Centuries of military history reenacted in one weekend
JAMESTOWN — A time-honored local military history event turns 40 this year, and there will be plenty of fanfare to celebrate the milestone.
The Jamestown-Yorktown Foundation will be hosting its annual Military Through the Ages this weekend at Jamestown Settlement. This year, the living history event will bring in hundreds of reenactors portraying historic military units and will also host modern service members from the 111th Field Artillery, Virginia Army National Guard and the Virginia Defense Force.
Foundation officials said they have numerous special events planned for the commemorative weekend. On Saturday, the event will feature artillery demonstrations, including from a 17th century swivel gun and a modernday howitzer. At noon on Sunday, the Virginia Army National Guard will present a narrated flyover of a UH-60 Blackhawk helicopter.
Visitors will also have an opportunity to see musical performances by three military ensembles, including the U.S. Army Old Guard Fife and Drum Corps, the AEF Headquarters Band and the 29th Division Band, known as “The Governor’s Own.”
Throughout the weekend, reenactors will present the ins and outs of life in the military over a chronology spanning 2 ½ millennia. Among the groups that are attending this year are the Greek Phalanx, which portrays citizen-soldiers from around 500 B.C.; the Ostvik Vikings from 984 Scandinavia; the New Plimmoth Gard representing the militia of the Plymouth Colony in the 17th century; and the 2nd Coldstream Guards in Egypt in 1882.
Homer Lanier, director of visitor experience for the Jamestown-Yorktown Foundation, said that the organization looks forward to this flagship event every year, and is very meticulous about staging it. Planning starts in September for the event, which is always held the third full weekend in March.
Reenactment units must fill out an application to attend, and those selected to participate are chosen on the basis of their commitment to accuracy and willingness to educate visitors, among other factors.
Every year, awards are presented to reenactment units for categories such as camp authenticity, cooking and demonstrations.
That commitment to accuracy results in a living history experience that includes the best of the best, according to Lanier. “It’s like drinking from a firehose with all the history from one end of the museum to the other,” he said.
After 40 years, things run pretty smoothly, Lanier said. The greatest unknown variable is the weather, which has occasionally lent the nickname “Misery Through the Ages.” But by and large, Lanier said, the weather usually cooperates.
Jamestown Settlement interpreter Fred Scholpp has been a part of Military Through the Ages from the beginning. He was on the first planning committee in 1983, a task he undertook soon after started his career at the museum.
Scholpp said that the first Military Through the Ages was an effort to bring attention and visitation to Jamestown Settlement, which was encountering relatively sparse interest at the time. Outside of his job at Jamestown, Scholpp was a reenactor of medieval history, and quickly saw how valuable such a timeline event could be for the museum.
“By bringing people from all over the country to be at this living history-centered event, we would show off our facility to showcase the good things that were happening at Jamestown,” Scholpp said. “It also got us talking to others in the living history community.”
Four decades of Military Through the Ages have made for some remarkable memories, according to Scholpp. There was the time that the weather was less than cooperative, so a reenactment group of medieval knights hitched a ride to one of their demonstrations aboard an M-51 tank, a juxtaposition that visitors found uproariously humorous.
Many of the most lasting memories are the reenactors who have brought to life elements of the past that made little-known but important contributions to history, Scholpp said.
Several years ago, for instance, one group portrayed the Women’s Land Army, a British civilian organization during World War I and World War II that supplied essential agricultural labor in place of men who went off to fight.
“They were telling the story that modern-day war includes everyone,” Scholpp said. “It wasn’t just guys with guns.
It was also women with distinctive sweaters who wrestled sheep.”