Welcome to the "Marsh" page... what is that? Well, it is a page that will tell you about me, Marsh Wise, the idiot Webmaster/owner of reenactor.Net and a few other sites.
First, I am a historical reenactor... DUH! I got into it originally doing OPFOR (Opposing Force training) for the U.S. Army as an unpaid volunteer--this hooked me up with other reenactors and I then got into WWI reenacting. This led to WWII and Rev War (a bit) and now, Roman reenacitng.
A bit about me now: I was the the long-time former editor of both J.R. 63's magazine Der Frontsoldat and its webmaster along with also being the editor of the GWA's (Great War Association) On the Wire and their original webmaster (I resigned in 2001 as I just didn't have time for it). As it is now, I've been doing computer and electronic publishing for quite awhile now. I find it fun and challenging. I keep trying to make reenactor.Net a better resource for reenactors around the world and to this end, we are always soliciting help. I say "We" because it is a collective venture with a number of really great assistant webmasters in each time area!
And if you're really bored, .
Me in front of the (then) newly rebuilt Fokker DVII at the U.S. Air Force Museum. This really excellent museum is located at Wright-Pattersen, AFB in Dayton, Ohio. If you have the chance to visit the USAF museum, don't pass it up, as it's comparable to or better than, the Smithsonian Air-Space Museum! And yes, WWI German soldiers could have beards)
Wanna buy me a book? :-) Here ya go:
A bit about me -- like you care! Originally from California, I have also lived in Pennsylvania, Florida, Virginia and, for a short while, in Alaska. I graduated from Atascadero High School in 1982 and (like a fool) joined the U.S. Navy. I was stationed in Pensacola, FL for training and then in Key West, FL with Tactical Electronic Warfare Squadron 33 (VAQ-33). It wasn't so hot... as much as Key West is associated with people like Jimmy Buffett and Ernest Hemingway, I found something else about it -- Key West is wierd! Not only is it the GAY capital of the South, it is also a really wierd place to live. As you can imagine, all of this was quite a shock for a young kid from a little town out in the country (yes, there are country towns in California too) -- not that I am particularly bigoted about it, it was just kind of a shock to see guys in dresses, etc. ;-Þ
Free at last, free at last, free at last!
After I got me outta the Navy ;-) I moved back to good old Atascadero for a couple of years and that is where I learned to be a "truck drivah" oooohhhhh.... a "contract mail driver" to be precise. An "oh-so-fun" job dealing with the Post Office and its minions. In 1986, I moved to the Washington D.C. area (actually Northern Virginia), where I continued to haul mail for a sucession of scumbags mail contractors -- actually, one of them was very good to work for, the last one, 4-G's Trucking-- in fact, they were the BEST company I ever worked for. Alas, all things change and when one door closes, another opens. I've worked for a couple of other contractors, but 4-G's was the best! Now I'm back to decent work (driving, vs. management) -- I can sleep and actually have days off -- I wasn't gettin' that... kinda why I now have high blood pressure and diabetes :-(
During this time, I did different things such as attend Columbia Schools of Broadcasting (whatta scam and a waste of $$) and went to Northern Virginia Community College (NVCC)--that was pretty good and I learned a lot and met some good people, including my mentor, Dr. Donald Crosby. Living in the D.C. area, I also got to do a lot of fun things. The D.C. area is pretty neat and has a lot of great things to do -- history, culture, etc. Sometimes I really miss it ;-( Of course, sometimes I don't either -- at least here, I don't have snipers gunnin' for me at the gas station. Nor is it likely that Fort Loudon will be the target of a scumbag terrorist attack.
Reenacting
In 1989, I got into reenacting, first with the 393 VDV OPFOR unit and then later into WWI and WWII. In WWI, for years, I was a member of the old IR63, back East before I moved out here and it had multiple implosions (hobby politics are BS). Anyway, below are some reenacting links I am, or have been, involved with:
I now do Infanterie-Regiment 23, a great unit that I, along with Kameraden, re-activatied This is a living history group that is planning on going to our first event as a unit, this Fal. If you are interested in WWI, please visit the website!
