Chickamauga
River of Mud
HCR prompted this time machine talk. In the 1980’s & 90’s my company Video Vision pretty much owned the niche of large scale Civil War & WWII re-enacting video documentaries. HCR mentioned Chickamauga & Shiloh. As re-enactments, they were both very muddy for us. It had rained hard before each of the events and my main memory is dealing with mud. In addition to doing our own videos, we worked with Jay Wertz shooting 16 mm film for his Smithsonian Great Battles of the Civil War series.
These photos are from the 125th Gettysburg Re-enactment. I need to go back and re-watch some of this stuff. I learned a lot about how Napoleonic Tactics work…and where not to stand and shoot film. I was between 2 pieces of artillery. We were all facing the “enemy”. They fire by battery, which is 6 guns at once. My hearing shut down from the concussion. I thought for a moment I was going to be deaf…it came back gradually over a minute or so.
The incredible Ed Bearss was the on camera battlefield host for Great Battles.
We had a great time and learned a lot…taught a lot. Still trying to do that with “Monumental Struggle”. Headed out on the road today for some adventures we will talk about.
I just did this interview yesterday…with Jared Frederick host of the Reel History You Tube Channel. He then showed our “Making of Gods & Generals”. Check it out.
When you put it this way, the whole concept is overwhelming (in more ways than one). And the Nazi-uniformed 'confederate' - a bit of wishful thinking? Growing up as I did in the 40's-50's, I had little chance to look down on others as different, because almost everybody was of my klan. When I was struggling thru my teens - figuring out who I was going to become - I had more sympathy than other emotion to those I saw as different. I guess I never felt superior to any class of people. I mean, we're all struggling here, right? Back to reenactments ... if replaying the past to change it into something better could work, we have (worldwide) a lot of reenactments to do. Can we reenact JFK's assassination? Lincoln's? 911? Can we 'abort' some of our horrible dictators before they even get a chance to breathe on this earth? Maybe the ultimate question would be - what event would you choose to 'abort' to save mankind? Could you choose only one??
Hey - really enjoying our conversations. Challenging and fun ... till next time.
Okay. As an old school born-and-bred New Englander, I don't get it. Why do descendants of the Confederacy want to re-enact those long-ago battles? Do they hope for a different ending? (I still don't get it.)