I was a boy during World War II. When I visited my grandmother in Mississippi, I would visit the battlefield at Vicksburg. It wa snothing like it is now, because the trees had no grown up to obscure so much, and one can still see the town on the crest of the river and see the depressions in the ground where the entrenchments were. My grandmother lived in a house along the road followed by Grant, differing from the road he us only in being covered by asphalt. My great-grandmother was still alive and remembered the siege; she stayed a while in the caves under the city. One of her uncles decapitated by a cannonball during the Union attack. No wonder that when old people spoke of “THE WAR,” they did not mean the war against Hitler.
This particular great-great-grandpa was buried, along with his wife and children
in the church cemetery that remained after...
“..The church used to stand right here (pointing)
but some of them yankee boys came down here from Indiana and from Pennsylvania
and tore down the church building to use the logs to build a big fence
right over there (pointing again) on the edge of that big gully.”
Great-great-grandpa saw the identification on some of their dead
before he helped to bury them in unmarked graves.
This happened at a minor battle that took place in Griswoldville,
about 10 miles east of Macon, Georgia.
I visit the cemetery a couple of times a year.