Doing Living History Right  

     Historical re-enacting entails more than just battle re-enactments since we also re-enact the camp activities of our impressions.  Sadly, too many re-enactors only focus on the battles, weapons and uniforms, ignoring the camp activities and full personal development of their impression. This omission wastes the greater part of the day and ignores the opportunity for close contact with the visitor. Educating the visitor is a major part of what we should be doing. Entertainment and recruitment are also part of what we do but play secondary roles to public education. I offer the following thoughts and observations in order to help us portray our impressions at a higher level that is more satisfying and create a more rewarding experience to the visitor.

     Farb is one label no re-enactor wants. Whether it is a Civil War camp with cans of Budweiser and squirt bottles of French’s mustard or a WWII camp with bottles of Deer Park lying out for the public to see, it shows that unit’s camp impression is amateurish. The fix is camp discipline. Farb is usually applied to uniforms, weapons and accouterments as well as wearing out of period personal accessories, all of which can be easily corrected. Of course, haircuts and facial hair also lead to farb. Members in your unit are willing to help so don’t hesitate to ask or take offense at corrections. Take the time to make your impression accurate before you arrive at an event.

     Farb in personal camp life should also be avoided. Re-enactors should not be sitting in camp discussing current politics when visitors are present. They may however, be discussing the politics of their impression, whether it is 1944, 1863 or 1781! Your camp conversations in front of the public are a large part of your impression. Americans have always held political opinions so learn a few of the political ideas of your time frame and discuss those as the visitor walks thru camp and you will have a more accurate impression.

    

     Try to stay in character as long as you can. With practice this will become easier. Draw the visitor into your world. If however, you do not enjoy or feel comfortable doing this, be prepared to begin an activity just as they enter your camp . This will catch their attention.

     Movement attracts attention. The reason visitors watch the battle is because of all the activities that the battle entails. Give them activity in camp and they will not just walk away. I will continue to emphasize activity because I see the public’s reaction to it in every event I participate in and at events I go to visit too. It really works.

  

     The simplest activity is to just clean your weapon. Have a rag and bore brush close. Ask the visitor to hand them to you as you tell them about the good and bad things of your weapon, how it is firing and how clean you keep it. Even if you have to clean it again for the next visitors coming thru camp, it will seem easier and more relaxed. Another easy activity is falling in for close order drill. We all need practice so drill at camp. If the day is slow give that 10 year old a broom stick and have him fall in for drill too. They will love it and their parents will be taking pictures.

        

     Know your visitors! A retired Marine Colonel does not need or want to hear about the weapons ballistics. A young family may not understand ballistics but may want to know about what unit you are in or what chow is cooking. Pay attention and you will be able to give them what they want to know to keep them in camp longer.

     Campfires always draw visitors in. You need to keep them in. Whether it is Afghanistan, Normandy, Chancellorsville or Camden, American soldiers are always burning a campfire. Steel barrels work well for winter camps and modern war scenarios like the Bulge or a Vietnam camp. Again, get them to your camp and keep them there for as long as you can.

     Quality Living History presentations are:

1. Researched. (Yea, we all love that part.)

2. Have the look, sound and smell of authenticity.

3. Have a back story – What did your impression do before the war?

4. Take a Stance – Your person had political opinions and personal preferences.

    Do not become just a “soldier”, become that person in history.

     Finally, never ignore your visitors. It is rude and makes your unit look like amateurs.  I hope these tips help you and your unit present a more informative and enjoyable history for the public.

                                                                    

                                                                                 Book Review

                                                                          By Joseph G. Brosius

                                        1781 The Decisive Year of the Revolutionary War

               

                                                         By Robert L. Tonsetic 

                                                         Published by Casemate Publishers 2011

     When one considers the precarious military and financial straits America found itself in by 1781, then this is a year that begs for a single volume history. Robert Tonsetic PhD and retired US Army, gives us a fast paced narrative of the climactic year of America’s war for independence.

     Surprisingly for the 18^th century, 1781 was a very busy year in America. The tempo of the war moved quicker than it had for the preceding 3 years. The author effectively explains how Generals on both sides were able to change their tactics at a more rapid pace to meet this new tempo. His discussion on their command decision making is a constant throughout this book and is what I enjoyed the most.

