HIS PLACE HIS PASSION

TO UNDERSTAND Clark “Bud” Hall’s passion for Brandy Station, where the war’s biggest cavalry battle was fought, you have to explore his battlefield with him. “Brandy” is a living thing for the 74-year-old former Marine and ex-FBI agent—a fragile place worth vigorously defending, nurturing, documenting, and, yes, loving.

“I have spent more time there,” Hall tells me, “than I have anywhere else in the world.”

Early on a late-fall morning, before we closely examine his beloved 1863 battleground, Hall and I visit several other Civil War sites in Culpeper County, Va., in his gray truck. “,” his license plate holder reads—“,” the motto of the U.S. Marine Corps. One of the country’s leading battlefield preservationists, Hall rents a house in the town of Culpeper, allowing the Mississippi native easy access to the area’s rich Civil War history. “He is one of those rare people that when he drives and travels, he sees in his mind’s