THE Random Chat Thread - AKA "The RCT" - No shirt or shoes required - Open 24 / 7

Good morning crew mates.
Glad your ok RR. Hope the car gets replaced.
ECS glad your well and it wasn't covid.
Happy Canada Day to all you north of the covid line, stay safe! ...pssst, don't open the boarder yet.

This is a Hi & bye. I thought I could drop in before rug rats got up...I was wrong.
Seems they are wired directly into the tablet.
And I have been informed the tablet is needed else ware, because we are running out of crayons (there goes my fun!)

Sunday we had hail and a down pour like I've never seen here, total white out couldn't see a foot from the window.
It flooded a hospital a few towns over.

Pepper, thanks for the key...free rum for all!
As long as we keep Captain's cup full, he won't mind. :laughing7: I

Gotta go some one is way too quiet!
 

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Morning WD. Spending the 4 th with screaming rug rats, crayons, spilled milk, empty rum kegs, and Tylenol. What???
Doesn't everybody celebrate that way?:icon_scratch:
 

Good morning, Msbeeps. You are their favorite grandma, I am sure! :love7:

Running out of crayons is slightly better than running out of coloring books/paper.

I remembered another tip for you. This you will have to save for when they are turbulent teens. I tell mine, "Just remember, you will have to change my diaper someday."

Pay backs!
 

This will be my day.
Meeting up with our close friends.
Going strawberry picking at a operation that I have sole use of the patch on the 1790's farm.
Then a swim, good food, and then a wee climb up to see the views.
The little boy wants to play 2 1/2yrs old.
So his dad will climb up with him.
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I just have it part way up, threat of thunder storms later on in the day.
 

WD I get strange looks when I pull that card.
If they start drawing on the toilet paper, I will have to draw the line on that one

Morning pepper, trade days with ya!
 

Last night's reading at wind down time I ran across a 1816 flintlock musket article.
It included references to captured (seized from arsenal type/storage capture).
Both sides used them early in the war. Many of those old guns were converted shortly after to percussion. (A friend brought a similar item to show me years ago , from his ancestor that carried/dragged it about during the war..)

A picture in the magazine I was reading , of a confederate youth posing with one stood out.
Yet another youth who probably didn't need to worry about shaving much. And dressed worn already.
But the eyes as other pictures will , told of the reality of what was going on having set in already.

I looked for the picture online and came up short.
Did find this article (quoted below) of one musket that had been converted. Gettysburg was late in the war for a smoothbore , but hey ,it was a gun...
Folks used what they could till (if) it could be upgraded. Unless they were content with what they had. (?)

.69 caliber...(469 grains)That's about 15 roundballs per pound. Meaning , a solid ounce of lead per shot. For reference , a .50 170 grain roundball is plenty for deer or bear. Yes , more can be preferred but for economy of scale and function , a .50 cal is more than was always common here.

With the 500 grain .58 minieball evolving in rifled bores , effective range was extended. It is but one of multiple bullets employed , but a good common example.
Bullets capable of removing your participation in fighting with shattered bone or worse.Followed by the high odds of infection if you survived.

A nasty business , war. Residuals haunted.
Zack might have agreed...



zachariah-1520564735-6.jpg
The long list of casualties from the firestorm that devastated Confederate Maj. Gen. George E. Pickett’s division at the Battle of Gettysburg included Zachariah Angel Blanton. Blanton enlisted as a sergeant in the Farmville Guards in 1861. He sat for this portrait wearing a cap with the letters FG, and armed with a Model 1816 conversion musket. The Guards became Company F of the 18th Virginia Infantry. By 1862, he advanced to captain and company commander. Blanton fought in this capacity at Gettysburg. During Pickett’s Charge, he suffered a gunshot wound that caused massive damage to the right side of his face–a significant section of his upper jaw was destroyed and his tongue injured. Captured on the field of battle, he spent the next 10 months as a prisoner of war at Johnson’s Island, Ohio, and elsewhere. Blanton was exchanged in mid-1864, and retired from the service on account of his wounds. He returned to Virginia, married in 1868, and started a family that grew to include three children. He died in 1893.
 

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Good morning Msbeepbeep and releventchair.
 

Here's a summer corn pasta recipe for you. If you don't have pancetta in your area just switch it up for bacon.

 

[“While crossing a Clover Stubble field I was shot in the thigh (right) and soon fell to the ground helpless, unable to rise to my feet, the blood spurting from my wound in a torrent. My regiment passed on and left me, and the rebel line of battle passed over and while lying on the ground in rear of the rebels I received a shot in the right side. Just below and a little back of the right nipple and following the rib that it struck past out at the breast bone… I lay in the Clover field aforesaid until the evening of the next day…”]

Private Edward Sloyer, 153rd Pennsylvania, describing his wounding on July 1, 1863 on Barlow’s Knoll at the northern edge of the battlefield.



[“I advanced up the hill to the right. In ascending to the right, I passed Col. Jack Jones, of my regiment, lying on his back with about half of his head shot off. I then passed one of Company K, of my regiment, lying flat on the ground, and he said to me: ‘You had better not go up there; you’ll get shot.’ I passed on to the top of the hill, and throwing up my old Enfield rifle, I was taking deliberate aim at a Yankee when a Minie ball passed through my right thigh.

