RICHMOND TIMES-DISPATCH                             
 Monday, November 4, 2002             
by Chris Dovi                                                       
Times-Dispatch Staff Writer                                           
Contact Chris Dovi at (804) 649-6061 or cdovi@timesdispatch.com     
                                                                              

FLASHBACK OF WARFARE   REENACTORS DRESS THE PART TO HONOR VETERANS OF WWII              

 Playing dress-up - that's what  Mike Valentine's wife calls it. The Henrico County native  hangs his head a bit at her gibe, but he smiles. Decked in his woolen fatigues, gray-green field coat and stove-pot  helmet, and with an M-1 rifle slung over his shoulder, Valentine is in the zone despite his wife's taunts.                                               
 A short drive up Interstate 95 and Valentine's game of dress-up starts to look pretty darn real. Two weekends ago, he and 400 or so other weekend Walter Mittys gathered on a cow farm in rural Maryland to pay a muddy tribute to the men and women who fought and died to save the world 60 years ago.           
"I've always been interested in World War II," said Valentine, who is among the growing ranks of World War II re-enactors nationally.   He joined the 29th Division re-enactment group about a year ago and has submitted happily to his wife's gentle teasing ever since. "I can't think of a better way than this to really understand" World War II, he said.

Kin to their more commonly recognized Civil War re-enactor cousins, Valentine and this band of brothers devote their free time to remembering and preserving the daily-life history of World War II soldiers.                 
It may seem silly to some, Valentine admits, but for him it's a way to pay homage to his grandfather.                                                   
"This is a way for me to get sort of a glimpse of what he went through," he said, calling re-enactments a way of underscoring the years spent listening to his grandfather's stories.                                                   
 

The event two weeks ago in Boonsboro, Md., was nothing if not a window to the past. Gray and overcast skies transformed the farm's pastures and woods into a air likeness of rural anywhere-France. Full-size tanks, jeeps and troop transports rumbled over pastures and along wooded trails. Everywhere were tents.                                         
The faux 29th Division, much like the real 29th that helped storm Normandy's beaches, draws its members from all along the East Coast. And like the real 29th, many call Virginia, Maryland and Washington home.              

Begun as a collection of National Guard units around the time of World War I, the real 29th was activated and went to England for two years before storming the beaches of France. The war exacted a terrible price on the 29th. The group had the third-highest mortality rate in the Army, a staggering statistic considering it first saw action in June 1944. Men from the tiny Virginia town of Bedford were members of the 29th Division. That town lost 19 of its sons during the D-Day invasion.                                                               
 

By stark contrast, World War II re-enacting is just a hobby, but it's much more than a game to most of the men involved.  Though organized re-enactments of the war date to the mid-1970s, Paul Yeneziano was among the early participants in the hobby. An Arlington County resident, he joined a sizable re-enactment group in 1985 after many years of collecting relics from the period. The hobby is about preserving the past, he said.  "It was the same year I went on active duty," Yeneziano recalled. "In fact, I spent more money on this new hobby for my uniform than I did for my real Army stuff."                                                                 
 

There's no cost to join the organization, but that's not to say this hobby comes without a price tag.                                                   
"It ain't cheap," said Brian Barfield, especially for someone with a 21st-century physique trying to squeeze into mid-20th-century clothes. "They were small back then. I think the average height was like 5'9" or something. The average waist size was 32 inches."                                         
 

While many military-surplus stores still have dusty old uniform parts and  equipment sitting on shelves (available for a fraction of the cost of the reproduction gear that most re-enactors rely on), it doesn't take a tailor to guess that Barfield's waist size - and that of most of the members of the 29th - is something beyond 32.   "I call it the FBT," said Barfield, who lives in Chesterfield County. "That's the fat-boy tax."  That "tax" typically doubles the cost of getting outfitted.  Barfield said $1,000 is a conservative estimate for getting all the duds, and that doesn't include your rifle." The M-1 that was typical to most soldiers at the beginning of the war now costs between $500 and $1,000.  When he's heading to an event, he stuffs his trunk with everything from canned goods to toothpaste to soap, all authentic to the period and all likely to cause skin rashes if opened and used. "I get a lot of it off eBay," he said. "eBay and estate sales, that's the best way to get stuff."                                                        
 

Capturing a moment in time also means showing the dark side. Down one well-worn dirt road at the farm in Boonsboro, a rough-hewn signpost pointed the way to Berlin.   "It's kind of creepy going over there," Valentine said about the German encampments. "But the guys are really nice. And their food - oh, man - their food's awesome."   Valentine said that for spectators at re-enactment events, the common misconception is that these guys really are Nazis, that they portray Nazis because they are Nazis. "That's stupid," he said. "If you're going to portray history, you've got to have both sides."                                                        
 

The history of both sides is equally valuable, contend members of Gross Deutschland, one of the many re-enactment groups dedicated to re-creating the daily grind of the common German soldier.  "You never see the other side of the coin," said Charles Lipsett, of Baltimore. "Things weren't that much different for them. They were cold, wet and miserable."  And Gross Deutschland, like most German re-enactment groups, is careful to screen potential members to make certain bad eggs are kept out. "We don't get into the politics," he said.  What they do get into is camp lifestyle - eating German food and even learning the German language. And if he's got to be on the losing side, there are at least perks to playing German, Lipsett said: "German beer."   Like the "Germans" of Gross Deutschland, members of the 29th also try to   
make contact with the men they portray. "I'm a member of the American Legion," Yeneziano said, boasting "at least 50 grandpas back home." These veterans have a lot to teach, he said. "You've got to love them, they're the only heritage we've got left. I'll cry when the one dies."

                                                                
Grateful acceptance typifies the reaction of veterans of the 29th Division who encounter their re-enactor counterparts. And the 29th Veterans Association allows 29th re-enactors as members.  "Basically we're junior members," said David Spencer, of Greencastle, Pa.,  renactment group's membership coordinator. "I think [the veterans] understand, I really think they do. We all grew up playing with G.I. Joes.   These guys were our heroes."