Tweet
Greetings,
No comment. I'll let you draw your own conclusions about the objectivity of this article. Actual link at the NY Times is:
Playing Wars Whose Wounds Are Fresh
Photograph by Kenneth Dickerman for The New York Times
Nathan Long plays a member of the United States Army's Ninth Infantry Division at the annual World War II Re-enactment Weekend in Batavia, Ill.
By JENNY THOMPSON
Published: June 5, 2004
Kenneth Dickerman
David Pacanowski as another member of the Ninth Infantry.
BATAVIA, Ill. — Near a smoldering campfire on the grounds of Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 1197, 20 men were standing dressed in German World War II uniforms. After a heavy morning rainstorm that had flooded their campsite near the banks of the Fox River, they were drying out.
Along with two dozen other re-enactors portraying American and British forces, they had gathered here, 40 miles west of Chicago, to participate in the Seventh Annual World War II Re-enactment Weekend. Lines of tents, a 1940's VW bug, a jeep and displays of period weapons and equipment were set up, ready for the spectators.
"We're out here to celebrate Memorial Day and give the public a taste of what life was like for the soldiers," said Dave Fornell, 32, who was portraying a German.
Mr. Fornell's unit, the 353rd German Infantry Division, is part of the World War II Historical Re-enactment Society, a co-sponsor of this event, along with the V.F.W. In real life, Mr. Fornell is a newspaper reporter.
Jennifer Garden, 27, works as a sign-language interpreter. She was spending the weekend dressed as a German helferin, or helper. "You dress up in this uniform," Ms. Garden said, "and get to stand out here and tell other people about history, which I love."
Later the soldiers waged a mock battle that ended in victory for the Americans.
Civil War re-enactors are, of course, well known, having been famously portrayed as oddball history nuts in Tony Horwitz's book "Confederates in the Attic." But the re-enactment of battles from more recent wars like World War II and Vietnam, with some participants playing Nazis or Vietcong, has a different flavor. For real survivors, some whose memories are still raw, the safe historical distance collapses.
The events also raise troubling questions. Is this an acceptable representation of war or a parody? Many people would shudder at the thought of taking an M-16 and donning fatigues to go on a fake search-and-destroy mission to honor those who fought in Vietnam. And surely, joining a simulated German Panzer unit to roam the woods in a kübelwagen and shoot blanks is a far cry from more traditional ways of commemorating World War II.
Some historians are quick to condemn the practice. Battle re-enactments "are nothing but mere titillation, meaningless amateur dramatics promoting the postmodern simulacrum, a hazy image of a manipulated and trivialized past," Kevin Walsh writes in "The Representation of the Past: Museums and Heritage in the Postmodern World" (Routledge, 1992).
I spent seven years trying to figure out the motivations behind this avocation. I interviewed and surveyed re-enactors, dressed in uniform and joined several units to participate in numerous events. I slept in the woods, invaded Virginia Beach, Va., during the 50th anniversary of the Normandy invasion and on another occasion was captured, interrogated and "executed" by a band of German soldiers in the Maryland woods.
What I found is that there are now about 6,000 mostly white, mostly male 20th-century war re-enactors who belong to official units across the country. They dress as Doughboys, Russian soldiers, German nurses and Vietcong. They own tanks, jeeps and rifles. And on any given weekend, not just that of Memorial Day, they perform simulated war in public settings.
There is also a distinctly private side to 20th-century re-enactments, which first developed as a hobby in the 1970's. Across the country, re-enactors hold weekend-long events that are closed to spectators. One remote Pennsylvania site owned by World War I re-enactors even has a fake, bombed-out French town, along with an intricate network of trenches, look-out posts, a cemetery and a no-man's-land strewn with battle debris. It's here that re-enactors try to get a sense of the horror of the Great War.
