On Monday, May 25, the World War 2 Guys took part in the second annual Memorial Day ceremony hosted by Bill Williams and Patriotic Productions. Once again, the members of our group proudly portrayed a group of local heroes from Omaha and the surrounding heartland who died in the service of our nation. Portrayals from our group included Donnie as Private William Orr who was killed in the Philippine Insurrection in 1899, Rhys as Corporal Russell Hughes who was killed in France in 1918, Cody as Private First Class Anthony Mancuso who was killed in Italy in 1945, Matt as Captain Gordon Shotwell who was killed in Germany in 1945, Don as Private First Class Norman Rosenblatt who was killed in Korea in 1950, Eric as Lieutenant William Roark who was shot down over North Vietnam in 1965, and a representative as Sergeant Lonnie "Calvin" Allen, Jr. who was killed in Iraq in 2006. We marched in to the presentation portion of the program in a new features called "The Walk" which was visually pretty impressive. And of course we all loaded up on pancakes and coffee which is a big draw for this event. We can't thank Bill enough for his inclusion of our group in such an important ceremony to remember all of our fallen on this very special day.

The weekend of May 2-3 saw the World War 2 Guys participate in our first ever "Spring" Timeline Weekend. Working with Superintendent Jason Grof as our coordinator, we were able to do a slightly smaller scale version of our big September Timeline which is a favorite unit event. For this event we had Donnie representing the 507th PIR during its training period in Alliance, Nebraska. Dom was representing the 507th PIR in Normandy wearing the iconic M42 Jump Suit. Eric was representing the U.S. Marine Corps in Korea at the 1951 Battle of the Punchbowl. Rhys was representing the 173rd Airborne Brigade in Vietnam. Once again Joe brought out his excellent 5th Special Force Group impression for Vietnam. And to round out our group, Davan was representing the 82nd Airborne in the early 2000's. The weather was fantastic the entire weekend with sunny skies and light breezes. We took part in the 3:00 afternoon whiskey ration on Saturday and were invited to the reenactors' supper in the early evening. We gathered around the big tent at sunset to talk about all things history and the day's events. Sunday saw fewer visitors to the fort but our group still had a fun time hanging out and talking history. We're already excited to get back to the fort in September for the much larger Fall Timeline!