Smith and Jackson Military Antiques

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Hi, Tom. I'm Barry Smith and this is Michelle Jackson. And together we are Smith & Jackson Military Antiques and Firearms. We've been here about eight and a half years. And when I say here, I mean the Millville Executive Airport in Millville, New Jersey. This airport was built in 1941 specifically for defense. It's actually Millville's first defense airport. Leon Henderson, who was

Roosevelt's price administrator during World War II. He was going to be from Milva, the department of road. He was influential in having the airport air base, I should say, military air base base here in Milva. So 1941, August of 41, the airport opened. There was a big celebration back then. And all that would happen was December the 7th, 1941, Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. This base was truly the

influential, well I should say really important to protect us from any attack of the Germans by air. Now it seems a long way away but the Germans definitely were working on coming to the U .S. The type of fighter plane that they used here was a P -47 Thunderbolt and well it had a massive engine on it and they trained here. This was an advanced fighter training base. Pilots who came here

had already received previous splinter training, but when you came here, you learned gunnery. In other words, how to shoot planes down, how to attack trains, ships, vehicles, and that kind of thing. So when you left Millville, you were ready for combat. As you can see, we have a lot of mannequins in here. We name all of our mannequins, by the way. One of our good friends who passed away about five years ago now was from Greenwich, New Jersey.

And we call him Private Robert Brooks Jackson. And I happened to bring his actual uniform here today. So I hope to show that in the, in the tape a little longer. cool. Very interesting. So this is a typical GI from world war II. And you can see that he brought back a few souvenirs, the treasured German Luger. And he's got what's called the Knights cross and the iron cross too, as a souvenir.

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At his waistband? Yes. Gotcha.

What's his, what's his rifle? That is an, it's a reproduction of an M1 Garand or a lot of people like to pronounce it Garand rifle. That's really, in my opinion, the rifle that won the war for us in world war II. Germans had a bolt action rifle, meaning that every time they fired around, they had to take the bolt, pull it back, put another bullet in, pull the bolt forward and re -aim. So it took a lot of time.

Well, the Garanda had eight rounds in it and they could fire eight rounds one right after another. There's a lot of interesting things in this case. A lot of this stuff came into our shop since we've opened eight and a half years ago. And there's a whole mishmash of items in here. Great helmet here from the Vietnam War. It's called a short timer helmet cover on it. He was counting the days.

that he was over in Vietnam. And it looks like he actually made it home.

And a German world war two air force helmet here, German world war two police helmet. Since we're on the topic of German items, a lot of people get the wrong idea about collecting German items because of the Nazis. Well, these are simply war souvenirs that were brought back by veterans. Nothing more. I've been collecting for 50 years. It's hard to believe, but I have never met anybody who's a neo Nazi.

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who collects this stuff, only historians. Here we have a Japanese officer's sword and it happened to be named, and I have a friend in Japan, Shoichi Kamosada, and he researched the tag and it actually belonged to a Japanese general. that's amazing. Yeah, it's my great piece. Japanese World War II helmet.

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World War II German motorcycle helmet. That's a wild design. Yeah, it is.

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And we're not only a military collectible shop, but we're also a gun shop. So you're going to see a lot of war souvenirs and a lot of firearms. The bottom, you have a lot of World War II German daggers.

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Here we have the uniform of, I forget his rank now, there's his rank on there. Captain, Captain David Cunningham. He's still alive. He lives down in Florida. He was a helicopter pilot during the Vietnam war. And we're really lucky to get his uniform, complete uniform. In fact, I need to give him a call. We talked to him last year. Last year for a long time. He's a very, very nice guy. That's his whole stuff. You might find this painting really interesting too.

This is the crossing of the Rhine River in Germany. Is it February or March? I think March. I'll say March, 1945. But this is an actual photograph a friend of ours painted for us. And you can see the fear on the guy's faces. And our friend Marcos Montero did a really fantastic job of capturing the photo. What's interesting is that the soldier in the foreground,

His face was completely washed out of the original photo. So we gave Marcos an original World War II American helmet and uniform and he took a picture of the son wearing the items and he planted him in the photo, in the painting. that's cool.

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Ooh, potato masher! Yeah, well you're good, you know what that is.

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And this is a uniform and cap that belonged to my dad, Edward Mickey Smith. He died four years ago. Unfortunately, we collected together for 46 of those years of the 50 years I've been collecting. And, I always told my dad, he had the most important job on the ship. You want to take a guess? He was cooking. He was the cook. Yeah. And he served aboard the USS Macon, which was a heavy cruiser.

He was really, really proud of the service.

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I'm not familiar with the making. Give me a brief history on the making itself. The only thing that I know is it was involved in the Suez crisis. And I don't know what year that was, 56, something like that.

But it was a World War II ship, definitely a World War II ship that was made into razor blades eventually. This is our Japanese World War II mannequin. Most of this stuff is original. Some of it isn't. But one time, I think I looked in a hat that we have here, had a name in it. So I wrote to my friend again, Shuichi in Japan, and he said the name...

and it was Goemon Nakano. So we call him Private Goemon Nakano.

