Postscript:Camp Miles Standish

Camp Miles Standish closed the year of Alveda and Ziggy's marriage: 1946. 

It was decommissioned January 11th  and it  closed in one day.

All of the civilian workers were laid off in that one day.
There was a brief span of time when Taunton officials tried to get the Camp
 to be the location of the newly founded United Nations.

 That, as we know, did not work out.

                                                              The Echoes of Legacy

The over a million and a half service American and Allied men and women passing 

through the Camp were from :

17th Field Artillery Brigade

20th Fighter Groud

26th Infantry Division

29th Transport Squadron

34th Tank Battalion

372nd Military Police Company

395th Infantry Regiment

452d Bombardment Squadron (medium)

361st Fighter Squadron

49th Troop Carrier Squadron

501st Infantry Regiment

555th Signal Aircraft

57th Fighter Group

5th Ranger Battalion

68th Armor Regiment

70th Infantry Division

95th Infantry Division

99th Bombardment Wing

III Corps

30th Cavalry Reconnaissance Troop

167th  Engineer Combat Battalion

                                     A little spot in Taunton  played a pivotal role in WWII.





   To memorialize those from Taunton who made the ultimate sacrifice in the war an Honor Roll was placed was erected and for years had pride of place on Taunton Green.  The dedication was photographed by Alveda and here is that photograph.... date unknown.  That little boy looks familiar.....

For $1 in 1953, the state purchased the Camp, and on Oct. 26th of that year, former presidential candidate and Governor of Illinois, Adlai Stevenson, with  other dignitaries
 and Governor Paul Dever of Massachusetts  presided at the dedication of

The Paul Dever School for  Disabled Youth. A crowd of over 5,000 was present.
 The School was built at a cost of $10, 200,000.
 Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Becall were also present, remembers one of our readers who was there.
In  2002  due to changes in state policies, Paul Dever was finally closed and now its shuttered remains have joined those left by the Camp.

In 1973, the City of Taunton purchased 700 acres of the old Camp area to establish
the Miles Standish Industrial Park.

.......

Acknowledgements:  Sources:

*Wikopedia:  Camp Miles Standish

*Archives of Alveda and Zigmund Napieralski as shared by their daughter Shelley Au

*70th Infantry Division Association website: History and Remembrances of 

*Jim Koller- Remembrances of Camp Miles Standish- 64 Years Later
http://www.trailblazersww2.org/units_276_accounts_jkoller2.htm

*Archives: Taunton Daily Gazette online:
http://www.tauntongazette.com/news/x872933419/PRISONERS-IN-TAUNTON-Dr-Hanna-to-tell-story-of-WWII-POWs-at-Camp-Myles-Standish

http://www.tauntongazette.com/news/x1831798596/Overflow-crowd-turns-out-to-hear-history-of-Camp-Myles-Standish
History Of Camp Miles Standish and Prisoner of War Experience 1943-1946 review
of presentation by Dr. William Hanna, Taunton Historian and author History of Taunton.
Many of Dr. Hanna's quotes were used in these posts.

*The Taunton Public Library, Reference Department.


....................

Coming: interim posts as I prepare for the telling of The Origins of the people of the Village.
Welcome to any and all who wish to help with their family history in this regard,

V FOR VICTORY !

Ziggy was wounded in France suffering from shrapnel wounds and burns on both ankles.  The scarring and pain would stay with him he whole life. Who knows what memories were also embedded in his mind: he never spoke of them.  He had that in common with

 many veterans of that global catastrophe.

Finally, the war in Europe ended.  Paris was liberated and Ziggy was there with his unit.  This photograph is the inspiration for this entire series of blog posts.  It is incredible.  I wish I could enlarge it more.  Ziggy is in the bottom row, fifth from the right.  He wears a pensive expression. Many of the faces we see here are as serious and thoughtful as he, perhaps reflecting
on the heavy cost paid to get to this moment.

