Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: MONDAY, July 11, 1994                   TAG: 9407140051
SECTION: EXTRA                    PAGE: 1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Ben Beagle
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

YOU WON'T SEE ME GETTING SECTIONAL ABOUT GETTYSBURG

I can say this isn't the case with old yours truly here. I had a New Jersey roommate in college, and he is a great American.

It drove me crazy when he said words like "fawn" and "lawn," but he became a little edgy when I said thing like "house" and "mouse."

No, sir, boys. I'm a well-rounded, literate, intelligent, somewhat debonair and gracious Southerner who knows that such feelings are not a proper practice for ladies and gentlemen.

One of my best friends in the practice of journalism is a nice kid from Maine. I never held what the 20th Maine did at Little Roundtop against him.

I may have used some mildly indecent language when we discussed the behavior of these brave boys in blue, but it was all in honest fun.

I don't think, however, that there was anybody in the 20th Maine or the entire Army of the Potomac who could have matched what Lewis Armistead said to his brigade before Pickett's Charge: "For your lands. For your homes. For your sweethearts. For your wives. For Virginia."

I'm not being sectional when I say that most Northerners didn't talk like that.

I believe that had my roommate commanded a New Jersey brigade, he might have watched the dress-parade Confederate advance on Cemetery Ridge and said something like: "Geezo, wheezo, guys. Here they come."

This is not very eloquent, but it would have been a fairly accurate description of what was going on.

As I said, I have become incredibly urbane and sophisticated, and I didn't tear up but once. That was when George Pickett reported to Robert Edward Lee that his division was gone.

I admit that I did sob a little at the length of the commercials separating us from the action on the field. It just seemed that the entire Battle of Gettysburg took less time than the ad spots.

Incidentally, Americans from all over the country should join each other in happiness that nobody in the advertising business wrote any commercials based on the battle. You know, Gen. Lee would have been better off if he had had a certain telephone service.

No. The Union stills stands rock-bottomed and four-square, but I'd kind of like to know what would have happened if the 20th Maine had been AWOL at Gettysburg.