The Memorial Day Parade has been canceled due to weather — though there will be a ceremony Monday.

A ceremony to honor veterans will be held at the Legion, Monday at 9 a.m.

Other events happening…

• Killington Stage Race
• Woodstock Garden Club Plant Sale
• Calvin Coolidge Historic Site – Opening Weekend
• Vermont Open Studio Weekend

Check out these and other events happening in the area.

Marsh-Billings-Rockefeller National Park hosted a snowshoeing event. Interns Amanda Anderson and Marissa Jager took a group of people on a tour of the carriage trails in the park. The tour talked about the history of the park, its founders and origins of the movement towards conservation in Woodstock, Vt.
Rick Russell Videos

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Freaky Fun
Spooky Woodstock, the Woodstock History Center’s Halloween celebration of interesting a spooky stories of Woodstock’s history.
Rick Russell Photos and Video

Watch the Video

A portion of these photo first appeared in the November 1, 2012 print edition of the Vermont Standard.

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Woodstock History Center hosted a Revolutionary War Encampment on its back lawn. The re-enactors demonstrated and discussed 18th century cooking, clothing, weaponry, and more.

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Motdel T’s in Plymouth
The Calvin Coolidge Foundation hosted many Ford Model ‘T’s on the estate recently.
Rick Russell Photos

A portion of these photo first appeared in the August 2, 2012 print edition of the Vermont Standard.

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Saturday, July,21st from noon to 5p.m. there is a self guided tour of local
historic sites (eight in all) in and around South Woodstock.
There will be a knowledgeable guide at each site and check in is at the 1848
Green Mountain Perkins Academy on Route 106 in the Village of South
Woodstock with a map and details on the other sites. This is an
interesting look at the History of South Woodstock, right in your
backyard… Spend an hour or the whole afternoon and support the
preservation efforts of the Green Mountain Perkins Academy. $15.00 per a
person or $25.00 for a family, Kids under 16.00 free. Refreshments
available at the Kedron Valley Inn at the end of the tour. Come see the
History of the Village of South Woodstock!

12:00-5:00 p.m.

Visit historic sites in South Woodstock, with GMPA board members on hand at each site as docents.

The Green Mountain Perkins Academy
Erwin Fullerton’s Collection
The Kedron Valley Inn
South Chapel
The Methodist Cemetery
Kingsley House
Moon’s Arc
Upwey Barn and the Country School

Woodstock Historical Society: History In Bloom
Blooming Pretty
The second annual History In Bloom event, which featured historic garden tours, a reception and floral exhibit and live painting, was held this weekend in Woodstock as a fundraiser for the Woodstock Historical Society, and featured gardening experts Charlie Nardozzi and Henry Homeyer.
Rick Russell Photos

A portion of these photo first appeared in the June 28,2012 print edition of the Vermont Standard.

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The Woodstock Elementary School 4th graders have spent the last nine weeks learning about local history. With the help of their teachers and some mentors from the community, and with the help of the Woodstock Historical Society, the children presented their findings Wednesday evening at the Dana House in Woodstock. They focused on the life of George Perkins Marsh, The Woodstock Inn, The Windsor County Fair, Woodstock’s Past through old photos, the Woodstock/Pomfret border, and Taftsville’s past.
Nancy Nutile-McMenmey Photos

A portion of these photo first appeared in the May 17th, 2012 print edition of the Vermont Standard.

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The 180 year old BGS, the communities most popular gathering place, will close its doors Tuesday after repeated efforts to market a more viable business operation.
Separate and apart from the general store and restaurant business, the historic building and land overlooking Silver Lake is being sold by its owner, William Twigg-Smith. One group of area residents has expressed interest in purchasing the property, but their plans are still evolving.

Store owners Carolyn DiCicco and Kim Furlong have labored for 18 years to continue the grand tradition of the BGS being an iconic community service, but are forced into moving on starting next week.

Rebuilding
West Windsor resident Steve Bodley has been working since September to restore the Bowers Covered Bridge. During Tropical Storm Irene, the bridge was lifted off its concrete and floated downstream to the Bibel’s yard on Harrington Road where it remained through September. Bodley and crew salvaged most of the bridge and moved it back upstream to Bible Hill Road. Bodley spent most of the winter hand cutting the pieces to restore the bridge back to its glory; that process began on Monday.
Nancy Nutile-McMenemy Photos

A portion of these photo first appeared in the March 22, 2012 print edition of the Vermont Standard.

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By Laura Power
Special To The Standard

