"The Fine
Print", by M.H. Schrader
"...THESE DEAD
SHALL NOT HAVE DIED IN VAIN" (A. Lincoln, 1863)
(Published in the Neighborhood
Journal 20 May 1998)
Have you noticed that Arkansas is obsessed with the Civil
War, and more specifically, Civil War re-enactments? While I personally think that it is good that folks are
interested in that era, it is bad to be obsessed by it. And that is exactly what re-enactments have
become: obsession. Especially when lawsuits are filed regarding
the realistic appropriateness of uniforms worn to re-enactments. Give me a break! Get a life, will you?
Hello! It is a
re-enactment. It can never be
historically correct. So get over it!
Re-enactments are an insult to the memory of those who
died for us. They trivialize death into
play acting. And it must stop.
You want to make the re-enactments more realistic? Use real bullets in the guns. After all, that is what the ten of thousands
who have died for us and our freedom faced.
When they left their families, their families knew that they would not
be home for dinner. No, those families
knew that they were sending their husbands, fathers, and sons off to die. How many modern day spouses would be willing
to let their loved ones go off to a battle reenactment if they knew that they
would never see them again?
Is it possible to really, really re-create what was going
through the minds of the soldiers who died for us, whose thoughts prompted
their actions? No, unless you are
willing to wake up every morning knowing that you may die today. Because death was imminently real to those
in the real battles. Personally, I do
not know how a person could cope with it.
In addition to using real bullets, re-enactors should
also use the medical technology available at the time of the Civil War. To many soldiers, death was better than
injury, as injury most assuredly resulted in a painful field amputation
(without anesthetics) of a limb.
To truly re-create the uniforms of that era, then
participants should forgo footwear.
After all, the soldiers did. Do
you know why the Confederate troops were in Gettysburg anyway? To raid the boot factory. It seems the Confederate troops were lacking
in footwear. Imagine having to go into
battle barefooted, having to raid corpses for a pair of boots to wear. That, my friends, is the reality of
war. It is not some weekend excursion
to a park somewhere to play act. If
only the real soldiers, who died for us and our freedom, had such a luxury!
To me, the best way to honor our dead soldiers is through
thoughtful reflection. Standing in the
cemetery at Fort Donelson, Tennessee, seeing endless rows of tombstones, both
Yankee and Johnny Reb, I was struck by the silence of the place. On the day that I visited, it was a sunny
spring day, and you could hear the birds chirping. What a marked contrast to what those whose graves I was amongst
must have heard at the moment before their deaths--gunfire, screams of
agony. They died so that I could hear
the birds. Awesome, when you think
about. Tens of thousands of people that
I never knew died so that I could enjoy the peace and solitude of a spring day
in Tennessee.
Besides that cemetery, probably the most awe-inspiring
place that I have ever visited is the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in
Washington. Reading the tens of
thousands of names, some the names of fathers of friends of mine that they
never knew, I became overwhelmed with emotion, namely grief. Looking at the name of the father of a
friend of mine, a father he never knew, made me upset at the way I sometimes
take my own father for granted. Sure,
my father makes me upset at times. But,
at least I know my father. My friends
never had such a luxury.
War is hell.
People die because of it.
Families are ruined because of it.
Our fallen soldiers died for us, for our freedom. We should stop being so petty, so concerned
about the minutiae, and thank God that they did. We should spend some time this Memorial Day reflecting on this
sacrifice. They sacrificed their lives
to give us freedom, and what have we done with their gift? We have wasted it. We can't even get one half of all voters to vote, a right given
to us by the tens of thousands who have died on our behalf.
We should hold our heads in shame.