The Mountains Remember

We are told that there are still human societies on this planet who, believe it or not, do not have a single word for "WAR," let alone "Civil War," in their vocabulary. We are accustomed to calling such people "primitive." Some of them are said to live in remote arctic areas, and their daily battles for existence are so demanding that they would find it absurd, if not downright ridiculous, to brandish their hunting weapons against human neighbors. Neighbors are needed. They are there to help or be helped, to share to be shared with, in short, they are there to ensure communal survival.

Perhaps, some day far into the new Millennium -- which we are about to enter with much pomp and circumstance -- the rest of mankind might evolve to the same level of common sense, practicality, and civilized behavior as our brethren dwelling among the ice bergs.

For, as we know, except for the two polar ice caps, this globe on which we live has been literally pockmarked with battlefields since time immemorial, and we know all too well that this process of disfigurement continues every minute in many parts of the world as we assemble here at Chickamauga.

With such a profusion of "killing fields" -- old and new -- one might ask: Why do we come here? One answer is simply: Why NOT here, as well as anywhere else?

Chickamauga is a sad place, a tragic place, whether we look at it in retrospect or as part of a pattern that repeats itself throughout human history. We have learned that civil wars are notoriously more fierce, more brutal than other conflicts, with national "families," so to speak, being unable to resolve their domestic differences without drenching their own backyards in the blood of their youth. Most wars that have been raging around us recently, and are still raging as we stand here, in Europe, Africa, Asia, are civil wars, and as in all modern wars the real victims are innocent civilians, old people, women, and children. It is safer to be a soldier than a toddler in any war today, as we approach the new millennium. Today it would seem to make more sense to hand out medals for bravery to grandmothers rather than to generals!

However, it was not safe to be a soldier on either side at Chickamauga. He had no "smart" weapons, no push-button rockets that could hit the enemy from a safe distance, no generals who could fight battles while keeping their own troops out of "harms way." It was dirty, bloody, hand-to-hand combat, more gruesome to the combatants than any entertainment industry can depict for us, or any "reenactors" reenact.

The American Civil War was in many ways a war between Europeans who had brought their problem-solving techniques and traditions with them across the Atlantic. It is safe to say that many of the men on both sides who fought here had left Europe, or hailed from ancestors who had left Europe, for the very purpose of getting away from the endless squabbles and wars and bloodletting on the old continent. They knew full well how young men had been forced -- many of them "shanghaied" by brutal "press gangs" -- to march into battle upon battle for various emperors and kings and rulers and causes of which they understood little or nothing and cared less. What an unexpected surprise and shock it must have been to many of them to have to march into the gunsmoke on fields like this, here in the new, the promised land, where they had wanted to create a new life, in peace for themselves and their families.

That is not to say that the participants were oblivious to the cause for which they were fighting, on either side. Col. Heg certainly had clear ideas about what he was doing, and anti-slavery sentiments were strong in Norwegian and other Scandinavian communities, although there must have been many amongst them who had never seen a slave, or even a black person, for that matter. Many of them, however, may indeed have felt like "half-slaves" at least, well acquainted as they were with the bondage of poverty in the land they had left.

As you know, Col. Heg realized that many of the newly arrived immigrant boys in Wisconsin had little or no mastery of English, and therefore might hesitate to volunteer in the Union Army unless they knew they could march off to war with friends and neighbors of their own background and be commanded by officers who spoke their language. And they did enlist in Heg's regiment, and often gave their companies names after their home districts in Norway, "Valdres Kompani," Vossa-Kompani" and so forth, and chose to have their regimental slogan emblazed on their banner in their mother tongue: For Gud og vort Land" -- For God and Our County," the "Land" of course being the new one they had chosen to live in. In all these years I have felt that I knew these boys and shared their thoughts. They must have looked like the mountain people I meet today in Voss and in Valdres. But in remembering the 15th, we must also realize that thousands of Scandinavian immigrants, or sons of immigrants, enlisted in many other Union regiments.

Most soldiers of Nordic background fought in the Union Army, one reason being simply that they had chosen to settle in Northern territories and states. But there were indeed Scandinavians on the Confederate side as well, Norwegians serving mainly in Texas units. I do not know if Norsemen faced Norsemen on this field; I know they did on other battlegrounds. But it is quite possible that a rebel yell or two may have been emitted somewhere along the lines here as well, in an unmistakable Scandinavian accent.

But we have not come here to glorify war or romanticize an already over-romanticized tragic conflict. We have come here to remember people on both sides who were drawn into momentous events in history, events more often than not far beyond their individual choice or control, or even full comprehension. They were swept into a whirlpool, but did their duty as they saw fit in the time in which they lived. And died.

We have come here because history is important to each and every one of us. For us Norwegians, the story of our countrymen and women who migrated to other lands, is an important and integral part of our national history as a whole. The first great wave of migration to the United States started 175 years ago. But the mountains remember those who left, just as people of Norse heritage here have remembered the "old country." These bonds have been exceptionally strong all these years, perhaps because Norway is a small nation which lost, or contributed, more than 40 percent of her population in the great waves of emigration. We cling to those bonds perhaps more ardently than bigger nations who certainly have far more descendants numerically, if not proportionally, on this continent than we do.

We think today of all the lives, from the South and the North, that were lost on this field of sorrow for so many families all those years ago. We honor Col. Hans Christian Heg and his 15th Wisconsin Regiment. They were volunteers, and indeed we shall be in need of volunteers in the times we are about to enter, volunteers of the same mettle but another outlook, ready to combat poverty, intolerance, racism, violence, greed and indifference, if we are to survive and ultimately be able to erase the word "WAR" from our modern vocabulary. In honoring the Fifteenth we need not indulge in any heroics or lofty oratory, which would only embarrass good people who did what they thought was right. All we need to say is...

Hvil i fred. Rest in peace.

Fjellene minnes. The mountains remember.

Copyright by Erik Bye. All rights reserved. Used with permission of the author.