A Real Sacrifice...

   One friend asked me yesterday, when he heard how many days we had been gone in the evacuation, "How in the world did you spend 4+ days in Montezuma?. What did you do?"

   Well, first of all, our good friends took care of us, fed us, gave us a "barn" to sleep in and generally looked after our needs. It would have been a hassle without them.

   But we also took advantage of our time by catching up with some History.

   Just 10 miles south of their place was Andersonville, the site of the infamous Confederate POW camp in our Civil War (or the War of Northern Aggression as it is sometimes called).

   I had read some of the history of that place, and it was not a pretty story. Toward the end of that conflict, the Confederates were not even able to feed their own men, so how could the prisoners expect much. Disease and starvation were rampart and almost 13,000 Union soldiers died there over the time.

    You can read of the situation, and should, but I'll post a few snapshots of the area, just to pass along some of a camera's impressions.

   It was a stockade basically. The first section was comprised of about 16 acres, and the second around 10. No prisoner housing, except what they could cobble together, just two loping hillsides with a stream in the low section running through.

   A view of a replica of the palisade wall in the area of the north gate, where all prisoners entered a set of double doors, the outer one opened to let them into the enclosure, then closed, and the interior door opened to let them in the enclosed prison area.

   The men got plenty of sunshine and heat in the summer and rain and cold in the winter.

   After the war states placed monuments there to commemorate their losses.

   Graves were originally marked with wooden stakes, but were marked with stone and concrete markers after the war ended in 1865. You will notice how close the headstones are together. Men died in such numbers that burials were hasty, basically a long trench with bodies placed front to back with shoulders touching, like cordwood.

   We thought we were sacrificing our time to the evacuation of Matthew, but here was real sacrifice.

   This motto was on several of the monuments placed around.

   All who were put in here made a great, almost unbearable sacrifice.

   Many made the ultimate one.