We chatted with the dead as they trudged out of the snowy forest, and several let us fire their carbines. Following the sound of gunfire up into the mountains, we ended up parked a dozen yards from an American battery with a 37mm howitzer that was shooting blank shells at unseen German placements. A friend and I drove freely around the training area of the base. Two years ago, during my first visit to the BOB, the war game was a wide-open affair. "All wars should be like this," he says with a wry smile. "Bunch of wannabes," mutters Bob Hyde, a 79-year-old who fought at the Bulge with the 109th Infantry, 28th Division. None of the spectators I can see have put down their coffee and hot dogs, served from a convenience truck, to cower in fear. Although the combatants are no more than 750 yards away, the crackle of rifles and the boom of cannon sound distant and toy-like. Volleys of blank rounds echo across the valley.Ī German Hetzer (a light tank) opens up on the Americans they return fire with a howitzer and a. As Grossdeutschland slowly advances, a hand signal from a referee starts the battle. In jeeps and on foot, K Company moves swiftly across the field, then turns to confront its opponent. "The Germans have won the toss, and they will be attacking." This year it matches Grossdeutschland, the most rigorous of all the WWII units and a showcase for what reenacting can be, with the more relaxed American members of K Company.Ī man with a loudspeaker offers play-by-play analysis to about 200 of us who have gathered on a hillside overlooking a treeless plain. But as a public-spirited gesture, the organizers also stage a "tactical" down in the valley - open to anyone.
The BOB at FIG is designed exclusively for the reenactors themselves, and they pay good money for the right to shoot at one another in the woods above the base. The once-a-year gathering at Fort Indiantown Gap (known to insiders as the BOB at FIG) is the biggest event on the calendar - the Super Bowl of WWII reenactments - and enthusiasts from around the country prepare all year for the spectacle, which culminates in a large-scale battle. Gruesome fascination with the period, especially the almost incomprehensible crimes of the Third Reich, has not diminished with time. Outfitted as GIs and Nazis, they assume roles on the world stage of 1939-1945, when governments killed more people in less time than ever before or since. Given the million other things this day that won't begin to approximate the conflagration of World War II - blanks instead of bullets, for starters - a discrepancy of 50 degrees is comparatively minor and, for these mostly out-of-shape weekend warriors who will be humping rifles and packs up and down stony hillsides for hours, not unwelcome.Įvery weekend somewhere in the United States, groups like this come together to dress up in WWII gear and fire off WWII weapons. Then again, military reenacting has always been more about fantasies of time travel than acknowledging the unpleasant facts of history. Hundreds of men on both sides died from exposure or had limbs amputated. Knifing winds froze toes and trigger fingers. Roads were pitted with Olympic-size puddles, and passing tanks splattered icy mud on sleep-starved troops. Soldiers sank up to their waists in quagmires of snow. Cold took a horrific toll on both Allied and German armies at the Battle of the Bulge.
This is crazy weather for central Pennsylvania on the last weekend of January, and for the 900 or so military reenactors, gathered at Fort Indiantown Gap military base for their annual re-creation of the Battle of the Bulge, the balmy morning presents yet another "inauthentic" factor in their scenario of war, January 1945.įifty-seven years ago, in the Ardennes region of Belgium, the winter was not so kind. By 1000 hours, temperatures have climbed into the forties, and before the battle has ended in mid-afternoon, soldiers will be shedding helmets and overcoats in 60-degree heat, their arms and faces raised toward the ventilating breeze. Except high in the mountains surrounding the valley, the snow vanished weeks ago. The frost on the ground at reveille has melted away under spotless skies.
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