Museum Exhibits Veterans' Battlefield Memorabilia

NEAL CONAN, host:

There's a new feature on our blog where we've been asking visitors to Blog of the Nation to tell us the buzz at their dinner table or water cooler. It's called the Talk of Your Nation. And this week, we got a very interesting entry.

Johnny Israelson(ph) writes, I'm a first-generation veteran who feels obligated to pass on my war trophies and/or photos to somebody. My memorabilia is the form of Saddam's business cards, journal entries, mortar rounds, flags, pieces of military equipment that were destroyed in combat and video footage of cute kids and ignorant soldiers. Will they have a value other than emotion? Should they, I would love to pass on my opinion and my objects.

Well, we'll have an answer for him in just a moment, but there are probably a lot of veterans listening now with similar collections of medals and memorabilia. What one object do you have that tells a story: 800-989-8255. E-mail: talk@npr.org. You already know that blog address: npr.org/blogofthenation.

Joining us now is Bill Brewster, curator of collections at the Wisconsin Veterans Museum, with us today from WHA, Wisconsin Public Radio, in Madison. Nice to have you on the program.

Mr. BILL BREWSTER (Curator of Collections, Wisconsin Veterans Museum): Thank you very much, Neal.

CONAN: So what kinds of things do you - have veterans contributed to you over the past few years?

Mr. BREWSTER: Well, it's very typical for veterans to approach museum usually with their dress uniforms. That's first and foremost in a veteran or a family member's mind as to what museum might be interested in: it's decorative, it's good-looking, it has ribbons and patches on it. And so that's usually what they'll bring in. And that is not usually what we're interested in, though. We're far more interested in the personal items, combat items, field uniforms that the service person might have used while they were actually in a combat or in the field. And so we will usually take a donation that's initially offered and turn it around. So, well, we're, you know, really not interested in that dress uniform as much, but these other pieces which the veteran or the family may have but just didn't think a museum might be interested in.

CONAN: Didn't think they were museum worthy because they're…

Mr. BREWSTER: Exactly.

CONAN: …these personal objects we're telling about that do tell stories as opposed, well, if you know how to read those campaign ribbons, they tell a story, too, but most of us don't.

Mr. BREWSTER: Absolutely. And that's very true. And we, our museum, the Wisconsin Veterans Museum, does display dress uniforms. They absolutely serve a purpose for us in exhibit. And as you said, the ribbons and different unit insignia tell a story. But we want to get at a deeper story very often and so we will supplement and/or build complete exhibits around the field uniforms and equipment and personal items that a service person brings home.

CONAN: But I wonder, is there an object you've received for the past couple of years that would, you know, just be sort of an emblem in your mind of the kinds of those personal items that you would really prefer?

Mr. BREWSTER: Well, that - you know, it's interesting. I get asked very often what my favorite object in the museum is, and more often than not what I'll say is everything. I cannot be selective. But I will tell you that we have an exhibit up currently called "In the Belly of the Dragon," which is on the I Corps experience of service persons in Vietnam.

And we pursued a particular Wisconsin veteran, a fellow named Ray Stubbe, who was a Naval chaplain serving with the Marines at Khe Sanh. And there's actually a pretty famous photo by photojournalist Dick Swanson of Ray Stubbe doing a service at Khe Sanh. And there's his service set with the crucifix there. And we - when we were preparing to do this exhibit, we contacted Ray and it turned out he still had that cross and was more than willing to donate it to the museum for use in this exhibit.

And as it turned out along with that cross, Reverend Stubbe had saved over 400 other objects from his Vietnam tour. So there, along with that cross, came a wealth of material including his combat boots that he wore at Khe Sanh that were still caked with the red mud that attached itself to the boots while he was serving.

CONAN: Anybody who remembers anything about that battle, the red mud certainly played a very large part of it. Of course, I Corps, up in the northern part of South Vietnam.

Our guest is Bill Brewster. He's the curator of collection for the Wisconsin Veterans Museum. You're listening to TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News.

And let's see we can get a caller on the line. And this is Kurt(ph) Kurt with us from Eugene, Oregon.

