Petersburg, circa 2008

I was able to visit the Petersburg National Battlefield Park on my recent trip to VA and I was impressed that so much of the earthworks had survived the post war era. Erosion has rounded out the edges of the batteries and trenches, the Crater is visible still and though mostly filled in stands as a testament to the uniqueness of the gambit and as a reminder of the sacrifice of both the USCT regiments and the white volunteer regiments who were slaughtered in the deep hole that trapped them.

Again, Petersburg is a battlefield bereft of monuments or other visual markers save for the grassy mounds of earth that trace the driving tour. Nine months of daily warfare are encapsulated in the now quiet pastureland. Areas of tall grass mark where entrenchments used to exist but were plowed under by post war occupants. Cannon, that obsequious marker to be found on most civil war battlefields mark some areas or actually re-occupy old forts.

One of the few monuments to sit on the field marks the spot where the 1^st Main Heavy Artillery vainly charged Colquitt's Salient early on in the siege and suffered for their obstinacy. The marker, a ways down a walking trail takes one through the second line of entrenchments and rifle pits (when one knows that they existed, every undulation in the ground suddenly heightens the perception that it could have been part of the picket line) takes one from Fort Steadman to a spot perpendicular to the future Union entrenched line on a bee line to the Confederate fort where today sit a few cannon marking Colquitt's Salient. You walk over ground that was bloodied by the men from the 1^st Maine who died or received wounds one for every foot of ground that covered the distance towards the fort they never reached, about 200 yards of open space. The monument lists the names of those who died or died of wounds a few days later and for a battle that saw much death and misery, is a singular testament of the bravery required to charge alone. Markers along the way describe what you are seeing and would have been seeing during the battle or soon after (often with period photographs) and I found that nice, especially since little of the period surroundings survive to this day.

The Fort Steadman/Colquitt's Salient area is one of the few surviving no-man's-land that you can actually walk with a clear view of the opposite line, the forest having re-claimed other areas of the park. You can stand at the apex of Colquitt's and look at the earthworks of Fort Steadman and the intervening ground and try to envision what it would have been like to live day in and day out in the forts or on the picket line. Cannon trace the embrasures of Fort Steadman today. I was struck by how small each fort really was. These surviving earthworks were untouched by man and have sat mute for these tens of decades. The trenches that once held the abitis logs are still visible and indeed offer formidable defense against a frontal attack by a wary and on guard garrison. The trenches still make the fort walls at Steadman eight feet high and one can stand at the parapet and see the guns at Colquitt's easily, the lines being close enough for rifle fire to easily pick off targets. It is also hard to imagine the countryside as it was then. Everything is green and lush today, but from photographs one can see that all was a dirty brown and bark/wood colored: this was what they saw every day. In the book, Mother, May You Never See the Sights I've Seen, a unit history of the 57^th Massachusetts Veteran Volunteers during the last campaign of the war speaks of stints on and off of the line and endless parades and inspections when off the line. These men lived this life through heat of summer and cold of winter, in huts and tents, crowded in trenches or hugging the earth on the picket line and ever mindful of snipers. Standing between the forts in silence, brings to mind the inability to imagine it even after reading so many accounts.

I also ran into a fellow reenactor who was manning a section of line at the base of Battery 9, a trench dug and revited with logs as it would have been during the siege and occupied by two very hot Federals who came out of their shade to talk to anyone who wondered down. http://www.appomattoxtours.com/ We shared some of the same experiences at a few events where his group, the Skulker's Mess and my unit the 23^rd NY, both members of Dom DalBello's Army of the Pacific. It was nice to talk to a fellow hardcore reenactor and someone whose knowledge of the area and battle far surpassed my own (I hadn't time to read up on the battle before visiting, a must for anyone who wants to experience a battlefield). John Marler is his name and someone who has obviously put a lot of himself in allowing others to experience the history of the area.

My main interest in Petersburg was research for a novel/screenplay on the role of the USCT regiments who were there from the beginning of the battle to its end. Writing about history is one thing, and doing it with fiction gives one the freedom to extrapolate on experience, sight and sound, and emotion that is often missed or unavailable when writing non-fiction. But seeing the landscape, its undulations and surroundings gives fodder to the minds eye of a writer. I wanted to see what those USCT regiments saw as they took on Battery 8 and 9 early in the battle.

I do not get the opportunity to wander the battlefields much, living in New Mexico keeps the history that I love out of arms reach. But standing on mute fields is still a treat.