Well done, sir!

I bet marmelmm will cream himself when he sees this.

He was such a foin broth o' a boy until... Aw well, we kin hardly be talkin' about a wound in such a plaice as that!

Actually, I'm thinking thast you look awfully clean, and hadly at all like someone who has just marched two days with little sleep in a hot summer month. I hope you don't do something as "farb" as wash you uniform between battles? You won't have the authentic pong of the Civil War if you do.

I probably asked you this years ago, but I've fogotten the answer. Were you ever at Gettysburg? I was there twice or three times -- once in the 1960s, when I was just a kid. I was there in the '70s too, and spend a good part of the day on the battlefield. I have a vague memory that I may have been ther for a very brief time on a second occasion in the '70s.

I gotta tell you, when I watched Gettysberg on the big screen for the first time, and saw the Texans charging up Little Round Top -- it was like standing there with the 20th. Maine because I *had* stood there and looked down on those very trees. They had cleaned up the dead Rebs by 1975, of course...

The woolen fabrics brush off dirt fairly well and the coat has never been washed. The trousers might get once a season and the undershirt gets changed daily (fat old men playing at lean young mens' games will leave that wringing wet with sweat in no time)
I went to an anniversery event at Gettysburg, which was able to muster historical equivelent numbers of troops for Picket's Charge. Of course visited Little Round Top, but also visited the site where the 24th Michigan held fast and suffered about 80% casualties for their trouble.
One of the little insights from the visit, as I was in full kit the whole time, was that trying to climb the Round Top in period shoes was a real chore, the grass and stones were crazy slippery with leather soles, even with hob-nails and heel plates.

I got news for you... even in modern shoes, following some sort of path and being in my twenties at the time, climbing Round Top was still a pain. I can't imagine being in full kit and doing it on the double while you could hear shooting all around you in the distance. I think everyone in that war was crazy.

Or maybe just everyone in every war. But, societies where people did the sensible thing -- shoot their officers and march on their hown king, a lynching the objective -- would soon be overcome by crazy socieites.

Squeeeee! On o' them "Iron Brigade" chaps!



My own hair these days fits English Civil War outfits to a tee - right down to long sausage curls! (and a goatee)

Our local events would sometimes have an English Officer observer, and his emplacement (too posh to call a "camp") was a sterling outpost of Empire.

Demned fine!

I understand that the Australian Civil War is coming up in only four years?

Sounds like historical Pre-enacting (as demonstrated in the ever so fine web comic, Dredsen Codak and the second Gorilla/Human war) A theme sort of summed up by the paraphrased slogan "depicting the future the way it should have been"

Very cool. My father used to be in Civil War re-enactments as well (also a Union soldier).

Don't smile for "period" photographs.

I kind of wish that the 19th century photographic technique had been replicated or faked here (soft natural skylight and a few second's worth of exposure time.)

Consarn Yankees! 'Course...I do mountain man and F&I these days...

Our officer, when he isn't doing WotR, also does Lewis and Clark, Spanish-American, and WWI impressions. And is a history teacher.

Much less kit thantI woudl Carry doing WW2.. any WW2 except Soviet, which I would carry less kit, but the rifle was abotu the same length XD. Much preffered US kit. German kit has few wear optiosn that regulation and is expensive and needs a lot fo caire. Butish kit isnt bad, but it's secodn to U.S. Kit, and Soviet, well it's like going out in your Pajamas inthe summer, and Wool heat death int he winter., But the best piece of Soviet Kit I ever wore was a T-34/85.

Ahh, the Black Hat Boys.
I've been looking in to some of various Union Civil War Uniforms. My Great-Great-Grandfather a private was in The Western Theater with the 25 Iowa Volunteer Infantry Regiment. I've heard that some troops in The Western Theater ditched their forage hats in exchange for slouch hats, but I have no photos of him or journals to tell what he or his regiment.

what he or his regiment did.*