Reenacting, lets talk.

[Daniel.S]

So , whats the deal with reenacting?

Is it to feel cool with Wearing a full SS Gear running around pretending to be a ww2 soldier? (Which they will never be)

Or is it what people say, to act like you were a part of the history?

Please tell me..

Take a look at these owerweighted clowns, and especially look when the movie is at 1 minute, is that reenacting?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0epNR8XKMT8

[Nico C]

the guys in that movie look like idiots!
Executing people
Those guys are giving the veterans, collectors and good reenactors a very bad name!!

[Military]

I guess theres many ways to look at reenacting - from a historical point of view, for pure enjoyment, or perhaps to indulge in a fantasy world.... just like those guys wearing customes for Cosplay events or for halloween... JMO.

[PlaceOfBayonets]

I do WWI re enacting with IR23 a Prussian Infantry unit. For me it's none of what you listed.
It's feeling the weight and texture of the uniform on your frame that a real soldier felt. Peering out of the same helmet a real solider viewed the landscape from. Peering through the same sights on the rilfe. Falling as one would in no man's land from un even ground. The Feeling of being rather worthless with a rifle in your hand, almost naked when facing the opposing lines. Or like a walking dead man. Experiencing how fast you can be killed in combat and never knowing where the grenade came from. Seeing the "enemy" rushing at your position and all around the flanks, firing at them and realizing there are too many for the 5 shot slow firing rifle in your hands and the that of the guys you are with. Realizing how much courage it would have taken just to pop your head above the parapet just to fire your rifle.

Going into "combat" in a wave attack with your buddies and within 30 seconds having no clue as to where they all went. Just like I have read about in history books. In short experiencing the some of the same things I read about of the experiences of those who were there.

You can't get any of this limited insight by not doing re enacting. You can't get it by reading about it. And while you can never really re live it you can get a glimps of what it was like. Especially at night when the only thing about it that is NOT real from what your eyes see is your memory of living in this time period.

William

[Greg]

I echo William's comments, only from an American Civil War standpoint. Aside from the personal desire to try to experience a little of what CW soldiers went through, I think the lessons for historians are very important. I don't think you can truly understand some things that happened in CW battles without a first-hand feel for why things happened down at a low tactical level. While CW reenactments and living history "immersion" events of course can't replicate the actual conditions of back then, you certainly can get a feel for possible reasons why, for instance, the Confederate flank attack (Jackson's corps) at Chancellorsville fizzled out at dark - ever try to maneuver a 300-man battalion (let alone larger units) through dense woods and along forest paths in the dark? I think professional historians that brush off experiences gained from reenacting are missing a valuable resource. Yes, a lot (probably a majority) of what goes on during CW events doesn't provide anything useful, but some lessons can be learned.

Best,
Greg

[m1steelpot]

So , whats the deal with reenacting?

Is it to feel cool with Wearing a full SS Gear running around pretending to be a ww2 soldier? (Which they will never be)

Or is it what people say, to act like you were a part of the history?

Please tell me..

Take a look at these owerweighted clowns, and especially look when the movie is at 1 minute, is that reenacting?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0epNR8XKMT8

Herp derp trollbait.

I do it 'cause it's fun.

[PlaceOfBayonets]

Good Shot Greg. I want to add, I've experienced the eb and flow of a WWI "battle" You may not be afraid to die but you are affraid or really do not want to have to take a hit and walk off the field or play dead because then you miss everything. So no one wants to be a hero. We retreat as they would have in real battle and you can feel the energy of an attack and feel it eb to the point you can counter attack. Just as a real combatant in WWI, while on the re enacting field you can only see the battlefield from your limited perspective. You don't know what is going on in the deep rear, the extream flanks and it adds to the sense of fear for your position and outcome. You don't understand that unless you've been in real combat and you don't get a glimpse of it unless you've done a re actment.
AS silly as it may sound there is a lot of energy in a re enactment attack.
As a side note the old hands told me about a German WWI vet who came to a re enactment years ago. He was impressed. He was only an observer but when the boys went over the top he drew his cane into the air as if a sword. What sights to be seen by a vet after all those years.

William

[deiter]

It looks like those are us fat americans in the video.......too much food-too little excercise........the 1:00 part was bad.......there is a big move in the hobby to end those skits for good........for the most part it is just play........once in a while at a reenactment, for a few seconds, i feel like im back there.....then the moment is gone


Dieter

[paddywhack]

i think reenacting can be very good at times but 2 thinks that happen alot and that are very annoying are one very very over weight people usually FJ or SS,it looks TERRIBLE and really to me is a bit insulting to the soldiers who trained very hard to in to these elite units!the second thing is seeing these reenacting festooned with high end awards!more RKs and DKs in one unit then would be possible!!! that just looks silly!and at time you see both!
iv seen some really great reenacting but then iv seen some terrible ones to! the bad one really do give the good ones a bad name!!