Editor’s Note — This is the first of a two-part series on Vermont in the Civil War.
Even from a palliating distance of 150 years, the casualties of the United States Civil War seem unfathomable. In a grisly, protracted conflict played out in bloody, eyeball-to-eyeball battles over thousands of meadows, forests, and villages across dozens of states, more than 600,000 Americans died, and hundreds of thousands bore the indelible scars of physical wounds.
“What humbles me when I study it,” says longtime Civil War scholar Jack Anderson, Director of the Woodstock Historical Society, “is that three million men, farmers, merchants, lawyers, you name it, left their families, left their jobs for the cause they believed in, and were perfectly willing to die for it.”
Bitter divides over political, economic, and moral consequences of the slavery entrenched in southern states, and the desire of some to expand it, drove the country to war in 1861. In this sesquicentennial year of America’s most devastating conflict, the Woodstock area and Vermont offer abundant opportunities for both fledgling students and seasoned aficionados to embrace history’s lessons.
Anderson’s fascination with the Civil War developed over a number of years. He was first inspired to study history in college by a “really good” high school teacher, and later taught middle and high school social studies himself. In the early 1970s, Bruce Catton’s Pulitzer Prize winning Stillness at Appomattox hooked Anderson on the Civil War. Through years of reading, studying, and teaching, he accumulated a wealth of knowledge, and a massive library.
The discovery that three of his four great-great-grandfathers fought in the war, one with the Vermont Cavalry, and the other two with regiments in Maine and New Hampshire, deepened his interest. Anderson’s grandmother used to tell him the story of her grandfather, who was shot in the ankle at The Wilderness, a thick and tangled forest near Chancellorsville, Virginia that was the site of chaotic battles in 1863 and 1864. “Grampy’s” wound never filled in, and years later he would tell his granddaughter, ‘this is where I was shot in the Civil War,’ and allow her to put her finger in the hole left by the bullet. “When she was older and I’d sit with her in the nursing home and hold her hand,” says Anderson, “I’d look at that finger and think, that’s my connection to [well known generals] George Armstrong Custer and Alfred Pleasanton and Phil Sheridan and the Union Cavalry.”
And although Anderson has studied the war’s battles, examined its strategies, and can quote its statistics, he most loves to impart his sense of history through the human stories of the men who fought and the families and communities that supported them. Amongst many chronicles of heroism, tragedy, and destruction, a few peculiar tales stick out.
General Daniel Sickles of New York, for example, was one of the war’s quirkiest officers. Future Secretary of War Edwin Stanton represented the general-to-be when, in 1859, Sickles shot his wife’s lover dead; he was acquitted with the nation’s first successful temporary insanity defense. At President Lincoln’s initial call for volunteers to fill Union armies, Sickles recruited hundreds of men with the ambition of becoming a general. When the governor of New York refused to sanction his “brigade,” Sickles used political sway to persuade officials in Washington to federalize his troops and appoint him their commander. He was often absent from the field, and when present, was known to disobey or modify orders. During the Battle of Gettysburg, his right leg was shattered by a cannon ball. Sickles sent the amputated limb to the National Museum of Health and Medicine, where, it’s said, he visited it annually.
In one of a number of incidents along the Canadian border devised to distract Union attention, Confederate soldiers attacked St. Albans, Vermont in October of 1864. A group of twenty or so escaped prisoners of war, posing as civilians, had gathered in the town where they rested in its hotels and cased local banks, livery stables, and even the Governor’s mansion. On the 19th of that month, they corralled citizens onto the public green while they robbed three banks of over $250,000; one unlucky visitor was killed and at least one local was injured. The raiders intended to leave the town burning as they rode out, but most of their chemical “grenades” fortunately failed. They escaped across the border; many were captured by Canadian authorities, who rebuffed attempts by the United States to extradite them. After the incident, Vermont’s Governor raised two Cavalry units, a total of 1,500 men, and stationed them in St. Albans for the duration of the war.
When Abraham Lincoln was elected President of the United States in 1860, the country’s standing army amounted to only about 16,000 men. At the new President’s call for volunteers, in response to Confederate secessions and shots fired on the federal Fort Sumter in North Carolina, Vermont raised the first of its many regiments. In May of 1861, seventy-some boys and men from Pomfret, Hartford, Barnard, Woodstock, Bridgewater, Hartland and other nearby towns formed that first regiment’s Company B. After a few days’ training in Rutland, nearly 800 freshly minted soldiers departed for Fort Monroe in Virginia. All along their route, throngs of spectators reportedly cheered and lauded the men. “These giants of the hills,” wrote Vermont Adjutant-General Theodore S. Peck years later, with their “magnificent physiques” and springs of evergreen jauntily affixed to their caps “struck the hearts” of loyal Unionists. In Virginia, the soldiers constructed entrenchment ditches at their camp ten miles from the Fort. They drilled and learned the routines of life in the field. The Vermont camp, according to historian George Benedict, was “a model of cleanliness and good order.” The regiment was, he added, “an example of attention to duty, and of freedom from the habits of rowdyism and pilfering which characterized too many of the troops.”
In June, Union troops, including the Vermont men, initiated the first active land engagement of the war, in the Battle of Big Bethel. It was an endeavor fraught with error and miscalculation, and Union forces retreated without achieving their objective. The only effective assault, wrote historian Benedict, was lead by Colonel Peter Thatcher Washburn of Woodstock, who had to relinquish ground gained when he was not reinforced. Private Rueben Parker, also of Woodstock, was picked up by Confederates when he lingered to help what he thought was an injured colleague; he later proclaimed himself the first prisoner officially exchanged in the war.
A few weeks later at the close of their four-month term, the men of the First Regiment returned home to Vermont. In the meantime, the President called for more volunteers, now for three-year terms. In response, Vermonters raised five regiments to form “The First Vermont Brigade.” Ultimately, over 34,000 Vermonters served in the Civil War, and more than 5,000 died.
Woodstock supplied 284 men, says Anderson, and more came from surrounding towns. Some of their stories are included in the History Center’s summer exhibit, From Big Bethel to Appomattox: Woodstock and the Civil War. The exhibit includes, for example, the dress sword of Major Solomon Erskine Woodward. “When I look at it, I like to think of it being on [Woodward’s] hip,” says Anderson of the recent addition to the History Center’s collection, “and how traveled it was, and how it made it back [to Woodstock].” Woodward, who originally joined Vermont’s First Regiment and subsequently re-enlisted with the regular, United States army, saw action in battles at Shiloh, Murfreesboro, Chicamauga, Chattanooga, and Atlanta. Although he returned to Woodstock after the war, worked in his father’s woolen mill, got married, and fathered a child, he died at age 41 in a sanitarium. “Many men were crippled or diseased [after the war], rheumatism, arthritis, consumption were big,” says Anderson, “they went to war and bad nutrition, bad habits, sleeping on the ground…shortened their lives.”
Visitors to the exhibit can also look on the placid face of Barnard-born Sergeant George Pratt. There’s a photograph of him, in uniform, hand resting on an empty, formal chair. Anderson speculates that Pratt may have been engaged to Olivia Briggs of Woodstock; before the war he lived with her family and worked on their farm. In his first two-year term of service, Pratt’s regiment fought on many battlefields, including Antietam and Gettysburg. He re-enlisted in the winter of 1863. The following spring, “his regiment was part of the renowned ‘Upton’s Charge,’ a bloody, three day encounter in the rain,” says Anderson, “[Pratt] was killed, he never came back, he lies in an unmarked grave… beneath the sod in Virginia.” The Vermont Standard marked his passing with a single line in a list of recent casualties, “Company C, Sergeant George Pratt, Woodstock, May 10.”
The Woodstock History Center at 26 Elm is open for the summer from 1 to 5 pm on Tuesdays through Saturdays, and 11 am to 3 pm on Sundays.
For information about Civil War sesquicentennial events in Vermont, visit www.vermontcivilwar150.com/index.html.

