There's a boy in my school who goes to be a drummer boy in American Civil War re-enactions. (Over here, that is.) His father takes part as an adult. Apparently, the attraction of doing battles from that war is that the costumes are cheaper, and easier to acquire than those needed for our Civil War, or medieval re-enactions. The lad knows a great deal about the technicalities of battles, though I'm not sure how much he knows of the background. However, since I went to see a re-enaction of Hastings, I've had very uneasy feelings about the activity. About half way through the event I realised that the point of it was not to understand the strategy and tactics, or the weaponry and armour, or indeed the political implications of the battle, but to have a fun day out and raise money for English Heritage. And this was on the actual battlefield, on which the Normans left the bodies of the Saxons they had killed unburied, and where the chroniclers record that skulls were turning up through the soil for a long time after. It suddenly felt very ghoulish. Naturally, those who re-enact the American Civil War over here don't have this problem.