Veterans Day evening we went over to Andersonville NHP, this is the home of the National Museum for POW’s and MIA’s, Andersonville was the location of the Confederate Civil War prison where in a 14 month period more then 13000 prisoners died either from disease or treatment from the guards.
This year was their First Annual Memorial Illumination Drive; the plan was to have 13000 candles spread across the old prison grounds to represent the soldiers that died there, well that were the plan. It was to start at 6:30pm and we went over about an hour and a half early, on the way there it started to rain a little. When we got there I talked to one of the rangers and asked here if we could wait in the parking lot until it started, she asked if we were volunteers and I said no. Well you are now she told me, the rain had put out most of the candles, she handed me half a dozen BBQ lighters and said get out there and start lighting candles. Cathy and I drove around to the site and started running around lighting as many candles as we could. About 10 minutes before it was to start, along with a ton of other volunteers we had managed to re-light approximately 80% of the candles. All of our lighters had run out of fluid and we were walking back to the car when the second wave of rain came along, I had my camera in my pocket and using a monument for a tripod I managed to get one time exposed picture before the rain hit really hard. Within two minutes all the candles were out again, by the time we walked back to the car the rain had stopped and was gone for the night. We only got to see it from the top of the hill for about 2 minutes but it was something neither one of us will ever forget. I talked with the ranger after and she said that they spent two years planning this and because of the time and money it took and because of the results that they will probably not attempt it again. If this is true then we are two of just a handful of people that will ever experience this sight.
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