     This book is not perfect however and while I will not recount each little hiccup, these smaller items should be easily picked up on by students of America’s war for independence. I will address the 2 major issues I have found with this work.

     The first item in the book I found troublesome was the author’s overuse of “Bloody Ban” when referring to British Lt. Colonel Banastre Tarelton. While this moniker did get some propaganda mileage for the Americans during the war, subsequent histories have shown that his American counterparts were just as bloody. Tarelton led from the front and pursued his foe aggressively. Tarelton stretched his offensive orders just as General George Patton did during WWII. To use the tacky “Bloody” when only referring to Tarelton seems jaundiced for a professional military officer. When one considers America’s war for independence was a civil war, an insurrection and a revolution all at the same time there were plenty of bloody officers on both sides.

      

     The other foible that perplexed this reviewer is the author’s repeating a 200 year old story that the most modern research has corrected. The old story is that British General Cornwallis ordered his artillery to fire into his own troops at Guilford Courthouse in order to break up a melee when they were held up by a stubborn Continental Line, in order to keep his momentum going. Recent research by Babits and Howard has shown that this is not exactly what occurred. This author however, has chosen to run with the 200 year old story and even dismisses the “conjecture of modern research” on this incident.

     Back to the positives in this work, of which there are plenty of, the author keeps the story of the year 1781 in America flowing nicely among multiple locations. He is absolutely correct when he says “The British winter campaign in the Carolinas ended as a strategic failure.” This book has some beautiful prints and photos of Yorktown, Va. The maps are clearly labeled and are relevant to the adjoining text.

        1781 is a compact, efficient account of the last year of combat in America’s war for independence.

WWII USCG

http://coastguard.dodlive.mil/2014/02/100-year-old-coast-guard-veteran-recalls-wwii-adventure/

100-year-old Coast Guard veteran recalls WWII adventure

Posted by LT Stephanie Young, Friday, February 14, 2014

Capt. Winslow Buxton is 100 years young today! Living in Bellevue, Wash., he remains affable, pert and active. He was born in New London, Conn., and attended the Coast Guard Academy from 1934 to 1938. Before the war he served as deck officer aboard Coast Guard Cutter Mojave and executive officer of Coast Guard Cutter Tallapoosa, working on search and rescue cases out of Key West, Fl. In honor of his birthday, Coast Guard historian Dr. Dave Rosen sat down with Buxton as the veteran recounted his WWII adventures.

Coast Guard veteran Capt. Winslow Buxton at his home in Bellevue, Wash. U.S. Coast Guard photo.

