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FORT SILL, Okla., Oct. 29, 2020 -- While several Soldiers who participated in Fort Sill’s annual Frontier Army Days encampment Oct. 17 merely stepped across the thresholds of their period Old Post Quadrangle quarters and onto the OPQ parade grounds, others drove as many as 450 miles before crossing the Red River and stepping back 152 years in time.
An estimated 150 visitors took part in the day’s event, immersing themselves in a living portrait of the post’s fabled past.
An assembly of just over a dozen living historians from Kansas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Texas formed up on the OPQ as Soldiers assigned to B Company, 24th Missouri, an infantry regiment that fought during the Civil War at Pea Ridge, Arkansas.
These Civil War re-enactors’ uniforms, weaponry, and equipment were true to what Soldiers assigned to Fort Sill at the time of its Jan. 8, 1869 founding by Maj. Gen. Philip Sheridan would have worn and used, said Frank Siltman, director of museums here.
Sheridan most notably commanded the Army of the Potomoc’s cavalry in the spring of 1864 during the Civil War, and the following year hastened Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee’s surrender at Appomattox, Virginia.
“What we have at Fort Sill are the most complete Indian War structures anywhere in the nation,” Siltman rightfully boasts of the OPQ and its quarters. “Since 1871 or 1872, someone has occupied these buildings constantly.”
All the other frontier outposts in this part of the country — forts Richardson, Texas, and Reno, Gibson, and Washita, Oklahoma — were either abandoned or saw their structures disassembled by settlers, according to Siltman.
Another outpost, Fort Larned in western Kansas, touts its “authentic frontier military experience,” but Siltman is quick to point out that 10 of those buildings are restorations. Not so, Fort Sill’s OPQ.
“It’s been a surreal experience,” said Edgar Garza, a communications and speech professor at Northwest Vista College in San Antonio, when asked how it felt to be camped out on the actual terrain where General Sheridan and his men camped in 1868.
“Sometimes you have that rare moment (during this particular encampment) where you’re back there, back then — you’re sleeping in shelters just like the 10th Cavalry Buffalo Soldiers did when they built this place,” he said.
Garza has been a Civil War era living historian for five years now, but this year’s Frontier Army Days at Fort Sill marked his first experience occupying the actual ground where the Soldiers he portrays lived.
“We usually set up close by or on private property, so setting up on the actual ground (occupied by those who founded and built the post) has been lovely,” Garza said.
Stepping directly from their respective OPQ quarters into this year’s Frontier Army Days experience circa 1868-1869 were Col. Scott Emmel, his wife Lucie, and their son Eric, 1, and Lt. Col. Jason Atkinson, his wife Jennifer, their three children, Abigail, 8, Andrew, 5, and Luke, 4, and Jennifer’s parents visiting from Hot Springs, Arkansas, Randy and Debbie Burroughs.
Col. Emmel is the Fires Center of Excellence and Fort Sill G3, and Lt. Col. Atkinson is the 75th Field Artillery Brigade deputy commanding officer.
Both families were engaged observers of infantry drills with reproduction Springfield rifles (Model 1864s mostly, but also 1861s and 1863s), the camp’s orderly pitched tents and field rations prepared over primitive fires, and Jeffers, the cavalry mount.
Of her family’s many diverse encounters with the re-enactors, Jennifer Atkinson said, “We were pretty impressed.”
Son Luke agreed that the guns were his favorite part of the event, especially the reproduction 1860 3-inch ordnance rifle which had twice delivered the loudest boom of the day.
Drawn to the event because it linked him to his career branch’s past, Sgt. 1st Class Anthony Hantaq expressed his life-long interest in field artillery history.
On this day, his first out of the post’s requisite 14-day precautionary COVID-19 quarantine for new arrivals, Hantaq engaged the re-enactors, and gleaned details about their period clothing, footwear, weapons, and accessories.
Hantaq, a 15-year veteran and 13B Cannon Crewmember here for the Master Gunner Course, will return to Fort Bragg, North Carolina upon graduation, where he is assigned to the 3rd Battalion, 319th Airborne Field Artillery Regiment of the 82nd Airborne Division.
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