Days 75 & 76, April 9 & 10, Gettysburg National Battlefield Park

April 10, 2022

Gettysburg is everything it’s billed to be. No, it surpasses all it’s billed as, supremely so. From the brilliant museum to the stirring auto tour complete with audio guide -- to the numerous battlefields spread across this now bucolic verdant countryside -- and to the 2+ hour field tour by Park Ranger Matt who eats/drinks/sleeps and then spews Civil War history. From the observation towers atop the Lutheran Seminary and at various battlefield sites -- to the Eternal Flame Monument -- and to the somber Soldiers’ National Cemetery where our man Lincoln gave his famously stirring 2-minute Gettysburg Address. From Cemetery Ridge to Culp’s Hill and from Seminary Ridge to Little Round Top, we simply could not get our fill of The Battle of Gettysburg. Words cannot begin to describe the sobering and seemingly impossible deeds of uncommon valor carried out multiple times on numerous fronts over the three-days battle. This place is hallowed ground reverenced by those who have the privilege of visiting here attempting to comprehend all that transpired near this once tiny township of Gettysburg. The dead, dying, and wounded littered the fields and farms and orchards and hillsides at the end of day 3 when Lee was at last decimated and finally retreated. To read the horrifying reports from the remaining citizens who emerged after the battle to then clean up the carnage as it smoldered in the July heat and humidity sickened us. Such a place as this surely one cannot truly comprehend, and we loathed leaving. Which is why we came back for a few more hours after attending church on Sunday morning. We just can't get enough of Gettysburg.

Three amazing things: 1- Chamberlain’s holding of Little Round Top to the point that when he ran out of ammunition, he masterfully maintained the high ground by ordering and leading a bayonet charge. 2- The boys from Alabama who had marched 20 miles through the night arriving on the battlefield at dawn exhausted, hungry and thirsty only to be thrust into an offensive maneuver to charge uphill to take Little Round Top. From where did they muster the strength? 3- Ranger Matt who confessed falling asleep each night reading yet another history of yet another Civil War Battle. The man intrigued us enough with his skilled retelling of the battles which took place where we stood that we couldn’t leave even when the wind, rain and hail unleashed on us. 4- The visit to The Soldier's National Cemetery where Abraham Lincoln delivered his 2-minute short, stirring and inspired Gettysburg address reduced Kasper to tears.

Good deeds: I'm gonna say that our good deed today was to pledge a goodly sum of money to an adorable young sister missionary whom we had the privilege to work alongside in Thailand for several months. She's a struggling starving BYU student, putting herself through college, and she's just an incredible young woman who would love to come up with the money to fly to Indiana this summer to visit the family of a young man whom she is most interested in. We told her we'd meet her halfway with the airfare.