Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, May 29, 1990 TAG: 9005290217
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: GREG L. GALLION
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Being a re-enactor, I have occasion to participate in a number of activities with my regiment, the 18th Virginia Infantry. Those activities, one hopes, enlighten the general public about this titanic struggle.
The activities encompass the majority of our free time, all at personal expense. And yes, my family of "hoop-skirted roadies" has decided that they too must share in this experience of honoring our forebears.
When we return from our engagements and living history encampments, we must readjust to the working world of the 20th century. My job is to teach American history to impressionable 7th-graders. I do so with no bias toward North or South, even though I realize that the agrarian South was goaded into sectional conflict by the Puritanical, industrialized Bible Belt of New England.
Further, Ayers implies that we are bitter and self-serving over the results of the war. I know not whether he has attended many functions such as we stage, but he should know that we harbor no bitterness toward our forebears' foes.
We do not gather for self-aggrandizement, but rather for the camaraderie of kindred spirits who hold dear the memories and, yes, the deeds of our ancestors who sought to shake off the shackles of tyranny as their grandfathers had done in regard to Great Britain.
Ayers could have done more solid research if he really wished to validate his comments. His figure of 364,511 who did not come back is misleading. The most basic examination of this conflict reveals a death toll that exceeds 615,000.
Is he concerned only with those who died as a result of combat? What would he have said to the mothers of countless soldiers, Northern and Southern, who perished of diseases, curable by today's standards; who died without ever seeing their foes? Would he conveniently argue that they were not battle fatalities? Did that lessen their status as heroes to their countrymen for their sacrifice?
Has Ayers even considered why a nation would risk annihilation, as he calls it, for the sake of its beliefs in what it considered just and right? Perhaps he might further postulate that Southern defeat was due to the fact that God was on the side of the just.
Ayers further compares the "Holocaust" to this war. He questions whether Auschwitz descendants would participate in public awareness that we might avoid a repeat of European atrocities.
He fails to acknowledge that this sort of "hollow-faced" protest has accompanied several attempts to spread our NATO nuclear arsenal into Central and Western Europe. Many of those who would scare us with "hollow faces" are not only Jews, but the offspring of former Wehrmacht and SS soldiers who choose not to let us forget the past.
And yes, the War for Southern Independence even rears its ugly head in Great Britain, of all places, where the practice of re-enacting is not only active but passionate. Though Britain was never officially a patron of the Southern cause, many there respected and supported the South's attempts at freedom.
It seems that we are considered irrelevant and vindictive for what we do. For whatever reason, Ayers implies that we are a juvenile, jingo-cowboy conglomerate that indulges in the glorification of war. He no more understands our devotion to the past than does the redneck who emblazons his vehicle with the latter-day version of the Confederate battle flag. (It was square, not rectangular.)
As an historian, I have devoted my life to the study and interpretation of this drama. I and others seek to understand its many intricacies so as to speed the healing of our great America. If we are "mutants" as Ayers suggests, then perhaps our mutations shall lead to a long-gone harmony between brothers.
Ayers seems appalled at war and its lack of civility. He dwells on the bugle, the gore, and the overall slaughter. It also seems that he should be grateful that "Uncle Alpheus" was "one of the lucky ones."
Let the complaining stop and the humble remembrance begin. Remember the motto of the Great Seal of the Confederacy: "Deo Vindice" - God will judge.
by CNB