This article first appeared in the August 11th print edition of the Vermont Standard.

In the latest event of the Calvin Coolidge Foundation’s “Coolidge Speaks” series, Middlebury College’s professor emeritus Nicholas R Clifford came to Plymouth Notch and addressed the matter of the 1927 flood and how it affected Vermont. Photo Provided By Woodstock Historical Society

By Dick Tracy
Special to the Standard
PLYMOUTH NOTCH — In the latest event of the Calvin Coolidge Foundation’s “Coolidge Speaks” series, Middlebury College’s professor emeritus Nicholas R Clifford came to Plymouth Notch and addressed the matter of the 1927 flood and how it affected Vermont.  It was in the days that followed Vermont’s most severe natural disaster that President Coolidge delivered the speech in which he declared that “Vermont is the state I love.” In 2007, Clifford, and his now deceased wife, Deborah Pickman Clifford, co-authored the book “The Troubled Roar of the Waters – Vermont in Flood and Recovery, 1927-1931.”
About the writing of that book Clifford noted that, as a life long historian with emphasis on Asian studies, his wife had to “pull him back” across the Pacific ocean to the states. But, he added, Deborah was a historian who focused largely on US history and the 19th century, so he had to pull her forward in time to the 20th century! Nevertheless, their joint effort produced a book that received many positive reviews, including one from Vermont History, which wrote, “For anyone who has written or who wants to write state-level history The Troubled Roar of the Waters is a model of success.”
In Clifford’s lively delivery, he set the stage for the flood by informing us that “rain came down in sheets” from November 2 to November 5 of 1927, with accumulations of as much as 9 inches. This followed what had been a very rainy autumn, so the ground was already sodden. With no place to go, the rain swelled rivers and streams across Vermont, eventually reaching the flood stage which led to the destruction of nearly 1300 bridges, hundreds of homes, and untold miles of highway. A reported 84 Vermonters lost their lives, including Lt. Gov. S. Hollister Jackson.
Amid the calamity there were many stories of historic rescues, but the tale of aftermath of the flood and Vermont’s recovery, is less often told. Clifford stated that Gov. John Weeks “remained very upbeat” throughout the flood and the recovery, and Vermonters “rolled up their sleeves and took it on themselves.” For his part, Coolidge was “adamantly opposed” according to Clifford, to Federal aid to states at such times. Gov. Weeks declared that “Vermont can take care of its own,” and asked the state legislature for a bond issue to raise $8.5 million. More recently, Vermont economist Arthur Wolff estimated the total damage to be in the neighborhood of $3.9 billion of today’s currency, but Clifford felt that even that number might not be inclusive of all the unseen losses suffered.
Despite Coolidge’s apparent reluctance on the matter, his Secretary of Commerce, Herbert Hoover, met with Vermont leaders on November 16, 1927 to outline a program to guide relief and reconstruction. With a year, most of the lost bridges had been rebuilt.
Clifford noted that Vermont was still a very rural state, with modern innovations having yet to reach the state. Thus, towns which already had no electricity or telephones were not disrupted to the extent that they would be today if a similar disaster was to occur. On the other hand, Clifford noted that today we would have advance warning, whereas in 1927 there was virtually none.
As they have done for each of the other published authors in the series, Woodstock’s Shiretown Books was on hand with books for sale to attendees, thus enabling all to obtain autographs from the author.

Civil War Tours in Woodstock
Marsh-Billings Rockefeller National Park hosts “Civil War Tours.” A walking tour around Woodstock pointing out landmarks, comparing period photographs to those locations today.

A portion of these photo first appeared in the August 11th print edition of the Vermont Standard.

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by Chuck Gundersen
You Never Can Tell
Our story:
Lieutenant Marshall has had a second run-in with PFC Holley. This one is over a machine gun that was left unguarded during the night. Marshall doesn’t like Holley for a number of reasons, one being that Holley has been selected Colonel’s Orderly at Guard Mount ten times, the first man in the battalion to do that, and thereby being permanently excused from guard duty. In theory, it takes a good soldier to do that, but Holley is anything but a good soldier in Lt. Marshall’s view. He tells Holley that he’s a smartass and that smartasses are not good soldiers. He wants a response from Holley. “Are smartasses good soldiers, Holley?”

