Midway Village WWII Days (9/25/10)

This was another Meet Up outing that the whole family attended. Midway Village WWII Days is an annual event that draws over 800 participants from 40 different states. People dress in period attire, both allied and axis, civilian and military, as well as assembling weaponry, machinery and implements of daily living in settings that are demonstrative of life during World War II whether in a town setting, tent city or wooded campsites.

In addition to having mock street skirmishes, they have field maneuvers complete with pyrotechnics! It is very impressive and anyone who is interested in all things WWII should make a point of visiting.

For my photography I wanted to maintain the period theme and take pictures that did not contain anything or person that was non-period. I also decided to post process these images in a manner that reflected the time period so I converted them to a sepia/black and white color hybrid and added varying degrees of grain to simulate old photographs. While this was largely experimental I was quite pleased with how they turned out. Here are the final images from my visit...

This one made me think of the stories of Dad, Many and Granny trudging over hill and dale to escape the war in Belgium.

(The one above is a shout out to my former unit - Huah!)

For the one above, I really enjoyed the irony of the German troops in the foreground and the American troops in the background oblivious to one another - in reality they'd have been shooting each other!

This is the guy I bought my authentic "Official U.S. Army Photographer" patch from - I LOVE that patch!!!

You can see my patch on the desk between the drawer and the flash bulb!

This guy was every bit the a-hole of a German soldier - he took his role a little bit too seriously!!!

This guy above actually had an authentic Italian accent which I thought was also amusing.

This was one of the odder vehicles on display - Katie and I failed to see the point of the front wheel, it seemed oddly disproportionate and useless.

There were some extremely rare vintage German vehicles on display, this was one of them.

Some of these German soldiers wore the uniform so well and looked the part so authentically I secretly wondered if they drank the cool-aid, if you know what I mean!

This was before a mock street skirmish...

...and this was during the mock street skirmish.

If I am not mistaking the narrator said that this particular German vehicle was only one of four left in the world.

Needless to say it was pretty darned loud...though not as loud as the narrator in the ginormous speaker directly behind me!

Run away, run away!!!

The Sherman Tank!!

This was in the wooded encampment area - all kinds of different small camps were set up including, American, German, British, French, Polish, Russian and Japanese.

Wait! That little soldier girl looks familiar!!!

Kaitlyn, show us your war face...now let me hear your war cry!!!!

Bill, I mentioned that Katie's dad served in Iraq and he said to give a shout out to you from the 509th!!

Apparently this is his war face!

The German's had a mock awards ceremony.

This is the Japanese soldier and unfortunately he was not actually japanese or even of any dicernable Asian descent - they need some authentic Japanese people there!

This is a hand-operated machine used to load rounds into the bandoliers that are fed into the large machine caliber guns.

A Russian soldier - they were seriously probably about this young too!

A female Russian soldier.

Another ironic shot of an American Soldier walking past the oblivious eye of two German soldiers at a check point.