My Interests

[Custermen]

Marion,

I registered but I don't think I introduced myself. Then I began a topic but it timed me out before I posted it.

 

Anyway, I met Marion thru our interest in the II Corps and the Italian Campaign. For 5 years, I've been compiling info on the Italian Campaign into my website, that includes stories, photos and trivial bits of info. It is sorta like a giant note pad to help me remember what I've read.

 

I also started collecting books on the Italian Campaign to help research the units that fought there. Now, I've got a pretty good library but am always looking for more books, especially those related to other countries that were in Italy. I'm also interested in Militaria and have an assortment of uniforms and hats and pins, etc. A long time ago, I picked up a British cap badge at a gun show. That eventually turned into a pursuit to collect more and now I have at least 85 cap badges from British & Canadian regiments.

 

Gotta go, now.

Steve

(Hey! I can edit my post.)

[Custermen]

What I was going to say before my original post was timed-out was to tell a little about mybackground.

 

I am from the flat-Delta lands of Mississippi. In college, I enrolled in ROTC and went into the Air Force as an Aerospace Engineer. Since they paid for my college, I owed them 4 years but got out 3 months early. Then I moved to Fort Worth and worked for Bell Helicopter and broke helo parts for a few years. Then I got bored and moved down the street to a landing gear company where I was a design stress engineer. After our Stealth Fighter program was cancelled, I was hired by FedEx as an expert in landing gears. That is all I do here---landing gear this and landing gear that.

That did bring me and my family back to Memphis and close old boy-hood home and family.

 

I got interested in American Civil War and especially the battles in Mississippi and Tennessee----trying to refute the ole tale that 90% of the battles were in Virginia. I became frustrated with my research in the Civil War and turned my primary focus on the WW2 History of the Italian Campaign.

I'm not sure what the drive is behind this but I really love it. Like so many areas of military history, most books omit any mention of the Italian Campaign, especially the days after the fall of Rome. This totally erases the events which my Dad and his division participated in.

 

I started posting info about my Dad's artillery battalion on the internet about 5 years ago. Then I would add things as I came across it. If I learned a new fact that I didn't want to forget, I would throw it on one page or another. And the thing has grown. My webpage construction skills are limited. Initially I wanted to keep it simple because so many people didn't have the Mega computers to download exotic webpages. Maybe one of these days I will upgrade it.

 

That is a little about me.

 

Oh, my name. In some of my readings, "Custermen" was used to refer to the men of the 85th "Custer" Division. I don't use "CustermAn"---that might imply that I was in the 85th. So my name is dedicated to all the men who served in Italy in the 85th Division.

 

Steve

[Walt's Daughter]

Great background there Steve. May I say again how nice it was to meet you on the Internet last year and I'm glad that we have become friends and colleagues. You have helped me in my research and I you and I have exchanged info with each other several times since last summer.

 

Your site is a superb source of information and it is evident how much work you put into it and continue to do so to this day. I hope the others visiting my site will take the time to stop and peruse yours in the near future.

 

Thank you for your contributions and I look forward to seeing you here at VI Corps.

 

Your buddy, M