Flames of Freedom

Illuminating Antietam

Our world here in the US has really been spinning this past week. Thank goodness for Thanksgiving and some pause…some time to express gratitude with family.

Yesterday I commented on Heather’s Letter that I would write about the upcoming 35th Memorial Illumination on the Antietam Battlefield today.

On December 6, over 1,000 volunteers will descend on that sacred ground near Sharpsburg MD to place 23,110 luminaries across the fields of battle

which were created from piles of sand, skids of candles,small plastic cups and a mountain of paper bags a week ago by about 100 volunteers…then put in boxes and stored in a couple of 40’ trailers…where they are patiently waiting to become a large scale art project.

On Dec 6 after lunch, they will be lighted (many of the volunteers are Boy Scouts), to become an army of small flames, flickering in what will become the very dark rural night in unending lines across acres of battlefield…so that thousands of people can drive through and feel the enormous size and weight of 23,110 anything…let alone dead and wounded from a 12 hour battle, 163 years ago.

The first time I experienced the Illumination was 35 years ago at the first one…and the visual was overwhelming as we drove through. It had snowed the day before and was bitterly cold…and we had documented the lighting on 16mm film. The batteries didn’t last long..and we were freezing…so we didn’t see much beyond the few acres around us. Getting in the warm car was an incredible relief…then we got in the line of vehicles following the volunteers and drove through what seemed to be never ending points of light. It was the most sobering thing I’ve ever witnessed. I know that I teared up, when my thought was “will this ever end"?”

I had become aware of the battle 30 years before, as a five year old when my family went on a picnic to Antietam. At first I just thought the cannons were cool and the monuments with the soldiers were different from anything I had seen before.

Most of the stone men on pedestals were carrying muskets or flags. The places around the farm fields had names like “Bloody Lane” and Burnside Bridge. This wasn’t Baltimore or downtown Hagerstown…this was different and I understood “special”.

There were flags that looked different from the US flag around…and I got a grey kepi with one of those flags on it at a little shack of a stand near Bloody Lane run by the two oldest people I’d ever seen….and they sold Coke too. My sister was attending South Hagerstown High School and they were called the Rebels. They had a green and white version of the Rebel Battle flag and they fired a cannon when the football team scored a touchdown. Everyone cheered for the home team. This was 1958. I thought Rebels were cool. There were even TV shows about them…the Grey Ghost about Mosby and ”The Rebel” with Johnny Yuma…

Johnny Cash even recorded the very popular theme song.

I didn’t know anything about slavery or 23,000 dead soldiers. It was just cool to play with my toy soldiers.

Over the past 60 plus years my knowledge and understanding of the politics, slavery and war have increased and evolved a LOT. More about that in future Substacks. My real purpose today is to make you aware of the Antietam Illumination and invite you to attend on December 6…

or at least look at the posts on our Illumination Facebook page.

https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100068734570778

More details and info/stories coming about the Illumination and Antietam.

Thanks to Judi Quelland, official photographer of the Illumination for 25 years for some of the photos.

Peace

Mike