Published: July 12, 2008 07:41 pm         

They finished a fight someone else started

My buddy in The Little Blue Union Suit (I call it that because girls of all ages think he’s adorable in it) pointed to a slab of concrete and said, “If you’re ever up here in a uniform of some kind, don’t stand on that thing.”

Why not?

“I was standing on it one day when this woman came up to me,” he said. “She walked all around and looked at me up and down, but I never moved. Finally, she reached up and pinched my cheek, and I said, ‘Excuse me?’ She jumped back and said, ‘I thought you were a statue!’ ” It could have been worse, considering the other places she could have pinched, poked or patted.

It is said that if you wait long enough at Piccadilly Circus in London, everyone on earth will eventually pass by. That may also be true on Little Round Top at the Gettysburg battlefield, as I found out during a return visit over the Fourth of July weekend.

Folks from every inhabited continent and all over America come to see one of the places where the Free World’s future was shaped. They ask questions about the battle and want to stand next to the barrel of a Civil War-vintage cannon to have their pictures taken with two 20th Maine second lieutenants assigned to Gen. George Meade’s staff.

We’re still talking about the beautiful dark-haired, dark-eyed German girl who bubbled with elfin personality and could have been anywhere between 14 and 24. There were so many feminine distractions that we stood watching in three different directions, whispering “Your 6,” “Your 9” or “Your 3,” meaning that the way you are facing is 12 o’clock, and if you turn your head to the 6, 9 or 3 o’clock position, what you see will make it spin.

Don’t be fooled by an accent and ask a New Zealander if he’s an Australian or a Scotsman or Irishman if he’s English. It irritates them. I’ve met no Englishmen from County Cornwall — where my great-grandfather was born — but two men from Johnstown, Pa., have been to the Swift meat distributorship my Uncle Lohr Jackson once ran. They knew relatives of my old Keyser High coach, Joe Stanislawczyk.

I tried to communicate in what remains from four years of college French classes with a Swiss lady whose command of English was only a bit more proficient. We understood each other most of the time.

I told her that one of my professors said that if there were any French hillbillies, they would talk like I did ... then tried to explain what a hillbilly is, and that took awhile.

When my friends began doing what they call Living History, the park rangers and tour guides treated them like they had spent all day chasing hogs and cleaning out sewers with Mike Rowe on TV’s “Dirty Jobs.”

Now that a few years have passed, most have grown friendly toward my buddies. Some even bring their tour groups around to interact with them, and it’s neat to watch how they feed off each other. The pros see them not as a threat, but as knowledgeable amateurs they can work with to enhance the visitors’ experience.

I sometimes contribute things to the conversations besides an occasional, “My gray shirt and butternut pants are the new Confederate summer-weight uniform.” I might know some obscure fact or remind my friends of something they know but overlooked.

Mostly, what I do is the same thing I do for a living: observe for a moment, then ask a question that gets someone to talk.

Sometimes, a one-word question was enough: “Vietnam?” A volunteer park security guard who said, “Yes,” seemed to appreciate the change my friends described in the way the rangers and guides treated them.

After I told him, “Welcome Home,” he described what happened to him upon his return from a war he and his brothers won, only to see the politicians surrender the freedom they’d bought for South Vietnam.

It’s amazing that a man who did his job — and probably better than anyone expected — could return to face scorn, abuse and even laughter. The last thing he and the others deserved was to be treated like bums, particularly by older men who were veterans themselves.

Confederate veterans could no doubt have sympathized with them.

Some Tennesseeans in gray uniforms told us about the struggles to establish monuments or drum up respect for their Rebel ancestors. The South lost, and history is written by the winners. Twenty-one years passed before the first Confederate state monument was dedicated at Gettysburg (to Marylanders). Tennessee’s was the last, in 1982.

Much has been said about the brave men from Maine, New York and Pennsylvania who defended Little Round Top, and brave they were. But what of the men from Alabama and Texas who charged up that rocky hill four times on a warm and brutally humid day, right after finishing a 20-mile march with no rest and no water to drink?

A tour guide told us he was at the clearing on Little Round Top’s summit at sunset while a group of Boy Scouts was visiting the 20th Maine Monument down over the hill in the woods.

“Their bugler began to play Taps,” he said, “and we could hear it. There must have been 400 people where I was, and it just got quiet. Everybody turned toward the sound of the bugle and listened. People began holding hands or putting their arms around each other. It really was something to watch.”

Who was braver? Those who stood firm at the top of the hill, or those who tried to take it from them?

It doesn’t matter. Like many before them, and many more since, they were American soldiers who had to finish a fight someone else started. Most of them did their jobs better than anyone could have expected.

That’s how we should remember them.