Interview as recorded by Dr. Dave Rosen.
1942: Lt Buxton as executive officer of Coast Guard Cutter Comanche
The 1942 Greenland mission of the 165-foot cutter consisted of guarding the cryolite mine at Ivigtut, setting up the Beach Head Station, icebreaking, looking for any enemy personnel and helping chart the coast.
May: Comanche crossed the Arctic Circle just as the winter ice melted, escorting the cargo ship SS Bridgeport. It transited the 90-miles long Sondre Strom Fjord en route to the Bluie West Eight airbase at its inland end, about 35 miles north of the Arctic Circle. The delivery of aviation gasoline to the airbase enabled the trans-Atlantic flights to begin. Buxton was accepted into the Sons of the Polar Seas.
June: Comanche served as the visual aide and radio beacon at the fjord entrance to the main airbase, Narsarsuak, for the first U.S. Air Force trans-Atlantic flight of B-17s while the air control system was still being installed. The ship logged the arrival of 26 B-17s on that first day, from 2:40 am to 10:30 pm.
July: Comanche served as plane guard at BW-1 at Tungliarfik Fjord, performing rescue duty for arriving and departing craft in case of ditching or crashing. On July 15 the famous Lost Squadron landed on the Ice Cap after attempting to fly from Greenland to Iceland.
The Lost Squadron
Two B-17E Flying Fortress bombers and six P-38F Lightning fighters bellied in on top of the Greenland ice cap July 15, 1942. The airplanes were being ferried across the Atlantic in 1942 bound for Reykjavik, Iceland. The planes encountered bad weather. Bogus radio transmissions, traced to an illegal German radio station in northeast Greenland sending false weather information only added to the squadron’s woes. Running low on gas, they decided to crash land on the ice cap.
To assist rescue, the entire squadron stayed together. The first plane failed in an attempt to land with the wheels down, and the remaining flight went in with wheels up, sliding a considerable distance before coming to a stop. On the fourth day after the crash landing the crews managed to make their SOS heard.
Search and rescue planes located the crash site and dropped special clothing and food necessary for survival on the ice cap. The pilots and crew had to hike seventeen miles to the coast, where they were picked up by the Cutter Northland on July 14, which had been on patrol looking for German radio and weather stations.
The Importance of the Norden Bombsight
Left behind in one of the B-17s was the top secret Norden bombsight. The Norden was a tachometric bombsight used by the U.S. Army Air Forces and the U.S. Navy during World War II. It aided the crew of bomber aircraft in dropping bombs accurately. Key to the operation of the Norden were two features: a mechanical computer that calculated the bomb’s trajectory based on current flight conditions, and a linkage to the bomber’s autopilot that let it react quickly and accurately to changes in the wind or other effects. Together, these features allowed for unprecedented accuracy in day bombing from high altitudes. In test runs the Norden demonstrated a circular error probability of 75 feet, an astonishing performance for the era.
This accuracy allowed direct attacks on ships, factories, and other point targets. Both the Navy and the Air Force saw this as a means to achieve war aims through high-altitude bombing, without resorting to area bombing, as proposed by European forces. To achieve these aims, the Norden was granted the utmost secrecy well into the war, and was part of a then-unprecedented production effort on the same scale as the Manhattan Project which launched the development of the atomic bomb. It was critically important that the Norden not fall into the hands of the enemy.
The Recovery of the Norden Bombsight
Operations in Greenland were kept secret. Ship crew members were neither permitted to take cameras on operations, nor keep a diary during their ship’s travels. During these early operations two Army Air Corps officers joined then-lieutenant Buxton aboard the Comanche, Capt. Alan Innis-Taylor and Maj. Norman Vaughn. (Both of these two officers were also with the Byrd Antarctic expeditions in 1928-30 and 1933-35.)
After receiving an encrypted message, the ship returned to the base at Narssarssuak, Greenland. Several dog teams, motor sleds and extra lumber were immediately loaded onto the ship. Capt. Von Paulsen, the Base Operations Officer, also sailed as the ship set course for the east coast of Greenland. Instead of taking the usual sea route around Cape Farewell, a shortcut was made via the Inside Passage with sheer cliffs rising several thousand feet and cross currents making steering difficult.
After passing Angmagsslik on the east coast the ship’s navigator noticed the coast line began to differ from the navigation charts. Where the charts indicated glacier ice flowing down to the sea, the ship was on an open body of water, which appeared to be a bay. With the ship’s lifeboat preceding the ship, the depth was sounded and the unknown bay was shown to provide an excellent anchorage. The bay was charted and later named after the Comanche.
Lt. Buxton’s Wild Ride
The Comanche anchored in the bay and the dog teams and motor sleds were unloaded. Taylor, Vaughn and Buxton began their trek up the ice cap to the crash site of the B-17 on motor sleds.
On reaching the site at 2,500-feet elevation, the Norden bombsight was found and removed from the wrecked B-17. Buxton returned on skis lashed to the dogsled with the bombsight. The trip was a wild 17 mile downhill run from the glacier on the hill to the coast. The Lieutenant jumped over crevasses and rode the moguls. This was his first time on skis.
Buxton vividly remembers this ride 70 years later as one of the highlights of his Coast Guard career.
1943: Lt. Buxton as executive officer on the Joseph T. Dickman
The Coast Guard-manned attack transport Joseph T. Dickman participated in the Italian campaign. In July it assisted the amphibious landings in Sicily and in September at Salerno. In Sicily the ship was bombed by enemy planes as it disembarked troops and picked up wounded. Buxton recalls the holes in the bridge and the explosion of a nearby merchant ship.
At Salerno, the enemy artillery was dug in on the shore. Troops were landed at night to minimize casualties amidst the shell fire. The Dickman faced mines and enemy E-Boats. (These were a very fast patrol craft with a wooden hull designed to avoid magnetic mines.) After a destroyer sank nearby, the Dickman helped rescue the crew.
1944-45: Lt. Cmdr. Buxton as the commanding officer of the Pride
The Coast Guard-manned destroyer-escort USS Pride escorted convoys across the Atlantic. Early in 1945 the Pride joined a hunter-killer group and was one of three Coast Guard destroyer escorts that sank the U-866 in the North Atlantic on March 18. Buxton received a letter of commendation as well as a bronze star on his combat ribbon. He finished the war handling anti-submarine training in Panama.
1945-66
After V-J Day, Buxton served as executive officer of Coast Guard Cutter Mocoma – at a time there was no commanding officer. Later he commanded the Yakutat in Portland, Me; the Klamath in Puget Sound; and the Ingham in Norfolk. In 1964 Buxton became captain of the port of Seattle. He retired from the Coast Guard in 1966 and worked as marine superintendant at the port until 1978.
- See more at: http://coastguard.dodlive.mil/2014/02/100-year-old-coast-guard-veteran-recalls-wwii-adventure/#sthash.bF4JH1Hd.dpuf

