Well, it's Monday and I'm back from the "History of Heroes" event in Bakersfield. My compadres and I provided the WWI portion of the event and it was probably the best WWI event we've had since we lost (well, more precisely walked away from) our permanent battle site out at Jackrabbit Trail in Riverside County back in 2004.
The event is organized by the Kern Veterans Memorial Foundation and the purpose of the event is to raise money for the Kern Veterans' Memorial. The event site itself is at the Kern County Museum.
I took Friday off of work to have enough time to work on getting the trench system for the first public battles on Saturday (the organizers had a backhoe big out the trench systems for both the Allies and the Germans the week before).
After having stopped off at the stable to check on Max and turn him out for awhile, I then proceeded to drive up north through the Grapevine. Luckily for me, the water pump on the van held and I had no trouble with engine overheating (yay!).
When I pulled into the event (after having to deal with the crappy instructions that the event organizers had posted on their web site), I knew this was going to be fun- it was hotter than the proverbial "Hubs of Hades" and temperatures were in the mid-90s all through the weekend. In contrast to last year, I was the only one there and the prospect of having to begin work on the Allied lines in the hottest part of the day did not exactly appeal to me.
After taking time to fortify myself with Gatorade (drank ALOT of that during the weekend), I started work by working on the sleeping quarters and after fits and starts, managed to create a fairly decent temporary "hooch" for myself. Since nobody else was there, I pretty much decided to make it my own and it wasn't bad for what it was. I managed to nail together various scrap wood and soon had an improvised roof frmed together finished off with my shelter half.
"Reinforcements" didn't arrive until after 7:00 so much of the sandbagging and the like was done by myself with some help from the event organizer staff. They went well out of their way to help provide needed materials, even going as far as to order up 600 burlap sandbags (which was a definate improvement from the modern polyester white sandbags we had the year before). It's a real pain filling sandbags by yourself but I managed to sustain this until about 12 Midnight when I finally went to sleep.
The next morning dawned bright and early and soon the temperature started to rise (it didn't cool down at night until about 3 AM). Soon, what few Allied reenactors showed up so I put them to work fixing up the front line. We were outnumbered by the Germans about 3-1 and that was after a couple of the Germans switched uniforms and gear and "galvanized" as Allied soldiers. All told, we had 2 French, 1 British, 1 Indian and 4 US reenactors. It was a good illustration of the problems we've been having attracting and retaining Allied reenactors.
More to follow...
The event is organized by the Kern Veterans Memorial Foundation and the purpose of the event is to raise money for the Kern Veterans' Memorial. The event site itself is at the Kern County Museum.
I took Friday off of work to have enough time to work on getting the trench system for the first public battles on Saturday (the organizers had a backhoe big out the trench systems for both the Allies and the Germans the week before).
After having stopped off at the stable to check on Max and turn him out for awhile, I then proceeded to drive up north through the Grapevine. Luckily for me, the water pump on the van held and I had no trouble with engine overheating (yay!).
When I pulled into the event (after having to deal with the crappy instructions that the event organizers had posted on their web site), I knew this was going to be fun- it was hotter than the proverbial "Hubs of Hades" and temperatures were in the mid-90s all through the weekend. In contrast to last year, I was the only one there and the prospect of having to begin work on the Allied lines in the hottest part of the day did not exactly appeal to me.
After taking time to fortify myself with Gatorade (drank ALOT of that during the weekend), I started work by working on the sleeping quarters and after fits and starts, managed to create a fairly decent temporary "hooch" for myself. Since nobody else was there, I pretty much decided to make it my own and it wasn't bad for what it was. I managed to nail together various scrap wood and soon had an improvised roof frmed together finished off with my shelter half.
"Reinforcements" didn't arrive until after 7:00 so much of the sandbagging and the like was done by myself with some help from the event organizer staff. They went well out of their way to help provide needed materials, even going as far as to order up 600 burlap sandbags (which was a definate improvement from the modern polyester white sandbags we had the year before). It's a real pain filling sandbags by yourself but I managed to sustain this until about 12 Midnight when I finally went to sleep.
The next morning dawned bright and early and soon the temperature started to rise (it didn't cool down at night until about 3 AM). Soon, what few Allied reenactors showed up so I put them to work fixing up the front line. We were outnumbered by the Germans about 3-1 and that was after a couple of the Germans switched uniforms and gear and "galvanized" as Allied soldiers. All told, we had 2 French, 1 British, 1 Indian and 4 US reenactors. It was a good illustration of the problems we've been having attracting and retaining Allied reenactors.
More to follow...
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