Unknown soldier, NY 148th volunteers
Memorial Day; or, Have You Seen the Elephant?.
Memorial Day; or, Have You Seen the Elephant?
A popular expression during the Civil War for a combat veteran was “He’s seen the elephant” – meaning, this person has met with something utterly outside the normal range of experience.”Elephant” was a potent symbol, then, for things stranger and vaster than you could possibly imagine. Some people don’t survive seeing the elephant; some do; no one returns unchanged.
At the top of this page is a picture of an unknown soldier of the New York 148th Volunteers. When I first showed it to my husband, he said softly, “Is he blind?” No; those are the eyes of someone who has seen the elephant.
As it happens, many of the soldiers of the 148th came from Waterloo, New York, a smallish town in the Finger Lakes which, in…
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Zo Newell, Ph.d., writer/mythologist 
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