ever have the opportunity to visit this park, don’t pass it up. Unlike other battlefields, this one is very concentrated in a small area. We stopped at the visitor center where we watched a 30 minute movie about the battle. It was very informative for those of us not up on all the history of that time. After the movie we drove through the park following the prompts on the cd. This park was formed with the help of civil war veterans who fought there so everything is completely accurate and very detailed. The battle was not named after a town. Which is what we all thought. But named after a log church, the Shiloh Meeting House, that the fighting took place around. The church collapsed shortly after the battle because it was so
damaged, but the photo is of a reproduction of the original church. The Union army was camped in an area close to the Tennessee River where there was a boat landing. They didn’t think they had anything to fear from the Confederates. One of the regiment commanders felt uneasy about things and sent out a patrol of 250 men. Sure enough, at dawn they ran into practically the entire Confederate army on the march! The battle was on. The Union army was outnumbered. The Union patrol was reinforced but those men withdrew to a sunken old wagon trail where they were able to hold off the Confederate army almost all day. They eventually had to surrender, but by holding them off for the day it bought the time needed for the Union army to be reinforced. Most of the soldiers had never been in battle before and they ran to the river landing trying to escape. Unbeknownst to the Confederates, Union reinforcements were arriving by foot and by river. They had won the day, but not the battle. In the morning the exhausted Confederate army was met by wave after wave of fresh Union soldiers. There were heavy losses on both sides when it was over. A combined total of 23,746 men were killed, wounded or missing. Most were buried in trench mass graves 4 feet deep. Years later, the Union soldiers were exhumed from the mass graves and each buried in the National Cemetery by the river. The Rebel soldiers remain in their mass burial trenches. I picked up an assortment of acorns from Shiloh. I’m hoping my gardening guru friend, Deone, can help me grow them. I thought it would be neat to have an offspring from a tree that witnessed this battle. Now that I think about it, if its illegal to remove anything from a National Park and any Rangers are reading this, I’m kidding about taking the acorns!!!!