This is from the Richmond Times Dispatch July 9th electronic edition:


Yorktown's no place for battles, park service says
Re-enactment group to look elsewhere to commemorate fight

BY SUE LINDSEY
THE ASSOCIATED PRESSJul 9, 2005


NORFOLK -- If the Battle of Yorktown were held today, it would have to be
moved. The National Park Service doesn't permit even mock battles on its
land, so an organizer of a re-enactment for the 225th anniversary says the
group has to look for another site.
 Jeff Lambert, of the First Virginia Regiment of the Continental Line, said
his group had been working with the park service for two years on a program
involving 3,000 re-enactors for October 2006. The group wanted to stage
something similar to its 1981 bicentennial celebration on the battlefield,
which included three battle re-enactments as well as an encampment and
living-history interpretations.
However, park service rules changed in 1986, spokesman Mike Litterst said.
Encampments are allowed, along with weapons-firing demonstrations. But mock
battles involving exchange of fire, hand-to-hand combat and casualties being
carried off the field are not permitted, he said.
The policy changed for a couple of reasons, Litterst said.
"There's a safety issue," he said, but also a philosophical question.
"We're preserving battlefields to honor the memory of men who died there,"
Litterst said. "Is it disrespectful to have somebody pretend to die, then
get up and go home at the end of the day?"
Lambert said he understood the park service was in a difficult position.
"Rules are there for a reason, but there's also room for reason," he said.
"I think the 225th is a pretty good reason to have a celebration."
Lambert found it interesting that the battleground was open for a rally by
members of an American Nazi party under the First Amendment a couple of
weeks ago but would not be available to re-enact the battle that led to the
nation's independence from Britain.
"Without winning the war we wouldn't have free speech," he said.
Lambert said the First Virginia Regiment now was negotiating to hold its
re-enactment on private land in Gloucester County.
The group was willing to have an encampment and demonstrations at Yorktown
if battle re-enactments could be held on property owned by James City County
near the site of another Revolutionary War battle -- the Battle of
Greensprings. But those talks broke down, Lambert said.
"We decided to part company and go someplace where re-enactors can do what
they do," he said.
Litterst said the park service, too, is moving on. Officials are talking to
some other re-enactment groups.
The First Virginia Regiment's proposal wouldn't quite fit with the history
of Yorktown anyway, he said.
The Battle of Yorktown was an artillery battle, Litterst said, so most of it
involved cannon fire rather than infantry combat.
Litterst said two to three groups of re-enactors hold encampments at
Yorktown every year, and he praised their contributions.
"What they do is of tremendous educational value to visitors," he said.

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