A Learning Experience

The alarm goes off at 5:45, and even though I'm still adjusting to Eastern Daylight Time, I can still pull my fatigued body away from the sleeper sofa and into the shower... and later down to breakfast... and into my uniform.

The rain the weather people have promised us has arrived in the form of drizzly mist, but no downpours, fortunately. My private roommate and I march into camp through a marshy trail. I'm geared up and carrying a wooden ammo box full of cartridges, empty paper tubes, caps, and whatever else I can stuff in. The lid will barely close. "Elongated ball" reads the stenciling on the side. If it puts a scare into a stray Yank, the better.

We immediately have a special assignment: getting some brogans for an officer now re-cast as a private. Finding quality footwear has been tough with the blockades.


We fill in around him as we march to the sutlers' row, covering up any trace of white-footed anachronism. He's outfitted while we browse the historic goods -- the coats, caps, belt buckles, pins, snoods, and books.

Today is school day, meaning children will pour onto the grounds and we'll try to teach them what the books don't. A lot of the burden will fall on us: many of our allied units haven't shown yet. Last night's rain has forced a relocation of the Yankee camp, adding to the delays and gumming up the schedule a bit. It's no matter for the 1st Virginia as the cadets stay busy splitting wood while the infantrymen roll cartridges.





Our Captain is hurriedly summoned to Living History Duty. Soon after, our 1st Sergeant summons me -- we shall be a two-man detail on this educational mission.

We meet some four dozen eager students in the parking lot. Our Captain is already giving his opening remarks and answering a few questions when we march up to the crowd with fixed bayonets on our Springfield rifles. The 1st Sergeant gives a little talk on the uniforms while I stand at attention, looking as soldierly as possible for somebody who picks up the phone more than a rifle.

"Now, let's bring Private Francis into this," my Captain prompts.

I step forward and drop into my southern drawl while half my brain races to dig up more information early in the morning, realizing these kids probably know more history than I do having grown up in the middle of it. "I can't add much to what the Sergeant has told you," I begin, masking my morning brain freeze and the nervous desperation of a person who perceives himself a crib sheet standing next to a pair of 24-volume Civil War encyclopedias.

"But this is a cap pouch, and this is a cartridge box," I continue, indicating the proper accessories.

Good. Go for the gun. Gun talk is good. It's what you know.

"What we're going to do is, once we get the order, we're going to load one of these powder cartridges..."

Pull it out. Show it to them.

"We're going to pour it down the gun and ram it into place. Now we don't have a ball in these cartridges for safety reasons, but we would ram that down there with the ramrod..."

Remember the caps!

"And we're going to take one of these percussion caps out of here and place it over the nipple on the end."

CRACK! Somebody fires a shot back at camp.

"Somebody's getting started early," I crack to some scattered snickering.

Go on. Go on.

"When we get the order to fire, the hammer will come down and set of a charge, which will set off the powder in the gun and push the ball out."

Keep going, keep going.

"Now these rifles are much easier to load and fire than the muskets in the Revolutionary War, because you had to prime a pan with gunpowder, too, to set off the charge. These weapons are also a lot more accurate..."

Good grief, what's the proper range of an 1861 Springfield? Can I make a comparison to something in the parking lot? Maybe from here to those telephone poles? No. I'm not sure. I'm not going to risk giving out an unverified claim.

"I'm not sure about the distance though."

The 1st Sergeant steps in to offer the range figures I wish I had. Whew. I got through it without any bumps. After the talk, my head finally starts popping up the facts I wish I would've worked in, but now it's onto my next challenge -- showing a group of students the proper manual of arms given I'm still getting them down myself.

"You will emulate what Private Francis does," our Captain says after selecting a new Captain -- a teacher -- to lead our student cadets.

And if you emulate my mistakes, it's my fault.

"Shoulder arms!" comes the command. I get the rifle into place with the trigger guard between my right thumb and forefinger.

"Right shoulder shift!" Up here, lock out there. That didn't look bad. I hope.

"Order of arms!" Back down to my side.