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And here we have a Marine Corps soldier. This came from I Goldberg. Many of you may have heard of I Goldberg, which was in Philadelphia for God, I don't know how many years, a hundred years, but it folded up, I think in 2019. We were lucky enough to get the call to come and buy some of their stuff and bought a lot of their figurines, which the one like the one you saw out front. this guy we call Otto because Michelle's father was a Marine.

And she was born in Camp Lejeune, by the way. And her father's name was Otto Becker. He was very proud of his Marine Corps service. Even the big GI Joe is from Michael. The GI Joe came from there.

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That's a scary dude. And I'll tell you what, if he stands up straight, he's probably pushing seven foot. He's a big boy. Speaking of big boys, we got an eye Goldberg effort. Renate wouldn't want to pull the pin with your mouth.

Wow. Now you'd need a winch to pull the pin. Yeah.

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We got our German mannequin. I think we named him Hans. This is our German World War II soldier. Call him Hans. And this is just as a German soldier would have appeared in 1939 during the invasion of Poland and 1940 during the invasion of France.

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See helmet, dog tag here. This is an Iron Cross second class for an act of bravery in the field. Kind of equivalent to our Bronze Star. A German potato masher. They're called a potato masher because they look like one, but they're actually a grenade. Potato masher, grenade. Ammunition pouches.

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And he's wearing a K -98 rifle on his back too. It's amazing how much equipment that they carry on them. If you want to take a look at this. How many pounds of equipment would that be altogether for this fella? This mess kit, this gas mask, canteen and a rifle. I would imagine with the rifle included, you're talking 75 to 100 pounds, mate. Wow. Out of gear. And these are gas mask canisters?

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This is probably our best showcase here showing items that Michelle and I have picked up in the last eight and a half years in this shop mainly. We get calls too from all over the place. People want to sell their collection so we go on runs all the time. And so some of that stuff is what you'll see here. Mainly in here you're going to see German World War II war souvenirs but there's a little bit of everything in there. Italian.

World War II pith helmet. Was just going to ask what that fancy fancy helmet was. yeah. The Italians didn't mess around. No. It had been used in North Africa. Usually the army with the best uniforms loses the war. I think that's funny and fair. So you have several German caps at the top here. And you have a World War I...

Here, yeah, let's go ahead and get behind the glass. We're one German... wow! It's called a Pickelhaube, which means in German a spiked helmet. So you have a spike at the top. Sure. You can't really do anything. Like in the cartoons when we were growing up. Yeah. Wow. And so, what were the various, unis and who was wearing these? These helmets here, hats here? Yeah. This is an Army enlisted man's visor cap.

very fancy for an enlisted man. Wow. The white piping that you see here, I call this piping, that is for infantry. If it were red, it would be for artillery. Gotcha. Here we have a political leader's visor cap. It's a low -level political leader. This is for an SS soldier who, you know, they were the elite of the German Army.

And the bad guys as well, as I'm sure you've heard.

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Here we have a World War I US Medics helmet.

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three German Army helmets. This one's camouflaged. The Germans were big on camouflage. And this one even has a little bit of shrapnel damage to it. I was gonna say somebody had a bad day with that helmet. Or a lucky day. Right.

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that's an interesting firearm. Yeah, that's called a broom handle Mauser because the... Is it because the... is that a... What am I looking at? A stock there? Yeah, it's a stock that goes with it, yeah. It's a broom handle Mauser and...

The gun actually fits into the stock. It fits in and you can use it as a shoulder.

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I was excited.

That's a pistol that turns into a rifle.

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There's a lot of other interesting things in here. German World War II armbands. There's a belt and buckle for an army officer.

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I was just going to say that's right out of Indiana Jones. This is particularly interesting. It's the only German World War II award that had the soldier's or airman's name on it. This one was given to Unteroffizier, which means Sergeant Adolf Hossang. These were presented by Hermann Göring, who was the chief of the Luftwaffe, and given out.

for multiple missions or fighter pilots could get these for multiple kills.

They came in a case too. About 7 ,000, I believe, of these were awarded. They're beautiful.

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and a lot of World War II German daggers, pistols.

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You've got a couple versions of Luger there, it looks like to me. 1911 is a US 45. There's a P38, a German Luger. Okay, the P38 is what I got wrong. Yeah, the P38 has replaced grips on there. Normally it would have wood grips or plastic bakeable grips. After the war, a lot of American soldiers would take these to places. There was a place in Paris, I heard, to have them nickel plated. You can see this was nickel plated and he had special grips made for it with his...

Initials on it that I write down who that belonged to Ralph Phillips, we actually met the daughter right? Yeah. Yeah. Wow, that's cool And I imagine that's where a lot of this German memorabilia comes from it's like as people pass or Need to consolidate things as they move or a parent passes like who else are they gonna call it? They're gonna You're gonna pop up at the top of the list. I'll

It's yeah a good ecosystem for you to always have sources of stuff and also a way for families to make sure that heirlooms Things that grandpa or great -grandpa brought back from the war find a home where somebody cares for them. That's really cool. Yeah, that's what we're here for. Well said. A lot of collectors buy a lot of stuff for like Barry. Man, those Italians can make a helmet, huh?

