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Blue &
Gray
(Civil
War Reenactment)
Published by:
The Enumclaw
Courier-Herald
written by news correspondent: Tami Jayne Jackson
Shots, sounding like Fourth of July firecrackers, rang out from the
horizon. An earth-shaking boom rattled through the air.
“Run for your lives!” cried one soldier as he outran the rest of his
infantry unit beneath the haze of gun and cannon smoke.
He ran back in history as well, one of several hundred soldiers staging
the 1862 Battle of Shiloh on a grassy field two hours north of here in
Arlington. River Meadows Park substituted for the fields of Tennessee when
the Washington Civil War Association brought the Yankees and the
Confederates face to face once more July 22-23.
The Yankees won.
Confederate troops chased the Yanks all the way up to the rail fence when
spectators stood watching, but the Yanks were far enough ahead to drop to
their knees and reload their muskets.
“When we fire at the group, two or three men fall down,” said 28-year-old
John Persinger of Enumclaw, a flag bearer for the First Louisiana
Volunteers as well as an ultrasound technician at Auburn General Hospital.
“Our muskets have a cartridge with powder in it. It makes a lot of smoke.
When an officer hears a shot go, he knows he should fall over.”
Persinger’s group of Confederates was on of the few troops with a nurse in
their company during battle.
“She puts bandages on people so they can stand back up and keep fighting,”
Persinger said. “Since I carry the flag, I get shot all the time.”
The battle looked, sounded, and smelled so real, Hollywood cameras should
have recorded it. However, no movie producers were invited. Except for the
parking lot full of automobiles, no gadgets from the 20th century living
marred the historical setting.
“We’re mainly here to educate and preserve our American heritage,” said
Trish Howe, recruiting officer and event coordinator for the Arlington
meeting.
Howe said that everything in camp, the weapons, the tents, the clothes,
the type of food, is authentic. “We try to be as historically accurate as
possible,” she said.
Bruce Carr of Enumclaw joined the association this year as part of a
Calvary unit. During the Battle of Shiloh, he wore a dark blue $65 sack
coat, a $29 forage cap, and a $40 pair of wool trousers that he purchased
at his own expense.
Carr also invested $600 in his carbine rifle, $1,000 for a McClellan
saddle, and an unspecified amount for his carbine belt, pistol, authentic
Civil War canteen, and saber, which is a cavalry sword with a curved
blade.
Like many others, Carr spends hours studying history to ensure his
equipment is authentic – and relishes turning back the clock.
“It’s fun!” Carr said. “You get to go back in time and live the way
soldiers lived.”
“We eat off of authentic tin-ware and drink from cups that date back to
that period. There’s nothing modern in the Civil War camps at all,” he
said.
Car would have ridden his quarter horse on the battlefield, but since he’s
new to WCWA his horse hasn’t had long enough to get ready.
So far, Carr has trained his horse not to shy away from the flapping Civil
War flags by hanging blankets inside his horse barn. He’s tried to
familiarize his horse with gunfire by shooting his weapons from horseback
too but he hasn’t had much opportunity to teach the horse not to fear the
heart-stopping cannon roar yet.
Originally, interest in re-enacting Civil War events started back East
around Gettysburg, where the original battlefields were, but interest in
acting out history has spread across all the United States. Washington’s
branch evolved from Oregon’s Civil War Association.
“The Washington Civil War Association started two years ago with 10
people, and we now have over 360 members,” How said. After evaluating all
the interest shown at the recent Arlington event, Howe speculates WCWA
will hit the 500 member mark soon.
Members live all over the state of Washington. According o Howe, their
employment backgrounds are as diverse as they come.
“We have podiatrists to lawyers to short-order cooks to police and also
the military,” Howe said.
Whole families get caught up in the fun. And while some youngsters aren’t
old enough to carry out much of a part, they can carry some historic
names.
Some members recently born in Washington now have the middle name of Lee,
after Robert E. Lee, How said. “We have a Turner Ashby born. He was an
original confederate cavalry commander. Then there is a Lorena, named
after a popular Civil War song called ‘Lorena.’”
During the Arlington event, female WCWA members wore layers of petticoats,
hoops and skirts in the 71 degree heat.
“Women out there are a little more dedicated than some of us guys were,”
Persinger said. “Because they are really decked out in the clothes.”
According to Persinger, to be fully dressed, Civil War-time ladies tugged
on 13 layers of clothes.
The attention to detail is evident all through the civilian camps. Pioneer
children played with wooden guns and complained they didn’t have real
ones. Ladies cooked beans and sausage for the different detachments or
made hard tack, which is basically a brick-hard biscuit. The ladies also
mended uniforms or did laundry by hand.
~ end ~
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