At the beginning of November, AGS took 26 participants on the annual Gettysburg Staff Ride. Below is a reflection from freshman Garrett Simons describing his experience on the trip.
My name is Garrett Simons, and I am a freshman at Duke University. I recently participated in the Duke Program in American Grand Strategy Gettysburg Staff Ride. We traveled to Gettysburg to immerse ourselves in the Battle of Gettysburg, and explored each of the three days of the battle.
Each participant was assigned a part, and these parts were associated with either the Union or the Confederacy. Some parts were: Jefferson Davis, Abraham Lincoln, Gen. George Meade, Gen. Ulysses S. Grant, Gen. Robert E. Lee, and other major military leaders in the Battle of Gettysburg. Hearing about these individuals’ strategies in the Battle of Gettysburg really helped us understand why they took the actions that they did.
My part was Major General Abner Doubleday, a Union General in the 1st Army of the Potomac. On the first day of the Battle of Gettysburg, July 1st, 1863, Major General John Reynolds, the commander of the 1st Army of the Potomac, was killed and I took command. My troops held Cemetery Hill for 5 hours and then eventually retreated, which other generals called running away and led to me losing my command shortly after.
Being on the battlefield of the Battle of Gettysburg helped put the information we were reading into perspective, which was the goal of the staff ride. By walking up Little Round Top we were able to understand the difficulties that the soldiers faced in trying to attack and defend it. Seeing exactly where fighting took place helped explain the results of the fighting.
An expert on the Battle of Gettysburg from the US Army War College led the Gettysburg Staff Ride, which was so interesting as he filled in a lot of the information missing from our speeches and answered a lot of our questions. Another valuable part of the staff ride was the opportunity to interact with some of Sanford’s Counterterrorism and Public Policy Fellows, other undergraduate students, a masters and PhD student, and an AGS staff member. We were able to learn so much from the CTPP fellows about their experiences before Duke, and the graduate students and fellows were knowledgeable about the very specific details of the Battle of Gettysburg which I was able to benefit from significantly.
This was my first time participating in a staff ride but I really like the learning style and immersion into the history. I am grateful to have had this opportunity because of both the historical learning and the interaction with so many awesome Duke students and staff. I plan to continue my participation in the Duke Program in American Grand Strategy events and hopefully go on more staff rides throughout my time at Duke.