ARW
Sergeant
- Joined
- Nov 12, 2018
- Location
- Lebanon Pa
Let's see some reenactors on at a National Park. This first on is a demonstration of CW Medicine at Cemetery Ridge in Gettysburg.
Great photos, but I have to ask why is that child dressed in a Nazi uniform?1. Antietam
2.Antietam
3.Gettysburg (cavalry camp).
4. Gettysburg ( Eisenhower farm ).
5,Little Round Top
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WW2 weekend at the Eisenhower farm in Gettysburg. Lots of WW2 reenactors , but I was a bit surprised to see a child dressed in a German uniform . There are still WW2 vets alive and I wonder how they feel about German reenactors at Eisenhower's farm . My observation is that there are fewer visitors at the German end of the event than the Allied area .As with Civil War vets , some said forgive and move on , while others never could .Great photos, but I have to ask why is that child dressed in a Nazi uniform?
WW2 weekend at the Eisenhower farm in Gettysburg. Lots of WW2 reenactors , but I was a bit surprised to see a child dressed in a German uniform . There are still WW2 vets alive and I wonder how they feel about German reenactors at Eisenhower's farm . My observation is that there are fewer visitors at the German end of the event than the Allied area .As with Civil War vets , some said forgive and move on , while others never could .
I think there may be a belief among some that all was eventually forgiven after the civil war . This may be because of the newsreel footage of the later Gettysburg reunions showing bearded vets shaking hands .I don't want to take this thread in a different direction , but WW2 is much more recent . My father was a navy combat vet from the Pacific theater . Two of my uncles were army combat vets from the Pacific . They never talked about the war to me but as a child I would catch conversations amongst them at family events . There are millions of stories about the WW2 vets that will never be written down . Over 50 years after the war my father had a reaction to the sound of radial engine WW2 fighters flying over after an airshow . He immediately turned gray and started to shake We thought he was having a heart attack . After sitting for several minutes he said " I hadn't heard that sound in 50 years . That's what the kamikazes sounded like when they came after us ." I had a GGgrandfather in the Civil War and 3 GGUncles . I wonder if they suffered after the war when they heard a certain sound that reminded them of the things they had endured .People can do what they want, but I will never get into WWII reenacting. I know it’s a big thing now, but one of my uncles was killed by a German soldier in WWII. Another uncle flew daylight bombing raids over Berlin and wound up a nervous wreck for the rest of his life because of it—what they called “shell shock” then and PTSD now. He died in a VA hospital. My grandmother’s second husband—the only grandfather I ever knew, built airfields in the S. Pacific with the Seabees so our planes could island-hop their way to the Japanese mainland. My father emigrated to America before the war from Dresden and was heartbroken over what those totalitarian fanatics had done to his homeland. He supported the war effort in America, despised the Nazis and everything they stood for, and watched in horror and despair as they rampaged through Europe.
Although I was born after WWII, that war was vividly in the living memory of the family I grew up with. And there are millions of stories like that still out there.
I have no problem reenacting ancient armies—as the epilogue from the film “Barry Lyndon” notes: “It was in the reign of King George III that the aforesaid personages lived and quarreled; good or bad, handsome or ugly, rich or poor, they are all equal now.”
Ancient history is just that, and most people I’ve encountered appreciate our efforts in educating them about it. But when it comes to reenacting WWII, I’d wait until it is ancient history too, at least 100 years or more distant.