100-year-old Coast Guard veteran recalls WWII adventure

Posted by LT Stephanie Young, Friday, February 14, 2014

Capt. Winslow Buxton is 100 years young today! Living in Bellevue, Wash., he remains affable, pert and active. He was born in New London, Conn., and attended the Coast Guard Academy from 1934 to 1938. Before the war he served as deck officer aboard Coast Guard Cutter Mojave and executive officer of Coast Guard Cutter Tallapoosa, working on search and rescue cases out of Key West, Fl. In honor of his birthday, Coast Guard historian Dr. Dave Rosen sat down with Buxton as the veteran recounted his WWII adventures.

Coast Guard veteran Capt. Winslow Buxton at his home in Bellevue, Wash. U.S. Coast Guard photo.

Interview as recorded by Dr. Dave Rosen.
1942: Lt Buxton as executive officer of Coast Guard Cutter Comanche
The 1942 Greenland mission of the 165-foot cutter consisted of guarding the cryolite mine at Ivigtut, setting up the Beach Head Station, icebreaking, looking for any enemy personnel and helping chart the coast.
May: Comanche crossed the Arctic Circle just as the winter ice melted, escorting the cargo ship SS Bridgeport. It transited the 90-miles long Sondre Strom Fjord en route to the Bluie West Eight airbase at its inland end, about 35 miles north of the Arctic Circle. The delivery of aviation gasoline to the airbase enabled the trans-Atlantic flights to begin. Buxton was accepted into the Sons of the Polar Seas.
June: Comanche served as the visual aide and radio beacon at the fjord entrance to the main airbase, Narsarsuak, for the first U.S. Air Force trans-Atlantic flight of B-17s while the air control system was still being installed. The ship logged the arrival of 26 B-17s on that first day, from 2:40 am to 10:30 pm.
July: Comanche served as plane guard at BW-1 at Tungliarfik Fjord, performing rescue duty for arriving and departing craft in case of ditching or crashing. On July 15 the famous Lost Squadron landed on the Ice Cap after attempting to fly from Greenland to Iceland.
The Lost Squadron
Two B-17E Flying Fortress bombers and six P-38F Lightning fighters bellied in on top of the Greenland ice cap July 15, 1942. The airplanes were being ferried across the Atlantic in 1942 bound for Reykjavik, Iceland. The planes encountered bad weather. Bogus radio transmissions, traced to an illegal German radio station in northeast Greenland sending false weather information only added to the squadron’s woes. Running low on gas, they decided to crash land on the ice cap.
To assist rescue, the entire squadron stayed together. The first plane failed in an attempt to land with the wheels down, and the remaining flight went in with wheels up, sliding a considerable distance before coming to a stop. On the fourth day after the crash landing the crews managed to make their SOS heard.
Search and rescue planes located the crash site and dropped special clothing and food necessary for survival on the ice cap. The pilots and crew had to hike seventeen miles to the coast, where they were picked up by the Cutter Northland on July 14, which had been on patrol looking for German radio and weather stations.
The Importance of the Norden Bombsight
Left behind in one of the B-17s was the top secret Norden bombsight. The Norden was a tachometric bombsight used by the U.S. Army Air Forces and the U.S. Navy during World War II. It aided the crew of bomber aircraft in dropping bombs accurately. Key to the operation of the Norden were two features: a mechanical computer that calculated the bomb’s trajectory based on current flight conditions, and a linkage to the bomber’s autopilot that let it react quickly and accurately to changes in the wind or other effects. Together, these features allowed for unprecedented accuracy in day bombing from high altitudes. In test runs the Norden demonstrated a circular error probability of 75 feet, an astonishing performance for the era.
