Future reenacting mistakes.

[Valerian Pertinax]

Has anyone ever thought about the distant future of reenacting? What if people made mistakes on the same level as some reenactors and movies do today? We would be seeing the following in future portrayals of "us":

-American Civil War soldiers storming the beach at Normandy, holding M-16s.

-One really bad (to us) movie showing Wellington's regulars leading the charge into Iraq in 1990, only to be defeated by Teddy Roosevelt's Rough Riders, thus freeing the Mexican slaves. Said movie then wins 8 major awards.

-Endless chat board debates on whether or not American Embassy Marines wore their parade dress uniforms into battle, or if they did, in fact, have two sets of uniforms. Debate will then continue as to if their other uniforms resembled a regular Marine BDUs.

Finally, someone will write the definitive 20-21st century guide to period dress:
1) Start by making or buying a set of jeans. Blue is highly preferred. Material must be cotton.
2) Wear a "T"- style shirt. Also made out of cotton.
3) Those portraying someone at "work" will need a variant of trousers called "khakis". These may be white, tan, or even green. For best accuracy, a "polo" style shirt is best. Curiously, the shirt may be any solid color. An adornment called a "nametag" is optional.

[Redguru]

Question 1:

As a contractor mercenary of the second Persioan Gulf conflict Do I wear my blue polyester leisure suit under my kevlar?

Question 2:

Does the Denver version circa 1993 of Lorica segmentata football lace differently than the Green Bay version circa 1950?

[Valerian Pertinax]

Pictoral evidence exists that the contractors from the 2nd Persian Gulf war may also wear khakis (debate continues as to why) and sleeveless shirts.

[agrimensor]

Did all allied soldier wear the battledress and were armend with th m1 garand during th 2 ww of 1939 til 1945. or the lee enfield. And all the germans had a kar98 :wink:

[Vindex]

I once wrote a short story about a Second Century cavalryman being transported in time and turning up at a Living History event. All the participants criticised him for not having the right kit because he laughed at theirs! :lol: (And this was years BEFORE Deva 2012!! hock: :mrgreen: )

[Gaius Julius Caesar]

Hmmm, i like to think we could tell the difference....

Or the legions taking on the Luftwaffe.... :mrgreen:

[attachment=4357]63427_462701757131_37874_n.jpg[/attachment]

[Valerian Pertinax]

I see that Harry Turtledove has his own school of reenactment!

[Vindex]

I LOVE that photograph Byron!

[Gaius Julius Caesar]

We had a lot of fun that day! :grin:

[Semisalis Abruna]

I once wrote a short story about a Second Century cavalryman being transported in time and turning up at a Living History event. All the participants criticised him for not having the right kit because he laughed at theirs!

Went to a WW2 reenactment where there was a really old bloke (who looked vaguely familiar) in full kit with the Fallschirmjagers & thought isn't he a bit old for a portrayal of crack troops. Got chatting to him & he was in his 80s & had served in the unit he was reenacting. Having heard his jordy english I remembered I had seen him on TV.

Anyone brave enough to tell HIM his kit is wrong?????

[P. Clodius Secundus]

I'm waiting for the day when my son or some future grandson goes to a Desert Storm reenactment event and has some know-it-all tell him that no soldiers in the First Infantry Division carried M231 Firing Port Weapons into battle as their sidearm.

[Vindex]

I'm waiting for the day when my son or some future grandson goes to a Desert Storm reenactment event and has some know-it-all tell him that no soldiers in the First Infantry Division carried M231 Firing Port Weapons into battle as their sidearm.

Or pump action shotguns (for breaking up the packs of wild dogs that chased the dispatch riders).

[Dan D'Silva]

-American Civil War soldiers storming the beach at Normandy, holding M-16s.

Well, who's to say they didn't? We don't know exactly when the M-16 was introduced, but they were widely-used in the Vietnamese-American War of the 1970s and the Gulf Storm War a few decades after that. The basic kit of soldiers during the 18th-22nd centuries always included some kind of rifle, and we know automatic rifles were used as early as the First Great World War. Technology didn't change that rapidly. I see no reason that some of the Second Great World War troops wouldn't have carried an early variant of the M-16 type. And soldiers always pick up weapons from battlefields, so I could imagine that a few of the Germanic warriors also had M-16s.

-One really bad (to us) movie showing Wellington's regulars leading the charge into Iraq in 1990, only to be defeated by Teddy Roosevelt's Rough Riders, thus freeing the Mexican slaves. Said movie then wins 8 major awards.

Hey, we don't watch movies for their historical accuracy. I thought that having Gavrilo Princip assassinate Roosevelt at the end made sense from a storytelling perspective, since it illustrated the transition toward the Second Gulf Storm War.

-Endless chat board debates on whether or not American Embassy Marines wore their parade dress uniforms into battle, or if they did, in fact, have two sets of uniforms. Debate will then continue as to if their other uniforms resembled a regular Marine BDUs.

Oh, don't start that one again. American Embassy Marines were basically the same as Persian Immortals and would only have fought when the President-of-Presidents led an invasion personally. Of course they would've worn "parade" uniforms in battle.

3) Those portraying someone at "work" will need a variant of trousers called "khakis". These may be white, tan, or even green. For best accuracy, a "polo" style shirt is best. Curiously, the shirt may be any solid color. An adornment called a "nametag" is optional.

I've worn the Polo as well as the Buttondown-type tunics and I have to say the Buttondown-type is more comfortable in very hot weather because of its lighter material (world temperatures back then often reached 90 degrees Fahrenheit!). It can also be ripped open dramatically in the Super Man style... or so I've heard. It was normally worn with tight-fitting "bell-bottom" trousers and Western cowboots.

The wool plant, of course, was almost extinct by then, so I'm pretty sure cotton was the only material available, but there's some nut claiming that clothes in the latter half of the period were actually made out of a fibre called "polyester," which they somehow made out of that oil they used to mine out of the ground. I don't see how that's supposed to work, since oil is liquid at room temperature.

[Quintius Clavus]

Randi,
There were some reenactors doing Desert Storm several years back at Marching Thru Time - they were veterans, as you are, of that conflict. Someone had the nerve to criticize their kit and weapons. One of the men said that it all worked just fine while he was fighting the Iragis in 1991!

Sir Marshall of Eaglesbane (SCA name but a Major in the US 1st Cavalry Division at the time) regaled us with stories from his service in Desert Shield/Storm. He mentioned that he had confiscated a sawed-off shot gun from one of his men and was carrying it around in his vehicle when the tanks rolled into Iraq.

[Ron Andrea]

When we mobilized the First Tactical Fighter Wing (F-15s) from Langley AFB, Virginia to "somewhere in the Gulf" in September 1990, you wouldn't believe the number and variety of weapons we confiscated from our own troops who didn't feel comfortable going into a war zone without their personnel means of self-defense. (You can understand why the leadership was nervous about everybody bringing their own gun to the fight.)

Since we were aircraft maintainers the logic went at that time, we didn't need to be armed. Even though the only thing between us an the Iraqi army at that time were the 101st Airborne Division and the Saudi National Guard. Must have been enough because Saddam never even tried to come south.