September 9, 2008 5:59 PM

 

An American Riley's Farm Fall Tradition:

Civil War living history goes back a long way here, and I've often thought that the real men and women who lived the American Civil War from April 12, 1861 to to April 9, 1865 packed more life into those four years than most people could live in five or six lifetimes. We've seen young re-enactors take their first coltish waltz around the barn at the Blue Gray Ball, returning eight or nine years later with a wife and three children. We've literally seen small children go from camp kids to soldiers, over the years, growing up in the hobby of living history. We've seen ranks of wall tents, painted with snow, and shivering hands reaching for camp coffee at dawn, even as they recollect warmer battles they enjoyed here on the farm. We've heard the "war within a war" as reenactor units complain and gossip about each other. One year, the Union attacked the Confederate breastworks and the rebels threw snow balls at their attackers, even as someone on the Union side was yelling "safety violation!" (There was a heated after-action exchange later.) We've seen last year's best living history friends become this year's worst enemies, and last year's "discredit to the hobby," become this year's "fantastic impression."

One year, I nearly blinded myself by falling "dead" with a fife jabbed into my cheek. Another year, a guy fell right on a high pressure irrigation riser, broke it, and water went shooting all over the battle field. (We called it the battle of pumpkin springs.)

As a result of the land use compromise we made to save our field trip programs, we no longer do the big battle re-enactments with hundreds of soldiers firing away at each other, but one autumn, when we were fifing and drumming to the sound of the canons, the awful beauty of ancient warfare struck me powerfully, with music radiating harmony to the thunder of the big guns, and I turned to see crowds wiping away tears at the awful sacrifice of the men we were representing. I remember a certain well-loved re-enactor who handed me a business card one night that read something like "marriages arranged, revolutions fomented, attitudes corrected." He died a few years ago, after re-living the Civil War on weekends for more than a decade, and I was tempted to think there is something ironic in spending part of your life (which is very short) living someone else's life--but then I knew that this critique is really just the withering lament of the devil, who doesn't want us honoring the past, who doesn't want us remembering glory, or sacrifice, or courage. The adversary wants us to languish in the effeminate-god-hating-Bill-Maher present, sneering at absolutes and reviling virtue.

One day a grizzled old Vietnam veteran scolded me for giving a patriotic speech after a battle re-enactment. (Most Vietnam veterans are very patriotic folk, but every once in a while, you meet someone from the dark side of the force.)

"What did all my buddies die for?" he asked.

"Liberty," I told him.

He was taken aback. He expected me to go along with the standard party line about the futility of the Vietnam war. He was stuttering, speechless, trying hard to re-group. He--an old veteran--was astounded that someone would defend his war.

"As far as I'm concerned," I told him, "the more of those godless Marxist barbarians you killed, the better. Are you apologizing for fighting evil?"

The guy was mentally arthritic, of course, a victim of the hemp-headed dopiness that passed for deep-thinking among the Woodstock brats. He was accustomed to using his Vietnam veteran status as the last word in any argument about war.

"Granted," I told him, "you had tinkering idiots like Robert McNamara at the top, and craven, election-stealing cowards like LBJ, but the country wanted you to kill Communists. And you should never apologize for that. You should be proud of it. How many Bolsheviks did you kill anyway?"

"Uh," he said, "uh, uh."

Uh is right.

Sometimes the participants in American history don't appreciate the true heroism of their actions, or God fashioned them to speak with their actions, and not their words.

That's why, I think, you need poets, and novelists and historians, and even re-enactors. As one of our redcoats told me, when thanking another, wiser veteran for his service. The fellow turned to him and said,

"no, no, thank you. You're keeping the memory alive."

 

More of the Farm Journal -- September 8, 2008