We get the students dressed into lines about as well as you can with a group of grade-schoolers too wound up to stand in a straight line. Our Sergeant makes some adjustments and we've got a working company. The teachers grow envious -- if only they could do this in the classroom, every day. We march the lines over to the artillery demonstration.

"We don't know our left from our right," the artillery commander explains to the young recruits, explaining what differentiates them from the foot soldier. "But we fire big guns, and we make big holes."

They make big noises, too. Our students get the warning to cup their hands around their ears and open their mouths before the piece goes off. Many don't wait. I don't either, striking a pose that could earn me the nickname "The Yella' Rebel."

After marching the lines into our camp, I go through the Springfield spiel again for those who didn't hear it the first time and this time with more confidence, flanked by a comrade who could add to my information.

"A typical soldier could fire three rounds a minute," I explain. "That doesn't sound like a whole lot, but that was fast for that time. A well-trained soldier could do this automatically."

As the children in front of us circulate on through camp, an idea springs up.

"Do you have a housewife in your haversack?"

"A what?"

"A sewing kit," I explain. I don't have one, but I'm anticipating somebody's going to ask what's inside the sack sooner or later. That question doesn't come, however.

With so few Yankees in camp, we don't have enough for the scheduled Battle of Falls Church, so we put together a firing demonstration instead. Our Batallion Commander calls the shots and he introduces us to an unexpected command:

"Countermarch!"

Our neatly dressed lines of two ranks fissure. Some recruits interpret the foreign command as "about face and march the other way," sending them into the faces of other recruits urging them to keep going the opposite direction while a few correctly execute the order as a U-turn. The mass of students gathered with us in the parking lot again don't mind the levity.

"Load!"

We put the powder down the rifles and reach for the caps.

"Do not prime!"

Another new twist. Usually "Load" is two commands in one: load the powder (with the imaginary ball) and put the percussion cap on the nipple. We were warned things might be different in the east.

"Prime and Come To The Ready! Aim! Fire!"

The first volley sends a shockwave of shrieking and shouting through the student observers. They raise their excited, chattery voices, nearly drowning out the commanders' barked orders. My 1st Virginia comrades relay commands down the line over the din.

We line up for one more round of questions and one of the local officers explains how none of us are paid for what we do. We invest in our own guns, supplies and uniforms. And our particular unit, one of our young recruits interjects, has come all the way from Arizona to show this to you.

The impact shows later in the day, when my roommate and I are driving past their school and spot a CSA flag planted in the ground next to a game of dodgeball. They're loving it now, but what about the days to come?

"It's ironic somebody from Arizona had to explain the meaning of the Virginia flag to them."

I have only fired a few shots, but I want a clean gun for tomorrow's battle. Back at camp, my comrades help me wash the barrel out with boiling water and I dig into this cleaning kit I just bought, the one with a rod long enough to reach all the way down the barrel. But it looks like somebody forgot to put in the patch attachment. And I forgot to bring my other kit, thinking I'd already squirreled it away somewhere in my luggage.

With some help from another sergeant, we run several patches down the barrel using a borrowed attachment on the end of my ramrod. The first cleaing patch jams near the bottom, and he whispers concern.

We play tug-of-war with the gun and the rammer to pull it out. It takes myself and one other private on my side before the rod comes out. The patch is filthy. Fouling has built up in the bottom of the barrel over time, and I just haven't gotten to it until now. I try hard to keep my gun clean, and it stays clean -- mostly. But it's that bottom that just hasn't been scrubbed enough, I figure. He pledges to help me order what I need to get the gun truly clean.

"I've talked to three different people and gotten three different answers on how to clean a gun," I explain.

We later present our host commanders with a fine bottle of champagne, smuggled around the blockades. They present us with an honorary title of Second Battalion, deeply appreciative and awed at our mission of education and pride in America's heritage.

"I've been talking about you boys for a year," one commander says. He vows to get out to Picacho Peak one of these days. He hasn't been to Arizona, but he'll find a way to get there.

We talk about the weather. Heavy storms are set for tomorrow, and we can see the streams of clouds rolling in. If we don't blow away or flood out, we'll be back for battle.