Conclusion:
“No, sir.”
Lieutenant Marshall knew he was being patronized, and it galled him. This was his second run-in with PFC Holley, and he had the same feeling he’d had about the Bob Dylan episode: he should have the upper hand, but Holley, while maintaining the proper respectful demeanor, managed to simultaneously appear not to be respectful.
“You don’t mean that, do you, Holley?  You’re saying it because you think I want to hear it.”
“Yes, sir, pretty much, but I also think it’s possible that you’re right.”
“Possible?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Well, thanks for that, Holley.”
Holley, irritated at being called down, knowing that he and the squad members  were all negligent, and that they should have established a guard rotation, but also knowing that Lt. Marshall cared less about the military question here than he did about the opportunity to put PFC Holley in his place, and also aware that there was a delicate balance, chose not to say “You’re welcome, sir.” He said nothing.
“Let’s pretend we’re at guard mount, Holley. I’m the inspecting officer. I’ve inspected your weapon, it’s spotless.  I can see that your brass and your boots gleam and that you’ve got perfect military creases. Anybody can do that. Suppose I ask you some military questions.”
“Yes, sir.”
“What’s the nomenclature of the 50 caliber machine gun?”
“Browning Heavy Machine gun, 50 Caliber, M2, sir.”
“When was it first used?”
“World War I, sir.”
“How many rounds per minute does it fire?”
“520 rounds per minute, in our configuration, sir.”
“What does it weigh?”
“Eighty-four pounds, sir.”
“A flag pole is sixty feet high. If you raise the flag to half-mast, how far does the flag travel?”
“Ninety feet, sir.”
“Who’s the Secretary of the Army?”
“Stanley R. Resor, sir.”
“Who sang ‘Blue Suede Shoes?’”
“Carl Perkins, sir.”
“Oops, a little slip-up there Holley. Seems you don’t know everything after all. It was Elvis Presley.”
“No it wasn’t sir.”
“Yes it was, Holley. Sorry, but you got that one wrong.”
“No I didn’t, sir. Carl Perkins did the original version. Carl Perkins wrote the song and recorded it. His was the big hit version. Elvis did record it, but it was a cover version recorded after Perkins, and it wasn’t as good.”
Lt. Marshall looked at PFC Holley with an expression that was hard to read. Dislike was there, annoyance was there and also perhaps frustration over the fact that a minor victory — Holley’s appearing to miss the Blue Suede Shoes question — had been won and then vanished.
“I think you’re wrong, Holley,” he said, but they both knew he wasn’t.
“No, I’m not, sir.”
“Well, it doesn’t matter. the point is that you make Colonel’s Orderly by knowing crap like that. You show up at Guard Mount all polished up, which, like I said, anybody can do, and you answer questions and you get chosen as best soldier and they make you Colonel’s Orderly and you do it ten times which nobody else has done, but it doesn’t really make you a good soldier.”
“That was my point, sir.”
“What point?”
“Guard Mount is a very narrow context.”
“You’re a witty guy, aren’t you, Holley? One of those wire-haired intellectuals. You think you’re smarter than everyone else and everything will always go your way.”
PFC Holley missed the last part of that because he was taken with the phrase “wire-haired intellectuals” and wanted to be sure he remembered it for future use.
He said “Sir?”
“You think everything will always go your way, but this time it won’t.  We have to get that machine gun back to the track park and stow it in your personnel carrier. We have to be operational at all times — combat ready. So you’re going to carry it down there and stow it. It’s heavy — eighty-four pounds — as you said, and carrying it’s normally a two man job, but I carried it here last night by myself. You’re smaller than I am, but I know you can do it. So here. let me help you get it up on your shoulder.”
They picked it up together and Lieutenant Marshall helped Holley swing it up onto his shoulder. It grated immediately.
“All set?” Lt. Marshall said?
“Yes, sir.” Holley said.
“Good. Oh, let me get the door for you.”
Holley stepped through the doorway.
“Oh, Holley. Wait a minute. You know what. You’d better take it up to your armorer, what’s his name?”
Holley stopped and looked back. “Spec Four Beasley, sir.” he said, his shoulder already aching.
“Well, take it up to Beasley and have him check the serial number against his records. We need to be sure it’s the right one. Then take it back down to the track park and stow it. I know that adds a half mile or so to the trip, but we have to be sure. I have a staff meeting and then I’ll be down later to see that you’ve got it all stowed and secure.”
“Yes, sir,” Holley said. and he turned and walked away.
Lieutenant Marshall watched him walking slowly and uncomfortably under the weight of the machine gun. Before he’d gone a hundred feet, he stopped and tried to shift the position of the gun. He bent over a little trying to get some of the weight onto his back rather than just on his shoulder. Lieutenant Marshall smiled. He watched Holley until he turned onto the street that took him up toward Bravo company and disappeared behind the Motor Pool Maintenance shed, and then he turned and walked back into his office, happy.
Holley had barely turned the corner when his friend Kasko, the battalion sign painter, walking down the street toward the track park, saw him, came over to him and said “Where are you taking that? Why the hell are you carrying it by yourself?”
“Gotta take it to Beasley to have the serial number checked.”
“Jeez. Here let me give you a hand.”
He grabbed the barrel of the machine gun and helped Holley lift it off his shoulder.
Together, they carried it quite easily up to Beasley in the arms room, where it checked out fine and then they carried it on down to the track park, stowed it and had a smoke in the break area. Holley asked Kasko who sang “Blue Suede Shoes.”
“Oh man,” Kasko said. “A classic. Carl Perkins.”
Holley told him he was a wire-haired intellectual.
Lt. Marshall went to his staff meeting in a good mood.
Chuck is the owner of the Teago General Store in South Pomfret. Find more of his stories, poems and other writing, including parts one and two of this story, at www.chuckgundersen.com.

This article first appeared in the July 21st print edition of the Vermont Standard.
Parts 1 and 2 ran consecutively July 8th, July 14 editions.

