Thursday, February 26, 2009
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
Monday, February 16, 2009
Our Trip to Andersonville, GA - the POW Museum and Cemetery
Below are pictures from our trip to Andersonville, GA with granny-great. The pic's are sort of - backwards - so if you scroll to the begining of the pic's in Andersonville and work your way up you can see the pic's in the order they were taken and chronological to our visit.
The POW museum was really awesome. The coolest thing is that you walk through as if you are the prisoner. You'll see posts and pictures of the times in order from the march through the camps gates to life in the cell. It doesn't simply dipict POW's of the civil war but of all wars and you can see how they were treated differently. Not all POW's were treated poorly - but, most were. As you walk through there are signs you read as if your enemy were telling you himself - to lay your weapons down; Discard of all your personal belongings; NO TALKING! All while rifles of the enemy you were sent to kill are pointed at you.
It's not a huge museum but it's artifacts and the way it is set up make for a memorable trip. The theater shows an intriging movie of life as a prisoner or war at Andersonville. The grounds are what's amazing. The north gate still stands and you can walk through it. You can see the pigeon roost in the pic's below where a gaurd would stand with his rifle trained on the enemy as they trodded through the gate - hundreds at a time. In other pic's you can see the deadline which was a simple rail about 16 feet from the stockade (or outer wall). Cross that line - and you're dead. Tyler expresses this well in a pic below where he's got on union soldier garb and lays unmoving between the deadline and stockade.
The monuments are moving - I have a pic of the boys in front of the Wisconsin monument in dedication to the fallen soldiers and POW's. The cemetery has over 14,000 buried on its grounds. The headstones that are father apart are from later wars. The ones very close together are from the civil war. The monuments in the cemetery are beautiful.
All in all we had a great time. I can't say the kids walked away moved and touched but, they thought it was very cool! They learned a few facts that as adults we don't consider to be the high points. But, the seed is planted and already they've stated they'd like to go back some day. Hopefully, when Joshua is a little bit older.
Anyway, it was a wonderful experience and we have to thank granny great for bringing it to our attention and getting us there, finally. And, as you can see - they were quite worn out from our trip!
The POW museum was really awesome. The coolest thing is that you walk through as if you are the prisoner. You'll see posts and pictures of the times in order from the march through the camps gates to life in the cell. It doesn't simply dipict POW's of the civil war but of all wars and you can see how they were treated differently. Not all POW's were treated poorly - but, most were. As you walk through there are signs you read as if your enemy were telling you himself - to lay your weapons down; Discard of all your personal belongings; NO TALKING! All while rifles of the enemy you were sent to kill are pointed at you.
It's not a huge museum but it's artifacts and the way it is set up make for a memorable trip. The theater shows an intriging movie of life as a prisoner or war at Andersonville. The grounds are what's amazing. The north gate still stands and you can walk through it. You can see the pigeon roost in the pic's below where a gaurd would stand with his rifle trained on the enemy as they trodded through the gate - hundreds at a time. In other pic's you can see the deadline which was a simple rail about 16 feet from the stockade (or outer wall). Cross that line - and you're dead. Tyler expresses this well in a pic below where he's got on union soldier garb and lays unmoving between the deadline and stockade.
The monuments are moving - I have a pic of the boys in front of the Wisconsin monument in dedication to the fallen soldiers and POW's. The cemetery has over 14,000 buried on its grounds. The headstones that are father apart are from later wars. The ones very close together are from the civil war. The monuments in the cemetery are beautiful.
All in all we had a great time. I can't say the kids walked away moved and touched but, they thought it was very cool! They learned a few facts that as adults we don't consider to be the high points. But, the seed is planted and already they've stated they'd like to go back some day. Hopefully, when Joshua is a little bit older.
Anyway, it was a wonderful experience and we have to thank granny great for bringing it to our attention and getting us there, finally. And, as you can see - they were quite worn out from our trip!
Friday, February 13, 2009
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