This accuracy allowed direct attacks on ships, factories, and other point targets. Both the Navy and the Air Force saw this as a means to achieve war aims through high-altitude bombing, without resorting to area bombing, as proposed by European forces. To achieve these aims, the Norden was granted the utmost secrecy well into the war, and was part of a then-unprecedented production effort on the same scale as the Manhattan Project which launched the development of the atomic bomb. It was critically important that the Norden not fall into the hands of the enemy.
The Recovery of the Norden Bombsight
Operations in Greenland were kept secret. Ship crew members were neither permitted to take cameras on operations, nor keep a diary during their ship’s travels. During these early operations two Army Air Corps officers joined then-lieutenant Buxton aboard the Comanche, Capt. Alan Innis-Taylor and Maj. Norman Vaughn. (Both of these two officers were also with the Byrd Antarctic expeditions in 1928-30 and 1933-35.)
After receiving an encrypted message, the ship returned to the base at Narssarssuak, Greenland. Several dog teams, motor sleds and extra lumber were immediately loaded onto the ship. Capt. Von Paulsen, the Base Operations Officer, also sailed as the ship set course for the east coast of Greenland. Instead of taking the usual sea route around Cape Farewell, a shortcut was made via the Inside Passage with sheer cliffs rising several thousand feet and cross currents making steering difficult.
After passing Angmagsslik on the east coast the ship’s navigator noticed the coast line began to differ from the navigation charts. Where the charts indicated glacier ice flowing down to the sea, the ship was on an open body of water, which appeared to be a bay. With the ship’s lifeboat preceding the ship, the depth was sounded and the unknown bay was shown to provide an excellent anchorage. The bay was charted and later named after the Comanche.
Lt. Buxton’s Wild Ride
The Comanche anchored in the bay and the dog teams and motor sleds were unloaded. Taylor, Vaughn and Buxton began their trek up the ice cap to the crash site of the B-17 on motor sleds.
On reaching the site at 2,500-feet elevation, the Norden bombsight was found and removed from the wrecked B-17. Buxton returned on skis lashed to the dogsled with the bombsight. The trip was a wild 17 mile downhill run from the glacier on the hill to the coast. The Lieutenant jumped over crevasses and rode the moguls. This was his first time on skis.
Buxton vividly remembers this ride 70 years later as one of the highlights of his Coast Guard career.
1943: Lt. Buxton as executive officer on the Joseph T. Dickman
The Coast Guard-manned attack transport Joseph T. Dickman participated in the Italian campaign. In July it assisted the amphibious landings in Sicily and in September at Salerno. In Sicily the ship was bombed by enemy planes as it disembarked troops and picked up wounded. Buxton recalls the holes in the bridge and the explosion of a nearby merchant ship.
At Salerno, the enemy artillery was dug in on the shore. Troops were landed at night to minimize casualties amidst the shell fire. The Dickman faced mines and enemy E-Boats. (These were a very fast patrol craft with a wooden hull designed to avoid magnetic mines.) After a destroyer sank nearby, the Dickman helped rescue the crew.
1944-45: Lt. Cmdr. Buxton as the commanding officer of the Pride
The Coast Guard-manned destroyer-escort USS Pride escorted convoys across the Atlantic. Early in 1945 the Pride joined a hunter-killer group and was one of three Coast Guard destroyer escorts that sank the U-866 in the North Atlantic on March 18. Buxton received a letter of commendation as well as a bronze star on his combat ribbon. He finished the war handling anti-submarine training in Panama.
1945-66
After V-J Day, Buxton served as executive officer of Coast Guard Cutter Mocoma – at a time there was no commanding officer. Later he commanded the Yakutat in Portland, Me; the Klamath in Puget Sound; and the Ingham in Norfolk. In 1964 Buxton became captain of the port of Seattle. He retired from the Coast Guard in 1966 and worked as marine superintendant at the port until 1978.
- See more at: http://coastguard.dodlive.mil/2014/02/100-year-old-coast-guard-veteran-recalls-wwii-adventure/#sthash.bF4JH1Hd.dpufhttp://coastguard.dodlive.mil/2014/02/100-year-old-coast-guard-veteran-recalls-wwii-adventure/