When Gettysburg Licensed Battlefield Guide Jerry Hahn watched a YouTube episode of Life on the Civil War Research Trail featuring Capt. Davis Eugene Castle of the U.S. Signal Corps, a wartime portrait of Castle—standing confidently, binoculars in hand—appeared on the screen.
Hahn, who tells Castle’s story as part of his tour, had not previously seen the image.
Hahn reached out and requested permission to use it, and for a higher resolution copy.
The image, part of the late Rick Carlile Collection, first appeared in our Summer 2019 issue in a feature story titled “Optics: Military men with field glasses and telescopes.”
In 2022, Castle’s image and story appeared in the book Gettysburg Faces: Portraits and Personal Accounts, printed by Gettysburg Publishing.
Castle’s Gettysburg story is memorable. According to an official report by his commanding officer, “On July 3, when the enemy made their furious attack upon our center at Gettysburg, Captain Castle occupied a signal station at General Meade’s headquarters, near Cemetery Hill, and remained there on duty after all others had been driven away. His flagmen had also left with his signal equipments, under the impression that their officer had gone with the rest. Having occasion to send a couple of important messages to the general commanding, then at General Slocum’s headquarters, Captain Castle quickly cut a pole, extemporized a signal flag from a bedsheet procured nearby, and sent his dispatches through under a most galling fire.”
We gladly granted Hahn’s permission to use the portrait in his interpretive work on the battlefield. Using ChatGPT’s image-generation tools, he created a compelling artistic interpretation of Castle, standing with his improvised bedsheet signal flag, with Meade’s headquarters behind him. This imaginative visualization reflects what great battlefield guides do—take historical evidence, understand it in context, and bring it to life in ways that help visitors see the past more vividly. Hahn’s image reinforces Castle’s extraordinary moment of bravery and ingenuity.
Licensed battlefield guides like Hahn help visitors understand the human stories that shaped the battle. Their work depends on primary sources—photographs, letters, memoirs—and on the historians, editors, and collectors who preserve and publish them.
When battlefield guides and other students of Civil War history reach out to request an image—as Hahn did—we see it as a sign that the magazine remains a relevant resource for public history. We’re honored to support Hahn and all who interpret America’s defining conflict.
