Remembrance Day early mornng

Knowing that I have people to join with on a cold and windy November 15 morning is a comforting way to enter this most extraordinary day.  As part of the General Meade Society ceremonies, we meet at the General Humphreys statue along the main road in Gettysburg park.  I had not anticipated the formality of the event, but immediately realized the seriousness of this occasion when General Meade himself steps out of his car (!) in formal dress uniform.  Throughout the morning, dozens of generals, soldiers and their 'ladies' walk up Sickles Ave to form lines for a procession. Joined by onlookers, the ceremony is led by General Humphreys (Jerry) as he remembers the life of the general who was Grant's chief of staff. The generals themselves march in a ragged line, clearly out of practice unlike the regiments that I have seen over the past few months who pride themselves on their proficiency in all matters of soldiering.

All around the park dozens of such ceremonies are in progress. Flags are flying, regimental band music can be heard as they march by on the roads. After the Meade ceremony is over, I am a bit adrift waiting for the parade at 1:00. Then just 100 or so feet away I see a large crowd that draws me to one of the most unusual ceremonies of the morning. One hundred people are gathered around the statue that was, in July, hidden by tree cover, quite curious. This man sitting on a chair dressed in a suit seemed so out of place among the monuments and uniformed soldier's statues. 

 I now recognize it as the statue of the last union solder survivor,  Albert Woolson, who died in 1956, at the age of 107. He was a member of the Grand Army of the Republic a national  organization "limited strictly to 'veterans of the late unpleasantness' "  The GAR eventually endorsed the Sons of Veterans of the United States of America (later to become the Sons of Union Veterans of the Civil War) as its heir and then the Women’s' Relief Corps (WRC) with the title "official auxiliary to the GAR." 

 So, one by one, representatives of the Sons of  Union fighters, and women's auxiliaries, 12 groups in all, place wreaths at the foot of the statue. Seated in the front row is a special guest, known to all (both literally and figuratively)-Abraham Lincoln. He manages to finesse the anachronism of the time, smoothly winding his remarks about the present into.... wait, is he reciting the Gettysburg Address?  The man behind me says, "He's the best", apparently remarking on his abilities as a Lincoln interpreter.

Some 50 feet away, a trumpeter plays the most stirring Taps that I have ever heard. Slow, elongated, legato, with a last note that floats in the air for seconds. It is at that point that tears come to me-and an image of my father in uniform, a veteran.