by Tony Horwitz
—BERRY BENSON, Confederate veteran
I returned home to Virginia badly in need of a furlough. My Southern journey had taken a long and dispiriting detour in Todd County. Apart from brief visits to Fort Sumter and a few other sites, I’d hardly set foot on the historic landscape of the Civil War I’d originally planned to explore.
Salvation arrived soon after my return in a telephone call from Robert Lee Hodge, the hardcore reenactor I’d met bloating on the road months before. He said the first major event of the campaign season was coming up: the Battle of the Wilderness. Eight thousand reenactors were expected to attend, plus twice that number of spectators. “It’ll be a total Farbfest,” Rob predicted.
Hardcores were ambivalent about battle reenactments. After all, it was hard to be truly “authentic” when the most authentic moment of any battle couldn’t be reproduced, though Rob did the best he could with his bloating. Hardcores also felt that crowds of spectators interfered with an authentic experience of combat. But Rob and several other Guardsmen planned to go anyway, to scout fresh talent and see what changes the long winter layoff had brought to the hobby.
I was curious to go, too. Since spooning with the Southern Guard, I’d been doing some research. Before, I’d assumed that reenacting was a marginal part of Civil War memory, a weekend hobby for gun-toting good ol’ boys—with the emphasis on boys. My reading suggested something altogether different. Reenacting had become the most popular vehicle of Civil War remembrance. There were now over 40,000 reenactors nationwide; one survey named reenacting the fastest-growing hobby in America.
Also, while battles remained the core event, reenacting now encompassed all the nonmilitary aspects of the Civil War, mirroring a similar trend in scholarship on the conflict. Soldiers were joined by growing ranks of “civilian” reenactors who played the part of nurses, surgeons, laundresses, preachers, journalists—even embalmers. A generation ago, a young person with a keen interest in the War would likely have joined a Civil War “roundtable,” one of the hundreds of scholarly clubs nationwide. In the 1990s, the same person was more likely to join a reenacting unit, perhaps with his wife and kids.
Not that women needed men to get involved. On the Internet, I found multiple chat groups for reenactors; on one, the topic of the day was “Top Ten Civil War Studs,” a discussion among women about “gents who would most belong on the cover of a romance novel.” The designated “Dishes” included P. G. T. Beauregard (“Continental charm in Creole packaging”) and Robert E. Lee (“a geron-tophile’s dream with sugar daddy possibilities”). The “Dud” list featured Braxton Bragg (“less style than a Nehru jacket”) and William Tecumseh Sherman (“sinister expression”).
Reenacting had also bred a vast cottage industry of tailors, weavers, and other “sutlers,” a Civil War term for merchants who provisioned the armies. For advice, reenactors could turn to a dozen publications, ranging from the oxymoronic Civil War News to the Camp Chase Gazette, a monthly crammed with how-to articles titled “Bundling Paper Cartridges for Field Use” and personal ads such as, “DWF ISO S/DWM between 45-55. Must be in good shape and ready for some hard campaigning. No TBGs need apply.” Translation: divorced white female in search of single or divorced white male in trim condition—not one of those tubby bearded guys (TBGs), or what Rob would call a “fat flaming farb.” There was even a Consumer Reports-style quarterly called The Watchdog, which rated the historic accuracy and quality of the various products on offer to the Civil War shopper.
Standards hadn’t always been so high. When reenacting first became popular during the Civil War centennial in the 1960s, many soldiers wore work shirts from Sears and fired BB guns. But in the three decades since, the hobby had matured and so had the quality of soldiers’ “impressions.” Even so, reenactors differed on just how far they should go in seeking “authenticity.” Hardcores were a small minority within the reenacting community and regarded by many as elitists. Mainstream reenactors also feared that the hardcore faith, taken to its fundamentalist extreme, would turn the hobby into a performance art that no one would want to watch—much less participate in.
“They’re pushing the envelope in terms of authenticity,” the Camp Chase Gazette editor, Bill Holschuh, told me when I phoned for his opinion. “About the only thing left is live ammunition and Civil War diseases. I hope it doesn’t come to that.”