The Calvin Coolidge Memorial Foundation held its Annual Dinner Saturday night July 30 and the keynote speaker was The Honorable Justice Stephen G. Breyer, Associate Justice of the Supreme Court. Justice Breyer was also promoting his new book “Making Our Democracy Work: A Judge’s View”.
Nancy Nutile-McMenemy Photos

You Never Can Tell
by Chuck Gundersen
The story so far:
Lieutenant Marshall has discovered a lone personnel carrier in the track park at 3 AM on  a morning when the battalion has moved out for an alert exercise. A machine gun, left unguarded,  is mounted on top. He climbs up, removes the machine gun, takes it to his office and later that day, calls the driver of the personnel carrier, PFC Holley, in to dress him down for leaving the machine gun unguarded. Lt. Marshall is delighted to be able to call PFC Holley in for this dereliction of duty. Among other things, Lt. Marshall says that it’s a good thing he wasn’t a Russian when he found that machine gun. PFC Holley agrees and says that’s true, “you might get shot.” They both know that Holley is not the man who should have been called in. Sergeant Miller, the Squad Leader, should have been called in, but Marshall has called Holley in because he and Holley know each other from an incident several moths earlier, in which Holley angered Marshall — deliberately, in Marshall’s view — and Lt. Marshall does not like PFC Holley.

It was like this: Spec 4 Cameron, the driver of “Big Bad Butch,” the squad’s personnel carrier, had completed his tour of duty and had rotated back to the States. PFC Holley, trained as a 106 MM Recoilless Rifle gunner, and having been for a period of time the Battalion Courts and Boards Clerk, and having driven “Big Bad Butch” once, for a distance of about fifty feet, on a training exercise a year earlier, naturally was assigned to be the new driver.
Before long, Holley became comfortable driving “Big Bad Butch.” He’d learned Butch’s characteristics and his foibles, and they’d become a team. Holley decided it was time for a new name.  Since they were in “B” Company, the name had to begin with “B.” Holley painted over “Big Bad Butch,” and stenciled in “Bob Dylan.”
“Bob Dye-lan,” Holley’s squad leader, Sergeant Miller, said. “Who’s that?”
“A folk singer,” Holley said. Sergeant Miller shrugged.
Lt. Marshall, from Charlie Company, wandered over from Charlie Company’s row of personnel carriers in the track park a couple of days later, to see if there was really a track named Bob Dylan in Bravo Company.  He objected; said there was not going to be a track in the Second Battalion of the 54th Infantry named after a greasy pacifist and that he would take it up with Holley’s platoon leader, Lt. Tolliver.
The next day, Lt. Tolliver, who didn’t seemed as upset as Lt Marshall, told Holley the name had to go. Holley painted over the “ylan” and left it “Bob D.” Lt. Marshall objected. Holley painted out the “D.” Lt. Marshall objected. He painted out the second “b,” and left it “Bo.” Lt. Marshall objected, said Holley was just trying to get away with something.
PFC Holley thought about it, and since he already had the “Bo,” wondered what name he could make out of it.   “Bobby Darin?” “Bo Diddley?” “Bonehead?” That last one almost got stenciled on, but then he thought of one more: “Botulism.”  He stenciled it on. Lt. Marshall said “Botulism? What the hell, Holley?” Holley said it was food poisoning. Lt. Marshall said he knew that. Holley said it was deadly, a real killer, a good name for an armored personnel carrier. Lt. Marshall said he was tired of Holley’s little game, tired of his smartass ways and tired of being jerked around. He said that Holley was going to drop and do fifty pushups and after he finished doing the fifty pushups—to Lt. Marshall’s count—he was going to paint “Botulism” out and come up with a name that started with “B” and the second letter could not be “o.”
He named it “Bubbles,” and by this time word had gotten around. Half the guys in the battalion wandered by to look at it, and many of them seemed to have found reason to be nearby when Lt. Marshall came to see it. Lt. Marshall was livid; said it was a fairy name and he wouldn’t have it. This time Holley knew that he’d pushed the Lieutenant about as far as he could get away with.  There was talk of insubordination, although Holley wondered if that could be proven. He was just a dumb PFC trying to come up with an acceptable name that started with “B” for his personnel carrier.
Still, better to be safe than sorry. He painted out “Bubbles” and stenciled in “Blood and Guts.” That was acceptable. Lt. Marshall may have won, technically, but he and Holley both knew that Holley’s goal, once Marshall’s objection to the name Bob Dylan was established, was simply to annoy Marshall, and at that he’d succeeded very well.
So when Lt Marshall discovered the machine gun unguarded on a personnel carrier named Blood and Guts, he didn’t really care who the ranking member of the squad might be, he knew exactly who he was going to call down.
Back to Lt. Marshall’s office:
“Might get shot? What do you mean by that?”
“Well, it’s obvious, sir. A Russian wandering around on a US Army post carrying an American machine gun he took off a personnel carrier might get shot.”
“Yeah, yeah, except I’m not.”
“Good thing.”
“Anyway, that’s not the point, Holley.”
“I thought it was, sir.”
“That I might have been shot?”
“That you might have been a Russian.”
“That’s right. That’s the point.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And now that you bring it up, Holley, if I was a Russian, one of you guys, whoever was supposed to be on guard, should have shot me. Maybe you. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”
“No, I wouldn’t, sir.”
“You wouldn’t?”
“No, sir.”
LIeutenant Marshall looked at PFC Holley speculatively for a moment and then said “I understand that you’ve been Colonel’s Orderly ten times.”
“Yes, sir.”
“First man in the battalion to do that.”
“Yes, sir. That’s what I was told.”
“It’s a lot of work to be chosen Colonel’s Orderly, isn’t it? A lot of spit polishing boots, polishing brass, cleaning your rifle, memorizing the general orders, the chain of command, military history, random military information; maintaining a military bearing at inspection.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Doesn’t seem like your style, Holley.”
“No, sir.”
“So why would you go to all that trouble?”
“Well, sir. If you get chosen as Colonel’s Orderly at Guard Mount, you get excused from Guard Duty that night. If you get chosen ten times, you get excused permanently.”
“I know.  So that means that ten different times at Guard Mount, you’ve been chosen as best soldier, and you’ve been made Colonel’s Orderly.”
“Yes sir.”
“And since you’ve been Colonel’s Orderly ten times and you’re the first man in the Battalion to do it, that means that, technically, you’re the best soldier in the Battalion. Do you think anybody believes that?”
“I don’t know, sir.”
“Do you believe it?”
“Maybe not, sir.”
“Maybe?”
“Well, guard mount is a very narrow context, sir.”
“Guard Mount is a very narrow context. Jeez. Holley? You’re a smartass. Good soldiers are not smartasses.”
That didn’t seem to require a response, so Holley said nothing.
“Are they, Holley?”
To be continued…
Chuck is the owner of the Teago General Store in South Pomfret. Find more of his stories, poems and other writing, including the first part of this story, at www.chuckgundersen.com.

