Civil lessons unfold on field.

Byline: Karen McCowan The Register-Guard

LIVING HISTORY

SPRINGFIELD - The hills above Dorris Ranch Park reverberated with the ka-BOOM of cannons and the crack of rifled muskets Sunday as members of Northwest Civil War Council twice re-enacted a skirmish from the bloody conflict before hundreds of spectators.

The living history lesson began when a Confederate unit hiding in a ditch surprised a regiment of Union soldiers as they marched along a dirt road. It proceeded to face-to-face combat in a nearby field, the acrid smell of gunpowder and puffs of blue smoke lending sensory realism. It ended with crumpled soldiers in blue littering the east side of the battlefield, and the historical absurdity of drum and bugle music as the Confederacy trumpeted its victory.

"That's the Union," 14-year-old Derek Trost told his sister Lindsay, 7, pointing to the field of fallen men. "They lost this battle, but they won the war."

Derek studied the Civil War in history class last year and "kind of knew what to expect," but was surprised by the face-to-face combat.

"I thought they hid more," he said. "But they just marched out and shot at each other from not very far away."

"It's kind of gory, to look each other in the eye and shoot them like that," agreed his mother, Karen Trost. She and her Army veteran father, Robert Delamontaigne, drove from Gladstone so her three children could witness the mock battle.

"I thought it would be something they could use in their reports at school," she said.

Delamontaigne, who served in Vietnam in 1967-68, said the simulation gives audience members a more realistic taste of the chaos and emotion of battle.

"You can't get this reading books," he said.

Behind him, Eugene parent Erik Sarvela noted one crucial distinction between re-enactment and reality, however.

"In a real war, the dead guys don't get up again," Sarvela said as fallen Union soldiers rose to acknowledge the crowd's applause.

Afterward, participant Doug Zade showed his musket to curious spectator Nathaniel Joseph, 8, of Eugene.

"We never shoot anything at anybody," said Zade, who teaches history at a Silverton middle school. Though the muskets don't shoot the lead bullets used in the war, he said, they use real gunpowder, which can explode out six or seven inches.

"Did you notice how we aimed up when we got real close?" he asked Joseph.

Zade, who portrayed a Confederate soldier, was among several hundred NCWC participants who stayed here all weekend, camping in white canvas tents similar to those used during America's bloodiest conflict.

"To come down here and live the life of a soldier for a little bit makes me a better teacher," Zade said.

He joined the organization to spend time with his son, Kevin Zade, 18, who likes the events for less noble reasons.

"I like dressing up and shooting guns," he said with a grin.

But re-enactments are not intended to glorify war, father and son said.

"What you're trying to show the audience, really, is that this war was a horrible thing," Doug Zade said.

NCWC president Erik Wood of Salem agreed.

"When those soldiers are laying there dead in that field, it can have a real emotional impact," Wood said. "It can lead people to say, 'We need to find ways to end war.' "

The organization has about 1,000 active members, he said, with several hundred participating in this second annual Lane County re-enactment.

Its goal is to educate the public about the American Civil War, which claimed more U.S. lives (more than 200,000 battle deaths by some estimates) than all subsequent wars combined. NCWC also aims to correct misunderstandings about the war, such as the notion that it was fought "to end slavery," Wood said.

"The thing that triggered it was whether the federal government or the states would decide how people lived their lives," he said. "Slavery was just the poster child of the states' rights side."

The Springfield re-enactors are among an estimated 150,000 people who recreate Civil War battles nationwide.

"Re-enacting is kind of like golf - it's an expensive hobby," said Brenda Miles, who wore Confederate grey in Sunday's battle. A retired Gettysburg National Monument park ranger, she is a descendant of Maj. Gen. Nelson A. Miles, who accepted the historic surrender of Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce.

"Re-enactment is a way of making sure we don't lose our American culture," she said.

For participants, even more than spectators, it's a way to understand the terror of war, said Joe Cross, a Portland bakery worker who has been a re-enactor for more than 30 years.

"When you're out there on the field with gunfire and smoke all around you, you can feel a sense of panic even though you know they're blanks," he said.