THE DAY BEFORE THE Wilderness battle, Rob dropped by to lend me some gear: foul-smelling socks that might once have been white but were now splotched amber, a butternut “trans-Mississippi officer’s shell jacket,” gray “JT Moore” trousers, a “smooth-side 1858 model” canteen, and a “tarred Federal haversack.” None of this meant anything to me, but I was given to understand that I’d resemble a walking museum piece. “With this kit,” Rob said, “people will think you’re hardcore even if you act like a total farb.” Rob wasn’t sure about the Southern Guard’s plans, so we arranged a vague rendezvous at the reenactment, held on a private farm near the historic battle site.
The real battle of the Wilderness, as its name suggested, was a confused struggle fought in jungly Virginia woods in May 1864. Lee slammed into Grant’s advancing army, hoping that surprise and the tangled terrain would disorient his much more numerous foe. For two days whole units became lost in the scrub oak and slash pine. The woods caught fire, cremating hundreds of wounded. Grant lost 17,000 men, twice as many as Lee. But the North could bear such losses better than the South, and Grant pressed on, waging the grisly war of attrition leading to Lee’s surrender the next spring at Appomattox.
Today’s Civil War “battles” were scheduled months in advance and conveniently signposted. I drove across the Rappahannock and the Rapidan and turned at a roadside placard marked Battle of Wilderness. A bit farther on, another sign pointed to the C.S.A. Parking Area. A woman sat behind a bridge table, chatting on a cellular phone. “Are you preregistered?” she asked me. I mumbled something about the Southern Guard. “Well, just fall in,” she said, glancing at her watch. “Afternoon battle’s about to begin.”
Just beyond the parking lot and a long line of Porta-Johns, several thousand Confederates mustered as drums rolled and flags unfurled. I scanned the long lines of gray but couldn’t find any of the Southern Guard. A ragtag troop marched past, led by a lean, strikingly handsome figure. He wore wire-rimmed spectacles and a battered slouch hat, brown and curled, like a withered autumn leaf. Long blond locks brushed the shoulders of his butternut jacket. He looked like a cross between Jeb Stuart and Jim Morrison.
I saluted him and said, “Sir, I’ve lost my unit. May I fall in with yours?”
He peered through his spectacles at my uniform. “Certainly, private,” he drawled. “I regret to say that one of our men fell in this morning’s fight. You may take his place.”
He pointed me to the rear rank, between two middle-aged men. The one to my left, named Bishop, had graying hair and what looked like red finger paint smeared on his cheek. I asked about the soldier whose place I was taking. “His wife wanted him back for their kid’s birthday party tonight,” Bishop said. “So he took a hit early and drove home.”
Bishop had been wounded in the same clash. He pointed to his stained cheek. “Yankee bullet just bounced off me,” he said. Then he reached into his pocket and pulled out a tube labeled Fright Stuff: Fake Blood. “Got it at a gag shop,” he said. “It’s mostly corn syrup, with some dye and chemicals mixed in.”
The soldier to my right, a huge man with long stringy hair named O’Neill, said he’d fought as a marine in Vietnam. The experience had evidently left him embittered. When the rebel army halted, confused over where it was headed, O’Neill groused, “Just like the real military—a continual fucking screw-up.”
I’d joined Company H of the 32nd Virginia, from the Tidewater area in the state’s southeast. The handsome man in command was Captain Tommy Mullen, a carpenter by trade. O’Neill worked at a museum. Bishop was a cop. Many of the others worked in the shipyards around Newport News
. “We’re a bunch of average Joes, pretty much like the Confederates of old,” Bishop said.
“Bullshit,” O’Neill interjected. “We’re a bunch of fat slobs who couldn’t hack it in the real Civil War for an hour.”
The 32nd wasn’t hacking the unreal war particularly well, either. Our line kept wavering, and every time the captain gave an order someone got it wrong. “Git back up in the ranks!” the captain shouted. “I said right face! Do you know right from left?”
We reached a line of trees. “Watch the poison ivy!” one of the lead men called out. Then, marching through a pasture littered with cowpies, someone yelled, “Watch the landmines!” A few yards farther on, he yelled again, “Watch the cable!” I looked down and saw an electrical cord snaking through the scrub. O’Neill explained that a film crew was recording the battle. “My brother’s on the other side, in the Sixty-ninth New York,” he said. “He lives in New Jersey. I’m hoping to get filmed capturing him.”
