WW ii reenactments continue from the folk of VF

[DaisyD]

It's a fine line between educating and insulting. We need to teach our children history, lest they repeat it, and with age appropriate descriptions of the most gruesome aspects. However, it's very easy to romanticize another time. Once on M.A.S.H. Hawkeye was talking about reading Hemingway and how it all seemed so romantic and being surprised by the reality of war. That always stuck with me. Whatever these fools are doing, if I had walked by that event, I would have thought it was some kind of hate rally done with city backing. :shock:

[CloakNDagger]

Yeah, to me the whole romanticizing of a terrible era in history is yet another example of Dougie's toolishness.

Doug Phillips always has been, is and always will be a tool.

Even in this DPIAT was just a copycat of others.

Those in the home-school movement will remember Little Bear Wheeler did a lot of events for years before Doug came along and would tell stories dressed up as George Washington, Kit Carson, William Bradford, or a number of other historic figures. He was featured a lot in the early VF catalogs and was one of the guys that helped found BCA, too. He broke off right after the church covenant was set up I think from what I remember. There were various times when VF folks would wear Pilgrim and Indian outfits at Thanksgiving outfits (nothing new in the church circles I had been around) and such.

I think most of the actual VF dress up stuff started around and after the Iwo Jima reenactment that a LOT of the VF / BCA folks went to (a few were participants, but not with as VF members).

That jogged my memory a bit so I did a quick image search and quickly found these from http://www.pbase.com/vernix/iwo_jima_doss_texas (not breaking link because it's a public album from a public event)

For instance:

That particular reenactment was held in conjunction with the guys who worked with the National Museum of the Pacific War (G Company - http://www.texasmilitaryforcesmuseum.or ... pastevents) and was pretty professionally done and I think it was a good thing. The veterans in attendance were good with it for the most part and it was tastefully done without the kind of spin that a VF event would put on it. I that is the inspiration for an event like this deal in Tennessee, but of course I have no idea if it was done anything like the Fredericksburg event.

Oh, and if you look through that album - and I think it's NOT a VFer's album - you'll probably recognize some of the VF faces.

Googling "iwo jima reenactment doss" under images will find more such, too.

[GenerationCedarchip]

Re: Iwo Jima reenactment - very interesting!

I did not know about Little Bear Wheeler's involvement with BCA, but I knew the name from church circles and he presented at a vacation Bible school event at my church when I was a kid.

Up here in VA, there are definitely lots of reenactors, both fundie and non. It's been a big deal in the homeschool movement up here for many years(VA was slower than many states to allow homeschoolers to participate in various extracurriculars, so historical reenactment and Civil Air Patrol were both huge here). This also used to be Bill ("I came THIS close to the PhD") Potter's home base.