Clark Van Buskirk will serve as a captain in the 44th Georgia Volunteer Infantry Company C this week in Gettysburg
By Chuck O'Donnell
His legs will burn, his lungs will fill with cannon smoke, his sword will grow heavy in his hand as he rushes toward the 3-foot-high wall of stacked stones.
Pohatcong Township’s Clark Van Buskirk has traced the fateful steps of Pickett’s Charge across the Gettysburg fields with his fellow members of the 44th Georgia Volunteer Infantry Company C re-enacting unit before.
View full sizePohatcong Township's Clark Van Buskirk will participate in re-enactments this week of the 150th anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg, the deadliest battle ever fought on American soil. Van Buskirk, wanting to move forward but relenting to historical accuracy and his conscience, ends up with the other Confederate re-enactors slumped on the ground, picked off by one of the Union soldiers firing from behind the safety of the wall, a casualty in one of the turning points of the Civil War.
But things might be a little different with some 10,000 re-enactors gathering in south central Pennsylvania this week to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg and pay homage to the roughly 58,000 men killed, wounded or captured in July 1863 during the bloodiest battle ever fought on American soil.
Van Buskirk, a 73-year-old retired phone repairman and great-grandfather, will be portraying a soldier in Gen. Lewis Armistead’s brigade — one of the few pockets of Confederate forces to breech the wall. They broke through, albeit briefly, at a point known by Civil War historians as “The Angle.”
“Well, since I’m a captain, my chances aren’t good,” he said in the days leading up to the re-enactment. “Captains were at the front, leading the charge, so not too many of them would have made it to the wall.”
But since the re-enactors who get to the wall will be picked at random, there’s a chance.
“Well, maybe one in a thousand,” he concedes.
It would mean everything to Van Buskirk, who took part in re-enactments at Gettysburg this weekend and will take part in one next weekend, too.
Pickett’s Charge
His voice trembles with emotion when he talks about the 13,000 Confederate soldiers who began to move across open land toward the Union forces on the third day of the battle, July 3, 1863. In one hour, half of them were dead, injured or captured, and the Confederate troops began to retreat.
For Van Buskirk, Pickett’s Charge was an example of men making the ultimate sacrifice in the name of freedom. Or as he puts it, “Men doing the honorable thing, even if it cost them their lives.”
“They realized they may not get there,” he said. “You take your wound, you go down, they play ‘Taps.’ Back then, they didn’t play ‘Taps.’ They didn’t get up and walk over and put their hand on the original wall. So, this is a way of saying, ‘I know you didn’t make it, but I made it for you.’”
Maybe their heroism is close to his heart because it’s literally in his DNA. As a child, Van Buskirk heard stories about his great-grandfather, William Butler, who fought with the 2nd Pennsylvania Heavy Artillery.
View full sizeClark Van Buskirk serves as a captain in the 44th Georgia Company C re-enacting unit. The retired phone repairman had great-great-grandfathers who fought on both sides of the Civil War. So, when he began re-enacting 18 years ago, it was natural that he joined a Union group.
“One day they wanted to have a little skirmish after the re-enactment,” he said. “So a few of us went on the other side.”
Historic discovery
Van Buskirk never went back. He became fascinated with the Confederate states’ right to secede and swept up in the romanticism of Robert E. Lee’s valiant fight for freedom, not their stance on slavery.
It wasn’t until after he helped found the Company C re-enacting unit that he discovered — through a series of cosmic coincidences — that he likely had a great-grandfather who served in the original Company C.
While touring historic sites in Georgia, he met a woman who mentioned that her maiden name was Klutz and that she had a distant relative, George Klutz, who was fatally wounded at the Battle of Chancellorsville. Well, Klutz happened to be Van Buskirk’s mother’s maiden name.
He began to comb census records and uproot family trees, amassing so much anecdotal evidence that the Sons of the Confederacy, a national organization dedicated to preserving the legacy of the Confederacy, recognizes his lineage to Klutz. A marriage certificate that resided in a small town in South Carolina that might have provided proof positive was apparently destroyed by Gen. William T. Sherman’s forces.
“It’s one of those things that puts you back in your chair and makes you stop and think that there has to be a power bigger than ours that directed me to this,” Van Buskirk said.
Capt. William B. Haygood
While the blood of his great-grandfathers courses through his body, during most re-enactments he conjures the spirit of Capt. William B. Haygood, who was wounded at Gettysburg, lost an arm and was captured by Union forces at Hagerstown, Md. Dressed in his grey wool uniform, he portrays Haygood in body and soul.
Even at 73.
“He gets around great for a man his age,” said Corporal Ken Doran, of Easton, one of the 40 or so school teachers, lawyers, trash collectors and others who comprise Company C. “He loves the hobby, and his (genealogical) connection and passion keeps him going. Heck, it keeps all of us going.”
First Sergeant and East Amwell Township resident Rick Sasor said the way Van Buskirk — known affectionately as Capt. Clark — maintains their equipment and organizes their trips makes him “simply the backbone of the company.”
Re-enacting has turned into a family affair for the Van Buskirks. His wife, Betty, has been known to don purple or brown day dresses and accompany her husband to sites. Their son, Clark R. Van Buskirk, is a private. His cousin, Keith, is a private in Company C. And Keith’s son, Keith Jr., a sergeant in the U.S. Army, flew in from South Korea to be at the event.
Betty says Clark’s quest to consecrate the lives of the men on both sides of the war — on both sides of the wall — inspires his company and his family.
“He’s an emotional-type man,” she said. “He can understand where the soldiers were coming from and what they were fighting for. He can feel it. You don’t see that ability to feel that deeply in too many people.”