Field Hospital

While the opening dedication ceremony took place Thursday morning outside of Pry House, "surgery" on an officer was performed inside in one of the displays in the photo above. Left, those in attendance at the ceremony prepare to enter the house. The National Park Service acquired the Pry House, at 18906 Shepherdstown Pike, in 1975, but the interior never was open to the public before Thursday. The house, and eventually the barn, is part of a cooperative project with the National Museum of Civil War Medicine in Frederick, Md. The Union Army took over the Pry family's house, barn and land just before the Battle of Antietam.

Children who have a love for history, fashion, adventure, competition or who simply enjoy learning new things, might find their niche at Children's Experience Weekend.  The Pry Field Hospital at Antietam National Battlefield is hosting the two-day event from 11 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Saturday, July 21, and Sunday, July 22. "It should interest everybody," said Thomas Frezza, superintendent at the Pry House Field Hospital.  This event gives...

julieg@herald-mail.com SHARPSBURG - Imagine someone coming into your home, tossing your rolled living room carpet aside and transforming the room into a makeshift hospital. That's what happened to the Pry family when the Union Army took over their home, barn and land just before the Battle of Antietam. This Thursday people can get a glimpse of what life was like on the Pry Farm during and after the Sept. 17, 1862, battle when the Pry House Field Hospital Museum opens.

Robert Hicks, author of "Widow of the South," will be at Washington County Free Library at 100 S. Potomac St. in Hagerstown on Nov. 14 at 7 p.m. "Widow of the South" is a fictional account of a real, but relatively unknown, Civil War battle that took place Nov. 30, 1864, in Franklin, Tenn. The battle is recounted through alternating points of view as told by witnesses. Before the battle begins, Carrie McGavock's house is commandeered as a field hospital. By the end of the battle, 9,000 Confederate and Union soldiers perished.

By KERRY LYNN FRALEY Staff Writer The mock cannon blasts and gunfire left the battlefield a little too smoky for 9-year-old Ansar Ali's taste. Still, the afternoon battle demonstration had to be the best part of the 135th Commemoration of the Battle of Antietam event, said the Fountaindale Elementary School fifth-grader. Classmates Ben Poole and Mary Ellen Leap, watching the action from alongside Ansar, agreed. "I like it. You get to see something you couldn't see in real life," said Ben, 10. "It's neat.

andrews@herald-mail.com MIDDLETOWN, MD. The bomb that exploded near Maryland National Guard Sgt. Randy Divel's vehicle in Iraq on Christmas Eve burned about 40 percent of his body, mostly on his right side, his sister, Dianna Divel Mehaffie, said Saturday. Divel, a 1987 graduate of Clear Spring High School, had his first skin graft operation on Dec. 28 and is scheduled to have his second on Monday. Mehaffie said her brother - who is recovering at Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio - was at first listed in critical condition, but has greatly improved.

pepperb@herald-mail.com A mission to make history mean something has led one group of high schoolers and one group of outsiders to rally in support of a local Civil War legacy. Ann Stickler's North Hagerstown High School Advanced Placement U.S. history class and Forest Glen Commonwealth, a Kensington, Md.-based nonprofit historical preservation and education organization, have their eyes on a piece of land off Gapland Road in southern Washington County where a farmhouse and barn sits that once served as a Civil War field hospital.

scottb@herald-mail.com Mary Burral said Saturday she has no regrets about her experience in the military even after being hurt in the war in Iraq. Burral, 24, of Boonsboro, a U.S. Army specialist, received a broken leg and shrapnel wounds to her arms and legs when a five-ton truck in which she was riding was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade on May 16. Burral's 54th Engineering Battalion was working on rebuilding Iraq's roads. She had expected to serve in the Middle East until September.

I am a veteran of the United States Marine Corps. However, it's not about me that I'm writing to you, it's about my father. Although I believe that because of my father's service, I probably chose to serve. My father is a veteran of World War II, but it took the United States nearly 50 years to recognize his veteran's status. In 1942, when my father was an 18-year old freshman in college, he decided to enlist. Because of his poor eyesight, every branch of the military turned him down.