I felt as if lightning had struck me. My gun fell, and I hobbled down the hill. Reaching the timber in the rear, I saw a Yankee sergeant running out in the same direction, being inside our lines. I called to him for help. Coming up, he said: ‘Put your arm around my neck and throw all your weight on me; don’t be afraid of me. Hurry up; this is a dangerous place.’

The balls were striking the trees like hail all around us, and as we went back he said: ‘If you and I had this matter to settle, we would soon settle it, wouldn’t we?’ I replied that he was a prisoner and I a wounded man, so I felt that we could to terms pretty quick…”]

Private John W. Lokey, 20th Georgia, describing his wounding at Culp’s Hill on July 2, 1863 in an article published in Confederate Veteran in September 1914.
 

4th of July.
We celebrate independence.
Family ,friends, Food , fireworks , parades (traditionally).... Happy stuff....Good times.

Lincoln was chafed at Union Commander General George Meade for not following up the advantage by pursuing the retreating Confederate Army and destroying it.
I'm guessing Meade had his reason(s) for not pursuing.

[Lee orders General Imboden and his brigade of cavalry to protect the retreating train of Confederate wounded as it retreats back across the Potomac River into Virginia. The column moves out at four o'clock in the afternoon and stretches for miles. Wagons carry the severely injured while the walking wounded straggle behind. The column makes its way west through the Pennsylvania mountains. We rejoin General Imboden's story the evening of July 4:

"After dark I set out from Cashtown to gain the head of the column during the night. My orders had been peremptory that there should be no halt for any cause whatever. If an accident should happen to any vehicle, it was immediately to be put out of the road and abandoned. The column moved rapidly, considering the rough roads and the darkness, and from almost every wagon for many miles issued heart-rending wails of agony. For four hours I hurried forward on my way to the front, and in all that time I was never out of hearing of the groans and cries of the wounded and dying. Scarcely one in a hundred had received adequate surgical aid, owing to the demands on the hard-working surgeons from still worse cases that had to be left behind. Many of the wounded in the wagons had been without food for thirty-six hours. Their torn and bloody clothing, matted and hardened, was rasping the tender, inflamed, and still oozing wounds. Very few of the wagons had even a layer of straw in them, and all were without springs. The road was rough and rocky from the heavy washings of the preceding day. The jolting was enough to have killed strong men, if long exposed to it. From nearly every wagon as the teams trotted on, urged by whip and shout, came such cries and shrieks as these:

'O God I why can't I die!'

'My God I will no one have mercy and kill me!'

'Stop! Oh! For God's sake, stop just for one minute; take me out and leave me to die on the roadside.'

'I am dying! I am dying! My poor wife, my dear children, what will become of you?'

Some were simply moaning; some were praying, and others uttering the most fearful oaths and execrations that despair and agony could wring from them; while a majority, with a stoicism sustained by sublime devotion to the cause they fought for, endured without complaint unspeakable tortures, and even spoke words of cheer and comfort to their unhappy comrades of less will or more acute nerves. Occasionally a wagon would be passed from which only low, deep moans could be heard. No help could be rendered to any of the sufferers. No heed could be given to any of their appeals. Mercy and duty to the many forbade the loss of a moment in the vain effort then and there to comply with the prayers of the few. On I On I we must move on. The storm continued, and the darkness was appalling. There was no time even to fill a canteen with water for a dying man; for, except the drivers and the guards, all were wounded and utterly helpless in that vast procession of misery. During this one night I realized more of the horrors of war than I had in all the two preceding years."]


But despite Meade's own reluctance , the retreating force was not ignored....

[Desperate Battle

Harassed by Union cavalry and pelted by driving rain that turned the ground into a quagmire of mud, the retreating column reached the town of Williamsport on the afternoon of July 5th. Occupying the town, General Imboden turns it into a giant hospital, ordering the citizens to cook for the wounded. The following day Union cavalry attacked the town in strength:

"The enemy appeared in our front about half-past one o'clock on both the Hagerstown and Boonsboro roads, and the fight began. Every man under my command understood that if we did not repulse the enemy we should all be captured and General Lee's army be ruined by the loss of its transportation, which at that period could not have been replaced in the Confederacy. The fight began with artillery on both sides. The firing from our side was very rapid, and seemed to make the enemy hesitate about advancing. In a half hour J. D. Moore's battery ran out of ammunition, but as an ordnance train had arrived from Winchester, two wagon-loads of ammunition were ferried across the river and run upon the field behind the guns, and the boxes tumbled out, to be broken open with axes. With this fresh supply our guns were all soon in full play again.

...Night was now rapidly approaching, when a messenger from Fitzhugh Lee arrived to urge me to 'hold my own,' as he would be up in a half hour with three thousand fresh men. The news was sent along our whole line, and was received with a wild and exultant yell. We knew then that the field was won, and slowly pressed forward. Almost at the same moment we heard distant guns on the enemy's rear and right on the Hagerstown road. They were Stuart's, who was approaching on that road, while Fitzhugh Lee was coming on the Greencastle road. That settled the contest."]
 

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