It’s not often that weapons other than guns and knives come up for sale at the auction houses I go to. But recently, a medieval-looking item found its way to one of the tables. I…
Artifacts of pain and suffering
Posted in Military
Category: Military
A slave freed to join the Union army
Posted in Black history, Civil War, and Military
Bill Fox slid the slightly faded and folded document carefully from the clean white envelope with my name on the front. He was just as excited as me about what we had before us. It was…
I immediately made my way to the glass counter to look for the letter. I wanted to see this document written in the hand of a black Union soldier to his wife in May 1864.…
I had walked past that spot several times, but had never glanced to my right or left to see the headstone. If I had, I would’ve remembered it from two weeks ago. Even then, it…
Soldiers and their keepsakes from war
Posted in Ephemera/Paper/Documents, Military, and Photos
I was reading a story in my local newspaper this morning about a soldier’s experiences in World War II. It had been written by a columnist whose family had sent him correspondence that this soldier-cousin had…
A sailor’s story
Posted in Military
A certain solemnity seemed to have settled over the military memorabilia laid out on the auction table. These were once some man’s treasures – photos and a sailor’s log from his travels, his garrison caps,…
I was flipping through some GE Show ‘N Tell records and filmstrips from 1964 that I got at auction, putting aside the Disneys and fairy tales and cartoons. Then I started seeing some serious stuff: Indian…