While more than 90 percent of re-enactors are civilians, nearly one-third have some military experience; a few are even World War II, Korean War and Vietnam veterans. More than 80 percent of re-enactors say they are related to people who served in the wars they re-enact. Some joined the military after pursuing the hobby. But nearly all re-enactors stress that they do not want to be in the military nor do they want to experience real war. They want to re-enact.
Raised in a culture that allows them to fantasize about war, almost all had played army games in childhood, and have read about battles and watched war movies ever since. But despite all the movies, books and relatives who are veterans, their interest in war is not satisfied. They remain enthralled by war's mystery. Re-enacting, they believe, is the only way to glimpse that experience themselves.
"To do it for real, you'd get killed," said one participant I interviewed for a book on re-enactors. He re-enacts both world wars and Vietnam and asked that his name not be used. "It's not like playing tennis, you know. You can play tennis for real and not get hurt. But if you want to try to get a sample of what war was like without getting killed, this is about as close as you're going to be able to do it."
Privately, these re-enactors argue endlessly over how far to go to achieve authenticity, debating everything from the sex to the race to the weight of the participants. But they do agree on one thing: they cannot recreate real war. Many even say that the term re-enactment is inaccurate. In their private events, rather than re-enact specific battles, they create a kind of generic war setting in which they live, and fight, for a while. As a result, World War I and Vietnam events can be surprisingly similar. In all re-enactments, the participants fight, talk, joke and hang out together. And as one re-enactor in my book puts it, "everybody dies."
Emphasizing neither politics nor nationality, they focus on the details: uniforms, weapons, drills. That is why dressing up as a Nazi or a Vietcong soldier does not seem to bother most re-enactors. To them soldiers are not ideologues or saviors. Instead, their mythic common soldier, whether a private or an officer, is a victim, a pawn used by politicians. But the soldier is also a kind of antihero, a noble everyman — or woman — who sacrifices and suffers.
"It was war," said one re-enactor in an online discussion in 1998. "Politicians started it, soldiers fought it and the world's people paid for it. To fault a soldier for the ideal of the government he serves is the same as blaming a hammer for driving a crooked nail."
The version of war that is generally played out is a curious blend of traditions. The heroic "good war" image of World War II is tinged with the sense of futility often associated with Vietnam. There is both horror and honor, waste and sacrifice.
But ultimately, it is the power to represent history that most captivates 20th-century re-enactors. Raised on a litany of war stories, they can now put on authentic uniforms and tell their own tales.
Critics of the hobby say re-enactors have not earned the right to do this. In their view there is something inherently disrespectful in re-enactors' wearing military uniforms. A former National Park Service official, Dwight F. Rettie, criticizes re-enactments in "Our National Park System: Caring for America's Greatest Natural and Historic Treasures" (University of Illinois, 1995), arguing that they "trivialize the horror and reality of war and, for young people and children in particular, they convey a false impression of war's terrible effects."
But part of the impulse to re-enact seems to be a desire to control war's legacy by owning it. As the historian George L. Mosse says in "Fallen Soldiers: Reshaping the Memory of the World Wars" (Oxford University Press, 1990), depicting war, whether through images, toys or games is "one way of coping with war, not by exalting and glorifying it, but by making it familiar."
Having consumed images of war for so long, re-enactors now enjoy the power to create their own representations, ones that center on themselves. In my research one World War II re-enactor explained this lure: "No other collection that I can think of — like stamps or coins — you can't just shrink yourself into a stamp and put yourself in the book and go, you know, `Oh, look! I'm a stamp!' Right? I mean this is something that you can actually collect and actually show off."
Mr. Fornell, the reporter and re-enactor, thinks of it as a more public-spirited endeavor. "It's up to us, as re-enactors," he said, "to help carry on that history, and also to pass on that information to the next generation."
Jenny Thompson is the author of "War Games: Inside the World of 20th-Century War Re-enactors" (Smithsonian Institution Press, 2004).
