Orchard Hill Elementary School fifth graders got a visceral look behind the meaning of Memorial Day on Friday with the annual Civil War encampment.
Students dressed in mock Northern Blue and Southern Gray uniforms, engaging in various activities including marching exercises, learning how the sick and wounded were treated in the 1860s (complete with biting bullets), square dancing and even playing a game of rounders, the precursor to baseball.
The day also included a lesson on how soldiers ate (though there was no hardtack this year). The exercise concluded with a fire brigade competition.
"The hope is the students get a real-life experience of a day in the life of a real Civil War soldier," said fifth grade teacher John Smith-Horn.
Smith-Horn said that the encampment has been done in South Windsor for about 20 years and is still one of the most popular rites of passage for students in town.
"It's phenomenal," he said. "Kids can read about things in books, but here they can see it themselves and they remember it for a lifetime. ... It just gets better and better."
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