[bigschuss]

O.K., I'm one of the reenacting skeptics....I see it as mostly fat, old guys running around the woods playing war like they did when they were 12.

But William and Greg have me thinking that maybe it's more valuable than I thought. So, I'm keeping an open mind here. My question remains this....how do you know when you are dead? William talks about the ebb and flow and nobody wants to be a hero because you might die. How is that determined? Is it pre-scripted? Or is it just "bang, I got you first."

[Bcarver]

Willaim and Greg summed it up, it's the feel of what the real soldiers went through. I know we Americans can be fat and look nothing like what the men looked like on starvation rations back then, but it's the "feel" that makes me do it.

[panzer224]

I am 16 year old WWII reenactor. I do what I do for many reasons. Some of those are because I enjoy the hobby, I want just at least a small glimpse of what it was like, and I do it to learn new things. I am a simple grenadier in a heer unit. We don't make ourselves look all decorated with medals and fancy gear, we go simple. We wear our uniforms and gear as if we were there. We practice the tactics to see what it would be like in a combat situation, and we act like the average soldier did. I know the main german unit in this video and i'm not going to say the name of the unit. What those SS guys did was indeed wrong with the demonstration of the execution. They do give bad names to the actual men who fought. I find myself rather bothered with how people would describe american reenactors. I am a big kid (6'0", 240 lbs) but I exersize a lot and try to make myself not look like some SS farb weighing a lot and thinking they're elite soldiers. Not all WWII reenactors are old men too. I know a lot of people who are in their teens reenacting too. A decent amount of people in my unit aren't a bunch of old men either. I have met some kids who were 11 or 12 who want to be reenactors and they study just as hard as anyone else on this forum. They may not be massive collectors but they try too. My opinion is that reenacting is a hobby but it also is a way to honor those who fought and there are the guys who want to honor them and others who want to be an SS officer wearing a panzer uniform and have every german medal they think they should possibly have on their tunic. This is all my opinion though

[Willi Z.]

It is basically a hobby. Why do we read so much into it? Some like golf, horse racing, baseball games, etc, etc. It is also seen as a hobby of like people; cops, veterans, historians, collectors, etc who want to hang with others who share the same interests.

There are quite a number of hard core reenactors and superb units. Why don't we focus on them?

Nothing bothers the disciplined and tactically skilled reenactors more than seeing the slobs and flakes which give us all a bad name. Just like collecting militaria..... But, that usually comes down to too many units (everyone wants to be in charge of their own unit), poor unit leadership, and lax standards.

[pzrwest]

No matter how realistic you make re-enacting it comes nowhere near what it was like to be in actual combat. Even when I was in the army and we went on "war games" it was still nothing like the real thing!!!!! No live rounds, no real grenades, no real mortor fire, no real artillery comming in. A referee to say who was killed and who was alive... at the end of the day or exercise everyone went home!!!!! Yes you could get hurt BUT still it wasn't real combat! Unless you have been in real combat there is no way to really feel the terror not knowing if your next breath would be your last or the pain of being wounded, seeing your buddy killed before your eyes, to live with the memories of what saw and had to do!!!!

[Tom M]

Overall I don't see a problem with it. I think a lot of hostility towards re-enactors is from those who have been in the armed forces. I must admit it "miffs" me sometimes.

However, there are two sides to the coin. Re-enactors who are professional in what they portray, keep it as realistic as possible and who practice their enactments at the appropriate place I applaud. However, I once saw a group of re-enactors getting married in reality on the news a while back (WH) and I did feel that was a bit odd. I felt it was crossing the boundry whereby those involved actually started believing in some sort of fantasy world and it served no historical purpose. Like I've said before, appropriate place.

On the issue of awards I believe, again, there are boundries. You have to be donning some sort of award here and there for the realism, but once you start believing yourself that you earnt it and you start plastering all sorts of gongs on your chest like its body armour, then again, stupid.

That being said, overall I enjoy it, I might not neccessarily ever do it myself, but I can see a purpose. Actors in war films are glorified re-enactors themselves, ban them? Or how about warbird pilots at airshows, victory roll for what?

Right place, right time...