KURT (Caller): Hi. Yeah. You know, my dad had given me - well, he'd sent us a series of about six to a dozen audiotapes when he was in Vietnam. I was pretty young at the time, but I had a chance to listen to them again a couple of years ago and actually have them transcribed and considered trying to do a repository of, you know, battle area audiotapes of which is too much of a task for me at the time. But that's probably one of the biggest objects as it was that I have from my dad's life. He's still with us, but it's really a treasure and a way looking through his life in a time when I had no access to it really.

CONAN: And I wonder, after he passes, will you keep that material in your family or would you look to donate it to a museum?

KURT: Well, you know, we wanted to kind of start something like that and because we couldn't - I probably would. I mean, I'd at least keep a dub of them, but absolutely, I think it's really valuable to hear especially considering the fact that, you know, you hear all the horror stories from Vietnam but what you don't hear is the fact that guys like my dad who went through their service there relatively unharmed and so forth. And in addition to the banality of evil, there's also the banality of good. His tapes were all about how nothing was wrong and everything was fine and, you know?

(Soundbite of laughter)

CONAN: I wonder, Bill Brewster, is that the kind of material that you would welcome at your museum in Wisconsin?

Mr. BREWSTER: Well, absolutely, Neal. That is very much the type of material we'll pursue. We, of course, are Wisconsin Veterans Museum, so we're dedicated specifically to collecting materials from Wisconsin veterans, but other states do have state historical societies usually with archival components. And an audiotape, reel-to-reel or cassette would be considered an archival material along with letters and photographs and scrapbooks.

We do have an archival component, and you pursue that type of material - and Vietnam was a unique conflict in that it was the first time that you had the use of audiotapes for recording and sending messages home. And I also might add that it's not uncommon, as I'm sure you know, in letters and also in those tapes that the cruelty of war is not presented to the family members. It's the desire of the veterans very often to insulate the folks at home from what they're really experiencing and seeing.

KURT: And I wanted to say quickly also that I believe it's Texas Tech who has a Vietnam center that has a big climate-controlled archive for video and audiotapes.

CONAN: All right, Kurt, thanks very much for that. Appreciate it.

KURT: You're welcome.

CONAN: Bye-bye. Let's see if we can get another caller on the line. And this will be Jack(ph), Jack with us from San Jose in California.

JACK (Caller): Yes. Good afternoon, gentlemen. I served 22 years in the U.S. Army, most of my time spent with the 2nd to 75th Rangers. And I carried my father's model 1911 Colt 45 pistol that he carried under the beaches of Normandy and then through France until he was wounded and shipped back to the States.

My wife has been getting after me to consider getting rid of that. And I'm just wondering about what is the legality - in California, I mean, you need to go through, you know, quite a few hoops to transfer a weapon. If I wanted to do - if I wanted to submit that as a donation to either a local veteran's museum or something like that, what's the protocol for talking about doing that?

CONAN: I'd first think that Bill Brewster would prefer if you just move to Wisconsin first.

(Soundbite of laughter)

CONAN: Go ahead, Bill.

Mr. BREWSTER: Yeah, that's a unique piece, and it's not an uncommon story to have a personal side arm passed down through family, generation to generation. My grandfather who served in the World War I and World War II passed his 1911 along to my uncle when he served as an officer in Marine Corps.

Those laws are really local in nature when it comes to side arms, and that's what you're going to have to look at. I believe that if you approach a local institution or even a state institution if that indeed is something that they would collect, that there would not really be a problem with it. It become more of an issue if you were going to ship it to a national organization, say the D-Day Museum in New Orleans - you know, then you'd have to look at transportation issues. But that's still something that they can work with.

So with a personal side arm though, I don't think you're going to have a lot of problems that where we encounter issues is it wasn't uncommon for World War II veterans to bring home automatic weapons.

CONAN: That's another problem altogether.

Mr. BREWSTER: That's a whole different issue.

CONAN: Jack, we hope you find a home for your father's 45.

JACK: All right. Thank you very much.

CONAN: Appreciate it. Thanks very much for the call.

And Bill Brewster, thanks for your time today.

Mr. BREWSTER: My pleasure.

CONAN: Bill Brewster, curator of collections at the Wisconsin Veterans Museum, with us today from WHA, our member station in Madison, that's Wisconsin Public Radio.

Tomorrow at SCIENCE FRIDAY, Ira Flatow will be here. Anthony Brooks will be in this chair all next week. I'll see you later. This is NPR News. I'm Neal Conan.

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