America in WWII - (Page 18) A LANDINGS War Games at Ike’s House by T.W. Burger R EENACTORS ARE NOTHING NEW in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. It’s one of the few places in a troubled world where you can watch soldiers amassing and hauling artillery without worrying that something bad is about to happen. They’re men dressed in blue and gray. A lot of them have beards and speak of Rebels and Yankees. Once a year, however, reenactors in olive drab and khaki come to town. Just south of the hallowed ground that absorbed the most blood ever spilled in a battle fought on American soil, these living-historians show up on the third weekend of September at the home of one of World War II’s greatest commanders. They compare notes, swap treasures, and educate themselves and the public while camping out in the back yard of the only house ever owned by General Dwight D. and Mamie Eisenhower. Hosted by the National Park Service’s Eisenhower National Historic Site, the event typically draws more than 150 reenactors from all over the Mid-Atlantic, portraying American, British, Soviet, Canadian, Polish, and German soldiers and presenting programs on medical services, weapons and equipment, communications, military vehicles, and the life of the GI. They bring authentic WWII vehicles and authentically re-create Allied and German army camps. Guest speakers at the event usually include WWII veterans. The 2006 event featured a program presented by Colonel Edward Shames, a lieutenant in Easy Company of the 101st Airborne’s 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, the company later made famous by Stephen E. Ambrose’s best-selling book Band of Brothers and the television miniseries based on it. Despite foul weather, last year’s encampment drew a good crowd. David Griggs and Chad Smith, 23-year-olds from Reading, Pennsylvania, were part of the 83rd Division, a unit created before World War I from Ohio reserve units. Showing off their various patches and insignia, the two men said they were happy with the turnout. Griggs gestured at a worn OD (olive drab) kit bag sitting beside him on a box to keep it off the wet ground. It was part of his reenactment gear, but it was not a re-creation. The bag had belonged to his grandfather. “I got into this several years ago partly as homage to him,” he said. “He fought in World War II, and I want to understand and honor what he went through, what he helped accomplish.” Paul Webster was another reenactor at the event. In a re-creation of a US Army mobile surgical tent, Webster, a professor of medicine at Towson State University in Maryland, and Brynn Shortell, an openheart scrub nurse from Reading, Pennsylvania, went through the motions of operating on a combat victim. During the surgery, the two explained that the soldier, portrayed accurately enough to suggest some of the more unsettling scenes in the CSI television series, suffered serious abdominal injuries when a land mine flung a part of one of his lower leg bones into his gut. Tim Cook of Hedgesville, West Virginia, portrayed war correspondent Ernie Pyle, who wrote for the Scripps-Howard newspaper chain from 1935 until he was killed by Japanese machine gun fire on Ie Shima, off Okinawa, on April 18, 1945. “I got into this because of my interest in Ernie Pyle,” the 47-year-old said as he sat at a folding wooden field desk. “We’re both from Indiana, and I’ve visited his boyhood home in Dana. I’ve always liked that he was there for the common foot soldier.” One of the typewriters Cook uses is a 1930s-era Underwood that has been in his family since it was new. Given that World War II was heavily mechanized and that the majority of WWII reenactors are men, the Eisenhower WWII weekend attracts its share of motor heads. Merlin Hanson of Westminster, Maryland, drove to the event in his restored 1944 Volkswagen KF82E, one of 670 militarized Beetles produced for the German military. He explained that the vehicle is very much like an early version of a Thing, but with a T.W. BURGER 18 AMERICA IN WWII OCTOBER 2007
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