Bloody battle turns into family fun

Thousands descend on town of Gettysburg for 150th anniversary of conflict

The good folk of Gettysburg in rural Pennsylvania are braced for a blur of trinkets, muskets and pyrotechnic percussions as an invasion begins this week of thousands of tourists, re-enactors and history buffs all bent on celebrating the 150th anniversary of the US Civil War battle that carries their town's name and marked the turning point in the war and the nation's history.

Organisers are emphasising family fun. There will be walking tours of the main battle sites, and visits through recreated encampments of the two opposing armies.

The climax will be a presentation of Pickett's Charge, the moment at 2pm on July 3, 1863 - the third and last day of the Battle of Gettysburg - when Confederate troops made one last push to penetrate the lines of the Union Army and failed.

"In 1863, we had more than 165,000 uninvited guests come to town. At least, this time around, we got the chance to plan," Randy Phiel, a commissioner of surrounding Adams County, recently noted. "This is our Olympic moment." As many as 17,000 civil war re-enactors are expected.

Increasingly, scholars lament the romanticising of the civil war and battles such as Gettysburg. They were, of course, tableaux of dismemberment and slaughter. An estimated 750,000 Americans died before it was all over. It claimed more lives than all the other wars Americans have fought combined. As a proportion of the population, that would translate into a figure of 7.5 million today. At Gettysburg, 7000 corpses were left behind; the last human bones were found in 1996.

"I don't understand why the US Civil War has never become our World War I," said Professor Fitzhugh Brundage, a historian at the University of North Carolina and an expert on the period.

"Pickett's Charge is portrayed as a remarkable demonstration of courage, which undoubtedly it was, but why isn't it remembered like the fields of Flanders? These men were marching to their deaths."

- Independent