Volume 7 , Issue 9

Flowers In Gun Barrells

"Most of the other younger and able men of Bedford County were also away serving the Confederacy as soldiers. But a home force of militia was still able to muster about thirty men who vowed to do their best to slow the giant army coming their way. Down near the base of Sharp Top, the militiamen didn't know that up above some of the Union soldiers had paused at the hotel between the peaks, helping themselves to anything in the hotel smokehouse larder, including a hundred slabs of bacon. One Union officer, a Major Harkins, facetiously signed the guest register. Opposite his name, someone wrote: He didn't pay his bill. Some small hotel outbuildings were set afire. Two miles of fencing were broken up and destroyed. The invaders smashed the roof of the rock house on Sharp Top. Little did the militia know that many of these northern soldiers had picked rhododendron blossoms and whimsically stuck them in the barrels of their guns. The adjutant for Colonel Hayes said that the marching troops looked like a moving bank of flowers." -- www.peterv.com/peak_otter.htm   |  View or Add Comments (0 Comments)   |   Receive updates ( subscribers)  |   Unsubscribe

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