1. A Happy New Year to you all and may good health and wealth be yours. Our dear editor, Wally Simon, is recovering rapidly and has even contributed two articles for this issue. He can walk up and down the stairs, make eggsalad sandwiches almost free of eggshells, and drive a car to Chinese class. Even the hair is growing back. Hopefully, if he keeps following his mother-in-law's advice and eating the chicken soup, he'll be back in fighting condition by Coldwars.
2. Jeff Wiltrout, son of Bob Wiltrout, both old PWrs, is going south for a year. I mean real south, as in Bolivia, South America. He's going to do a combination of teaching and missionary work. We've been teasing him about staying away from the local water, girls, and rebel bullets. He assures us that it's safe, the local beer is good, and the local girls have hairy legs. Jeff will have access to a computer, so I will publish his e-mail address as soon as I get it. Then we can send e-mail to the other side of the hemisphere. Wow! We all wish him well, and as they say in my Navy type office Jeffrey, "fair winds and following seas".
3. Back in November, Terry Sirk and yours truly spent a day wandering around Carlisle, Pennsylvania. What, you say, is a Carlisle, Pennsylvania? Well, it is a delightful (those not as politically correct as I might say scruffy) small town about thirty minutes drive west of Harrisburg. It is an old town, as we discovered, dating back to the early 18th century. Ben Franklin stayed there when he was dealing with the Indians, a pair of famous British spies, whose names escape me, were held there the first time they were caught (the second time they were shot), and even George Washington slept there someplace. Terry and I looked at the court house and the dents on the porch made by confederate cannonballs, walked about and looked for early architecture, and then headed over to Carlisle Barracks and the Army War College.
4. Which brings me to my point. Carlisle Barracks, an open base, has a terrific collection of historic military photographs. They range from American Civil War (lots of unusual local units in camp) to WWII. And the big bonus, the historian in charge is a big toy soldier collector. Tell him you collect figures, and in seconds he will pull out photos of his figure collection, tell you stories of when he was a boy collecting figures, and be your pal. Seriously, he was a good guy and if your into some serious research, he's an excellent resource (knows everyone and all the collections). Also, Carlisle Barracks has an interesting museum housed in a stone powder magazine built by Hessian prisoners of war captured at Trenton. The base started life as a magazine to store arms to be used against the French, Indians, and British, then became a cavalry training school, followed by a school for Indian children, and then an R&D center for the medics (the first medevac helicopter was tested here before WWII). There is even a late WWII, German, 88mm anti-tank gun parked out in front. Definitely a place worth a visit for a couple of hours.
5. Finally, I still need articles for this publication, so if you've got some really great ideas or even some almost great ideas, send them to me at: Fred Haub, Jr., 10211 Gary Rd, Potomac, MD, 20854, USA. My e-mail is fred_haub@navsup.navy.mil
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