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Longs Spring 2004

"By Seas, By Lands"

After Action Report
Battle of Longs Spring, Bridgeport, AL.
June 11th - 13th, 2004

Compiled by Pvt. Steven Fowler

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Observations:

  • Wow what a trip.  650 grueling miles one way.  Tough on the old back end but well worth it.  This event, even though this was its first year as an event, it has a lot of potential.

  • The place was spectacular.  The battle took place in a valley between a couple of small mountain ranges.  The crowds were bigger than I thought they would be. 

  • Big History was made this weekend.  Milton's did not have enough people to man both guns plus a gun from a Tampa SCV camp showed up.  The Marines helped manned the guns.  Milton's put three guns on the field on Saturday.  The big history is that the Marines finally manned a gun all by themselves (well one Matt Helms from Milton's ran as a private to help out).  Krystyne was the first female gunner on a Milton gun.  Very cool!!  Kudos to Krystyne. 

  • Miss fire drill at its best.  Krystyne's gun had to go thru an entire miss fire drill.  Shelly inadvertently put the round in backwards.  Oops!!  Well no one told her about that part.  Anyway, very good practice.  Sean was sweating a wee bit doing that.  The gun from the Tampa SCV camp needed help.  They didn't have the correct drill down pat and their rounds were rolled with baggies.  A very big no no.  Goodrich shut them down right away.  Anyway, the rounds were re-rolled and they had a great time on Sunday's battle.

  • Milton's provided the food preparations this weekend, nothing to do but sit back and enjoy the weekend.

  • Another big event, Eileen got on a gun on Sunday.  She traded for a Longaberger Basket.  Eileen, get the really big one.  :O)  And yes she even drank from the bucket!!  Way to go Eileen.  My daughter Shelly manned a gun on Saturday and Sunday and she drank from the bucket on Saturday and came close to pulling a Richard with the contents.  The fun part about what Shelly drank was that it had an un fired round in it from the miss fire drill so it was nice and thick.  Way to go Shelly!!

  • The drive home was hard with a couple of us having to work on Monday Morning, but we did it.  Taking Monday off next time.

  • Jon, Krys, Will & Neil drove up on Thursday.  They had the camp setup when we got there on Friday afternoon.  Very helpful.

  • Yes they had a camp ground near by.  The pool and showers were available for our use. Thanks goodness!!

Actions:

  • Saturday's Action: Well the battle started off around 2:00 pm.  A good sized crowd did show up.  That was good.  Three guns and all of the Marines manning guns of one sort or another.  I was the 2/5 guy on Mark Helms gun, the SCV gun and ours was with General Goodrich.  Krys manning the third gun with Major Griffin went to the right side of the field.  Action got hot and heavy.  The SCV gun missed fire real quick and eventually had to be shutdown by Goodrich due to rounds with baggies in them.  Krys' gun went into the full miss fire drill due to a round being put in backwards but they still got off 20 rounds before finally taken out and killed by the Calvary. Krys said it was wonderful watching Sandy (as a water angel) running from the action screaming. Added a humorous touch. :O)  So the gun I was on was it on the field for a bit.  We moved right then left then right then left then right.  And it was extremely hot.  After the SCV gun sat offline for a while, Goodrich brought the men online to our gun to fill in for those of us needing a break.  I was sweating up a storm.  I had Captains, Major's, Colonels and Generals dumping ice on me.  Very Cool!!  Eventually the Union Army pressed us big time and we withdrew the gun back to the big gun line and then ran out of rounds.  Eventually we withdrew back behind the Confederate camps and the Union pressed to take the CSA.  Hardy eventually surrendered and the battle was over.  Very cool battle for the first time.  It went on for about 90 minutes.

  • Sunday's Action: Well the Sunday battle started off great.  Milton's had three guns running full bore.  The SCV gun stayed on the field and lined with up with the bigger guns.  The other two guns, Marine musket support (Steve and Neil) and a small company marched about than 3 miles via a small mountain trail. Over hills and meadows. It was beautiful. We saw a wild turkey run from the tall grass in the meadow. Very neat. We got to a dirt road on the right flank of the Union. They had no idea we were up there. The battle raged on the field and we waited our right time. Then it happened. As we were prepared to battle anything that came up the road at us, we sprung forth onto the field. We had to drop the guns down a 4 or 5 foot drop off and the rest of us took the field. We totally shocked the Calvary, they were caught off guard. As we advanced on the Union and the Calvary making a last ditch effort to stop us. The left Mountain Howitzer rolled over on it top. Loaded!! Talk about a tense moment. Goodrish yelled to right it back over, re-rammed the round and fired away.  We moved forward towards the tree line and the gun hit another small drop off and the gun was rolled again.  We finally made it out to  the main battlefield and fired away.  Finally the Union, only having a very small infantry support  surrendered.  The day belonged to the Confederates.   When we got the guns back to camp, upon inspection of the guns, we found crks in the axle support.  Goodrich was not worried and the guns will be ready to go by the start og the 2004 - 2005 season. Overall a very good way to close out my first season.

Members:

  • Sean & Eileen Wells
  • Neil Stimac
  • Jon & Krystyne Bateman
  • Will Bateman
  • Steve & Sandy Fowler
  • Shelly Fowler

9 Total people, 8 troops and 1 water angel.

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