I’ve been conscripted
I took a trip this past weekend with Rob down to North Carolina to participate in an Eastern Front WWII reenactment gig. He had offered, I wasn’t doing anything terribly important, so I accepted, and we left Penn State early Friday morning.
We took a quick stop in Harrisburg to pick up the equipment, then drove the 500 miles to Littleton, North Carolina. It was dark by the time we arrived, so we promptly got lost on the backwoods roads, and had to stop to ask for directions. But we eventually made it.
When we got there, the Germans had established a camp on one side of a large clearing, and the Russians (us) had commandeered the use of a cabin for the night. But despite being inside and having a roaring fire, it was still too cold for any of us to get some sleep. So we sat around the campfire all night telling jokes and stories, and waiting for dawn to break. And when it did, we suited up, checked our rifles, and marched out to meet the Germans.
Me as a Commie
Not the best picture, but you get the idea. More pictures as they’re posted to the ‘tubes.
The rest of the day was filled with small skirmishes and large firefights between the 8 of us Ruskies and 30 Nazis, comprised of plain Jane Wermacht, SS, and even a Fallschirmjager unit made up of of ex-marines and a retired colonel. Considering our odds, I’d say we held up rather nicely against them, despite that one time when the entire unit was captured and subsequently killed by those tricky SS bastards. Definitely something I want to do more of, and considering I was invited to an event coming up in February, I’d better get my kit together in a hurry, and find some better fitting clothes.
We took off that afternoon, wanting to get back to school that night. So we took turns driving back to Pennsylvania, switching off when we got too tired to drive. It was my turn when we cruised into the outskirts of Washington DC. We were barely in the city limits when we came across a rather large accident that had happened not 10 seconds before. We pulled over, hopped out, and got to work.
The gist of the accident was that an older woman in an SUV had stalled in the middle of the highway, and then was rear-ended by a guy in a sports car, sending her flipping across the highway, and landing on her side. The guy was fine, but the woman was bleeding and trapped. We tried to get her out through the sun roof, but the glass refused to break. So we tore open the rear windshield, helped her out, treated her wounds, and stayed with her until the ambulance arrived.
The adrenaline rush from that pit stop kept us conscious through to State College, and we made it back in one piece. Definitely one of the better weekends I’ve had in a long time.
