The last weekend in October was a repeat of the event which the PLA attended two years ago on the Saturn property near Spring Hill, TN. The PLA could not get enough people to form a crew this time, so Bruce Hoover and Bruce Rollin went by themselves and fell in with Stanford's Mississippi Battery. As you might have guessed, it rained for most of the weekend. Bruce and Bruce had decided to travel light and go campaign style, taking only a couple of blankets, ponchos, and dry socks, but at least we didn't have the bother of taking down a wet tent at the end!

The event organizers have been advertising for months that they had learned from their mistakes last time, and would be even better this time. There were a few improvements, by they still have a long row to hoe if they want to come anywhere close to the level of organization which we saw at Sharpsburg.

Particularly lacking was any organization in the artillery command. On Saturday, the scenario was changed several times with the guns being moved back and forth. Finally they were moved completely across the battle field, by tractors, in full view of the crowd with less than thirty minutes left before the battle. We had five guns placed in a fort which had been abandoned half finished. The scenario called for us to be federal and fire on the advancing Confederate troops. They would overrun us, and in the commotion we would change clothes and emerge as a confederate battery in support of them as they went down the field. (The spectator line was about 30 yards behind us, so if there had actually been any spectators they would have doubtless been thoroughly confused by the clothes changing and etc.)

After the Confederate troops advanced some 1/2 mile across the field (with no apparent casualties) they stopped about 30 yards in front of our fort, turned 90 degrees, and marched in front of all five guns giving us a text book example of enfilade fire. They were too close for us to fire safely, so we had to stand there looking completely stupid as they marched past. Then we changed uni forms and gave them some "friendly fire" from the rear. All in all a highly ridiculous scenario.

After the battle we thought we would be clever and move the gun to the site of Sunday's battle. After several hours of confusion, and discussion between members of the command and the property owner, we finally left the gun where we thought it would fight the next day.

Imagine our surprise (and disgust) when on Sunday they tried to charge us $3 each to get in the gate to Woodlawn and move the gun one more time! (This is the same location that charged registered civilians in perdiod garb $6 to witness the battle two years ago.) Stanford's gunner decided to just load their gun and leave early. This gave the two Bruce's ample time to eat supper at their favourite Indian restaurant in Nashville on the way home!