Learning how to drill as a new recruit
6th North Carolina State Troops at Bentonville March 11, 2011 Last Saturday (19 March 2011) I participated, with other members of the 6th North Carolina State Troops, in a living history program at the Bentonville Battlefield State Historic Site as part of their Civil War Sesquicentennial commemoration. The program was called "TO ARMS! TO ARMS" and featured us reenactors portraying civilians answering the call to duty, to be recruited into the Confederate Army. My previous post describes my experience being recruited. This post will describe what it was like to learn drill for the first time. For this program, the reenactors were instructed to "forget everything" we knew about drilling and pretend we didn't know a thing...not too hard for most of us after a long, idle winter off the drill field. After taking the oath of allegiance to the Confederate government and then being sworn into Confederate Service, uniformed officers pushed and prodded us into a line fa