Weaponry

Michelle: Do you have any other weapons?

Colonel: I have a 22, I gave the 9 to the museum. The 9 millimeter. I have one unusual one. As you grip it, your fingers are normally on the trigger in an encasement. This one has a section ahead of that so that you can draw it further in. It’s the only one I’ve ever seen. It has some function, I don’t remember what it was. It wouldn’t be to throw out the shell. I’ll get Bill to bring it next time you’re home, it’ll be here.

When I was doing target shooting in Penn State, it was with a 45 frame, but 22 caliber. 45 is expensive ammunition. And so for target shooting on a 45 frame, they chamber it for 22 caliber shells. The 45 I have is the real thing, but for most range firing they use 22. The Germans made 9 millimeter popular.

The strange one though. I brought that one home because I thought it was usual and I had never seen it before!

[Pete pulls up some photos of guns on his phone to try and figure out which it is – no luck though, but the following description is as follows]

Yeah, I brought that one back from overseas. Its like a double gripe, in front of the normal one. The magazine is in the handle. It had a guard over your trigger finger. Magazine in the stock. It comes out in front of the trigger guard. Its unusual. I’ve never seen one like it. 

22-Year-Old 2nd Lieutenants War-Bound

Eugene. My college roommate. In 1941, he came by my parents home in Valley Forge, we sat up all night in the summer of ’41. Two 22 year-old kids. Knew more about what was happening in the world then anyone else. And at daybreak, we concluded, there was a war coming and we were going to go in ahead of everyone else.

Called Fort Meade. And they were happy to hear from two 2^nd Lieutenants. They said, “Come on down! Right away!” “Well we’ve been up all night, so how about tomorrow?” “Okay, come in tomorrow”. So we went in tomorrow, and they interviewed us. At the conclusion of the interview, they said to Eugene “Lt. Forquer, we’ll take you today. Lt. Busch you have to wait 60 days, you’re doing Engineering work for the War Department, they have priority on you for 60 days and they won’t release you for 60 days. So we can’t take you for 60 days.” So Eugene and I talked and talked and talked. Ya know, we were two kids, we were going to go in together, and all that things. We decided that Eugene would go, and I would have to stay. And I would catch up with him! This is the attitude of a 22 year-old kid! And the bad news of course, is that we were both infantry. Eugene went to the Philippines, was on the Bataan March and died on a prison ship on the way to Japan. Horrible death. 

This story has already been published earlier in the blog. This is retold at a separate time.

Meeting the Brides Family

Michelle: Do you remember when Colonel met your brothers, Sara?

[At the same time]

Sara: I think maybe they were in Iran.

Colonel: OH YEAH.

Michelle: Was it intimidating?

Colonel: Oh no, no, no, not before we were married.

Michelle: You met her brothers after you were married?!

Colonel: After we got married. See there was a war going on! They were all away at war.

Michelle: Andrew and James?

Colonel: Yeah. Andrew was in the Figi Islands. And James was flying out of that Attu. The island off of Alaska.  United States has a military base there.

Pete: Is that the farthest one in the Aleutians?

Colonel: Yep, yep. That’s where they flew over Japan, from there. Over the Korean chain of islands.

Colonel: I had one sister [Ruth] and when the war was over, she and Bill Heistler [spelling?] were married. The marriage took place in the Valley Forge Baptist Church in 1949. My father had died of cancer in August and the wedding delayed until fall because of his illness and so on. Then it was an October wedding but Sara and I were attendants with Ruth and Bill and a picture was taken of the four of us in this Baptist Church. Ruth and Bill had two children – Tracy and Glenn. Tracy had three children and one of them is being married next month. Bill, he is doing graduate studies at Stanford or Cal or one of them, I can’t remember, Chemical Engineering.

But he’s getting married and Tracy, his mother, asked me if I had any pictures of Ruth and Bill or others of an earlier period of time which  - she didn’t ask just me, she asked a lot of people – which they can put on display at the reception. So I can’t look very well, but BethAnn went through all of our old pictures. And she came out with an 8.5x11 picture taken in October 1949 of Bill, and Ruth, and Sara, and me. And you know, I mean, how we were dressed. It was different! Then today! But that will be the hit of the reception, when people look at that picture. I didn’t make a copy of it, but I mailed it to Tracy. If she mails it back, I will show you. If not, then I left it with them. Its more valuable to them. 

Marsh Creek State Park Preliminary Investigation

At the time, I was here with the Soil Conservation Service before I went to the Midwest. I did the PI on Marsh Creek. Preliminary Investigation. In other words, there had been flooding downstream from Marsh Creek. They filed an application with the federal government under the provisions of public law 566 for assistance in building a flood control dam up there. 

And so, I was the senior officer here, so I had the responsibility of carrying out the PI – the Preliminary Investigation – which means you made an assessment of the damages downtown, 50 years torn, after it reaches a given height, because the water hasn’t been controlled. 

And then you made a preliminary assessment of the cost of building a dam and how far, how much property you would have to condemn, and all that, it’s a preliminary thing. I was scheduled to go to Indiana, but they wouldn’t let me go until I completed this PI. I got it all done, it was favorable. It had a favorable cost benefit ratio. And so at that point, I left and went to Indiana and they went into the formal design work, construction and everything. 

Of course I’ve been back to see Marsh Creek, but it was basically the same thing we anticipated it would be when we made the PI. It was, frankly it was, I don’t want to say it was easy, but the benefits. 

Root Beer and Sarsaparilla

Colonel: My father would bring be back when the place was called Cedar Hollow and he would do his business there. It was a little country store and he would buy me a bottle of sarsaparilla. And I would sit there, a little 10 year-old kid, while they were doing business, drinking my sarsaparilla. But it never became popular until occasionally it could be found, here and there.

Michelle: Didn’t your mother make it as well?

Colonel: Not the sarsaparilla, she made root beer.

Sara: I think everyone made root beer! My brothers did!

Michelle: I didn’t know that! Was it carbonated?

Colonel: Yeah, it was with yeast. “east” you pronounce it “east” but it is Y-E-A-S-T. And you would put that in it, put it out in the sun to ferment, cap it tight, and then take it in and let it sit for three days and then it was carbonated. Now, let’s have a root beer float!