We had a picture session prior to that.
We've got a pretty interesting program lined up.
Good, good to hear that.
I was just back here at the check-in table a few minutes ago and I asked a gentleman
there about how many he had checked in so far.
He said he thought it was 58 people.
Yeah, we had 58 so far.
And we've got about a few more yet to come in.
There is a few more to come in and this is counting those that we know will be in.
But through the two days we've been here we picked up several others that tend to be
with us at least for the banquet.
So we should have a pretty nice group and a large group picture.
How many new people are here this year for the first time?
Well I'd say probably two-fifths of them are new.
Two-fifths, I see.
And you don't know where the next reunion is going to be yet?
No, we'll decide that Saturday evening.
It will probably be somewhere in the south and right now we're sort of looking for the
Atlanta, Georgia area or somewhere in that area.
We trade off between north and south and as much as the 31st was the National Guard unit
from Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana.
And then as the war progressed and as a lot of the old veterans from the 31st were transferred
in other units and started other units, well then they brought a lot of recruits and volunteers
from the north, the midwest, and the Yankee New England area.
Yeah, yeah.
Well I, yeah, we understand that these reunions have been getting a little bigger every year,
is that right?
Well, in most cases it kind of depends on where we're at, but we've been keeping a good
average.
We've, in the beginning, well nine years ago the guys were nine years younger so they were
able to get around a little better than they are now, so we lose a few and gain a few and
we stand by the same.
We've had some reunions, we started, I understand the first one, I wasn't there at the first
one, they never located me until 1986 and they had one in Atchison, Kansas in 1985 and
there was eight fellows there with their wives and that totaled 16 people and about a month
after that was over with one of the fellows located me and I went to the next one and
I was the only new guy there the next year when one of the other fellows couldn't make
it so they had the same number there in 1986.
Well we're sort of in a new area in here, of course in Niagara Falls that's northwestern
New York and then Sertoga Springs is north of Albany so we're getting people from the
central midwest or the eastern midwest you might call it, from Ohio and that area and
then quite a few from Pennsylvania and Maryland and Delaware.
My sergeant's there tonight, Dune Marsh Company B, he was my assistant squad leader, I was
just a PFC in the squad and he was, he's from Greensboro, Alabama and he had a brother that
was serving in Company B too in the same platoon and he was brother with squad leader of the
second squad and Dune, Eugene Marsh, he was assistant squad leader of the first squad
so I was in Dune squad and we've located, I suppose, this is the third platoon now of
Company B, we've located about, I'd say about ten guys out of that platoon alone and so
it's really a hectic job to try and locate.
Many of them are so much older than me and they're not able to travel like I am and they
just won't come to these reunions that's so far away from Kansas, most of them are from
Kansas and Missouri and you can't hardly get them over a couple hundred miles away from
home and when they come east like this it's just too far for them to go, they want to
be able to get there in one day, you know.
That's right.
But when you have to travel 1,200 miles or 1,300 miles, you can't make it in one day
and it's too big days for them to drive over there and none of them wants to fly and they're
scared of you.
They don't want to fly, a lot of them don't want to fly, it's generally the women.
Yeah and some of them it's just health is not good anymore and they just can't hold
up under the wear and tear of a reunion drive away from home like this.
Well we welcome any soldier or veteran from any of the 31st units because we're pretty
well organized and we sure like anybody that would like to come to join us.
I know she sends out newsletters quite often but how many of those are sent out a year?
I mean how many times?
About every three months.
Now there's several that send them out under kind of a franking privilege and they send
it out about once a month but we find it gets a little expensive when you got about 240
on the mailing list.
That's right, 240 people now on the mailing list.
That's great, I didn't realize you had that many on the mailing list.
That's family units.
Yeah that's just like where I'm from, Company B 167 and I know I gave you several names,
I don't know exactly how many anymore now but I know that was quite a list.
Well I sent a special letter out to about 27 that you gave me and I got some replies
from three or four that couldn't make it this year but maybe next year.
It really, not a lot of them, was 600 or 700 miles from northern Alabama up here and then
we had one come from Tennessee and he drove almost 700 miles in one day and he was pretty
close to getting here Tuesday.
But where it's a great distance, we like to fly because it takes, like if we went on a
bus it would take a couple days, Amtrak takes a couple days from the Midwest.
We had one in Omaha, Nebraska and we had a pretty good group out but a lot of them were
from Missouri and Kansas and Texas so they came generally north.
You have a story every time you send out one of those newsletters where you get all your
information.
Can you remember all that stuff that happened so many years back that you can write it up
in a letter form like that and get it out in the mail and I'll say how you do it.
Got a good memory I'll say that.
We used to send out some do you remembers and particularly all the funny things that
happened and we had quite a story once on our company bootleger and he started in north
Georgia and he kept going overseas and he started out slow just throwing in all the
ripe papayas and mangos and the jungle juice was a little raw there but as time went on
he was able to accumulate a little money and trade with the Navy and get sugar and corn
mash and so forth so he had a good operation going.
But toward the end of the war they were cutting down on the clamping down on these illegal
steels as we call them.
Yeah I know one myself that was going on over there for a while and somebody put a stop
to it.
Yeah there was one man in the company here that bought into Pappy Steel and they were
working together pretty good on that and then he got word that he was going to re-clamp
down so they wouldn't sold it to some other fellow and two days later they got him.
Well Joe I wanted to ask you about these tours now so far you had one today and I'd like
for you to tell me where that was at and where the remaining tours that you got planned are
going to be.