This article first appeared in the July 14th print edition of the Vermont Standard.

Lieutenant Marshall pointed at the 50 caliber machine gun leaning against the wall in the corner of his office and said “You know what that is, Holley?”
“Yes, sir,” PFC Holley said. “It’s a 50 caliber machine gun.”
“Very good,” he said. “Do you recognize it?”
Holley had just said that he recognized it, so the question mystified him.
‘Well,” he said. “Sure, I recognize that it’s a 50 caliber machine gun.”
“Yeah, but it’s not just any 50 caliber machine gun.” Lt. Marshall said. “It’s a special one. You know what makes it special?
PFC Holley couldn’t see anything about it that made it different from any other 50 caliber machine gun.
“No, sir.”
“It’s yours, Holley, that’s what’s special about it. And it’s here in my office.”
“It’s mine? Sir?”
Lt. Marshall leaned back in his chair and folded his hands across his stomach in a self-satisfied way.
“That’s right, Holley, it’s yours. If you go check, you’ll find that your 50 Caliber machine gun is not where it belongs. It’s missing. You know why?”
“Because it’s here?”
“Yup, it’s here.”
“Why is it here?”
“Why is it here, Sir.”
“Why is it here, Sir?”
Lieutenant Marshall smiled and  settled back more comfortably in his chair.
“I was hoping you’d ask that, Holley, because there’s an interesting little story there. You want to hear it?”
It was clear that Holley was going to hear the story. It was also clear that he probably was not going to come out well in the story, but he was curious. Why would Lieutenant Marshall have the machine gun off his personnel carrier? Lieutenant Marshall began the story:
“You may remember that we had an alert last night.”
Of course Holley remembered. They had alerts periodically. He hated them. Everyone hated them.  An alert meant that either we were suddenly at war with the Russians or that we were being tested to see if we were ready to go to war with the Russians. War with the Russians apparently never started at two in the afternoon. War with the Russians always started at about two in the morning. We’d be sound asleep, peacefully asleep and somebody would burst into the room shouting “Alert! Alert!” and roust us all out of bed. The new guys would jump up in a panic. The rest of us would drag ourselves out of bed in foul moods, cursing Seventh Army or Brigade or whoever had called this alert — we knew it was only a drill.  We’d get dressed, grab our field gear, run down to the arms room, check our weapons out and head down to the track park. Then we’d fire up the personnel carriers — 12 ton behemoths called “tracks,” in G.I. jargon  because they had tracks instead of wheels— and convoy out to our alert position which was somewhere near the Czech border, and be there to repel the Russian invasion. When we’d all got to our positions and set everything up, we’d get a cursory inspection by some officer from Brigade and then after a while we’d get word to stand down and return to post. No Russian invasion after all. We would return and it would be a new day and we’d face it with our night’s sleep all shot to hell.
“Yes, sir. I remember.”
“Well, a funny thing, Holley. I was assigned to stay behind as security, so I was doing my rounds and when I got to the track park I found your track all by itself, just sitting there in the moonlight. I knew it was yours, Holley, because I remembered the name: ‘Blood and Guts.’ That’s what you finally named it, isn’t that right?”
“That’s right, Sir”
“Why was it there?”
“No motor, sir.”
“No motor?”
“No. The mechanics pulled it out. They’re going to put a new one in, but right now there’s no motor, so Captain  Dutton said the squad should stay with the track. So that’s what we did.”
“That’s what we did, Sir.”
“That’s what we did, Sir.”
“You stayed with the track?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Inside the track?”
“Yes, Sir.”
“So, I would say that it’s safe to assume that when I came into the track park at 3:15 this morning and saw your track there by itself and this 50 caliber machine gun mounted on top, that you were all inside the track.”
“I guess so, Sir.”
“And when I climbed up on the track and stood on top of it, you were all inside.”
“I would have to say yes, Sir.”
“And when I unmounted the machine gun and climbed down off the track with it, you were all inside?”
“Uh, yes, Sir.”
“And when I walked off with that 50 caliber machine gun, you were all inside.”
“Yes, Sir.’
“And no one heard me.”
“I didn’t, Sir.”
“Apparently no one else did either.”
“Apparently not.”
“Apparently not, Sir.”
“Apparently not, Sir.”
“You know what I think?”
“Sir?”
“I think you were all asleep.”
Well of course they were asleep. It was three o’clock in the morning. And of course they should have set up a guard rotation, which Holley could see was the crux of the matter here, although he wasn’t quite sure what that had to do with him. He wasn’t the squad leader. Sergeant Miller was the squad leader and, in fact, Sergeant Miller had brought up the issue of a guard, but before the discussion got too far, they’d all dozed off.  They’d slept peacefully until they heard the rest of the battalion rumbling down the Zollnerstrasse returning from the alert.  When all the tracks were parked where they belonged, in perfectly aligned military ranks and files and all the gas tanks were topped off and logs filled out, they gathered up their stuff and returned to the barracks to stow their gear. An hour or so later an orderly tracked Holley down and told him to report to Lieutenant Marshall’s office.  
Lieutenant Marshall and PFC Holley both knew that Sergeant Miller was the one who should have been called in, but they both also knew that Marshall didn’t like Holley, and that’s why he was skipping over the chain of command. This wasn’t really about a machine gun, it was about Bob Dylan.
To be continued…
Chuck is the owner of the Teago General Store in South Pomfret. Find more of his stories, poems and other writing at www.chuckgundersen.com