We stumbled through brambly woods until Captain Mullen ordered us to halt. Then he gave us a few stage directions for the upcoming fray. “The Yanks get hit big-time, forty-five percent casualties,” he said. “But those rebs to the right of us are going to get overrun so we’ve got to counterattack and chase the Yanks back.” He glanced at his watch. “Ten minutes to battle so take a piss and eat something if you need to.”
The men pulled out pieces of store-bought beef jerky, minus the plastic, and Marlboros repackaged in old cigar cases. As we ate and smoked and urinated, I asked my fellow soldiers what they thought of hardcore reenactors.
“We try to be authentic,” O’Neill said. “But no one wants to eat rancid bacon and lie in the mud all night. This is a hobby, not a religion.”
Bishop gestured at his motley garb: work boots he’d bought at a yard sale, a homemade canteen, a haversack he’d crafted from an army surplus bag. “The way I see it, soldiers back then threw together whatever they could lay their hands on, like me. Was it perfection? No way.” He also resented the snobbishness of hardcore units. “Back then, the army took all available men. So why turn away someone who wants to fight just because he’s fat or doesn’t look the part?”
He had a point. I also realized I felt far more at ease here, among fellow bumblers, than I had at the Southern Guard drill surrounded by perfectionists.
Artillery began pounding in the field just beyond the woods. Each time the cannons boomed, the ground shook and pine needles showered down around us. A foul gray smog seeped in among the trees. “Suck it in, boys,” Captain Mullen said, resuming his Civil War persona. Troops to the right of us hoisted their guns and flags and rushed from the woods, vanishing into the smoke and noise. There was a keening rebel yell and the crackle of small-arms fire. I started to feel butterflies. Crouching in the woods, peering into the smoke and listening to the percussion of guns and artillery, I sensed a little of what a soldier must have felt, with no clue who was winning the battle he was about to join, or what his part in it would be.
Then I realized I had no role myself. “Prime muskets!” the captain barked. All around me the men of the 32nd bit open paper cartridges and poured black powder down their rifle barrels. Since I’d failed to hook up with Rob, I was the only man without a gun. I asked the captain what part I might play in the upcoming combat.
“If one of our men should fall, pick up his musket and fight on,” he said. Then he added, sotto voce: “If no one goes down, run around awhile and then take a hit. We can always use casualties.”
Back in line, I shared my orders with Bishop. “Casualties are a problem,” he said. “Nobody wants to drive three hours to get here, then go down in the first five minutes and spend the day lying on cowpies.” Sometimes, he said, officers began the battle by asking everyone for their birth dates. “Then they’ll say, ‘all Januarys and Februarys die. March and April, serious injuries.’” Another trick was to hand out different-colored cartridges with a particular hue designated as “death rounds.”
“Usually, though, it’s an honor system-type situation,” Bishop said. “If someone takes a bead on you and fires, go down. Otherwise you wait until you’re tired or you’ve run out of ammo.”
O’Neill cut in with a safety tip about dying. “Check your ground before you go down,” he said. “I’ve gotten bruises from falling on my canteen. Also, don’t die on your back, unless you want sunburn.”
Shoulder to shoulder, we marched out of the woods and into the clouded field. We marched forward, then sideways, completely blinded by the smoke. Somewhere in the fog a fife tootled “Dixie.” Then we seemed to be marching away from the noise. There were no other Confederates in sight.
“Halt!” the captain shouted. He took out binoculars and peered through the gloom. Just ahead, we heard the murmur of voices and what sounded like triggers cocking.
“Form battle lines!” Mullen shouted. Ten men knelt, rifles at the ready, with the other ten standing right behind. Then the smoke cleared, revealing a crowd of spectators in lawn chairs, aiming cameras and videos back at us. “There they are!” one of the spectators shouted, and a hundred shutters clicked at once.
“Company, left!” Mullen yelled, wheeling us sharply around, back into the smoke. Suddenly, fifty or so Yankees appeared just in front of us, as startled and disorganized as we were. “Fire at will!” the captain shouted. Flames licked from the muskets and bits of white cartridge paper fluttered all around us. The blanks made a deafening roar. Like street mimes, the Yankees aped our motions precisely. Then both sides frantically loaded and fired again. “Pour it in, boys!” the captain shouted.