Well we were at Carlisle Barracks which is down in Carlisle Pennsylvania and it was richly
the property of the British in the early days.
It was considered a forward post in which the British were fighting the French and Indians
and then during the Revolutionary War General Washington captured a lot of Hessians at Trenton
on Christmas Eve when the Hessians were drunk and brought them to Kylom Barracks to build
up the barracks there and then during the Civil War Confederate cavalry came up there
and burned down the barracks and then they were called to Gettysburg and this was on
the second I believe when they burned the barracks and by the third a lot of them were
killed in the charges at Gettysburg and then following the Civil War and along about 1870
something they brought in Indians from all over the United States and they had an Indian
school there and some of the great famous Olympians came out of there.
There was Jim Thorpe for one and Jim was the only person that ever won the, there were
two types of like the pentathon and then there was another one in which they had to compete
in about ten different things and he was the only one that won both of those and years
later they found out that in Kansas he had played and got a little bit of money for playing
baseball and so they took away his Olympic medals but before he died he got it back because
not today there's a lot of professionals in basketball or whatever and then during the
end of the World War I it was a treatment place for a lot of the soldiers that were
gassed and then after World War II it became a war college and only the very top colonels
in the various units of our army are invited to come up and take further courses and most
of the generals of World War II and a number that were in the battle in the Gulf were from
this school.
I thought Carlisle.
It was a military school right?
Yeah it is now and of course in there they have archives of most of the army and navy
and the Air Force units that fought in any of the wars.
They have museums that cover the Revolutionary War, the Civil War and World War I and the
war since then and there's a lot of research going on in there and we were able to see
a lot of that today and really interesting.
We had a special tour and then the commander of the post there came down and he had a special
room in which he had a lot of the information from the 31st division displayed, booklets
and pamphlets and everything else so we could see that.
Well what about the rest of the tours?
Well then we go to Hershey and tomorrow till about 11 o'clock and then we go down to Lancaster
in the Amish area and we eat there and then we visit an Amish home and we see the countryside
and see how they are starting to harvest their crops and then the girls are waiting for the
chance to visit some of the craft shops and the bakeries and so forth.
Yeah the Amish people are real good at crafts and bakery and stuff like that, preparing
food and things.
I've been to an area in Ohio that has a group like that and I think this is going to be
something similar to it.
Yeah it will and then of course Friday we go to Philadelphia and we get into the celebration
of the Bill of Rights.
It's the 200th year when the Bill of Rights were written and we see the Liberty Bell and
a few other historical areas in there and historical documents and then we go to Valley
Forge and see replicas of some of the quarters at the Washington Stoops.
So it will all be on Friday?
And then it will all be on Friday and then we go to Gettysburg and one of the men from
the south brought up a lot of Confederate flags and also American flags so I don't know
whether we are going to divide the group into two and all the southerners are going to do
picket's charge and the rest of us are going to stand the ground up on the high ground
but it will be interesting.
Well then the Saturday trip is that the Saturday trip?
That's the Saturday trip.
Okay.
This banquet here that you are going to have by Saturday night now everybody will be here
for that I suppose.
Yes.
So are any of these people leaving early?
There's only one couple that has to leave because they have a special anniversary to
go to within the family but they are here now and they will be here Thursday and Friday
and then they will leave Saturday morning because they live on the Long Island so it
isn't a big trip but they have to have most of Saturday to get over there.
I know the 31st division was the southern division and you are from Iowa.
Were you always from Iowa?
No I was born and raised pretty close to where I live.
Oh in Iowa?
Yes.
Council Blass.
How long were you in Iowa?
When did you get into the 31st division?
Well it had been the fall of 1942.
Well back to 1942.
See that's when the 156th Louisiana regiment was sent to England and because they could
speak French in a way they were, it was not the regular French it was the Creole French
and when they got over finally into France after D-Day nobody could understand them and
they couldn't understand French either.
And then the 124th was part of the regiment that went into Fort Benning and school groups
and so they only had two regiments left so they started a 154 and they brought a lot
of them from the Midwest and some from this area Pennsylvania, New York and New England
and we meshed pretty good together.
They would still battle between the north and the south.
What rank did you hold when you got discharged?
Well I was just a sergeant, I was in charge of the parts.
We had the parts truck and I had the parts and tools and we kept the vehicles going as
much as we could.
Trucks and jeeps and stuff moving.
Yeah and we were part of it.
Yeah that was a very important part.
Well Joe has been nice talking to you.
I noticed my light went out on the camera, we're still on camera though but the picture
might be a little bit dimmer now.
It's certainly been a pleasure talking to you here this evening.
Thank you.
And I'm looking forward to some more of these reunions and myself and I invite you to come
to one if we have any up close your way.
I'll certainly keep you posted on them.
Yeah I like how you have it down in the Ozarks.
You said that close to Kansas.
Yeah I don't know where the next reunion will be at.
We had to skip it this year, it didn't work out right so I'm planning on having one somewhere
next year if I can't get anybody to take it I'll take it myself again.
Or if you can't make it, come join us.
Well Joe, I don't know what time it is but most of the people have left this room already
and we're almost here by ourselves right now.
Well I'll see you in tomorrow and we'll keep it going and I'll probably take some more
film and I'll take this camera along and show this to some of the Ohio people next year
at our reunion.
I hope everybody's on hand then.
Thursday, tomorrow morning at 8.15.
Tomorrow morning at 8.15 is when we board the bus.
Okay well see you in the morning then Joe.
Thanks a lot.
Yeah.
Thank you.
Okay well, click and see yourself.
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