Field Trip

My kids may hate me when this is over.

In a couple of weeks I may have four days off in a row. I am seriously looking at my schedule and my checkbook, pondering a two day trip to Vicksburg with the kids so they can see their great great great grandfather's name on the Wisconsin Memorial at Vicksburg, MS.

I know we've covered this here at the Bund, but John Foster, Corporal, F Company, 25th Wisconsin Regiment, served in the Vicksburg campaign and is listed on the Monument along with almost a dozen other Fosters and thousands of Wisconsinites. My children, during their last visit to the ancestral home in NE Minneapolis, got to see and dry fire the Model 1863 Springfield .50 cal muzzle loading rifle John carried throughout his Civil War service. (Ethan even drove the bayonet into a 110 year old maple beam deep enough to cause me severe concern I wouldn't be able to get the damned thing out! Who'd have thought a 9 year old would take to bayoneting like such a pro?)

So why would they hate me?

Today, 4 July, 2010, marks the 147th anniversary of the surrender of Vicksburg. It is the pivotal strategic victory the Union forces needed to defeat the Confederacy. As much as I loved Gettysburg, as absolutely impressive as that fields is, we here at the Bund know that battle was a MISTAKE. Vicksburg, however, had to be taken for the Union to stand a chance. The initial assault on Vicksburg began in late May 1863. Damned hot. The only thing hotter than Vicksburg on the 4th of July? Vicksburg two weeks later. The kids will be borderline heatstroke by the time they climb the Great Redoubt and other geographical landmarks of the battlefield. Will that stop them? No. Will I stop them? Hell no. My fat ass will be right next to them. But by the end we will be hot and exhausted and they may very well hate me.

No matter. When they do the same thing with THEIR kids, I'll be somewhere else in air conditioned comfort thinking "Damn, it's hot out there."