I put my fingers in my ears and crouched beside O’Neill. The Yankees were no more than twenty yards in front of us, firing round after round. But I waited in vain for one of our men to go down.
“Damn Yanks can’t shoot straight,” O’Neill said, lips black with powder. Apparently, the rebels couldn’t aim either. Despite the withering fire, only one Federal had gone down. “Yanks never take hits,” O’Neill griped. “Fuckin’ Kevlar army.”
Then, obeying the battle’s script, the Yankees suddenly turned and ran. “Look boys, they’re turning tail!” Mullen shouted, drawing his saber. “Drive em, boys! Drive ’em!”
“No-account Yankees!”
“Candy asses!”
“Take no prisoners! Kill ’em all!”
We reached a field littered with blue figures. Several of the dead lay propped on their elbows, pointing Instamatics at the oncoming rebs. Fifty yards farther on, we ran into a storm of Yankee fire and repeated our previous drill: battle lines, fire at will, reload, fire again. “Okay boys,” the captain said, after we’d poured imaginary lead at each other for fifteen minutes. “Time to take some hits.”
Bishop reached into his pocket for the Fright Stuff. Smearing the bright red goop on his temples, he asked me, “Want a squirt?” I shook my head, imagining what Rob Hodge would say if I returned his uniform with fake bloodstains. “Watch for landmines when you go down,” Bishop reminded me.
The Yankees unleashed another volley. I clutched my belly, groaned loudly and stumbled to the ground. O’Neill flopped on his side like a sick cow, bellowing, “I’m a goner, oh God, I’m a goner.” Then he spotted his brother from New Jersey, lying in the grass nearby. “Hey Steve, they got you, too! Just like the Civil War, brother against brother!”
Bishop sprawled with his eyes wide open, Fright Stuff dribbling down his chin. Another man lay on his stomach, convulsed with laughter. He was wearing foam earplugs, the type they give you on airplanes. I wondered how I’d report the scene to Rob Hodge. Died and gone to farb heaven.
As the battle raged on, I chatted with a young Virginian named Butch McLaren who had fallen beside me. I asked about his wound. “It was mortal,” he said. “A lot of internal bleeding. But I died for an honorable cause.”
McLaren rolled on his side and lit a posthumous cigarette. During the week, he said, he worked as a rigger at a Norfolk shipyard. He passed the long days dreami
ng about these weekends and thinking about his great-great-grandfather, Private R. J. Dew. “He was wounded three times at Chickamauga and once marched four days with no food,” McLaren said.
We sprawled flat again as rebel reserves rushed past us and poured another volley into the Union line. “You know,” McLaren said, face pressed to the grass, “if I could trade places with my great-great-grandpappy, I’d do it in a second. Life was harder then but in a way it was simpler. He didn’t have to pay phone bills, put gas in the car, worry about crime. And he knew what he was living for.”
We lay in the grass until a bugle sounded Taps, signaling the end of hostilities. Captain Mullen rose to his knees and gave a final order to his men: “Resurrect!” We stood up and shook hands with enemy corpses as the spectators gave a lusty round of applause.
COMBAT WASN’T SCHEDULED to resume until the next day, so the soldiers and spectators scattered: to the parking lots, to the Porta-Johns, to a huge tent encampment called the sutlers’ row, or “the Mall.” Here, brought to life, was the strange world of civilian reenacting I’d read about. North and South mingled peaceably along dirt streets lined with shops. The atmosphere was tongue-in-cheek quaint, with stores labeled The Carpetbagger or War Profiteer Serving Both North and South. A commissary sign said, “No Likker Sold to Soljers.” Shoppers could have their picture—or rather, ambro-type—taken in period dress by a man with a hooded camera, or buy “period” love poetry penned on handmade stationery.
I watched couples promenade in uniforms and hoop skirts, quaffing Doc McGillicuddy’s Sarsaparilla, then wandered over to explore the “civilian camps.” At a Confederate tent, I found a “Soldiers Aid Society” where women clad as Southern belles sat knitting socks. They sipped Confederate coffee (parched corn sweetened with dark molasses) and gossiped about their Northern counterparts. “Yankee women, of course, may not be of the highest moral order,” one woman drawled.
