John L. Burns, “old hero of Gettysburg,” in Gettysburg, PA in 1863. During the Battle of Gettysburg as a 70-year-old civilian living nearby, grabbed his flintlock musket & powder horn to walk to the battlefield to join in w/ Union troops as a sniper. His story elevated him to National Hero, briefly.
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“Those goddarned rebs were making a ruckus in my back yard”
Get off my lawn!
Dude was probably raised up on stories of The War Of Independence on his dad’s knee, what with being only about 20 years younger than the country he himself came to defend
That’s has to be the crazist ‟get off my lawn” story.
Notice the crutches behind him.
No one escapes the hazards of war…
Time for a biopc starring Clint Eastwood.
70 in 1863 was prob 30 years past life expectancy. So why not charge the enemy
According to the Ken Burns documentary, ‘THE CIVIL WAR’… in spring of 1861, at the start of the Civil War, Robt. E. Lee was given command of the Army of Northern Virginia. Men flocked to his command in Richmond, Va., which was only a few dozen miles from Washington, D.C.. After making preparations, Lee determined to march on Washington, where Union forces were bivouacked & capture Lincoln, ending the war quickly with the South victorious. The Union Army, learning of his plan, marched out to meet him. The opposing forces clashing in a bloody 2-day battle near a stream called Bull Run Creek. Portions of the fighting took place on a farm owned by a man named Wilmer McClean; his house was even commandeered & used as an infirmary. After the battle, McClean determined to move to somewhere more isolated so as to avoid the fighting, & found a property many miles away in a little settlement called Appomattox Courthouse.
Four years later, in spring of 1865, Lee’s army was surrounded in a forest in northern Virginia. Out-gunned, out-manned, & out-supplied, he realized his only option was surrender, & sent emissaries to Grant’s HQ. Grant sent staff out to find a suitable place for the surrender documents to be signed, & they found a large, well-kept house nearby, in a little town called APPOMMATOX COURTHOUSE, & in the most incredible of coincidences, the homeowner was WILMER McCLEAN! Years afterwards, McClean was often known to boast “The Civil War started in my back pasture & ended in my front parlor!”…
Like to know about the gun!
“Designated marksman” sounds better than “sniper”, just IMO.
More believable than all the bulletproof rebel stories