A Day in the Life of a Confederate Soldier Part 2

Fifteen minutes total (parts 1 and 2) - no audio.
Filmed July, 1965 in Gettysburg, PA,
With the 2nd North Carolina (one of the very earliest of the authentic Civil War reenactment units), the Potomac Field Music and others.
The story behind this video is contained at http://wesclark.com/jw/k_1965.html - Ross Kimmel's memoirs.

"With our script/scenario and about 40 volunteers, mostly 2nd N.C.ers and Potomac Field Musicians, Bill, Burt, I, and perhaps a few others pooled some money, rented a 16mm movie camera and bought several rolls of black and white movie film (whether to shoot in color or black and white excited some argument among ourselves; I had no problem with color, but Burt insisted that the Civil War was fought in black and white; "just look at Matthew Brady's photos.") I secured permission from Cheryl Vernon's father to use the farm they lived on south of Gettysburg. We all converged one weekend, probably in July. I remember driving up Friday night with Bill and Barbara Brown, Roger Zook, and maybe one or two others, in my father's 1959 Ford station wagon, which was stuffed to the gills with all manner of Civil War detritus. We spent Saturday and Sunday setting up and filming all of our scenarios, then Bill later edited the results. The point of the film was to "document" a day in the life of the Confederate soldier, including a battle sequence. In fact we called our production A Day in the Life of the Confederate Soldier.'"

Ross Kimmel's complete centennial memoir is at http://wesclark.com/jw/kimmel.html

Jonah Begone
jonah_begone@juno.com

Category:

Education

Tags:

• reenactment
• civil war reenacting
• 2nd North Carolina
• Potomac Field Music
• authentics

[BegoneJonah]

@cweed53 "the participants are young and nobody is overweight" PRECISELY. America was different in 1965! Fewer obese people...

[BegoneJonah]

@AntipodeanAl "why you would stand in a tight formation" - Too detailed to explain here. Read a book about the Civil War. In short, the military tradition was to present a massive, disciplined volley fire. Sure, that changed when guys starting digging in as the CW progressed - which led to the trench warfare of WWI. But there were a lot of suicidal charges before it dawned on the military that it was a dumb thing to do.

[drumsludwig]

Original muskets and accoutrements! Bad ass!

[clfhcks]

A lot of thought was put into this film, really very nicely done. Tasteful and unusually effective portrayal of casualties.

[cweed53]

Wow, This video looks far more realistic than most modern productions, just by virtue of the fact that the participants are young and nobody is overweight! The uniforms look real accurate too. As a boy, I went to a few Civil War Centennial events and most of the soldiers looked pretty "farby". (of course I didn't notice or care at 12 years old). Thanks for posting this.

[Jubilo1]

The hell you say! I say bully for Kimmel and Company!