From the News and Messenger:
Manassas National Battlefield Park will be marking Memorial Day with a commemorative ceremony on Monday.
The event will begin at noon at Groveton Confederate Cemetery and New York Avenue and will feature Union and Confederate flags, state flowers and wreaths of spring blooms decorating the battlefield in memory of the fallen of the two Civil War battles of Manassas in 1861 and 1862, and in commemoration of the nation’s war dead through history.
Members of the 42nd Virginia Infantry and 14th Brooklyn Militia reenactment groups will represent Con-federate and Union troops in conducting funeral musketry salutes at the cemetery and at the 14th Brooklyn Monument.
The park’s artillery detachment will fire a salute from a 10-pounder Parrott gun in honor of the war dead, and members of the 42nd Virginia will perform guard duty at the cemetery through the afternoon.
The ceremony will begin with the raising of flags to the peak of the cemetery flagstaff at noon. Musketry and artillery salutes will follow at the cemetery and a final musketry salute will be fired at the 14th Brook-lyn Monument at about 1 p.m.
The Groveton Cemetery is located on U.S. 29 about one mile west of Va.234. Parking for the cemetery is located immediately to the west of the site, off U.S. 29.
The 14th Brooklyn Monument is across U.S. 29 from the cemetery, with public access and parking located on New York Avenue, a park tour road.
Hopefully these brave soldiers will continue to be honored in this way, regardless of time. Many of those young men are buried far from their homes. Their families didn’t have the comfort of visting their graves. Virginia is full of civil war graveyards. My favorite one is a Union cemetery over on route 250, just east of Staunton. My father always tipped his hat when we drove by on the way to visit my grandparents and said ‘hello buddies.’ He did that every time he passed a military cemetery.
– “… Groveton Confederate Cemetery contains the remains of more
than 260 Confederate soldiers. The identity of only a few is known.”
Groveton had been a small village before the war.
– New York Monuments – “In five minutes the 5th NY lost 123 men killed,
the greatest loss of life in any single infantry regiment in any battle
of the Civil War.”
(US Park Service guide)
(Return to Bull Run by John J. Hennessy has a several riveting chapters
on this part of the conflict.)
The History Channel ‘The Story of Us’ showed the segment about the 5th NY having the greatest loss of life of any single infantry regiment in any battle. It looked horrible.
The more I learn about that war the more horrible I think it was. I almost cannot bear to think about it.