This was really a great field trip. I was impressed with what they had to say and teach the kids (and us adults). The Veterans Museum was founded by some Civil War Vets as they wanted to preserve the history of the war they just fought in. Then as our state sent soldiers into other wars - they became a part of Wisconsin history and the museum. Only about 20% of the artifacts are even on display. Much of the collection is in the archive storage - it isn't just about room to display it all but that the items are better preserved if they are not exposed to the light. Our tour had two parts to it: first was a talk with the curator of the museum that explained about the archives and how they preserve them, the second part of the tour was a guided tour of the exhibits with explanations of the wars since the Civil War.
He has some fascinating details on some of the artifacts. Much of what he showed us had to do with communications between soldiers and their families during war time. One of the letters from the Civil War show how the soldier tried to conserve paper by writing on both sides of the paper and he wrote across the paper one way - then turned it and wrote over his writing in another direction. It made it very hard to read but he did conserve paper. He showed us V-mail that was used in WWII - in order to save space on the mail transports that were also transporting supplies - the government copied the letters and then sent just the rolls of film over - it took up less space. At the other end, they then made a copy of the letter. It was really kind of neat. The only time V-mail was ever used was during WWII.
No comments:
Post a Comment