Stretching Blankets

[lukegilly13]

Re: Stretching Blankets

This is one of my favorite images of all.............
If you look at the end closest to you, there is a blanket that has been pushed back but it is still connected as if it had been stretched across the top as the adjacent shelter halfs...in fact, if you zoom in I think it is actually tied to a bayonett in one spot. On the far other end there is a blanket stretched from a musket sticking in the bottom of the trench and is stretched across and tied to a bush.

[-Jesse-]

Re: Stretching Blankets

Awesome image Luke! we have to try one of these!!

[lukegilly13]

Re: Stretching Blankets

I thought the same thing!!!!! I'm thinking Jonesville haha.

[lukegilly13]

Re: Stretching Blankets

I knew I had read this before but I couldn't rememer where until today. This is an excert from a letter from the man himself, Robert E. Lee, during his service in the US army, before his service in the CS army. Here it is:
"I hope your father continued well and enjoyed his usual celebration of the Fourth of July; mine was spent, after a march of thirty miles on one of the branches of the Brazos, under my blanket, elevated on four sticks driven in the ground, as a sun-shade. The sun was fiery hot, the atmosphere like the blast from a hot-air furnace, the water salt, still my feelings for my country were as ardent, my faith in her future as true, and my hopes for her advancement as unabated as they would have been under better circumstances."
Source: Lee, Robert Edward, 1807-1870, Letter from Robert E. Lee to Mary Ann Randolph Custis Lee, August 4, 1856, in Life and Letters of Robert Edward Lee, Soldier and Man. Jones, J. William. Washington, DC: Neale Publishing Company, 1906, pp. 486. S1564-D005 [Bibliographic Details] [08-04-1856] LeeRob:L1564-5

[Rebel Yell1863]

Re: Stretching Blankets

Anyone want to see how one of the reenactors on this forum do it, here's a neat image from Derrick Pugh's album- http://www.authentic-campaigner.com/...pictureid=1398

Pat, I was going to post this picture on here and you beat me to it...Ha.

I got the idea for that from the Lazy Jacks articles. They had period references of stretching blankets. I put a rock in each corner of the blanket, then tied a string around that to steak into the ground.

I use what I have on campaign...That is what they did during the war.

BTW- It was a original bayonet...