Form an early age I was interested in the American Civil war.

When my friends
wanted to play Cowboys and Indians, I always played the US Cavalry.

As a teenager I became interested in the Napoleonic Wars as well (“The Sharpe” TV

series was partially to blame) and when the Berlin wall fell I went to the re-enactment
of the battle of Großbeeren every year, since the battle field was only 8 km from my
house.

Through a school friend I met a guy that was member of the Prussian Infantry and
introduced myself as a potential new recruit. I was invited to come along to the next
event and participate in order to see if the hobby was really my thing.

Thanks to an understanding and supporting father, who drove me, I made my way to
the town of Jena in central Germany. The day was the 14th October 1996. As soon as
we arrived we were made to feel really welcome by both friends and foe. I was taken
straight away by the streets of authentic tents filled with straw to protect the men from
the cold, the camp fires with the stews boiling on them and the camaraderie I
encountered.

French, British, Prussian and other soldiers who wouldn’t

have had anything to say to each other and would have
tried to kill one another were peacefully sitting together,
laughing, singing, exchanging experiences and ideas.

The next morning another new recruit and myself were

taken aside by an NCO and trained for the upcoming
battle. As this was my first event and I was only 15 I was
not allowed to fire and therefor the officer decided that I
would be a casualty during the battle so that the groups
firing power would not be reduced.

I was lucky that my first event was a major event as it was

the 190th anniversary of the battle so I experienced the
whole lot: Infantry, Artillery and Cavalry. The latter was quite frightening as the
ground shook when they charged at us.

The thrill of the battle and the comradeship afterwards made my decision: This is the
hobby for me.

My mother however was a bit sceptic about it and thought I wouldn’t stick to it, like
other things I tried in the past. But it didn’t take long for her to realise that I will do this
as long as I am physically able to.

In my first year in the re-enactment I met a lot of people and made many friends at
events all over Germany and the Netherlands, as these were the main fighting zones
of the Prussian Army.
After a year in the Prussian Line Infantry however I was
looking for some more action and decided to swap groups
and join the Prussian Light Infantry (Jäger), which were the
skirmishers of the time. The people in the group were very
nice, but after a few months I realised that their idea of the
re-enactment and mine were not the same, as I was
looking for authenticity and the rest of the group wasn’t.

I was invited to join the 9e légère, a group re-enacting the

French whose main base was in the UK, but they were
branching out to the continent now. This group is known for
its excellence in drill and authenticity and a good few of my
friends joined and eventually so did I.

Re-enacting French opened a whole prospect to the hobby for me, as the French
fought in almost every Battle of the Napoleonic Wars I could go to a lot more events.
So I attended events in Italy and France and thanks to our UK based section we
made the journey over to events in Britain.

After seeing an American Civil War Battle at a multi period event in the UK a friend of
mine and myself decided we would like to re-enact this period of history as well. But
we couldn’t find a group that we wanted to join, except for a British group portraying
the 24th Michigan, who rejected our membership on the grounds of us living too far
away.

By pure chance I met a group of American Revolutionary British redcoats of whom I

knew one member from the Napoleonic re-enactment and they told me that they
were doing American Civil War Zouaves. Until then I did not like the Zouaves, due to
their rather odd looking uniform, but I decided to give it a try.
Again the camaraderie in this, for me, new re-enactment scene was great and the
Zouaves made me feel even more welcome than any other group I encountered thus
far. And after one event of wearing the Moroccan style uniform I was converted:
Zouaves is the only way to portray the American Civil War.

When I moved to Ireland in 2003 I took a little pause from re-enacting. This was due
to the fact that I didn’t have the money to travel to events abroad and I couldn’t find a
re-enactment group in Ireland. In 2005 I made contact with Lord-Edward’s Own from
Monasterevin which took me to the event at Duncannon. I was so happy to finally be
at an event again.

And again I was made to feel very welcome by complete strangers from all sorts of
historical periods, from ancient Rome to World War 2.

I am now a member of En Garde, portraying the 70e French Line Infantry, and the
support we get from other groups and individuals is great.

I once read an Irish saying: “there are no strangers, only friends you haven’t met yet.”
This saying is most certainly correct when it comes to the re-enactment. Of course
there are always clashes of individual personalities, but that is just human nature and
you don’t have to talk to people you don’t see eye to eye with. But the majority of
people will always welcome you at their campfire.