Awesome Day!

24 Feb 09

Tues

We had a field trip to Charleston, SC today, and it turned out to be a great day. We visited Charleston Air Force Base first and spent the morning there learning about ceremonies to receive and send home Soldiers KIA. It was not only neat to be there learning this, but also moving to see a demonstration of an Honor Guard carrying a casket with a flag draped over it up into a huge Air Force cargo plane. I cannot show you any pictures of the plane or the ceremony, except the funny one I caught while we were driving away on the bus. These plans are so big that special hangers are built to do maintenance on them, and even then they don't always get the whole plane inside. That plane has a huge door in the tail section that lowers to let large equipment drive up into it. We stood inside the main hull of a plane similar to that one.

After lunch at the Officer's Club at the AF Base, we drove down to the Charleston Harbor, and took a ferry over to Ft. Sumpter, which is an island near the entrance of the Harbor (to the Atlantic Ocean), where the first shots of the Civil War began. South Carolina was the first state to leave the Union, and it was fitting (or inevitable) that the first action of the Civil War started here as well. Anyway, about 85 Union Soldiers held the Fort initially, and the Confederate Army wanted them to leave peacefully. They refused, so the Confederate forces stationed at two other Forts over a mile away started to lauch cannon balls into Ft. Sumpter. They pounded it for about 30 hours, until the Union Soldiers gave up. Severe damage was done to the Fort, but not a single person died -- incredibly! Those cannon can file a 25 lb cannon ball over 4 miles! In the picture of me on the ferry, notice the small island over my head. That's Ft. Sumpter.

The retired Navy Aircraft carrier, the USS Yorktown, is also docked there as well, and is now a museum. We got to wander all over it, as well as an old WWII submarine docked next to it. Both were pretty cool! If you remember the movie, "National Treasure" with Nicholas Cage, there is a scene where he leaps off an aircraft carrier into the water below to escape the FBI guys. Well, that was the USS Yorktown, and my battle buddy, Doug and I, stood on the flight deck somewhere near where Nicholas Cage jumped over board for that scene. I find those big ol' ships fascinating. I later banged my head on a low-hanging door frame while tring to navigate through the halls and stairs of that ship. So maybe I don't like those ol' ships after all. They hurt!

Well, I need my sleep because we're going on a 3-mile hike tomorrow morning in all our gear (battle rattle), starting at 0530! Goodnight.