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Unity park gettysburg9/27/2023 The unit is 39 people strong and this year about 20 made the trip. Nathaniel Williams founded the 2nd Colored Cavalry Regiment reenactors group 23 years ago, and they've been coming to Gettysburg almost every year since. Nathaniel Williams of Nathaly, Virginia (left) and Tony Posinski of Baltimore, Maryland (right). "I know it's a bad word," he said, "but I happen to be a Republican. When we turned to politics and the current moment in America, Bloschak switched into a stage whisper. And my uncles were in the 3rd Marine Division at Tarawa. Then he was at the battles of Salerno and Anzio in Italy. One guy lit a match, and all of a sudden, a German shell came in and only my father and one other guy survived. "My father was in a mortar battalion, he was with 18 other guys at the Kasserine Pass in North Africa. We did pretty good – we didn't get wiped out."Īs we talked about what drew him to the hobby, the conversation shifted from the Civil War to the Second World War, as if playing a role in one gave him a way to vicariously experience something that members of his family had endured. "We pushed the Arkansans out of the woods. "We were the first company to engage the Confederates at Gettysburg," he said of his unit. Starting with the centennial in 1963, and really taking off in the 1980s and 1990s with the popularity of Ken Burns' Civil War documentary series, war reenactors flock to Gettysburg each July, often camping out nearby and displaying varying degrees of faithfulness to period dress, food, and military discipline. Instead, the non-profit Gettysburg Battlefield Preservation Association hosts it at Daniel Lady Farm, which in 1863 was the site of a Confederate headquarters and a field hospital. The reenactment doesn't actually play out on the historic battlefield because the National Park Service doesn't allow it. It was held in 2021 but some regulars, expressing misgivings that the event might become overtaken by politics and debates about racial justice, decided to stay away. Back in 2020, the annual dramatic reenactment was canceled first because the far right personality Glenn Beck had scheduled a rally in Gettysburg during the same weekend, but then due to Covid. It was the July 4 weekend and, after a hiatus, Civil War reenactors were back for the 159th anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg. Larry Geib portrays a trooper of the dismounted 2nd Colored Cavalry. Account icon An icon in the shape of a person's head and shoulders.
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