This article first appeared in the July 8th print edition of the Vermont Standard.

By Margaret Edwards
Special To The Standard
BARNARD — In 2009, soon after Lillian Wuttke De Giacomo finished packing up in Barnard, where she had lived for 27 years, to move to Cavendish, Vermont, to be near her son, she began to contemplate a book project that she had been putting off for too many years.  During the move, she was careful to transfer a precious and important box—a box filled with material that she had saved from the early years of her first marriage. 
The box held many original sketches on flimsy pieces of paper, some typewritten notes, and a faded photograph.  All were tragic mementos from her first husband’s four years spent as a Japanese prisoner of war. Just after Bill Wuttke had been liberated and had returned home, he described to his wife and family in some detail what he had been through during the war.  “But,” Lillian says, “after that, he put his experiences behind him and never mentioned them.  He didn’t want to dwell on them.  Like so many others, he wanted to occupy himself for the rest of his life with family and good times.”
Bill and Lillian became the parents of six children: five boys and a girl.  They lived first on Long Island, later in Pennsylvania, and eventually in Iowa.  In Des Moines, Bill died of cancer at the age of 59 in 1977.  Even as his end drew near, he did not speak of the contents of the box.  “Yet I knew what these things meant to him,” Lillian says.  “And I knew they had been packed away with good reason.  We never forgot what the war had been for him—and for me.  But we both felt thankful.  We just wanted to concentrate on the here and now, and to enjoy our happiness.”
In 1941, shortly before Bill became a soldier, he had married his sweetheart Lillian Wark. They were newlyweds and deeply in love when Bill was drafted.  He spent a few weeks at Camp Upton at Yaphank, NY.  Then he was moved to Fort Belvoir in Virginia.  The newlyweds were writing often and making plans to see each other.  So it was a great surprise to Lillian to have her young husband, who was stationed where she was welcome to go visit him, be very suddenly gone.  “We had no chance to say good-bye,” Lillian remembers.  “It was as if he had vanished.  And no one would tell me anything.”
Ten days went by before Bill was allowed to send a letter from California saying that he and his unit had been taken by railroad to the West coast.  They were soon to be on a ship bound for the Philippines.  Later, after he had arrived at Camp Stotsenburg, he wrote letters telling how he and his buddies were clearing jungle to build air fields.  The USA wasn’t yet at war but was preparing for the worst.  Then came December 7, 1941—Pearl Harbor—and war on Japan was declared.  That’s when all communication from Lillian’s husband ceased. 
There was complete silence.  Lillian knew only what the newspapers reported, and she learned to her horror of the US surrender in the Philippines.  The Japanese had overtaken the Americans there.   Lillian still shudders at the memory. “No one knew where Bill was, and no one could tell me what had become of him or his unit.  Bill and I were the type to write letters often.”   Having no word from him made her fear the worst.  “But then I reasoned that there had been no official announcement of his death.  So where was he?” 
While his wife agonized with worry, Bill as a captive was being moved, along with his fellow soldiers, from the Bataan peninsula to Camp O’Donnell.  This was a terrible ordeal, infamous in later accounts as the Bataan Death March.  Many soldiers died of disease and wounds, or were executed, and Bill’s survival seemed to him a miracle.  Also miraculous was Bill’s endurance of the next move, from Camp O’Donnell to Cabanatuan, and then the ordeal of being herded on into China, to Mukden, Manchuria.  Bill always credited his deep Christian faith and his fierce love of the wife he’d left behind as the two reasons he had hung on when others fell. 
The sketches that Bill made during his imprisonment, sketches of life at the camp, are a combination of many individual cartoons with a few realistic drawings.  They had to be finished quickly, and he took a great risk in creating and hiding them.  Together they compose a graphic account of the life of a typical private held prisoner.  Bill’s ability to draw had fit him for duty in the prison’s drafting department in a munitions factory.  In that drafting room, he was able to scrounge precious scraps of paper.  The drawing job itself saved him from the sort of back-breaking labor which, given the meager prison rations, tended to starve others to death. 
Lillian always knew that Bill’s sketches would be of value to historians, and early in the year 2010 she began to organize them and write captions for them, as well as to compose the story of Bill’s ordeal.  He, himself, had not left a written manuscript behind.
In August of 2010 came the completion and publication of Just One More Day, which is subtitled: “My Life As Prisoner of War #1475 As Lived and Pictured by William C. Wuttke, Sr.”  And now, on Saturday, July 9th, 2011, at 10:30 a.m., on the 2nd floor mezzanine of Woodstock’s Norman Williams Public Library, the book’s editor and guiding spirit, Lillian Wuttke De Giacomo, will make sure that future generations have local access to her husband’s account.  She will be making a public presentation of three copies of the limited edition, donating one to the Woodstock Historical Society, another to the Barnard Historical Society, and a third to the Library itself.
To the gathered public, Lillian will read from the book, show its illustrations, and answer questions.  Surely this presentation, which is being sponsored by the Woodstock Learning Collaborative (The Learning Lab), will fascinate anyone who has an interest in the history of World War II.  It may also delight romantics who still believe that love can conquer all.  Admission is free.

