Our friends, Bob and Michele Harvey of Morgan Hill, and their
four children, Sarah, Daniel, Matthew, and Joshua, reenact with the
20th Maine, a Union regiment of the American Civil War
Association.
Our friends, Bob and Michele Harvey of Morgan Hill, and their four children, Sarah, Daniel, Matthew, and Joshua, reenact with the 20th Maine, a Union regiment of the American Civil War Association. Last week, Michele Harvey hospitably (or rashly) invited seven extra children to reenact with them for six days at Roaring Camp in Felton.
“How was it?” I asked Anne, when I picked her up, late Monday night.
“Fun! I fought in almost every skirmish and in every battle.”
“That’s great! Did you die, ever?”
“Oh, yes. I took a hit pretty early in every engagement, so …” she calculated rapidly, “I was killed nine times and had my arm amputated once.”
For the first three days of last week, Wednesday to Friday, the re-enactors hosted school groups: giving living history workshops about life during the Civil War, along with a ride on the steam train and a skirmish.
“Sometimes we would ride the train with the school groups and the Rebels would ambush us. Other times the Rebels would ride the train, and we would go over to the site and ambush them.”
For the last three days, Memorial Day weekend, re-enactors interacted with the public, drilled, and staged two battles a day on the weekend, and a battle and a service on Memorial Day.
Drilling proved to be hard work for Anne, who, as a short 14-year-old, had to take long strides to keep in step with the longer-legged soldiers.
“And in the uniforms … in the morning, we were cold, and would have to huddle around the fire. Some people had great coats, so they were more comfortable. In the afternoons, we were hot. But our temperatures only went from about 40 to 80. During the real Civil War, temperatures went from zero to 110!”
I suggested the Confederates must have suffered even more, being ill-supplied with uniforms. Anne was doubtful.
“Yes, but they didn’t have to stay in uniform as much as we did. They could take off uniform pieces in the afternoons and put on extra non-uniform clothes in the mornings without looking farb.” (Farb is re-enactor jargon, obscure as to etymology. It may be derived from an acronym: “Fast And Researchless Buying.” Or it may be a truncation of “FAR Be it from authentic.” It means clothing or gear that does not look authentic.)
By Sunday afternoon, Anne was so tired that she curled up on the ground, slightly out of the way, and took a nap.
“Your priorities change,” she remarked. “During the first part of the week, I would look for something to sit on.”
“Not too many chairs?”
“Chairs? No, I would look for a box, or an overturned bucket, or a piece of wood. By the end of the week, I stopped caring; I just sat on the ground.”
Perhaps because she was tired, Anne elected to be killed early in every engagement. She says that the hardest part of taking a hit was falling to the ground convincingly without getting dirt into the muzzle of one’s rifle.
To stage the amputation, the surgeon gave Anne a pig’s foot in a red-streaked sleeve. Anne kept it in her haversack while she formed up with her unit, deployed to the field, aimed, fired, and took her hit. Then, screaming and writhing she fell to the ground, while thrusting the pig’s foot out of her sleeve in view of the horrified public.
The surgeon’s assistants came running, dragged her away to the surgeon’s tent, and laid her on the table.
“Don’t take my arm!” she screamed, thrashing. The surgeon gave her laudanum – “Water, really,” said Anne. “I spat it out, so they chloroformed me. Then I went limp while the surgeon sawed off the pig’s foot.”
During another battle, Confederates dragged Anne’s body out of the way so they could bring their cannon into position.
“It was kind of them not to run over you,” I remarked.
“They can’t run over you; it’s against the safety rules. But they were kind; they dragged me into the shade.”
The 20th Maine’s next re-enactment will be at Casa de Fruta, June 12th and 13th. For more information, visit voss-serenka.com. Click on ACWA, then on Events.
