GWOT reenactors gather for disconnected violence, ill-conceived civil projects
MANASSAS NATIONAL BATTLEFIELD PARK, Va. — On a Saturday morning, mist drifts across the fields of history as crowds gather to watch the past, brought to life by a group of dedicated enthusiasts in period garb. Here attendees are transported to a memory now largely lost in the collective American consciousness: a time of violence, population displacement, and families turned against one another in civil war as elites made unimaginable fortunes.
“The Global War on Terror is a critical time for us to remember,” says Charles Hampton. “Then, normal Americans with wildly inflated resumes could secure no-bid contracts worth millions, sometimes billions, to do things no one could reasonably believe possible, with little to no accountability or oversight. It’s hard not to be pulled into the romance of that.”
Dressed in khaki 5.11 pants with no less than seventeen pockets and a golf shirt with “Who’s Your Bagh-Daddy?” stitched on the breast, Hampton plays the role of a KBR electrician in a group of GWOT re-enactors who are “deployed” to “FOB Halliburton.”
“People call us re-enactors, thinking all we do is get together to masturbate in portapotties, but we prefer ‘historical interpreters’ because we explain what happened between 2001 and 2021,” he says. “And maybe now, too? There are people in Syria and Iraq still, right? Maybe in Africa? Speaking of interpreters, I’m not getting the $235,000 a year a clearance-eligible Pashto translator got for doing ‘document exploitation’ in 2012, but I am doing pretty well after four years here! The missus and I are notionally retiring to Branson next year! Ha-ha!”
As historical interpreters dressed in a rainbow of desert tricolors, Army Combat Uniforms best suited for fighting in a gravel pit, and Marine MARPAT digital camouflage the Corps would not share with anyone else, they offer a view into a past now seen only in the minds of the veterans suffering grievous physical and mental wounds. Attendees wind through displays replicating a time in history in which less than 1% of the nation participated in 20 years of now seemingly pointless war.
“I came today because I love America and freedom and that movie, American Sniper,” says Chase Owen, a 41-year-old tennis professional. “Also, a high school friend was in Afghanistan. Or Iraqistan. Or maybe Syria or the Philippines or North Africa? Those are places, right?”
The aging historical interpreters may not be as svelte as the servicemembers they represent. But as one looks at the food sitting under heat lamps and over steam trays in a tent marked “Raytheon DFAC” — lobster, steak, pizza, fried cheese sticks, and Baskin Robbins pecan praline ice cream — served by brown people playing “TCNs,” maybe they are. Eating chicken cordon bleu and lemon cream cake while competing in a Mario Kart tournament, 53-year-old event organizer Travis Brindel emphasizes that historical interpretation is a service unto itself. “This is how we give back. Most of us would have loved to have been able to serve during the Global War on Terror, but there just wasn’t time during its 20 years with going to college, b-school, and starting a successful career as a financial planner.”
Nearby, in a replica of a prayer room in an Iraqi compound, 46-year-old Harold Dingle ‘interprets’ a 24-year-old Army 1st lieutenant with an exercise science degree trying to negotiate the restoration of sewage services to 275,000 densely packed, recently unemployed, and heavily armed Baath party members. Across a low table covered in small glasses of tea sits Ali Jaffar, playing the role of a tribal elder with opaque intentions and questionable loyalties. Outside, a group of “soldiers” anxiously stands at a mock street intersection for three hours “waiting for EOD.”