Filed under: Preservation | Tags: American Civil War, Brandy Station Foundation, Preservation
The Brandy Station Foundation is a 501(c)-3 non-profit organization dedicated to preserving the natural and historic resources of the Brandy Station area of Culpeper County, Virginia. It used to actually make efforts in that regard. Then, Joseph McKinney became the President of the organization. Now, the organization has published a position statement that states that it is “generally not productive to officially oppose common property improvements”.
I cannot imagine why anyone would bother with a preservation organization that has no interest in preservation of land that is privately owned.
I regularly read Eric Wittenburg’s Rantings of a Civil War Historian and first learned of Tony Triolo’s wanton destruction of the Brandy Station battlefield there. Things got worse with the rains we had here in Virginia, but fortunately, the Army Corps of Engineers got involved at that point, since he was damming a creek to expand a pond in the midst of the battlefield and there is massive erosion occurring.
I like to think it’s surprising, but perhaps it is not surprising at all, that landowner Tony Troilo is a friend of BSF President Joseph McKinney.
Craig Swain, who served a year on the Board of the Foundation, notes that it is effectively no longer a preservation group and has renounced his membership. It is a sad day when preservation groups become unconcerned about preservation.
Filed under: Battle of the Bulge, Veterans, WWII | Tags: Battle of the Bulge, Fort Benning, Marksmanship, Sniper, Ted Gundy
When he arrived in Europe as a replacement, Ted Gundy was handed a sniper rifle because he’d scored the highest in his company during training. Today, sniper selection and training is far more complex and involved, but, truth be told, Ted Gundy would likely be a sniper if he enlisted today. Given a replica of his old rifle and 65 years later, Gundy showed he is still a marksman.
Today, Gundy’s gait might be uncertain, his hands shaky and his hearing electronically enhanced (but not always quite enough), but when he settled behind “his” 03 Springfield A4 sniper rifle, none of that mattered.
From a basic rest, he proceeded to make hits on a silhouette target -at 300 yards. Each one was better than the previous, with the final round landing dead center. Shooting Wire, February 8, 2010
I think this was passed to me the reenactors I know, but I’ve lost the original email, so can’t tell you which one passed it along. Gundy watches Shooting USA on TV and had emailed them about the long-range shots modern snipers make. When they realized they had a sniper from the Battle of the Bulge, they coordinated with the Army Marksmanship Unit (established back in 1956 by Eisenhower) to grant Gundy a chance to make a 1000-yard shot himself. It made for marvelous television.
In reading Richard Hargreaves The Germans in Normandy to learn the German perspective on the Normandy invasion, I came across a passage that simply rattled me. After the bow ramps came down on the first boats landing in front of WN62 on Omaha Beach….
They jumped into the cold water up to their chests and shoulders. Some disappeared under the water for a moment, and half swimming, half wading, they began to move slowly on to the beach in front of our strongpoint. At this moment there was complete silence in the bay; not one shot was fired. We had strict orders to wait until the GIs were only about 400m from the edge of the beach and were wading in water up to their knees….
Once the Americans had firm ground under their feet, they waded in two long lines, one after the other, through the water, with the left hand firmly on the pack of the man in front. Everything was so calm, so organized, that you had the impression that they were merely carrying out an exercise.
The Americans struggled forward with their weapons and packs through the high surf of the cold sea, slowly and utterly unprotected. We were well aware that the GIs below us were being led like lambs to the slaughter.
Then the firing commenced and all hell broke loose. Heinrich Severloh, who wrote that passage above, fired thousands of rounds from a machine gun and hundreds from his rifle. While his own estimates of how many men he killed and wounded is nearly as many as the total American casualties on Omaha Beach, one can be certain that he witnessed and took part in an absolute horror.
By 1959, his story was known in the US and he was nicknamed, “The Beast of Omaha”. Terrible dreams afflicted him until his death in 2006.
We're not lost, Sergeant, We're in ... France 