User blogs

We were at Gunpowder Mills in Essex last weekend - a glorious location for an event set amongst 170 acres of parkland dotted with old wartime and cold war buildings where they used to test rockets and bombs including the infamous 'bouncing bomb'. It made for a perfect setting, especially the amazing battle fought around the mostly falling down and abandoned scenery. We saw deer every day, the public were talkative (until we deafened them with the gas-firing MG34!) and the other groups were really friendly. We made some good friends that weekend, and I managed to actually get a little tipsy!

Anyway back to the point - while cooking our eggs (borrowed from the Russkies) and sausage (liberated from the Polish) a rather ragged bunch of Americans 'marched' past us singing a rather rude song! Well that was it - they had obviously laid down a gauntlet, for about 15 minutes later along come a band of slightly more professional looking Para troops, marching a lot better and almost in time however singing an even ruder song! Entertainment for breakfast time indeed.

Until not 10 minutes later along came the Grossdeutschland... wow, just wow. Not churning out a rude song but marching in time to an officer singing out 'links, rechts!' by the side of the men in his leather patched breeches just like the regular Wehrmacht officers from upper class backgrounds used to effect. They looked amazing, but wow how much training went into that! 

I ventured to their camp later in the day - I thought we were pretty authentic but theirs was incredible. They were actually really nice chaps though obviously very dedicated to their reenactment - and in the battle it was again a perfect storm. All praise to them indeed for giving the admiring public a chance to see how it might have really looked.

On another note - I had a very interesting conversion with a member of another group who are a little like WWIIRESW in that they are a loose band of all sorts who play Battle for Berlin and basically have people turn up when they can, representing all units. We had a discussion about equipment, and he made a very valid point about how people can be quite bonkers regarding ageing everything. He said, well actually equipment would probably have not been more than two years old, so wearing new equipment, and having non-rusty gear would generally be more accurate - after all, it wasn't 70 years old back then!

Great point. Think I will polish my boots again :-)

See you around.

Rose x