Sorry about being away so long, computer crashes are so much fun. Went to fire it up & .... nothing, wouldnt startup. Checked for loose switch wires ( i`ve had that problem before), everything plugged in & seemed ok. More checking found the problem was a bad power supply. OK, off the the HP parts store website..obsolete part number. all the HP resellers..not in stock/not avail. GRRRR. Power supply from from my waaaayyy older HP parts machine didnt match up with the wiring harness. Finaly got a used Windowz 7 computer from my son, full of weird games & assorted strange programs, no anti-virus software, yadda yadda. Took awhile to get that hardrive cleaned up & setup the way i wanted it. Installed my the hard drive from my HP as a slave drive...."windows cannot access data on driveE" " "Drive needs to be reformated" " Do you want to reformat now?" NOOOOOOOOO your NOT erasing my data! more checking.. hmm only showing drive size as 32MB. That aint right, it`s 160 GB, almost a million files of family genealogies, complete town & State histories, Unit histories, thousands of pictures, 5 huge family tree files in Family Tree Maker, over 2,500 links to research websites, software & data files for my website. etc. Rechecked the jumper pin settings on the drive, should work, still wouldnt access drive. Removed the jumper pin & tried it, that worked, got access to all my data finaly. Still had problems reinstalling the programs i had, some were not compatible with Winderz 7, some couldnt pick up the backup files yadda yadda. Taking things one step at a time, i got back about 99% of the data. Still having a browser problem with Ancestry.com`s image viewer.

Anyway, i`m back!

Today while reading a copy of the Ellensburg Daily Record dated June 12, 1944 I found a very interesting (AP)news article. It featured an invasion update by General Montgomery stating that there was 7,000 Beachhead Prisoners, including Japanese soldiers that were fighting alongside the Germans in France. He went on to say that they are "Regular Soldiers-Not Observers."

I don't recall ever hearing that before now...have you? I'm glad that I decided to keep all of the newspapers I bought at the last estate sale. Back then the local newspapers included the names of every little town and village where our troops were fighting.

A woman brought a very limp duck into a veterinary surgeon. As she laid her pet on the table, the vet pulled out his stethoscope and listened to the bird's chest.

After a moment or two, the vet shook his head and sadly said, "I'm sorry, your duck, Cuddles, has passed away."

The distressed woman wailed, "Are you sure?"

"Yes, I am sure. Your duck is dead," replied the vet..

"How can you be so sure?" she protested. "I mean you haven't done any testing on him or anything. He might just be in a coma or something."

The vet turned around and left the room. He returned a few minutes later with a black Labrador Retriever. As the duck's owner looked on in amazement, the dog stood on his hind legs, put his front paws on the examination table and sniffed the duck from top to bottom. He then looked up at the vet with sad eyes and shook his head.

The vet patted the dog on the head and took it out of the room. A few

minutes later he returned with a cat. The cat jumped on the table and also delicately sniffed the duck from head to foot. The cat sat back on its haunches, shook its head, meowed softly and strolled out of the room.

The vet looked at the woman and said, "I'm sorry, but as I said, this is most definitely, 100% certifiably, a dead duck."

The vet turned to his computer terminal, hit a few keys and produced a bill, which he handed to the woman..

The duck's owner, still in shock, took the bill. "$1500!" She cried, "$1500 just to tell me my duck is dead!"

The vet shrugged, "I'm sorry. If you had just taken my word for it, the bill would have been $20, but with the Lab Report and the Cat Scan, it's now $1500."

First off would like to thank Dogdaddy for the wonderful package which arrived this week. Inside said package was a poster from Fort Leonard Wood dated, 1941

Honor Roll Defenders of the USA - Battery B - 1st Field Artillery Battalion - Fort Leonard Wood

Here's a few quick snaps I took so you could see what it looked like.

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Recently I was looking at a 1943 Ellensburg highschool yearbook that belonged to my Dad or one of his siblings. Inside it I found four loose photos of a WWII Minesweeper and it's crew. The men's names were hand written on the back but none that I would recognize. The vessel is the USS YMS-398...shown here at Subic Bay, Luzon..The Phillipines. One of these pictures is of 5 happy-faced young guys labeled: "The Jolly Five" Civilians, dated May 27, 1946. They have survived WWII in the Pacific and are finally going home...Look at those young faces!

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