Existing comment:
Digging In:
Three years of combat carried hard lessons: be vigilant (especially against Robert E. Lee), watch your flanks, and dig.
By 1864, whenever soldiers stopped marching or fighting, they started digging. At the Wilderness, miles of earthworks went up in matter of hours. Some were carefully built, strong and geometric -- combinations of logs and dirt. Others were hastily thrown up to protect sleeping men for just a few hours. They remain a vivid part of the battlefield landscape here. |