Reenactments, Military

Many weekends across America, thousands of warriors clad in the uniforms of bygone wars take to the field at hundreds of sites. These weekend warriors are military reenactors: hobbyists whose avocation is an attempt to “reenact” the experience of soldiers of the past. Since the 1960s their numbers have swelled; witnessing a reenactment, either live or on television or film, is now one of the most common ways in which everyday Americans encounter history.

Reenactments have swept the world of public history, and many historical sites today include “living historians” who attempt to portray the doings of those who once lived there. The overwhelming majority of reenactors today are military reenactors, who attempt to demonstrate and, they claim, experience for themselves the lives of soldiers from wars past. The typical military reenactment involves uniformed reenactors setting up a camp and inviting the public to come and view the equipment and speak to the reenactors. Usually the day is not complete until a mock battle is fought. The number of reenactors involved can range from one to more than 10,000, though a figure in the hundreds would probably be typical. Smaller reenactments might feature only a few soldiers with their personal gear; larger reenactments will feature enough reenactors to represent large military units, and significant quantities of military gear, including horses, artillery, vehicles, and tanks, depending upon the war being depicted.

Perhaps the first military reenactments occurred in the late 19th century when veterans of the battle of Gettysburg walked the route of Pickett's Charge in a staged scene of reconciliation at “the Angle.” In the 1920s, elements of the Marine Corps from the Advanced Training Base at Quantico staged some re-creations of various Civil War and World War I battles. In one famous instance in 1976, members of the Confederate Air Force (an organization that preserves and flies old warplanes) staged a reenactment of the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima.

But the modern military reenactment is largely an off-shoot of the concept of living history. Living history was originally an attempt to make the experience of visiting a museum more meaningful by showing visitors not simply a passive display of objects in a glass-fronted case, but people living with and using the site and the objects. Living history first became popular in the United States, before World War II, when costumed interpreters were introduced at the site of Colonial Williamsburg. After the war, the idea spread rapidly. The 1960s and 1970s proved to be fruitful years for historical reenactment as a hobby. The Society for Creative [Page 721]Anachronism, a worldwide organization of medieval re-creationists, was organized in 1964, while English Civil War reenactment got its start in the United Kingdom with the foundation of The Sealed Knot Society in 1968.

Living history was originally conceived as a means by which professional historians could make history more meaningful to the public. Since the widespread adoption of military reenactment as a hobby, however, the overwhelming majority of those practicing living history have been amateurs. Amateur military reenactments have unquestionably become the tail that wags the dog of living history.

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