DEATH VALLEYS …AND RIDGES
WHEN U.S. ARMY VETERAN Chuck Lott examines a Civil War battlefield, he sees something much different than most of the rest of us.
“Every stretch of ground,” the 72-year-old says, scanning Kentucky ridges cloaked in green and brown on a deep-blue sky day at the Perryville battlefield, “is a chance to die. I’m thinking, ‘That’s good for concealment, that’s good for cover.’”
This “battlefield vision,” as I like to call it, is a product of experience and perhaps family genes. Lott witnessed the carnage of war in Vietnam, where he served as a medic. And his family is steeped in service in the American military: His father was a Marine during World War II, surviving the bloodbath at Okinawa in the conflict’s waning weeks. An uncle stormed Anzio in 1944; another fought in the Korean War. Six of his great-great grandfathers served in Michigan regiments during the Civil War.
Soon after Lott and his wife moved to
