Visiting the ‘Bivouac of the Dead’ for Memorial Day (4 PHOTOS)
While in Louisville for the National Rifle Association’s Annual Meeting, Guns.com staffers paid their respect at Cave Hill National Cemetery.
Cave Hill is an immense 296-acre Victorian era cemetery in the city with over 120,000 burials spread across its rolling hills and meticulously manicured lawns. Tucked in the back of the gardens of stone and statuary is the Cave Hill National Cemetery, which began when the first interment occurred in November 1861 from Union soldiers who had died at camps and hospitals in the Louisville area.
Among the dead are both Union and Confederate veterans including generals from both sides as well as men from later conflicts and a sole British Army Machine Gun Corps private who died while on a military mission to the U.S. in 1918.
(Photos: Chris Eger/Guns.com)
Besides August Bloedner’s marker to the 32nd Indiana Infantry Regiment– the oldest surviving memorial to the Civil War, and one of the country’s first dedicated monuments to unknown soldiers which predated the Tomb of the Unknown in Washington by a generation, the site includes several passages from Kentucky poet and Army officer Theodore O’Hara, the “Bivouac of the Dead,” written in 1847 after the war against Mexico.
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Source: http://www.guns.com/2016/05/27/visiting-the-bivouac-of-the-dead-for-memorial-day/