[END QUOTE]
***********************
Regards,
Mark Jaeger
No comment. I'll let you draw your own conclusions about the objectivity of this article. Actual link at the NY Times is:
Playing Wars Whose Wounds Are Fresh
Photograph by Kenneth Dickerman for The New York Times
Nathan Long plays a member of the United States Army's Ninth Infantry Division at the annual World War II Re-enactment Weekend in Batavia, Ill.
By JENNY THOMPSON
Published: June 5, 2004
Kenneth Dickerman
David Pacanowski as another member of the Ninth Infantry.
BATAVIA, Ill. — Near a smoldering campfire on the grounds of Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 1197, 20 men were standing dressed in German World War II uniforms. After a heavy morning rainstorm that had flooded their campsite near the banks of the Fox River, they were drying out.
Along with two dozen other re-enactors portraying American and British forces, they had gathered here, 40 miles west of Chicago, to participate in the Seventh Annual World War II Re-enactment Weekend. Lines of tents, a 1940's VW bug, a jeep and displays of period weapons and equipment were set up, ready for the spectators.
"We're out here to celebrate Memorial Day and give the public a taste of what life was like for the soldiers," said Dave Fornell, 32, who was portraying a German.
Mr. Fornell's unit, the 353rd German Infantry Division, is part of the World War II Historical Re-enactment Society, a co-sponsor of this event, along with the V.F.W. In real life, Mr. Fornell is a newspaper reporter.
Jennifer Garden, 27, works as a sign-language interpreter. She was spending the weekend dressed as a German helferin, or helper. "You dress up in this uniform," Ms. Garden said, "and get to stand out here and tell other people about history, which I love."
Later the soldiers waged a mock battle that ended in victory for the Americans.
Civil War re-enactors are, of course, well known, having been famously portrayed as oddball history nuts in Tony Horwitz's book "Confederates in the Attic." But the re-enactment of battles from more recent wars like World War II and Vietnam, with some participants playing Nazis or Vietcong, has a different flavor. For real survivors, some whose memories are still raw, the safe historical distance collapses.
The events also raise troubling questions. Is this an acceptable representation of war or a parody? Many people would shudder at the thought of taking an M-16 and donning fatigues to go on a fake search-and-destroy mission to honor those who fought in Vietnam. And surely, joining a simulated German Panzer unit to roam the woods in a kübelwagen and shoot blanks is a far cry from more traditional ways of commemorating World War II.
Some historians are quick to condemn the practice. Battle re-enactments "are nothing but mere titillation, meaningless amateur dramatics promoting the postmodern simulacrum, a hazy image of a manipulated and trivialized past," Kevin Walsh writes in "The Representation of the Past: Museums and Heritage in the Postmodern World" (Routledge, 1992).
I spent seven years trying to figure out the motivations behind this avocation. I interviewed and surveyed re-enactors, dressed in uniform and joined several units to participate in numerous events. I slept in the woods, invaded Virginia Beach, Va., during the 50th anniversary of the Normandy invasion and on another occasion was captured, interrogated and "executed" by a band of German soldiers in the Maryland woods.
What I found is that there are now about 6,000 mostly white, mostly male 20th-century war re-enactors who belong to official units across the country. They dress as Doughboys, Russian soldiers, German nurses and Vietcong. They own tanks, jeeps and rifles. And on any given weekend, not just that of Memorial Day, they perform simulated war in public settings.
There is also a distinctly private side to 20th-century re-enactments, which first developed as a hobby in the 1970's. Across the country, re-enactors hold weekend-long events that are closed to spectators. One remote Pennsylvania site owned by World War I re-enactors even has a fake, bombed-out French town, along with an intricate network of trenches, look-out posts, a cemetery and a no-man's-land strewn with battle debris. It's here that re-enactors try to get a sense of the horror of the Great War.
