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Cold Harbor, VA

Tonight as the wind blows, I'm reminded of the bitter cold wind and the snow flurries the days we were in Richmond, VA.  The last day of our history part of the trip, we drove to Cold Harbor. Bobby's great-grandfather had six older brothers who fought in the Civil War. Three of them never came home, and one of them died at the Battle of the Cold Harbor. Below he's braving the elements to read one of the signs. You can tell by the grimace on his face that he is VERY cold.


By this point in the war, soldiers have learned a little more about fighting, and have ceased some of their face to face combat and have started digging trenches with wood supports. In the pictures above and below, you can see the remains of the CSA trenches. Whether the farmers were unable to remove them or decided it wasn't worth the time and effort is unknown, but this area was not farmed again. Nearby farms that did not have trenches on them found that if they ever dug too deep, they'd encounter skeletons.

The trenches were built into T shapes.  I was amazed at how intact some of them still were, at least 36" high. Excerpts from letters and diaries were included on signage throughout the driving trail. Some soldiers recounted how the creek ran red as they had no other cover than the creek's brushes as they unexpectedly encountered an entrenched unit.  One of the three houses, still standing in the nearby vicinity told how the family was traumatized as they hid in the cellar, hoping to be undiscovered and the troops would leave, only to realize their home was being turned into a field hospital, and they had to sit in the corner and watch the blood drop through the floor boards from above. I cannot imagine. I think this site more than any other helped portray the horrors of war, and its cost to the people who lived through it. And that was one thing that I was impressed with the Confederate Museum...all the quotes from soldiers on both side telling how sick they were of "soldiering" and how they had witnessed more death and evil than any person should ever have to see in a lifetime in just one month. 

I have to admit, while I would highly recommend doing this trip in much warmer weather, I did enjoy it. And hopefully tomorrow I can post our last day, my day, when we headed home via Hampton, VA and the Mid-Atlantic Quilt Conference.

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