The war ended in Europe in 1945.  In 1946, Ziggy and Alveda were married in Taunton at St. Anthony's Church.  They could now start their new life together and would not be apart again until they each passed on and were united for eternity.

  

We are so very fortunate to have been able to piece together this story.  As we know, we are losing WWII veterans rapidly each day, and often their stories are lost with them.  It is an honor to consign this one to where it will not be forgotten. 

 Thank you, Aunt Alveda and Uncle Ziggy, for this history and personal memory trip.  I hope that we have done it justice.

A deep appreciation goes out out to my cousin Shelley, their daughter, and to
my late cousin, her brother Barry for keeping this collection safe.

  Thank you, Shelley, you have done your family proud!

                                                                      .................
 


Postscript: next post will finish the Camp Myles Standish saga and acknowledge my other sources.

OUR WARTIME SAGA CONTINUES

If  it were not for Ziggy and Alveda's faithful writing and their enclosed photos, we would have no record of what transpired with Ziggy's military sojourn.  Somehow, a large amount of WWII army records were lost in a 1976 fire, Ziggy's included.  Hopefully, government agencies are more careful today with archival storage of these precious records. 

There are probably more records of the Civil War!

But, we do have these precious documents.
Bless those little Brownie cameras on
both sides of the Atlantic.

Ziggy started out at Fort Devens in Massachusetts from Buffalo, New York, was sent
on to Camp Miles Standish to ready for embarkation, where he met Alveda.

His first stop after that, as we know, was Iceland.
While in Iceland, Ziggy apparently witnessed a viewing of the British
and American troops by Winston Churchill.  

Ziggy himself dates this photograph 1943.

This is pretty interesting as the only time I could find (on Google) that Churchill 

was in neutral Iceland was in 1941 when he met FDR on a yacht moored nearby. 

 So Ziggy might have had a jump on historians.....or not.

Ziggy's orders found him next in France as he followed his WWII destiny.  

Here he is with a bunch of guys, some of whom had served with him in Iceland.
 Ziggy notes that those fellows are marked with an X.

This is such a precious photograph.
 Wouldn't it be wonderful if someone recognized a loved one?

Did all of them return.....?   This is for sure in France where  Ziggy would be wounded by shrapnel fire in both ankles, suffering severe burns.  We do not know any other details: just the fact that the pain and scars bothered him his whole life.  He must have recouperated enough because, as we shall see, he stayed over there with his outfit.

......................

The writing across the sea continued and there is little doubt that Ziggy shared the photos of his lovely sweetheart with his mates.  Here is Alveda (left)  with a good friend on the front stoop of the Souza home on School Street sending him a warm smile of home and hope for better days.

Meanwhile, Camp Miles Standish now included a German and Italian prisoner of war camp. Once Italy was out of the war, Italian prisoners were allowed a bit more more freedom and could leave the camp on their own to visit Italian families in the Taunton area.
They still required passes.  Taunton historian, Dr.William Hanna relates that some of the Italian soldiers would skip out under the fence
on their own and change in someone's car.  It seems that that was so common,
" Taunton buses would stop at the gate and then at two holes in the fence."
They could even be seen walking around the downtown area.
 Germans were kept confined under 24 hour guard and were marched to meals.
Only a few of them were allowed, under guard,
 to work somewhere in the Weir, as there was a wartime
shortage of workers.

 A friend tells me her mother forbade her to wave to any of the prisoners.

Sorry if photo off kilter...

                            Note: I plan to acknowledge all my sources at the end of this series

The Camp continued to play a big part in the Village and Taunton social scene.
Another friend relaated that three of her sisters met their future husbands there,
where they were part of the U.S.O.

  The children in the Village knew the camp,too, another Village alumni tells us, since the army trucks traveling from the Camp would lumber down Purchase Street.  No one knew where they were going, but the kids would rush to the corner of Wilbur and Purchase so that the soldiers could wave to them.