During their first four weeks of training, Marine recruits study military history. The class that performed the training exercise I described on in my last three posts made a trip to a Civil War battlefield in Virginia. Their training grounds was not far from that battlefield.
Several members of the 1942 Reserve Officers’ Class were from York County in Pennsylvania. A very famous battlefield, Gettysburg is in that County. Today I am going to post some information about that the Battle of Gettysburg. My informaiton comes from “Never to be forgotten,” a book published by the York Daily Record.
Before the Confederates marched to Gettysburg, they marched into Hanover, PA. There they met up with some of the Union forces. The thinking Union troops realized that the horsemen under Jeb Stuart, a Confederate general, were the “eyes and ears of the Confederate army.”
Those same Union troops then made an effort to slow the movement of Stuart’s horsemen. In fact, they forced those horsemen to take a wide detour during their march to Gettysburg. As a result, Stuart and his horsmen did not arrive at Gettysburg until the second day of that three-day battle.
General Stuart had an in-depth knowledge of the Union troop positions. He was ready to share that knowlege with General Lee. Yet he could not get to Gettysburg on the day when Lee first had need of Stuart’s information.
Such facts, available in many accounts of military history, show how important any one confrontation with the enemy can be. They underscore the importance of studies focused on military history.
