Each year around the 18th of June, the Waterloo Battlefield comes to life with soldiers in period costumes reenacting the battles that took place around Waterloo and the Allied and French camps. This time of year is always a little nuts with the end of school and the main battle of Waterloo is always reenacted on Sunday morning from 10-12 (the same time we are in church), so until this year, none of the festivities have fit into our schedule.
That and the fact that our older two children are terrified of all loud noises and the thought of dragging them to a battlefield full of European men who are rarely allowed to use firearms in their every day lives, given free license to shoot at will, wasn't very appealing.
This year Nathan has shown more interest and asked more questions, but he finally decided that we (meaning Daddy and Mommy) should go to the battle ourselves and check it out first so that he could decide if he'd like to go next year.
The first battle they reenact is always on Saturday night from 8-10 PM and we decided that taking them some place they really did not want to go with loud noises right in the middle of bed time would be a complete disaster. We opted for the middle of the day visit to the camps where people dressed in costume would be living as they did at the time of the battle. Of course we knew the soldiers would be there, but I honestly thought they would be resting up for the upcoming battle that evening. I was sure the gunfire would be minimal and that the kids would enjoy at least some part of the experience. Right.
As we drove up to the battlefield to find a parking space, we rolled down the windows to show the kids some soldiers marching right outside. Naturally at that moment, all 10 or so of them shot their weapons at the same time. Kids had immediate changes of heart. They were done before we began.
Somehow, we convinced them that the camps would be much quieter (although no promises were made) and we moved on to the next stage of buying tickets. After we got our tickets and the kind lady at information explained just how far away the Allied and French camps were, we opted for the closer Allied camp and set off on our walk. It was a long walk, but on the way there the kids were okay. There were soldiers marching past us and some riding horses. As we got closer, we heard some gun fire, but not too much. The kids started putting their hands over their ears as the cannons came into view and the looks on their faces completely gave away their opinions about this entire outing. Sarah was the most tolerant, but no one was happy after the first cannon was fired. We watched some soldiers wheeling several more cannons by assuring the kids that while they were marching they wouldn't be firing them. We were right about that, but little did we know the plans they had as they wheeled those cannons by. So much for our theory that they were leaving extra early for the battle. They did have a long walk and those cannons were heavy!
With one child unable to have a normal conversation due to having his hands over his ears and another child crying uncontrollably in between threats, we decided to distract them with some of the home made candy and cookies for sale (2 Euros for a piece of chocolate supposedly made as it was in 1815....hmmmmm). They took their hands off of their ears long enough to eat their treats and then kept their hands at ready position as we walked around checking out the soldiers and family members in the camps doing 1815 every day things. No one could be trusted. Even the group of German soldiers who were eating dinner and had their weapons no where near them, got a nice laugh out of our children's distrustful expressions.
As we saw the accumulation of cannons and noticed the crowd beginning to gather, we decided we had put our children through enough torture and one of us headed them back toward the car. Another of us stayed behind to try and get some pictures of the event that would most likely put our children over the edge, but eventually he had to run to catch up with his quickly retreating family. (Insert Napoleon joke here).
After the long walk back to the car involving quite a bit of whining and crying from both girls, we loaded them up and told them we were done, not to worry. Would you believe they asked why we didn't go see the French camp? Perhaps they reasoned that the French had less guns and cannons. They did lose you know.
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