Perryville

Sharpsburg 150

Big Sam's perspective.

Antietam

                                             Video from the others' perspective.

Sharpsburg pictures

Sharpsburg

Shiloh Part 1

                               Found these on youtube while looking for Sharpsburg videos.

Shiloh part 2

            I found these on youtube while looking for Sharpsburg videos - for your viewing pleasure.

Kentucky's Fiercest Fighters

One of our newest members,EJ, has decided to write a  series of stories about our adventures.  Here's the first installment:

Chapter One

        Hey Y’all!  My name is Edward Cox.  Please call me E.J.  I am here to tell ya about the fiercest bunch of fighters ever to roam the bluegrass of Kentucky.  They were called the Orphan Brigade and I was part of the 5^th Kentucky Company B.  We called up when the Yankee invaders came to the southland in 1861.  We were a Confederate unit while some of our brothers went to fight for the Yanks.  Even some of the boys that came with me from Ireland to escape the oppression of the English went to fight for the Yankees!  Our Captain’s name is J. Steiner and I will get to the other members of the outfit during the course of the stories in this account.

            The story I am about to tell y’all is something that no history book will acknowledge today.  Just a few days into the creation of our unit, we went with a contingent of Partisan Rangers and an artillery battery into Ohio to destroy the railroad lines in north-eastern Ohio.  We went through Ohio so fast that we did not even encounter resistance until we got to a little town called Carrollton. 

            We were camped and resting after a hard week’s march and one of the rangers came into camp and informed us of a Yankee artillery battery that was camped just east of our position.  We formed up and headed out to take care of said battery.  We came up to where the Ranger scout had spotted the battery and we set up an ambush.  I was positioned in some brush with my file partner, Sam, and the Captain to my right and a Ranger and the rest of the Company to my left.  I lay down and loaded my rifle and then started looking for something to shoot at.

            The way the brush was positioned and the way the land was, the only target I had was a Yankee captain that must have been at least seven feet tall.  Then we opened fire on them.  I fired right at that captains head but somehow I missed.  I loaded and then fired and I MISSED again.

            By then the Yanks definitely knew we were there and they started firing their artillery at us.  Thankfully, by the grace a’ God they overshot us.  The Captain led a small group of boys over the rise in the land and found what was on the other side.  There was regular cannon, a mountain howitzer, a mortar, a group of five regular infantry, and some odd contraption of a gun with eight barrels and a crank.  They came back to the rest of us and we formed up and got ready to charge them. 

            Then we charged.  We ran up that hill a hoot’ n and a holler ’n and making a big ole raucous.  Them Yankee tar-heels were so scared that they stopped fire ’n for a split second and almost looked like they was gonna retreat.  Then they opened up.  We bagged a couple and then we almost overran their line when that one odd-looking gun started up.  He took out part of the left wing of our advance and I my-self was hit in my canteen. 

            The force of the hit knocked me over and I thought for a second that I was really hit.  Then I sort a patted my body to see where and then I felt my canteen and the friggin’ bullet had been deflected by the canteen and through my left brogan.  I sure thank the dear Lord for sav’in my rump.  I sort a crawled and rolled away from the open field and into the bushes.  I got back up and saw what was goin on.

            The entire company was in retreat.  I ran to join ‘em and we started away from the field.  Suddenly we stopped and we were ordered to go back and get our wounded and dead.  My self and some other boys stayed back and fired at them Blue Bobs so that we would not lose boys in the process of retrieving the fallen.  I finally got that Yankee captain and one artillery man. 

            As the boys came a-run-in back to us a gallant cry rose through the gun smoke and scream’ in and dying and cut through the blast of the cannons and the ring of the muskets.  It sounded something like this:

“YYYYEEEEEHHHHAAAAAAAAA!!!

KENTUCKY! KENTUCKY! KENTUCKY!!!”

            And those tar-heel Yankees trembled with fear at the shouting and the screamin that cut the air that afternoon.  We left that field prouder than any soldier could be in the whole Confederate army.  So until we meet agin, “Kentucky a hardy rebel yell to y’all!”