Too Much Bulge in the Battle

Brothers and seven sisters, readers of Free Cheese, lend me your eyes because as part of my Slaughtering Sacred Cows series (previous posts in the series can be read here  about Lincoln, and here about Churchill) I’m about to poke a hole in a hobby that apparently is enjoyed by thousands of grown men and women across this country. You see them on the news occasionally or perhaps you’ve seen them in person. They wear hot, tight-fitting clothing and do quite a bit of moving around. They dwell on minutiae, usually take themselves pretty seriously, and are often revered by those who encounter them and thus rarely have much criticism thrown their way. We’re not talking about yoga enthusiasts here, though I know they fit many of the above descriptors. No reader, I’m going to discuss Civil War reenactors.

Oh I can hear you now and not because I’m staked out in the shrubbery outside your house (anymore) as an audible gasp echoes across the internet. “How dare you Gross! Those people out there camping and marching around are honoring those who fought in that war that is above all criticism. We don’t make fun of your bog snorkeling hobby.” Not the point reader. Short of harming someone’s person or property against their will I am cool with anyone’s hobby whether it’s polishing balls of dirt which has the fancy name of dorodango or grooming your dog to look like a panda or a buffalo or extreme ironing.

Now let me tell you something about Gross here. I have an undergraduate degree in History from a well-known, some would say infamous university so in theory I should have a certain affinity, even a kinship with these people I’m about to tear down. When it comes to history I’m a lover not a hater and I was making my bones in 400 level 19th century history classes when you were dating cheerleaders. It’s just that I have a few problems with Civil War reenactors.

So first off, first let me first get the more trivial one out of the way first. This deals with the physical characteristics of those who take part in reenacting. Keep in mind, as I’ve mentioned many of these individuals take this stuff very seriously, sometimes to the point of obsession, and no doubt spend sleepless nights worrying about things like whether their haversack is a few inches too long (braggarts!) or if the buttons on their coat are true to the style of their regiment. Apparently nothing is more embarrassing than not being true to your uniform. However, when it comes to another piece of the puzzle, well, that’s a different tub of Crisco. You see the thing is, the size of the average soldier in the Civil War was 5’8″ and 143 pounds. Uh oh. Now granted, there’s nothing you can do about your height, I’ve tried, but when it comes to weight, that’s something else. Honestly, I don’t care what you weigh, in fact I’m hovering around 185 completely naked, which I may or may not be as I write this. * (Webcam $3.99 per minute) But, or butt in this case, if you’re going to take the time to make sure everything in your get up is correct right down to your 19th century undergarments you should damn well take the time to lose the 21st century roof over your toolshed and get down to your correct playing weight. You can scour all the historical documents out there and you’ll never find an account of Colonel Pallet Ass leading a charge up Peanut Butter Hill, so to see a bunch of 280 pound infantrymen with barbed wire bicep tattoos out there marching around all red-faced and sucking wind is just not historically accurate.

Now we turn to the real problem I have with the Civil War reenactor hobby. This should be obvious but it seems that people either never give this much thought or else push it to the back of their minds. The thing is, there’s no death. No terror, no fear, no deprivation, no lice, no bayonet thrusts through your gut, no infected gangrenous wounds, no piles of sawed off limbs, and no lead balls flying through your head or through your sternum and then cracking your spinal cord in half. Much less that wound that never seems to make it into the movies, the wound that dare not speak its name, the understandably dreaded scrotum shot.

I often wonder what Civil War soldiers would think if they could see the reenactors. Some in the reenactor community feel safe saying that the Civil War soldiers would be honored by the hobby but I feel just as safe saying that at least some portion of them would be horrified. Keep in mind, many of them were drafted and even those who went willingly often grew disillusioned with the whole thing and couldn’t wait to get home. Of course many never made it home or came home in boxes, or else came home with certain pieces missing. Anywhere from 600,000 to 725,000 Americans died in that war. Is that something that should be celebrated by people pretending to kill one another and in reality heading back home afterwards for a nice meal and some reality TV? I can easily picture a Civil War soldier who somehow could see these reenactments saying, well first saying ” God, I’m really old.” But after that grabbing one of the reenactors by their woolen lapels and giving them a good shake while screaming, “Why would you want to reenact this? I saw five of my best friends torn in half by artillery fire right in front of me! I got sprayed with their blood and their brains! Don’t reenact this, it was horrible.”

A true reenactment would be to wound yourself, say a deep puncture wound, and then use only 19th century medical techniques to try to heal yourself. “See how he’s shivering nurse even though he’s hot? We’d better bleed him of another pint of blood to cure him of the vapors.” Or better yet, add some serious realism to the whole thing by randomly having one out of every ten men actually jam a lead ball down the barrel of his rifle. That would quickly add that component of true fear that reenacting by its nature is forced to leave out.

Regardless of how one feels about the American Civil War, and there are in fact arguments for and against the war for a myriad of reasons which I can’t go into in this post, learning history is one thing but pretending to be part of it for kicks is something far different. If people want to remember what happened between 1861 and 1865 that’s fine. People should. Read about it, write about it, write and perform a mime sketch about it, hell watch one Ted Turner’s crappy movies but don’t try to do what those men did and then cheapen it by leaving out the most crucial part of the whole thing. Real live human beings were getting mangled.

H.R. Gross