Quote Originally Posted by kilted hillbilly View Post
What a great thread! Most informative to a newbie such as myself. I concur with the re-inactors here when you say the spectators want to see the fancier dress. I used to do the single action shooting thing some years ago. I chose to dress as a humble cowpoke of the 1880's, as accurate as possible, but the spectators flocked to the "Hollywood" saturday morning western show dressed folks, complete with silver mounted double buscadero rigs and such.
I am reminded of a similar experience at a living history event where our NPS artillery crew was set up next to a reenactor unit for hourly artillery demos. The reenactor crew was literaly covered in red -- red shirts, red trim, red chevrons --and none of them were ordinary rankers. The lowest rank was a corporal, I kid you not.

Our crew was the exact opposite -- no red trim, just plain forage caps and fatigue/sack coats, and even our gunner was a "slick sleeve". Of course, the touristas flocked to the reenactor crew, but I did hear one young man ask his Dad, who was obviously a career military man, why the one gun crew had all the red and the other didn't.

The father said, "The guys with the red are the newbies -- they haven't learned that all that red is a good target. The guys with no trim are the veterans." :mrgreen:

T.