(2 of 4)
Christopher Nelson, 44, a vice president of a Japanese consulting firm in Virginia, was unruffled at the Manassas battle, as was proper for a Union officer sent down from Washington to view the fighting from a distant hill. He wore dark blue woolen trousers, suspenders, an officer's jacket, a sword and a Colt .44-cal. Army-model revolver of the type issued to officers before 1862 --in all, about $500 worth of gear. His interest was in the historical significance of the battle, which saw the first appearance of rifled cannons and the first movement of troops into battle by rail. "None of these generals had ever handled so many thousands of troops before," he marveled. An estimated 35,000 Confederates and about the same number of Union troops took part in the real battle, though accounts vary, and about 6,500 soldiers and camp followers joined in the re-enactment.
Patrick Massengill, a Pentagon cartographer, kept things in order with twelve pages of script and 34 maps that boiled a long day's fighting down to 2 1/2 hours. Troop movements were as accurate as history and conjecture could make them, but deaths, desertions and the like were left to the inspiration of the combatants. Said Massengill: "There is a lot of ham in these people."
There was a lot of earnestness too. "If you want to understand this war, then you have got to know how the soldiers felt," explained Thomas Downes, a machinist from Cleveland who had signed on as a captain with the 2nd New Hampshire Regiment. "We cannot drink Cokes or Gatorade in the camp. It wouldn't be authentic. But if you can get whisky, that's all right. We are living historians. We have to do this to understand our forefathers."
First Manassas was such noisy, nostalgic fun that the organizers are talking about staging the battles of Cedar Mountain and Antietam next year, Gettysburg in 1988, the Wilderness Campaign in 1989 and Appomattox in 1990. In the meantime, there is no danger of peace breaking out and boring everyone. If the French and Indian War catches your imagination, there are rousing battles at Old Fort Niagara, a restored 18th century stronghold on Lake Ontario. The conflict usually re-enacted is the siege of Fort Niagara, won by the British in 1759. But, one Saturday not long ago, the Siege of Oswego (1756) was refought, and the French and their Indian allies forced a British surrender. Afterward, Harry Burgess, 38, a Port Huron, Mich., history teacher, ranted to an onlooker in French-accented English about "thees monster," the British army. Reverting to normal English, Burgess said that partaking in such battles "gives us a private time machine."