[pursuivant]

Confederate States of America ?
Ya know there were a few aces from WW2 from the good ole south. I for one am sitting right smack in the middle of the south, and was in the US Army for 18 yrs. The military has a way of taking the "hillbilly" look away from ya. I remember my old drill hated boys from the south, and use to say to me on a regular basis "Bet thats yer first pair of boots, huh Campbell" I would remark "Naw Drill Sergeant, this has to be at least my third..." for that I pushed Fort Benning at least 2 inches lower with push up.... Like I said earlier, rent or buy CSI: confederate states of america, it will give you a lot to laugh, and to think about.

Your drill sergeant must have been very popular, given as Ft. Benning is in Georgia.

I just cringe when I see anyone proposing anything to do with the Confederacy on the internet, unless it's on a heavily moderated forum dealing specifically with the conflict - there's way too many nuts who want to keep refighting the damned thing until the South wins and it draws flames like a gasoline-soaked Buddhist monk with a political grievance. If you thought that "chart wars" over the precise performance of the Bf-109 were bad, you haven't lived through some of the Usenet flame wars about the "War Between the States."

Hell, on this forum we couldn't go 1 screen of posts before I saw the usual anti-southern slurs and the beginnings of the typical "slavery = ultimate evil" vs. "states rights = glorious lost cause" flame war.

IMO, any citizen of the United States who wants to refight the damned thing, online or in the field, is an idiot. The American Civil War was a national tragedy for both sides. Single greatest loss of American lives in a single day - check (see Antietam). Single greatest loss of life - by percentage of population - for any war in the nation's history - check. Most expensive war in the country's history in terms of percentage of GDP (counting in the horrendous damage to the Southern states) - check. Vicious multi-day battles that wasted thousands of lives to no good purpose and whittled units down to virtually no survivors - right up there with WWI, Vietnam and some of the less glorious U.S. WW2 campaigns in the Heurtgen Forest and Italy.

As for studying the conflict in detail - my advice is to put down your Bruce Catton or Steven Ambrose or "Battles and Leaders" and back away slowly. Every literate survivor of the damned conflict published a memoir, then spent the rest of their lives squabbling over who did what, when and why, in print. Add to that the relative lack of battlefield censorship and the facts that that the ACW was the big turning point in U.S. history and that the part of the country that lost is filled with proud people who hate to lose, you could float every ship ever built on the oceans of ink spilled discussing "The Cause." Without exaggeration, a young man could spend his entire lifetime JUST studying the official U.S. records of the conflict. Really, your time is much better spent shooting down virtual airplanes, or rolling the world's largest ball of rubber bands, or teaching your cat to break dance.