I think in all honesty it's looking pretty bullshit right now. Yes it should be a commemoration, but the person in charge of the reenactment really hasn't thought it through, in putting the battles at 8pm on the 2 nights... it means that by the time we're all back in camp, it's going to be around midnight if we get stuck behind the redcoats at their slow pace. That in turn means no noise in camp as per reenactment SOPs, which will lead to a lot of very pissed off reenactors
I think it's been turned into a political event. Yes it's nice that the wiff-waff want to get involved, however, my unit have said it from the start, let the bloody reenactors organise the living history side of things, it would run a lot smoother that way.
Not seen the "individual" sign up yet, but I think thats a load of bollox too. Some might say it's to scare away 'one timers' but units now should've closed recruitment to anyone looking to do waterloo, our unit did in May. If anything, signing up as an individual, rather than as a unit is going to encourage the one timers, and people without units to come along thinking they're Sharpe. Yes safety checks need to be made, however over here in the UK you already have to have a billion safety checks made against you before they even consider giving you a gun license. Why not just keep with what's happened in the past, have unit commanders sign the guys up, and provide the relevant information there. I can see this going badly with one timers getting the nod, but old hands, like myself, potentially missing out because the system is a load of crap.
I'm hoping that this farce gets sorted asap because to make a mockery of the 200th of Waterloo is going to piss a whole lot of people off, just to brown nose with some royals and army bigwigs