My arthritis has been kind of bad the last couple of months so I’ve been catching up on some inside projects rather than working on the Dodge. I’ve been working on this the last month or so and thought I’d go ahead and post it.

As the only one from my generation of the family who went into the military I ended up becoming the caretaker of the family’s military history. Last fall when I was back at home Mom gave me my great great Granddads Civil War Discharge papers. All I had originally planned to do was frame them, but it ended up being a bit more involved. I ended up researching his unit and being in an infantry unit let’s just say he had a long 3 year walk.

When I got his done it was enough motivation for me to decided to do something with my Granddads (WWI) and Dads (WWII) things.

Researching Granddads stuff was easy as I already had the books covering his units history that were printed shortly after the war. Researching Dads service was a bit more difficult. During the Civil War and World War I a lot of units were formed in a local area, they trained, fought and were discharged as a unit. WWII saw units formed from people all over the country and people being transferred in and out so just looking at one units history was not often enough.

When I was researching my dads stuff, I mentioned to my Daughter that I had so many questions I wish I could ask dad and grandpa to fill in some blanks. She asked me what about my stuff? I told her I’d get around to putting my stuff together someday but I didn’t really feel like I had done all that much. Her comment was that my ancestors probably felt the same way about what they had done. Then she got me, she said “don’t you think someday your grandkids or their kids might have questions they wish they could ask you?” So she convinced me to buy one more frame and even write a few notes about what I had done for whoever the next caretaker turns out to be.

Just a thought, I know several of the folks here are vets, and some may just as soon forget their time in service. You never know, a note or two thrown in the old show box with you other military stuff about what you did might be something that really means a lot to someone down the line.


Great Great Granddad 102d Illinois Volunteer Infantry





My granddad 350th Infantry Regiment, 88th Division





Dad 18th Field Artillery Observation Battalion, and Army of Occupation Germany






Me. I hesitate to post mine, all I did was spend 20 years going where they sent me.




You might have noticed that Granddad, Dad and myself were always ready for when they said “smoke’em if you got’em”.



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