From another war...

[lonerider]

By coincidence, today was also the date for lighting the luminaries on the Sharpsburg battlefield. Every year some hardy souls place and light 23,000 luminaries, one for each casualty in the battle of Antietam. I had hoped to find a spot to park and get some shots with a tripod, but wasn't able to, so everything I got was shot from the window of my pickup with a point and shoot Sony; please excuse the poor quality.

This event is always well attended; I had a two hour wait to get on the battlefield.

The tour through the battlefield is around five miles; there are very few unlit spots along the way.

Reading about 23,000 casualties in a book doesn't have quite the impact as seeing something like this that goes on for acre...after acre,,,after acre...

 

[BkerChuck]

Wow! I'd never read anything about this before. Thank you so much for posting. Wife and I had an opportunity on Memorial Day weekend to ride through Fort Indiantown Gap Cemetery in PA and they do something along that line with American flags. One flag on every soldiers graveside. Something like 58,000 flags. Pictures are great but I'm sure they don't do it the justice it truly deserves.