While more than 90 percent of re-enactors are civilians, nearly one-third have some military experience; a few are even World War II, Korean War and Vietnam veterans. More than 80 percent of re-enactors say they are related to people who served in the wars they re-enact. Some joined the military after pursuing the hobby. But nearly all re-enactors stress that they do not want to be in the military nor do they want to experience real war. They want to re-enact.
Raised in a culture that allows them to fantasize about war, almost all had played army games in childhood, and have read about battles and watched war movies ever since. But despite all the movies, books and relatives who are veterans, their interest in war is not satisfied. They remain enthralled by war's mystery. Re-enacting, they believe, is the only way to glimpse that experience themselves.
"To do it for real, you'd get killed," said one participant I interviewed for a book on re-enactors. He re-enacts both world wars and Vietnam and asked that his name not be used. "It's not like playing tennis, you know. You can play tennis for real and not get hurt. But if you want to try to get a sample of what war was like without getting killed, this is about as close as you're going to be able to do it."
Privately, these re-enactors argue endlessly over how far to go to achieve authenticity, debating everything from the sex to the race to the weight of the participants. But they do agree on one thing: they cannot recreate real war. Many even say that the term re-enactment is inaccurate. In their private events, rather than re-enact specific battles, they create a kind of generic war setting in which they live, and fight, for a while. As a result, World War I and Vietnam events can be surprisingly similar. In all re-enactments, the participants fight, talk, joke and hang out together. And as one re-enactor in my book puts it, "everybody dies."
Emphasizing neither politics nor nationality, they focus on the details: uniforms, weapons, drills. That is why dressing up as a Nazi or a Vietcong soldier does not seem to bother most re-enactors. To them soldiers are not ideologues or saviors. Instead, their mythic common soldier, whether a private or an officer, is a victim, a pawn used by politicians. But the soldier is also a kind of antihero, a noble everyman — or woman — who sacrifices and suffers.
"It was war," said one re-enactor in an online discussion in 1998. "Politicians started it, soldiers fought it and the world's people paid for it. To fault a soldier for the ideal of the government he serves is the same as blaming a hammer for driving a crooked nail."
The version of war that is generally played out is a curious blend of traditions. The heroic "good war" image of World War II is tinged with the sense of futility often associated with Vietnam. There is both horror and honor, waste and sacrifice.
But ultimately, it is the power to represent history that most captivates 20th-century re-enactors. Raised on a litany of war stories, they can now put on authentic uniforms and tell their own tales.
Critics of the hobby say re-enactors have not earned the right to do this. In their view there is something inherently disrespectful in re-enactors' wearing military uniforms. A former National Park Service official, Dwight F. Rettie, criticizes re-enactments in "Our National Park System: Caring for America's Greatest Natural and Historic Treasures" (University of Illinois, 1995), arguing that they "trivialize the horror and reality of war and, for young people and children in particular, they convey a false impression of war's terrible effects."
But part of the impulse to re-enact seems to be a desire to control war's legacy by owning it. As the historian George L. Mosse says in "Fallen Soldiers: Reshaping the Memory of the World Wars" (Oxford University Press, 1990), depicting war, whether through images, toys or games is "one way of coping with war, not by exalting and glorifying it, but by making it familiar."
Having consumed images of war for so long, re-enactors now enjoy the power to create their own representations, ones that center on themselves. In my research one World War II re-enactor explained this lure: "No other collection that I can think of — like stamps or coins — you can't just shrink yourself into a stamp and put yourself in the book and go, you know, `Oh, look! I'm a stamp!' Right? I mean this is something that you can actually collect and actually show off."
Mr. Fornell, the reporter and re-enactor, thinks of it as a more public-spirited endeavor. "It's up to us, as re-enactors," he said, "to help carry on that history, and also to pass on that information to the next generation."
Jenny Thompson is the author of "War Games: Inside the World of 20th-Century War Re-enactors" (Smithsonian Institution Press, 2004).
[END QUOTE]
***********************
Regards,
Mark Jaeger
Comment