On 11/17/2013 02:17 AM, Philip Williamson wrote:
Hey!
No name calling.
Yes, as used here -- the legacy of BSNYC and Richard Sachs --
"re-enactment" is nothing more than name calling, a way to mock and
insult. Such crap.
Today's Washington Post Outlook section has a story about Gettysburg
that really gives a feeling for genuine re-enactment. I'll quote part
of it here:
The North had vastly more railroads, manpower and natural resources
than the South. How on Earth did it take them five years to finish
this thing? Wasn't the outcome a foregone conclusion?
*Gettysburg reenacted*
It seems less obvious when you are sweating in a field in the July
heat, wearing several layers of wool, a canteen clicking at your hip
as you bring ammunition rounds to the gunners.
For this exercise in memory, I am embedded in Battery M of the
regular Union artillery. My face is smeared with black powder and I
smell of saltpeter. I have no idea how anyone managed to do this
under fire. I'm having enough difficulty when my life is in no danger.
What happened at Gettysburg? The reenactors know, and they'll tell
you, at length. Who was in this unit? Where did they fight? Why did
they go here, not there? Where was the left wing marshaled?
They aren't historians. Most of them have day jobs: In my unit, the
commander runs a landscaping business, the gunnery expert is a
retired veterinarian and the No. 3 man on the cannon is an assistant
commonwealth's attorney in Virginia. But they've absorbed all the
details Everett spoke about 150 years ago, and many more. Did you
see, they say, that horse-drawn caisson? Very rare. Very exciting!
One of the jokes about reenactments is that they make it seem
impossible that the Confederacy could have lost the war, given that
the Confederate reenactors always have the Union army outnumbered.
Then again, they're the ones who want a do-over.
In "Intruders in the Dust" (1948), William Faulkner writes about how
for "every Southern boy fourteen years old, not once but whenever he
wants it, there is the instant when it's still not yet two o'clock
on that July afternoon in 1863, the brigades are in position behind
the rail fence, the guns are laid and ready in the woods" and it
seems possible that this time "the desperate gamble" could be
crowned with victory.
As a northern 20-something millennial woman, I don't wish for an
alternate ending. But standing back from the cannon's recoil, ears
covered, dimly aware of the clouds massing over the fields and the
promise of rain, I can picture what a terrifying muddle it was ---
and how easily everything might have been different.
This randomness is the part of military history that has always
fascinated me. You miss a sunken road on your map, and Waterloo is a
defeat instead of a victory. You misplace three cigars with orders
wrapped around them, and Antietam suddenly grows more complicated.
You shoot at what you take to be an enemy riding in the woods, and
you have killed Stonewall Jackson. Hold the heights for an hour
longer, for two hours longer, and the course of history shifts.
Talk to any military historian about Gettysburg and you have to
fight your way through a thicket of "if"s.
When we reenact the charge, one of the soldiers in our unit secedes
to rejoin another regiment, the North Carolinians, to run at our
guns and see how far he makes it. Maybe they'll get over the top
this time. Who knows?
Is this, then, the story of Gettysburg: a historical near-miss? Is
it about how close the South came, and how much was sacrificed to
stop the Confederate troops?
In academic histories, one of the popular descriptions of Pickett's
Charge is as a "microcosm" of the war itself. "Matchless valor,
apparent initial success, and ultimate disaster," writes James
McPherson. He quotes a union commander's surprise: "I did not
believe the enemy could be whipped." Gettysburg broke the spell of
Lee's annus mirabilis. It was all downhill from here.
Gettysburg, more perhaps than other battles, is the sum of the
stories we tell about it.
*That* is "re-enactment." Going to Provence to ride up Mont Ventoux on
a 1972 Molteni team bike, that too would be "re-enactment". Signing up
for L'Eroica Vintage with a "heroic" bicycle (see Article 6, here
http://www.eroicafan.it/en/l-eroica-ita-3/l-eroica-storica-ita/2012-07-09-08-47-03.html
) that's re-enactment, too. When you get done you'll not only have had
a hell of a ride and made memories that will last a lifetime, you'll
also have a much better understanding of what those activities and
accomplishments really were like for the participants.
So how did it become a fit and proper term with which to make fun of
us? Who died and elevated Even Weiss to a throne from which he could
look down and sneer? And why should we go along with it?
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "RBW
Owners Bunch" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email
to rbw-owners-bunch+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to rbw-owners-bunch@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/rbw-owners-bunch.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
