Civil War burial draws praise and cries of disrespect

They were lost to history, six Union soldiers from Massachusetts killed in battle just days before the famous First Battle of Bull Run in 1861. Found in shallow graves in woods in Centreville, Va., the men's remains were traced to the First Massachusetts Infantry, after a decade of painstaking research.

Tomorrow, they will be buried at the National Veterans Cemetery in Bourne with an honor guard and a three-volley salute with Civil War-era rifles.

But not everyone will be celebrating a homecoming that is 145 years overdue.

The soldiers are being wronged, said Dalton Rector, a Civil War buff who helped discover the skeletal remains nine years ago and is credited with pushing researchers to determine where the soldiers hailed from.

Rector says he thinks he knows their names, and he argues they deserve better than to be buried in graves as unknowns without any descendants there to pay final respects.

``When I started this research, it was my main hope that they would be positively identified through DNA testing," Rector, a member of the Northern Virginia Relic Hunters Association, said in a telephone interview yesterday.

``These were some of the very first soldiers to die in the Civil War. . . . It is just heartbreaking to me. I came to know these soldiers personally. I came to know their names and their ages. It's so unfair. Just so unfair."