2014-09-28

From Anvil Campground, Williamsburg, VA.

Today, we drove the Jeep to the Fort Monroe National Monument Thank you, Nick Russell for mentioning this fort in your blog. We might otherwise not have made the trip. Located on the southern tip of the Virginia Peninsula, at Old Point Comfort in Hampton, VA. Fort Monroe is the largest stone fort ever constructed in the US. Construction began in 1819, and lasted for 15 years. One of the first picture we took at Fort Monroe was the Old Point comfort Lighthouse.  .  Robert E. Lee spent time at Fort Monroe as a Lieutenant engineer. . After he was captured near Irwinton, GA, Confederate President Jefferson Davis was confined to this cell at Fort Monroe. .  After spending about 3 hours reading the signs and looking at the exhibits in the Casement Museum, we walked up onto the parapet over the casements. There, we found a sign under the Fort’s flag describing the origin of Retreat, and how people should act during the sounding of Retreat. .  Since the sign is hard to read, I thought the information worth including.

“Retreat is a custom first used by the French and dates to the crusades. Retreat is sounded at sunset and its purpose was to notify sentries to start challenging until sunrise and to tell the rank and file to go to quarters.

Courtesies

During Retreat personnel in military uniform will render the hand salute. Personnel in civilian attire will place there hand over their heart. Male personnel wearing hats will remove their hats and using their right hand place their hat over their hearts.”

We decided to walk all the way around the fort on the parapet. It is a long way around with ins and outs due to its star shape. There are numerous little headstones on the parapet marking where people buried their pets. . One of the oldest we spotted was dated 1936. . We decided that if you were having trouble naming a pet, a walk along this parapet should give you many options.

Fort Monroe remained an active military base from 1819 to 2011. It taught the use of Artillery until it was split into Coastal and Field Artillery. The need for coastal artillery ended after WWII due to Missiles and Air Defense, I was in the Field Artillery in Vietnam, and was trained in Fort Sill, Oklahoma.

Hugs, and type at you later.