Confederate Autumn - by Dale Gallon



Early Fall Greetings from the Chief of the Armies of the CSA

September 14, 2018

Officers of the Confederate States of America (CSA) Armies,

It has been a long while since a message was sent to the CSA at large from me, but I wanted to take the time to highlight a few things we've been up to. General Cameron McOmish has been appointed as the Chief of Staff (CoS) of the Army of Tennessee (AoT) and has been working to help convert and bring up to date awards and ribbons for AoT officers based on the new awards system that has been developed. You can view all the new AoT ribbons and awards here:

http://www.wargame.ch/wc/acw/sub/vmi/Ao ... 02hAoT.htm

It was decided to make it similar to the system used by the Army of Northern Virginia (ANV). Cam has worked extremely hard at this process, which takes time to make sure everything is accurate and to notify the officers being awarded. To date he has completed awardings for Service Medals & Ribbons (Years of Service), Combat Decorations (Victories in Battle Against Union Opponents), Campaign Ribbons and Command Staff Service Ribbons.

Other things that the Command Staff has been up to is awarding many of our officers with some of the CSA National Medals & Awards, in particular the Patrick Cleburne Medal of Service, Jefferson Davis Medal of Recognition and the Samuel Cooper Medal of Service. It is a process I have been slowly working through and almost all officers who have played a game since the summer of 2015 will be awarded one of these medals when done.

You can see the awards issued in the multiple forum posts that have been made for these awards. The posts are grouped by divisions. The divisions posted so far are:

Army of Northern Virginia (ANV)

I (Longstreeet's) Corps:

2nd (Pickett's) Division
3rd (Hood's Texas) Division


II (Jackson's) Corps:

1st (Jackson's) Division
2nd (Hill's Light) Division
3rd (Mosby's Rangers) Cavalry Division


III (Swamp Legion) Corps:

2nd (Heth's) Division
3rd (Wilcox's) Division


Army of Tennessee (AoT)

I (Hardee's) Corps:

1st (Cleburne's) Division
2nd (Cheatham’s) Division
3rd (Breckinridge’s) Division


II (Stewart's) Corps:

1st (Buckner’s) Division
2nd (Hébert's) Division "Gator Alley"
3rd (Hindman’s) Division


Forrest's Cavalry Corps:

1st (Wheeler’s) Cavalry Division
2nd (Armstrong’s) Cavalry Division
3rd (Morgan’s) Cavalry Division


The other divisions will come shortly!


Some of them are posted to the Promotions & Awards Register as well:

December 2016
March 2017
April 2017
June 2017
August 2017


Also there is a forum post for several officers who have received combat honors for completing 50 games. You can view that here.


Finally several posts have been made for promotions as well:

June 2017
October 2017 (General Officer)
October 2017 (Line Officer)
Summer 2017 to July 2018 (Line Officer)


General Al Hovey and General Cameron McOmish have kept the Army of Tennessee (AoT) conduct and admin points going out to their officers and General Stewart Stiles has done the same for the Army of Northern Virginia (ANV). I thank them for their continued efforts this year! Also the Vicksburg Military Institute (VMI) graduated 6 officers in 2017 under the excellent tutelage of Commandant General Nick Kunz and Dean of Cadets Lieutenant General Tom Phillips as well as their training staff.

In the next month or two I hope to issue another round of Chief of the Armies (CoA) Discretionary Points, which I realized hasn't happened this year yet. This will be for all those who played games since July 2016. Typically the more someone plays games, the higher the amount of points I usually award. These are on top of any conduct, admin or awards points earned.

I hope this year has been good to all of you so far. I wanted to mention, since I visited this last fall with family, in Emmitsburg, Maryland just south of Gettysburg where parts of the Army of the Potomac camped is the National Shrine of St. Elizabeth Ann Seton run by the Catholic religious order Sisters of Charity. I mention this as they were present during the Civil War and during Gettysburg. An exhibit below the Basilica, which there is an overview for on their site https://setonshrine.org/civil-war-sisters/ is really worth seeing. The Sisters provided nurses on the battlefields and hospitals. They served not only at Gettysburg, but Antietam and Shiloh among other battles. Union Generals and units used various parts of their facilities and land. General Sickles, Howard, Schurz, Philippe Régis de Trobriand, a unit under his command the 40th New York Volunteer Infantry Regiment ("Mozart Regiment" or the "Constitution Guard") and others I can't recall at the moment. There was also a drummer boy who came back 50 years later to visit the site. The displays not only tell of what the Sisters did during the war, they had many bullets and shell fragments that were either removed from patients or found on the battlefield in areas where they action happened and they treated the casualties. It was free and is part of a set of exhibits for St. Elizabeth Ann Seton and the Sisters overall. I'll try to take photos and record more information next time, as we didn't have a lot of time to stay. There is a General John Reynolds link involved somehow. They also treated the Boys in Grey too! (Hopefully some of our Union officers will enjoy reading this segment too)

I hope to explore the Falling Waters area next.

As always, I am open to all comments & suggestions from the membership at large. You can email me anytime at eric2900@aol.com or my other email address: sludwig2900@gmail.com

Hope everyone has a great rest of September!

My Best,
-Scott

General Scott Ludwig
Commanding Officer & Chief of the Armies (CoA) of the Confederate States of America (CSA)