Graham Jaehnig/Daily Mining Gazette Second Lt. Richard Mueller, Veterans Reserve Corps, attempts to rest comfortably on a bench at Fort Wilkins on Wed. afternoon. Mueller, second-in-command at Fort Wilkins, received a crippling wound to his right hip during the fighting near the Railroad cut at Gettysburg on July 1, 1863.

EDITOR’S NOTE: The following story is written from the perspective of a character who is assigned to Fort Wilkins in Copper Harbor. Reenactment actors work hard to build their character at the fort each summer.

COPPER HARBOR — Richard Mueller, 2nd Lieutenant, Company K, 18th Veteran Reserve Corps, is enjoying the stark contrast between combat in the Army of the Potomac and garrison duty at Fort Wilkins.

A native of Prussia, Mueller moved with his family to Harrisburg, PA when he was four years old, where he enlisted in the 3rd Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry Regiment in 1862. Wounded in action on the first day of fighting at Gettysburg on July 1, 1863, Mueller was struck by a Confederate rifle ball in the posterior right hip, shattering the bone, and exited his abdomen near his navel.

“I woke up three days later and found out that we had won,” he said.

Unfit for further frontline service, Mueller resigned his officers commission in the PA. unit, and enlisted at the same rank in the Invalid Corps (I.C.).

“The name of the corps was changed in 1864 to the Veterans Reserve Corps,” Mueller said, “because I.C. also stands for ‘Inspected and condemned.'”

Mueller said that life at an obscure outpost in the Keweenaw Peninsula is far different from service in a combat regiment in time of active military campaign.

“We have beds here,” he said, “and of course, we know where we’re going to be every night.”

Military routine is very different, as well, he added.

“Whereas I’m responsible for posting the guard detail, it’s not quite the same as organizing a picket line every night,” he explained.

In terms of adjustment from war to peacetime, Mueller said it was less of an ordeal for him than most, because of his time in recovery from his wound.

“The I.C. was doing very much wartime activity in ’64 and ’65,” he explained, “so, I had a little bit longer time to adjust than some of the lads later on.”

Being stationed in Charleston, South Carolina, he added, as part of the reconstruction garrison there for several years, was tense at times.

“We didn’t like them,” he said, “because they started it, and they didn’t like us, of course, because we ended it.”

Mueller said there has been no word yet of the War Department de-garrisoning Fort Wilkins, but his wife prays for it very much, he said. For himself, he enjoys the peace of the area and the quiet routine of garrison duty, and is in no hurry for transfer elsewhere. As he put it, being garrisoned at Fort Wilkins is as good a post as he could hope for considering his present physical condition.

When the 18th Veterans were notified of their transfer from Charleston to Copper Harbor, Mueller said he was given notice two months in advance, to set his affairs in order, purchase winter wardrobes for his wife and children and himself, and to decide what items he and his wife would have shipped to the fort, as the Military only allows a maximum of 600 pounds of belongings for a 2nd Lieutenant. The remaining items, he said, were sent to his parents’ home in Pennsylvania.

Like any military post, however, there is some friction between officers at Fort Wilkins, particularly between Mueller and Major Fergus Walker, the commander of the Copper Harbor post. ”

“Maj. Walker is rather full of himself in manners that I think he should rather not be,” Mueller said, but beyond that he declined comment.

Amid rumors that the Veteran Reserve Corps may be dissolved by the War Department, Mueller did not comment. But he did say that if the garrison is still at Fort Wilkins, he expects they will remain over the winter.