Mustering a Militia

NORTH SUTTON, N.H. -- Weekdays, Frank Daly creates training programs for accounting giant PriceWaterhouseCoopers.

His wife, Ruth, works as a financial analyst while taking classes toward a nursing degree.

But on weekends, Frank and Ruth become champions of American independence.

They leave behind their comfortable home, on Main Street in Lincoln's Albion village, and step into the year 1775.

They gleefully ditch e-mail access and cell phones, but they also take a two-day hiatus from flush toilets, their dishwasher, and showers.

The Dalys are Revolutionary War reenactors.

Some might think them mildly demented. Instead of spending their summer weekends lounging at the beach or soaking up the air conditioning at home, they don 18th-century duds and spend their days off sleeping in tents, playing soldier and cooking food over a hot fire.

Their group, the Lebanon, Conn.-based Ye Olde Lebanon Towne Militia, imitates a group of Connecticut farmers who, under the same name, formed in 1775 and fought for the Colonies' independence in the Battle of Bunker Hill and, later, in the Colonial army under General George Washington.

Most of the militia's 70 members are from Connecticut, but there is a sizable Rhode Island contingent.

Though most attend events sporadically, a dedicated dozen spend roughly half their weekends, April through October, traveling to reenactment events across New England.

There, they meet up with other militias, as well as "regulars" -- groups that portray bona fide, uniformed Colonial army regiments -- and regiments that wear the red coats of British troops.

FOR THE DALYS, the weekend begins Friday afternoon, when they and their 12-year-old son, Ben, embark on the 2½-hour drive to North Sutton for an encampment at the historic Muster Field Farm.

By the time they arrive, it's dark. Rows of peaked white tent tops, illuminated by flickering yellow candle flames, are visible over a 3-foot-high wall of firewood.

In contrast to the soft candlelight and hushed conversations taking place in the tents, other details -- bright stars, a horse's whinny, the moon rising over the White Mountain foothills -- seem exaggerated.

A man in a three-cornered hat is silhouetted against an orange fire, and somehow, it's easy to believe it's 1775.

That is, until the Dalys' truck comes rolling in.

The family, dressed in jeans, sneakers, and baseball caps, sets up camp in the harsh beams of the truck's headlights.

Frank inflates a plastic Coleman air mattress with a pump plugged into the electrical outlet on the truck dashboard.

"This," he says, "is how we cheat on the 18th century."

Ye Olde Lebanon is fairly lax when it comes to allowing modern conveniences. The rule is, as long as the public doesn't see it, it's fair game.

So come tomorrow morning, the air mattress will be covered with a burlap sack.

And under the militia's "fly" -- an A-frame tent roof with no walls -- the women sip soda, chilled with dry ice in a hidden cooler, from cans disguised in cloth napkins.

Still, an air mattress and a can of soda are cold comfort when the temperature is 90 degrees and you're wearing two full layers of head-to-toe clothing.

CALL THEM old-fashioned. Call them gluttons for punishment.

Just don't ask them whether they're fighting for the Union or the Confederacy.

Or, for that matter, who won the Revolutionary War.

But rest assured these are questions they've heard before.

"We've had people point to our beds" made from rope "and say, 'What are those for?'" says Ron Barnes, of the Pawtuxet Rangers, a Warwick-based militia. "We have to tell them that somebody slept there last night, and they still don't believe it. We're just so used to modern-day comfort."

Still, the reenactors are happy to answer questions -- especially thoughtful and intelligent ones -- for any of the visitors who stroll through their camp.

Once day breaks on Saturday and visitors start appearing, only period dress is allowed and every detail is carefully planned.

For instance, the Colonial militiamen do not affix bayonets to the replica Brown Bess muskets they carry into their mock battles, because they reenact the year 1775. The real Colonial army did not use bayonets until the French entered the war on the American side in 1778.

The body of knowledge amassed in the camp is immense; every article of clothing, every object, is a potential history lesson.

As visitors gather round, Ted St. Amand, of Shelton, Conn., shows off the tools in his medical chest: a long, curved, pointed knife for amputation, and a small cylindrical saw blade, one inch in diameter, that was used to drill a hole in the skull to relieve pressure on the brain.

St. Amand, a construction project manager in real life, is the regimental surgeon of the Sixth Connecticut Regimental Line, a unit of "regulars." A s such, he bleeds people with rubber leeches and performs mock amputations, expounding on the substance the leeches' intestines excrete to keep blood from clotting, and on what muscles and tendons do when an arm is amputated.

In the shade of a nearby tent, Rose Valle-Patraw sells herbs and children's games as a "sutler" -- an 18th-century vendor. She explains that herbs, such as basil, used for flavor in modern-day cooking were used in higher concentrations, for their medicinal value, during the Revolutionary period.