In WWII reenacting, I started off in 3./IR226, a unit I helped found and then moved on to the 7./Großdeutschland unit, doing a Pionier (that's Pionier, not pioneer you dork, it means Engineer in German) impression for a coupla years.
In 1999, after moving back to California, I founded 1./Gebirgsjäger-Regiment 98 as there just too many Waffen-SS units in Calif. (and the world, for that matter) and not enough Army. Besides, I never thought anybody really tried to do this neat impression right, so... I started the unit. Haven't done much for awhile... in fact, I am getting a bit long in the tooth for this impression and am probably going to start doing Luftwaffe Field Division... why? Well for one thing, they had tons of old, fat guys and they were issued a mish-mash of kit, so it's mor einteresting. I have no need to portray some uhleet trooper :-0
Oh piss on it... WWII just doesn't do much for me these days. Maybe I'll do Ami or something. I bought a sailboat... makes me happy!
After years of fighting the desire to reenact the Roman Legions, I broke down and joined Legio IX Hispana. Still building that impression, but it is fun!! Lotsa fun and ya know what, I hooked my little brother on it too ;-) Anyway back here in PA, I have sort of started anew w/. Leg. IX Penna. Give it a look.
I am the webmaster for the Military Commemorative Association and used try to get out and reenact whenever I could... not often when you work every #!%^!%# weekend. Now I live 2500 miles away. Anyway, visit their site to learn a bit about WW2 reenacting. Maybe Yergen will decide it's time to update the site :-)
Changes in Latitude, Changes in Attitude
In 1998, I married the former Wendy Bunker (who says she will cut my throat in my sleep if I dare post her picture here) and things changed a bit ;-Þ Actually, married life is not bad and we have fun (well, most some of the time).
Living now in Pennsylvania, we have just moved Wendy from our old "homestead" in Foresthill, CA (go here to my Dad's site about FH), Ft. Loudon is pretty cool and puts me right back in the middle o' reenactin' country :-) It's also about 35 mins from the GWA's WWI site!! However, even better, I'm close to the Chesapeake and have bought a sailboat :-0
Work
These days I am back to being a DRIVER for another U.S. Mail contractor. I haul Mail from PA out to OH. It's a job. ...Never work for friends!
Andere Scheiße...
Let's see, what else... a bunch of cars, my eternal Blazer (still down) and trusty Ford F-150s (yes, I have TWO)... my brother, the King of Bodymen has found me a new Mercedes to carry on the tradition of our last one. At this time, we are down to three cats: and alas, my original three A.B. (the original "Sturmkatze"), Picard, Heinz all died within 2 months of each other in the fall of '03... ;-( Then we got Isabella and Nikki - 'Bella went to Kitty Valhalla in April and Nikki moved to Reno with my parents. We still have Isis and Nero. Caesar decided to break out as we were moving and didn't make the jump :-( He has been seen back there and we have hope to somehow get him back if he can be captured...
For over 4 years now, I have had a dog, Angus, who is pretty much smarter than most PEOPLE I have met. In January 2005, I sort of adopted a dog Miller, he's a Basenji (an African Barkless Dog)... his idiot former "guardian" (what an PC term... am I becoming an animal rights activist? Hmmm, I DID re-register as a Democrat. recently!?!) was going to put him down for killing chickens. What jackasses! He is the best, most well-behaved dog... oh, the fools they let have pets ;-( Anyway... Oh, I should mention, my Dad has sort of now stolen Miller :-0 In the summer of 2006, I got Zoey, a Red Heeler (also called a Queensland or Australian Cattle Dog)... she's WAY too smart for her own good :-o Lastly, my wife has another dog, his name is Pacha... he's a Chihuahua and, until she got him, I wasn't too enamored w/ these dogs. I must, however, admit he's pretty cool.
Zoey, the Velociraptor with fur.
Isis and the lateXena, who went to the Rainbow Bridge here in November '06.
Angus-Blue!
Miller and Angus...
Caesar. MIA Foresthill
Pacha Blue... King o' his domain.
Nero Nobody better.