This article first appeared in the July 8th print edition of the Vermont Standard.

By Christopher Bartlett
Special To The Standard

Do Just One Thing…
Show respect for our heritage by living as our forebears did – using things until they wear out, repairing things that break, and recycling whatever we can.

Happy birthday, Woodstock. But as the celebrations subside, might we ask what you have achieved in your 250 years?
Quite a lot, it turns out. But sadly, much of it is not widely known or celebrated. So in this space, we’d like to recognize the legacy of one of Woodstock’s quietly influential sons. Join us in celebrating George Perkins Marsh, the man who made our town the birthplace of conservationism in the United States.
Marsh was an extraordinary individual, a true Renaissance man. During his lifetime, he was a lawyer, a politician, a farmer, a banker, an architect, a manufacturer, a diplomat, and a naturalist. He was reputed to be fluent in 20 languages, and served as the US ambassador to Turkey and Italy.
But his most enduring contribution was the publication of Man and Nature in 1864, a book that his biographer, David Lowenthal described as “next to Darwin’s On the Origin of Species…the most influential text of its time.”

Image From Wikimedia Commons
Born in Woodstock in 1801, George Perkins Marsh was the author of Man and Nature, a pioneering work in environmentalism published in 1864. His lifelong efforts to ensure responsible environmental stewardship made Woodstock the birthplace of the conservation movement.

Man and Nature was written in the years Marsh spent in the Mediterranean region where he saw first-hand the environmental degradation caused by extensive deforestation. It made him recall the widespread destruction of forest land he had witnessed in his native Vermont, and led him to despair “wherever [man] plants his foot, harmonies of nature are turned into discord.”
While his contemporaries, the lyrical transcendentalists Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau were celebrating the notion that the human spirit was elevated through contact with nature, Marsh was giving voice to a more practical view. He appreciated and supported the preservationists, but also emphasized the need for responsible environmental stewardship. Indeed, he believed that the preservation of wild nature and the stewardship of natural resources were complementary and mutually supportive environmental views.
So how relevant is George Perkins Marsh to life in Woodstock today? Beyond having his name on the National Park that hugs our town in its green embrace, what influence does he have on our day-to-day life? The answer is, quite a lot.
You cannot live in Woodstock without being conscious of the stunning beauty of our natural landscape. It was Marsh who ensured that those surroundings would retain the grandeur with which he fell in love a century and a half ago. And today, that beautiful natural setting is a major asset that draws visitors from all over the country and the world.
So as Woodstock residents, we find ourselves as keepers of a rich legacy. And in an era when the protection of our environment has become a widespread societal concern, Woodstock has an opportunity to claim its heritage as the birthplace of conservationism. In doing so, we can become a prime destination for those who seek places of natural beauty and communities that respect and care for those beautiful environments.
In short, we have an opportunity to become a beacon of environmentalism and the model of sustainable living that will build on the Marsh tradition and carry it well into the 21st century. By our 260th birthday, might Woodstock be widely recognized as the greenest historic town in the United States? George Perkins Marsh would certainly hope so.
For more information, call us at 457-2911, email us at spm@sustainablewoodstock.com visit us online at www.sustainablewoodstock.org or follow us on Facebook.

This article first appeared in the July 14th print edition of the Vermont Standard.

by Bob Kelly
Woodstock: 60 Years Ago

This picture was taken in the 1940’s at Chick Wells’ service station on the corner of Central and High Streets. Those were the days when your gas was pumped for you, your oil was checked and windshield washed and gas was about 18 cents a gallon. And air for your tires was also free. Try getting any of those things today and you’ll be sent to the funny farm. To the best of my memory Chick was the only employee so it was him that pumped the gas and checked the oil. I notice there is a Woodstock Taxi sign over the door. I think that was Fred Doubleday’s taxi because that’s the only one I remember in Woodstock. We used to hang out some at the garage and bought our five-cent cokes from the dispensing machine. Chick and his wife and son lived over the garage. Don Perkins and Richard Ward, my buddies, lived in the neighborhood. Across the street was the fire station and next-door was Mooney’s one pump gas station. Perhaps someone can identify the make and year of the two cars in the picture.
Just to the right of the gas station was a restaurant owned by Mr. Davis. I remember sitting at the lunch counter, when in walked James Cagney. For those who don’t know who James Cagney was, he was a leading Hollywood actor. I got his autograph but it is nowhere to be found. In those days famous people could walk around without photographers hounding them.
Woodstock’s police department consisted of one full time officer, Chief Krupinsky, and four deputies, Elton Cook, Gordon Fish, Ray Langhans and Ed Leonard. The department was formed in April of 1948. I graduated in June of that year so I guess town officials felt they needed a police force with me on the loose. I’m sorry to see Byron Kelly leaving his position as police chief after 18 years. I find it hard to believe but understand that Byron was not even involved in picking a new Chief. Sounds like something they would do in Washington, not Woodstock. I guess politicians are the same everywhere.
Bob Kelly 192 Governors Lane, Shelburne, VT 05482 (802) 985-9555. bobkelly8@comcast.net

This article first appeared in the July 14th print edition of the Vermont Standard.