Anthony Sinclair - A Strange and Blighted Land

Gregory A. Coco

Copyright 1995, 2017 by Gregory A. Coco

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, saved, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the written permission of the publisher.

Originally published by Thomas Publications, 1995

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Coco, Gregory A. (Gregory Ashton), 1946-2009, author.

Title: A Strange and Blighted Land: Gettysburg: The Aftermath of a Battle / by Gregory A. Coco.

Description: First Savas Beatie edition. | El Dorado Hills, California:

Savas Beatie LLC, 2017. | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2017045749 | ISBN 9781611214055 (pbk: alk. paper) | ISBN 9781940669786 (ebk) | ISBN 9781940669786 (mobi)

Subjects: LCSH: Gettysburg, Battle of, Gettysburg, Pa., 1863. | Gettysburg,

Battle of, Gettysburg, Pa., 1863Social aspects. |

PennsylvaniaHistoryCivil War, 1861-1865. |

BurialPennsylvaniaGettysburgHistory19th century. |

Corpse removalsPennsylvaniaGettysburgHistory19th century. |

United StatesHistoryCivil War, 1861-1865Medical care. | Prisoners of warUnited StatesHistory19th century. | United StatesHistoryCivil War, 1861-1865Campaigns.

Classification: LCC E475.53 .C695 2017 | DDC 973.7/349--dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017045749

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FOR CLS

I have questions

She has answers.

I speak strangely

But she understands.

The Battle of Gettysburg lasted for three days in July 1863. The aftermath began on July 4 and, in some respects, continues to this day. Perhaps as many as 40,000 young men were killed and wounded (out of an estimated 51,000 total losses) in and around the crossroads town of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. The dead lay everywhere, wrote one soldier, and although not a half day has passed since they died, the stench is so great that we can neither eat, drink, nor sleep. Gettysburg was the bloodiest and is the most studied battle of the Civil War, but few writers prior to Greg Coco focused on the conflicts aftermath.

Gregory A. Coco (1946 2009) was a U.S. Army veteran of Vietnam and recipient of the Bronze Star, Purple Heart, and Combat Infantry Badge among other citations. Rather than write about his own experiences in Vietnam, Coco instead chose to focus his work on a war that occurred one century earlier. During his post-army career as a historian, he authored 16 books and 12 scholarly articles on the American Civil War. A Strange and Blighted Land , originally published in 1995, was his most successful work and continues to frequently appear on many Best of Civil War book lists.

Greg and I share at least one thing in common. We both proudly served as Licensed Battlefield Guides at Gettysburg National Military Park. (Greg later also served as a National Park Service Seasonal Park Ranger.) Licensed Battlefield Guides and National Park Service interpreters attempt to give Gettysburg visitors a realistic sense of the battles sights, sounds, and horrors while paradoxically riding through the beautiful National Military Park. Most battlefield tours primarily focus on the tactics, strategy, and decisions of general officers during the three days of combat. Many visitors, however, are left asking questions about the after effects of the battle. How many men died here? What happened to the bodies? What did Gettysburg smell like while inhabited with so much rotting flesh? How did the citizens recover? Such topics are pondered daily at Gettysburg, but prior to A Strange and Blighted Land they had seldom been addressed in writing.

Gregs interpretative interests were forged by his own personal combat experience. He believed that a person could not survive warfare without becoming a psychological casualty. His writing was recurrent with themes that de-emphasized battlefield glory and focused on death. He once described his own encounter with a battlefield corpse:

I recall when I was in Vietnam the first battlefield I saw I went up to a dead soldier, rolled him over, checked through his pockets, and I brought out a picture of Ho Chi Minh. It had a bullet hole in it and it was bloodstained. I have that today. I became fascinated with the way the human body can in one moment be alive and viable, chatting and laughing with their friends and then the next moment they are rotting, theyre a corpse and the creatures such as flies and beetles arrive and immediately start to attack the body. Thats what the early visitors who came here to Gettysburg directly after the battle experienced too and I wanted to tell this real part of the story of war.

Every time I walk on the battlefield of Gettysburg or give a talk, in the back of my mind is the reason why we care about the battlefield. The reason we are here to remember in a sense the pain of those mothers and fathers who never saw their sons again who came into these battles. The reason we preserve these battlefields is not for the visitor, really, the tourist, its not for someone to make money off of, and its not for someone to come and play Frisbee or jog. Its for those mothers and fathers. The terrible, painful, haunting memories of never seeing their boys again. These descriptions as you walked across the field were somehow so intense on the visitors that the ones that got home, the visitors and the soldiers wrote these things down. It was almost a way of cleaning out their souls and their hearts getting rid of the pain of seeing human beings destroying each other, human beings who should have been friends.

A Strange and Blighted Land remains the most comprehensive study of the battles aftermath including, among other topics, the burial of the dead, the care of the wounded, prisoners of war, and civilian casualties. (Yes, there were more local casualties than Mary Virginia Jennie Wade.) As was his style, Greg pulled no punches and graphically described stiffened corpses of both men and horses, and their accompanying disgusting stenches. Many Gettysburg historical interpreters refer to Gregs work when searching for such stories to properly convey the horrors of war to Gettysburg visitors. On nearly every one of my own battlefield tours I relate a story found in these pages of three-year-old Edward McPherson Woods, who was shot and killed on July 5 by his brother who was handling a loaded musket found on the battlefield.

As bleak as the subject matter is, Coco rightly concluded his book with an examination of Gettysburgs transformation from battlefield to hallowed ground. Eventually the dead were buried, the last of the wounded were transported out, and the farm fields were removed of the refuse of the two massive armies. Gettysburg became one of the nations altars and veterans returned not to make war but to commemorate and remember. Now, long after the veterans are gone, Gettysburg remains a pilgrimage for many Americans and for Civil War enthusiasts in particular. Many visitors comment on the peaceful beauty of Gettysburg National Military Park. Books continue to be written on every micro-aspect of the campaign, often by authors whom, as Coco observed, became carried away with the aura of places like Gettysburg [and] were men or women who had not faced and cringed at the iron and leaden hail thrown against living bodies on the grim battlefields of history.