Miller, living in Reno... :-0
About the reenactor.Net site:
Our Server: Well, in late 2001 we had to move our server as our old host (saturnnet.com) had gotten bought out -- the new ding-dongs owners then freaked-out at the bandwidth we were using (only 13GB of "pipe" then -- now, something dumb like 20 to 50 per month) and told me that they wanted $100.+ per month to host r.Net... yeah, RIGHT, like I am gonna pay that much money -- it's not like I am rich or this site brings in a lot of $$. In February 2004, reenactor.Net again moved and, in March of 2005, we moved once again... so, if you can't find a page, it still might be partly because the server is case-sensitive and we are still working the bugs out of our site ;-( We're working on it though!
Das Computer: It's now a AMD 2000+ with a 80GB hard drive and another 60GB on the side (fast fillin' up), 1.5 Gig of RAM (fast usin' it all) and some other crap -- guess that will hold me for another coupla years (we can hope). I DO have a decent monitor, a nice 17" Compaq I got for a song. Now, you're sitting there laughing, it is old... going on 6 years -- it'll soon need to be updated. Scanner is a Mustek... (I like them). Oh yeah, have a Iomega Zip drive and an old SyQuest EZ 135. They still work too. Are ya tired o' my computer crap yet?
Software: Initially, Adobe PageMill 3.0 was used to lay out pages and build my sites -- now I have converted over to Adobe GoLive -- first v.4.0, then v.5.0, v.6.0 and now GL CS2; a tool of the devil to learn, but a great program[Adobe's Technical Writing Dept. though, should all be taken out and shot!]. Of course, since Adobe went and bought Macromedia, you know these dorks just HAD to go and kill GoLive in favor of Dreamweaver -- hey, it's Adobe's way; buy something good, then abandon it. Will I convert to DW? I don't know. Hell, I still love PageMaker, even though they dumped it in favor of InDesign which I hate. The photos and art are usually edited with Adobe Photoshop CS2 and CorelDraw 12, also I am learning Adobe Illustratoras I go (kicking and screaming and rarely) -- I stilllike Corel better.Microsoft Word is used for editing some pages and text -- also for converting documents I have been given, over to HTML format [this used to work real well, but Satan Bill Gates just HAD to change the program so it now adds all kinds of wierd code to the pages, why Bill, why?] And to this end, I am occasionally using Macromedia Dreamweaver MX to fix the Word conversions... However, Dreamweaver REALLY messes up my GoLive pages, so it all takes tweaking. Maybe I'll use Dreamweaver for other stuff too, but that takes time to learn and chenge over and I really DO like GoLive! ;-Þ As of now, I also now do some HTML code editing, thanks to a class I took at Sierra College -- thanks Stan! However, coding by hand is a true pain in the arse and it makes it hard to lay stuff out and see what it looks like. Have Office XP too, might even get it installed someday (doubt it, but... NEW office 2007 SUCKS SH*T!, so we'll see)...
Please e-mail me, Marsh Wise with your comments (other than telling me to shut up) at: mwise@reenactor.net
Read this book!! It is about my wife's Great Uncle... a TRUE Hero!
If you're interested in having a web page (or even a whole site) for your reenacting unit, please visit my other website at www.sturmkatze.com. I specialize in reenacting (especially WWI and WWII) web pages and publications. We also offer web-hosting for reenactor uit websites, contact me if interested. No, of course none of this will be free, but it will be a reasonable price -- actually trades for reenacting stuff like WW1/WW2 militaria or German Soldbücher, photos and paperwork, along with SAILING gear, etc. are preferred! [Hobbies should NOT be about making a big profit!].
This photo was taken by Pat Sanchez during the 1996 Dawn Patrol WWI Fly-in put on by the Great War Aircraft Association (GWAA) and the U.S. Air Force Museum located at Wright Pattersen AFB in Dayton, Ohio
First, I am a historical reenactor... DUH! I got into it originally doing OPFOR (Opposing Force training) for the U.S. Army as an unpaid volunteer--this hooked me up with other reenactors and I then got into WWI reenacting. This led to WWII and Rev War (a bit) and now, Roman reenacitng.
