‘Never forget what they did here’ — Abraham Lincoln, Gettysburg Address

Now Waite is getting ready for the Battle of Gettysburg.

“This is the one everybody’s been looking at,” the Vancouver re-enactor said. “I’ve been targeting this.”

The July 4-7 commemoration will mark the 150th anniversary of the battle that changed the course of the Civil War.

Waite and 19 other local participants will be among up to 15,000 re-enactors wearing blue or gray. The combined forces will include 400 horses and 135 full-size artillery pieces.

These Yankees and Confederates will replay nine different engagements that were fought from July 1-3, 1863, during the Battle of Gettysburg.

The 150th anniversary’s re-enactment finale on July 7 will be Pickett’s Charge, named for a Confederate general who had served at Fort Vancouver in the 1850s.

Waite is a member of the 1st Oregon Volunteers, who represent a unit that was stationed at Fort Vancouver 150 years ago. The volunteers held down the fort when U.S. Army troops left to fight in the Civil War.

The 1st Oregon is a familiar part of soldiers’ bivouacs and living-history presentations at the Fort Vancouver National Historical Site.

Since the 1st Oregon served in the Northwest, the group adopts another identity for Civil War re-enactments: Company A of the 20th Maine, which played a major role at Gettysburg.

Waite doesn’t know how he will fare in battle.

“There’s no formulation for who lives or dies,” he said. At one event, organizers randomly put colored cartridges in the re-enactors’ cartridge boxes.

Cheating death

“If you pulled out a blue one, you would fire it and then you were wounded; a red one, and you would die,” Waite said.

Re-enactors have been known to cheat death, in a manner of speaking — especially if they’re a long way from the spectators.

“You’ve traveled so far, you don’t want to die and lie in a field,” he said. “You get back up.”

At other times, the casualties can have the best seat in the house.

“At Antietam, my unit was charging the Sunken Road. I was in the front row with the color bearer, and the front row just had to go down,” Waite said. “A friend and I just watched, from 100 yards away.”

Another memorable sight played out in a re-enactment of the 1864 Battle of Franklin, Tenn. — the last big frontal assault of the war.

“The Battle of Franklin was worse than Pickett’s Charge,” Waite said.

It also was Waite’s first national-level re-enactment held in an actual Civil War setting.

“Franklin was especially intense,” Waite said. “I went from 300 re-enactors locally to several thousand there. I’d never seen so many Confederates in my life.”

Like the 1998 event, this week’s re-enactment won’t take place at the actual battlefield.

“Out of respect to the hallowed ground where so many fought and died, our event coordinators host these major events on private farmland” just north of town, Stacey Fox, with the Gettysburg Convention & Visitors Bureau, said in an email. “The National Park will host several living history programs.”

The area expects 200,000 visitors during a 10-day span, Fox added. “We have been receiving requests for at least two years for accommodations and event details.”

Moore said re-enacting has become more sophisticated over the years.

No more blue jeans

“People started doing it during the 1960s, during the centennial” of the Civil War, Moore said. “It was blue jeans and make-your-own stuff, although some of it was copied off museum pieces and pretty well made.”

Now replica uniforms and other gear true to the era are available through “sutlers,” which was the word for merchants who used to sell supplies to soldiers.

As far as other aspects of life in the 1860s, “It can go from hobbyists to hard-core; we’re in the middle,” Waite said.

“I’ve heard of some guys who starve themselves and try to get that skinny, gaunt look you see in those photos” that were taken during the Civil War.

Some purists are known as “thread-counters,” Waite said. They can tell you everything there is to know about the weave of fabrics used to make uniforms.

o Tuesday, June 30, 1863: A Confederate infantry brigade marches toward the Pennsylvania crossroads town in search of supplies; they spot Union cavalry heading toward Gettysburg.

o Wednesday, July 1: Fighting begins at 8 a.m. when Confederate troops advance against Union forces at McPherson Ridge, just northwest of town. Reinforcements commanded by Major Gen. John Reynolds (who’d served at Fort Vancouver) help blunt the attack. Reynolds is killed, the highest-ranking officer to die at Gettysburg.

Union forces fall back; they regroup southeast of town at Cemetery Hill, whose high ground dominates the surrounding countryside and provides a position for Union artillery.

o Thursday, July 2: On the bloodiest day of the battle, Confederate forces try to flank the Union lines; fierce fighting takes place at Culp’s Hill, the Peach Orchard, Devil’s Den, the Wheat Field and Little Round Top.