During October 150 years ago, people lined the street outside a New York gallery to see something the likes of which they had never seen before. Inside were images of corpses captured just moments after battle hundreds of miles away at a place called Antietam. Photographer Alexander Gardner had shot the merciless photos about a month earlier for gallery owner Matthew Brady. Reproductions of those portraits are among the artifacts anchoring the exhibit “Bringing the Story of War to Our Doorsteps,” which opened Saturday at the Pry House Field Hospital Museum at Antietam National Battlefield.

Children who have a love for history, fashion, adventure, competition or who simply enjoy learning new things, might find their niche at Children's Experience Weekend.  The Pry Field Hospital at Antietam National Battlefield is hosting the two-day event from 11 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Saturday, July 21, and Sunday, July 22. "It should interest everybody," said Thomas Frezza, superintendent at the Pry House Field Hospital.  This event gives...

The Pry House Field Hospital Museum, off Shepherdstown Pike, in Keedysville, will be featured in  “Civil Warriors” at 8 p.m. Tuesday, April 11, on the National Geographic Channel.  The hospital is one of the locations in the first episode, "Families at War" as National Museum of Civil War Medicine Executive Drrector George Wunderlich explores the challenges and conditions faced by Dr. William Childs. Childs’ great-great-grandson Tim Sawyer discovers with Wunderlich the story of grueling hours and unthinkable conditions his ancestor faced as a Civil War surgeon at the Battle of Antietam.

Robert Hicks, author of "Widow of the South," will be at Washington County Free Library at 100 S. Potomac St. in Hagerstown on Nov. 14 at 7 p.m. "Widow of the South" is a fictional account of a real, but relatively unknown, Civil War battle that took place Nov. 30, 1864, in Franklin, Tenn. The battle is recounted through alternating points of view as told by witnesses. Before the battle begins, Carrie McGavock's house is commandeered as a field hospital. By the end of the battle, 9,000 Confederate and Union soldiers perished.

andrews@herald-mail.com MIDDLETOWN, MD. The bomb that exploded near Maryland National Guard Sgt. Randy Divel's vehicle in Iraq on Christmas Eve burned about 40 percent of his body, mostly on his right side, his sister, Dianna Divel Mehaffie, said Saturday. Divel, a 1987 graduate of Clear Spring High School, had his first skin graft operation on Dec. 28 and is scheduled to have his second on Monday. Mehaffie said her brother - who is recovering at Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio - was at first listed in critical condition, but has greatly improved.

While the opening dedication ceremony took place Thursday morning outside of Pry House, "surgery" on an officer was performed inside in one of the displays in the photo above. Left, those in attendance at the ceremony prepare to enter the house. The National Park Service acquired the Pry House, at 18906 Shepherdstown Pike, in 1975, but the interior never was open to the public before Thursday. The house, and eventually the barn, is part of a cooperative project with the National Museum of Civil War Medicine in Frederick, Md. The Union Army took over the Pry family's house, barn and land just before the Battle of Antietam.

julieg@herald-mail.com SHARPSBURG - Imagine someone coming into your home, tossing your rolled living room carpet aside and transforming the room into a makeshift hospital. That's what happened to the Pry family when the Union Army took over their home, barn and land just before the Battle of Antietam. This Thursday people can get a glimpse of what life was like on the Pry Farm during and after the Sept. 17, 1862, battle when the Pry House Field Hospital Museum opens.

"The dead do lie in heaps, the wounded are coming in by the thousands. Around and in a large barn about half a mile from the spot where General Hooker engaged the enemy's left, I counted 1,250 wounded. Along the same road and within the distance of two miles, are three more hospitals, each having from 600 to 700 in them, and long trains of ambulances standing in the road waiting to discharge their bloody loads. Surgeons with hands, arms and garments covered with blood, are amputating limbs, extracting balls, and bandaging wounds of every nature in every part of the body.

I am a veteran of the United States Marine Corps. However, it's not about me that I'm writing to you, it's about my father. Although I believe that because of my father's service, I probably chose to serve. My father is a veteran of World War II, but it took the United States nearly 50 years to recognize his veteran's status. In 1942, when my father was an 18-year old freshman in college, he decided to enlist. Because of his poor eyesight, every branch of the military turned him down.