Day 2 Journal

Day 2: Saturday, August 10^th, 2002

I’m writing this journal entry on Sunday morning from the Doubletree Hotel in Roanoke, VA. We started our day with breakfast at the Bavarian Inn. Unlike the night before, there was no sense of menace at all. In fact, while we were eating, a family that looked like duplicates of the Von Trapp family, came into the dining room singing “Do, Re, Me..” I can only attribute my fevered imaginings of the night before to work-related stress. The Von Trapp all waived good-bye to us in the driveway as we pulled away.

We then proceeded to go to the Antietam Battlefield. The battle field of Antietam, unlike many Civil War battlefields, is relatively easy to understand. The battle took place in the “Cornfield” in the early morning; then in “Bloody Lane” for 4 hours midday; then at “Burnside’s Bridge” in the late afternoon. (see link to Antietam Battlefield).

What is hard to understand is the level of carnage that took place that hot autumn day of September 17, 1862, which remains the bloodiest single day in American history. 6,500 Union and Confederate soldiers were killed near the sleepy Maryland village of Sharpsburg in the span of 12 hours. Another 15,000 men wounded in the battle would recover, but many of them would never walk again on two legs or work with two arms. The number of casualties at Antietam was four times greater than American casualties on the Normandy beachheads on D-Day. More American solders died at Sharpsburg (the Confederate name for the battle) that died in the 8 Revolutionary War, the war of 1812, and the Mexican-American war combined.

In the beautiful pastoral landscape that is the battlefield park today, it is still possible to imagine the carnage. The fierce battle that raged back and forth in the Cornfield, where men dropped like flies in the 7 ft. high corn, until there was hardly a stalk standing by mid-day. The Confederate bodies were piled three and four deep in Bloody Lane, where they held wave and wave of Union charges all afternoon, until their position was flanked and they were mowed down where they lay in that blood-soaked trench. And finally the idiocy of Burnside’s Bridge, where instead of fording the shallow Antietam creek, General Burnside sent wave after wave of Union troops to try to take the narrow bridge where they were systematically picked off by Confederates on the high ridge overlooking the bridge.

In the end, there is a sadness and a happiness that coexist at this place. Sadness that so much butchery could occur in a war that started off with notions of chivalry and “civilized warfare”. Happiness because, 139 years later, little kids were tubing under Burnside’s Bridge, and maybe the mindless sacrifices of Antietam helped to bring about this idyllic scene.

After the Battlefield, we hopped in our luxurious motor coach for a three hour ride on incredibly beautiful, with vistas at every turn of the Shenandoah Valley, which also saw its share of fighting over the four years of the war. The Blue Ridge Mountains in fact look blue in the haze of a warm summer day, and with Elvis tapes playing softly we took our time and stopped at many lookout points to take in the scenery.

We then got off the Drive, (which we will get back on today) and went to the town of New Market where we happened upon the Southern Cooking restaurant where we feasted on Virginia-style Southern fried chicken and home made pies.

After dinner it was on to Roanoke at night, while watching the Blues Brothers on TV. I am now writing this journal entry at the Doubletree Hotel in Roanoke, which is so well hidden that it took us one hour to find it in Roanoke, which is a small place. Maybe there’s a reason why they don’t want guests, maybe there is something sinister…..but I digress.

So ended Day 2 of the Great Elvis Expedition.