THE REENACTORS take it upon themselves to bring to life the lessons and traditions at risk of becoming just a few two-dimensional paragraphs on the page of a history book.

"In a public school curriculum, only two weeks is spent on the Revolutionary War," says Ye Olde Lebanon vice president Ken Giella. "You have people who come out here and don't understand how this country was founded, and what we fought for."

The heart of the educational experience is the mock battle.

At some reenactments it mimics the tactics and events of a specific historical battle.

But at Muster Field Farm, the men simply demonstrate 18th-century military techniques.

Spectators watch from the sidelines, eating potato chips, snapping pictures, and covering their ears.

As the first charge is fired, a cloud of sulfur-scented smoke drifts into the crowd.

After taking a shot, each man pulls out a new cartridge and rips the paper off with his teeth before loading it into his gun.

The battle moves excruciatingly slowly; it takes each man anywhere from 15 to 30 seconds to reload his musket.

The technique used here is exactly the same as the one used ten score and some years ago. The only difference is that the cartridges contain just black powder; back in the 18th century, each one contained a lead musket ball as well.

But after this battle concludes, the dead come back to life. The two sides gather in a square, their commanders in the center, and offer one another a "Hip, hip, huzzah!"

BATTLES ASIDE, the days are taken up with handiwork, cooking, and chatting.

Men with ponytails walk down tent row, carrying water in wooden buckets. The sound of a fife and drum lilt on the air.

Women sit in the shade of the fly, weaving on a wooden loom.

The camp is teeming with children. Forced to survive without computers, video games, or television, they still manage to entertain themselves.

The girls dirty their dresses, the boys their breeches, playing tug of war and falling off wooden stilts.

They swing on a rope swing hanging from a tree, play tag and wrestle in the muddy field.

But the outward simplicity of reenacting can be deceptive, since the hobby has a way of emptying one's pocketbook.

It's easy to spend $2,500 or more on the tent, chair, tableware, weapon, and clothing one needs just to start.

Old members, eager to add to their ranks, jump to lend new recruits tents and dress patterns, giving them tips on what to pay good money for and what to find for a few dollars at a tag sale or the Salvation Army.

Many pick up a hobby that produces some necessary product, such as sewing, blacksmithing, woodworking, weaving, or assembling gun kits, and trade their products with other members.

Reenacting attracts folks of varied pedigrees. Besides the Dalys, Ye Olde Lebanon counts among its members a metal fabricator and a sprinkler fitter; a design analyst for Pratt & Whitney aircraft and an office manager; a dean of students at a high school and a Reiki practitioner, as well as two museum docents.

But with a shared passion for those weird old days when men wore wigs and modern personal hygiene had yet to evolve, a bond is forged.

"It's like a big frat party," says Frank Daly, "almost."

Conversation topics around the campfire are not limited to 18th-century banter. One also hears talk of modern-day politics, the state budget, and even the Nickelodeon character SpongeBob SquarePants.

And in the world of reenacting, it doesn't matter how bad the jokes are, as long as they're historical.

Ken Giella and his wife, Cele, arrive Saturday morning, pulling up to the campsite in a silver late-model car.

"I like your horse," Frank Daly says to them.

Militia quartermaster Bill Hayes pulls from the car trunk a 25-pound box marked "BLACK POWDER FOR SMALL ARMS."

"Just put that over by the fire," Frank quips.

AT NIGHT, when the tourists are gone, rum flows freely -- but responsibly, of course -- on tent row.

Bawdy jokes and raucous laughter ring out over the crickets' chirps.

They ring out especially loudly from the Redcoats' end of the camp.

Come nighttime, His Majesty's 47th Regiment of Foot is particularly fond of risque songs, sung loudly.

One expounds on uses for a drunken sailor; another rhymes "moose" with "loose."

Sure, those Brits know how to have a good time, but one wonders: Who would want to reenact as a Redcoat? After all, they lost the war, didn't they?

Guess again.

"I believe the British did win," says Paul Nett, a soldier in His Majesty's 47th. "A lot of people only get one side of the story. We portray the other side."

Dale Paulsen, the Burlington, Mass., truck driver who commands the regiment, explains their logic.

"Are you speaking English?" he asks rhetorically. "Do you still pay taxes without representation?"

"Think about it," Paulsen says. "You vote for some idiot who says he'll do something and gets in office and does the exact opposite."

On Sunday afternoon, when the flow of tourists tapers off, those on both ends of the camp will pack their tents back into their trucks.

It will become less easy to distinguish between Redcoat and rebel, as they trade their military trappings for the 21st-century uniforms of retail clerks and construction workers, registered nurses and municipal employees.

Until next weekend.