Commemorating the 150th anniversary of the opening hostilities of the Civil War, the History Channel is offering up a bevy of programming which kicked off Sunday with the two-hour documentary Gettysburg. Executive produced by brothers Ridely and Tony Scott, it offers a very personal account of the war taken from the perspective of the “boots on the ground” so to speak who fought (and died) during those terrible first three days in July 1863.  As an unapologetic Civil War “buff” I was looking forward to this episode.  I was especially psyched as the Gettysburg campaign is my focus of study and I’ve walked  the battlefield many times.  I was not disappointed with the Scotts’ program…and yet I was at the same time.

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First of all, about the show itself:  Gettysburg takes us through the three-day battle starting us at around 9:00am on July 1, 1863 and then focuses on several key moments throughout the see-saw fighting that would ravage the town and the surrounding countryside, leaving 55,000 casualties in its wake.  It follows several men on the front lines, from foot soldiers to generals.  Some live, some die.  Each has a story to tell and we see the raw terror mixed with unimaginable bravery that such battles summoned.  It also shows the ghastly wounds that were a horrible consequence of modern weapons meeting outdated line tactics of the day. The program is also quite effective at showing this to be a savage affair (including a graphic depiction of a Union soldier splitting a rebel’s skull with his rifle butt that had me cringing.)  If Gettysburg’s purpose was, as the History Channel’s website announces, to “strip away the romanticized veneer of the Civil War to present the pivotal Battle of Gettysburg in a new light—a visceral, terrifying and deeply personal experience” then it does the job.

There were, however, disappointments that I really didn’t expect.  First is the heavy reliance on re-enactors despite the liberating aspect of modern CGI.  (Perhaps budgetary constraints were in play here).  Re-enactors are great for replaying tiny segments of the battle, and the consultants must have paid particular attention to the grime and filth, even the tattered uniforms, so prevalent among un-bathed Civil War soldiers in the field.  But like the Turner feature film of the same name almost two decades earlier, the numerical limits of available play-actors means that these depictions are hopelessly under-populated.  According to the June 30 rolls, a combined 185,000 soldiers (105,000 Union, 80,000 Confederate) were in the area.  This means that massive infantry formations and rows of artillery lined hub-to-hub were engaged.  For example, the Confederate line of battle that assaulted the Union position on Herr’s Ridge at the very beginning of the still-developing fight was almost a mile wide.  (And that was just two brigades.  Three to five brigades made up a Confederate division, three divisions a corps, three corps made up the Army of Northern Virginia).  Indeed, Gettysburg was one of the few open field battles where entire mass formations were in plain view at once creating what one Alabama soldier described as “a grand panorama with the sounds of conflict added.”

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Memorial Day puts the lie to the nonsense that violence never solves anything.

Those rows of white tombstones decorated with little flags are the reason Americans don’t walk downtown, past the ruins where the synagogue once stood, to grab a schnitzel und ein bier from that little imbiss next to der bahnhof.  They are why there isn’t a smoking pit in the heart of Los Angeles where the Library Tower used to be.

Violence never solves anything, war is not the answer, arms are for hugging….  It’s hard to believe that there are adults out there that actually buy into such foolishness.

Memorial Day is about men and women who didn’t orient their lives to the dictates of poorly thought-through bumper sticker clichés that belong on the rear of some NPR-listening public school administrator’s Prius.  It’s about men and women who understood that sometimes doing the right thing means doing the hardest thing. (more…)