New Market: The Field of Lost Shoes
Virginia
On May fifteenth, eighteen sixty-four, two hundred fifty-seven cadets from the Virginia Military Institute marched into battle on a rainy Sunday in the Shenandoah Valley. The average age was sixteen.
General John Breckinridge had hoped to keep them in reserve. His Confederate line was cracking under Union cannon fire atop Bushong's Hill, and an aide urged him to send the boys in. Breckinridge reluctantly looked at the gap and ordered them forward.
The cadets charged across a freshly plowed field turned to thick mud by days of rain. Their shoes were sucked from their feet in the mire. That stretch of ground became known forever as the Field of Lost Shoes. They closed the gap. Union General Franz Sigel retreated. Ten cadets died. Every May fifteenth, VMI holds a ceremony to call their names.
