GDG- FW: CW: New Gettysburg documentary

[huddleston.r at comcast.net]

Hmm. Great grand children know everything about it!

--
Take care,

Bob

Judy and Bob Huddleston
10643 Sperry Street
Northglenn, CO  80234-3612
huddleston.r at comcast.net

"Problems will always torment us because all important problems are insoluble: that is why they are important. The good comes from the continuing struggle to try and solve them, not from the vain hope of their solution."

- Historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr.


-------------- Forwarded Message: --------------
From: scpatriotgirl <scpatriotgirl at yahoo.com>
To: CWC <civilwarcollectlist at cwcollect.com>
Subject: CW:  New Gettysburg documentary
Date: Fri, 16 Nov 2007 05:01:59 +0000
> Would be interesting to see this documentary, wonder if it will be on DVD 
> sometime?
> 
>     
> ---------------------------------
>   
>   Civil War descendants shed light on Gettysburg 
>   Documentary will be shown at Coastal Carolina as part of Veterans Day  By The 
> (Myrtle Beach) Sun News 
>   Posted on "The State" website Oct. 21, 2007
> 
> MYRTLE BEACH — George Ermentrout can tell the gripping story of one of the 
> bloodiest battles of the Civil War. 
>    
>   Relying on wartime letters and photos of his grandfather, a Civil War veteran, 
> Ermentrout, of Pawleys Island, recently sat before a camera and described the 
> Battle of Gettysburg for a documentary.
>    
>   “It was the most important battle of the war. It was an epic battle, 
> horrendous,” Ermentrout said solemnly about the three-day conflict that happened 
> more than 140 years ago.
>    
>   The 83-year-old is one of several Grand Strand descendants of Gettysburg 
> veterans sharing their family histories for a documentary about the battle.
>   Locally produced “Gettysburg: On Fields of Fire and Valor” will premiere Nov. 
> 2 at Coastal Carolina University as part of an annual Veterans Day event.
>    
>   The film — which features interviews with descendants, historical photos, 
> re-enactments and footage from Gettysburg — is geared toward saluting all 
> veterans and thanking them for their sacrifices, said Rod Gragg, a historian and 
> the senior producer of the film.
>    
>   Gragg scoured the area for descendants to interview for the film and found 
> about five, some with Northern and some with Southern roots.
>   One was Ermentrout, one of a few surviving grandchildren of Civil War 
> veterans, and his wife, Barbara Ermentrout, whose great-uncles were in the band 
> of the 114th Pennsylvania regiment.
>    
>   George Ermentrout’s grandfather, George Washington Bard, was among the first 
> wave of troops to volunteer to fight. At 19, he joined the 93rd Pennsylvania 
> regiment.
>    
>   Few soldiers realized the magnitude of what they were getting into, Gragg 
> said. Initial enlistments wouldn’t have guessed the war would last four months, 
> much less four years.  It wasn’t animosity that prompted many soldiers to join, 
> but loyalty and love for their states, some descendants said.
>    
>   “I think he was fighting for his homeland,” said Andrew Lewis, a dentist from 
> Haymarket, Va., about his great-great-grandfather Lt. John Henry Lewis in the 
> 9th Virginia infantry. “He was fighting for his state, and his state was 
> Virginia.”
>    
>   In July 1863, about two years into the war, Union Maj. Gen. George Gordon 
> Meade’s army clashed with Confederate General Robert E. Lee’s army in 
> Gettysburg, Pa.
>    
>   John Lewis fought in the heart of one of the most disastrous assaults, called 
> Pickett’s Charge.
>    
>   “The deafening thunders broke the stillness of earth, and the sun obscured by 
> smoke that from the blackened cannon’s mouth sent death In each discharge to 
> many of that gallant band,” Lewis later wrote in a poem about the assault.
>   Off the battlefield, Barbara Ermentrout’s musician uncles bore the gruesome 
> task of helping in a Northern army hospital.
>    
>   “The 2nd of July was a day of horror. To and from our hospital the ambulances 
> heaped with the wounded were running all day,” her great-uncle Frank Rauscher 
> wrote in his journal.
>    
>   About 200,000 Americans were pitted against one another during the battle that 
> ended Robert E. Lee’s invasion of the North. There were between 46,000 and 
> 51,000 casualties when all was said and done.
>    
>   “The actual horror of what the war was came to full fruition,” Andrew Lewis 
> said. “They lost so many men.”
>    
>   Lewis and the Ermentrouts’ ancestors survived the battle and the war, they 
> said. George Ermentrout even remembers meeting his grandfather, who died when 
> Ermentrout was 5.
> 
> 
> Jean MacCallum 
> http://members.ebay.com/aboutme/tarheelpatriot
>        
> ---------------------------------
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