Wouldn't do a whole lot if you got hit with anything now it's just very lightweight. is it? Yeah it's very light.

okay. It's like a hard -core board. Another thing I love to collect are World War II U .S. medals. And among my favorite, probably my absolute favorite, are Purple Hearts. Purple Heart was awarded, well, the first ones were awarded, they weren't a medal actually, but during the Revolutionary War. Washington instituted a patch and...

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not until I think it was 1929 they instituted the Purple Heart. So a lot of World War I veterans got the Purple Heart for being in World War I. During World War II, they made a hell of a lot of these because they were given out for people who were wounded or killed in action. And the first one I have here is for Joseph T. Biggs. My dad and I got this one.

I don't know how many years ago, 40 years ago, but Joseph T. Biggs was from Bridgestone, New Jersey. And he wasn't killed in action. Usually a Purple Heart is only engraved on the back if the soldier were killed in action. But sometimes when the soldiers got back, their unit would put the information on the back of the Purple Heart. I don't know if you can see it very clearly. It's kind of faint. Yeah.

that gives his name and his specific unit. no, that I can... Here, I'll... If you...

I can get.

there we go. Kinda.

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there we go.

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Joseph T. Biggs, junior 26th infantry, first division. The first division was known as the big red one and they landed on Omaha beach on D -Day.

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Then we have another Purple Heart for Private First Class Mitchell A. Kamensky. He was from Bridgton and I actually knew one of his family members and that's how I was able to acquire this Purple Heart. But he was killed in a B -24 bomber on July 11, 1944 over the Netherlands after a raid on Munich, Germany.

and you can see that this purpleheart is officially engraved on the back. It's kind of small as well, but...

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July Kaminski.

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So you got Purple Hearts for two Bridgestone men, one who gave his life. Well, thank you. I appreciate you making the effort to bring out some historical Bridgestone stuff for us.

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And I do think it's cool that, you know, these families have somewhere like instead of things getting lost in the shuffle, they know you're going to take care of it. You're going to, you know, give it a place of honor and maybe even get it a new home of honor. Yeah. Believe me, private collectors take care of this stuff better than many people, including museums. This is a piece I think you'll find really interesting.

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The Army Weekly.

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I bought this piece back in 1989 from a Bridgestone veteran, John Shaw. He was at Nuremberg at the end of the war. Hitler held all of his so -called party rallies at Nuremberg up until the beginning of the war. Once the war started in 1939, it discontinued the party rallies. But on top of...

the area where Hitler spoke, there was a big giant swastika that capped the stadium. And at the end of the war, members of the 7th Army wound up going into Nuremberg and they placed explosives on top of the swastika or below the swastika.

There's actual footage of this being blown up. You could look it up on YouTube. Nuremberg swastika being blown up. What's really cool is John Shaw was actually there and he brought back a piece of the swastika.

Years ago I got this book, booklet about Nuremberg, and it talks about exactly, called the stadium, and it talks about the swastika itself. It says the whole complex was crowned by a copper gold -plated swastika within a laurel wreath. And there you have it, it's copper and gold -plated. Wow. That's rough when you're...

when your enemy's blowing your trophies to pieces and taking them home as their own. To a lot of people that would be a piece of junk, but as you can see, I document everything that I get right from a veteran or a veteran's family. No, that's, that's, I think it's, you know, we're sticking it to sticking it to the Nazis, frankly. Blow it up and take it home. That's it. Yeah. This is...

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When I actually acquired it from him, you can see that was a long time ago. John Shaw handed me the piece of the swastika. I also collect photos of that, of the swastika on top of the Nuremberg Stadium. Wow, interesting.

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It's like in Band of Brothers The big thing was everybody wanted to get a Luger. Sure. It was probably the... In fact, I shouldn't say probably. It was the number one souvenir for GIs to get. They had a lot of value back then. The guys were paying $200 for them back then when they were only getting, I don't know how much, a month, $40. Yep. Yeah, I was just gonna say.

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Michelle, you wanna be out here for Jacks and stuff?

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Let me just look through this room.

That's a great shot. Look at that. That's a great shot.

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So behind us... Yes, sir. So behind us we have the World War II Eisenhower jacket, or Ike jacket as they were called, of our very good friend Robert Brooks Jackson. He was from Green Village, which is up in North Jersey, and he enlisted in the Army right after Pearl Harbor. And he was a true American hero.

and really a great guy. He died just shy of 99, so I think he's been gone now for five years. Five years. Yeah. But he was a real combat soldier and one of the funniest men I ever met in my life. Here's a picture of Bob before he went into the service, well just as he entered the service.

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His daughter put this together and gave me a copy of it.

Bob was one of my absolute best friends.

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She covered his complete history. In fact, the first time that Michelle met Bob, she asked him, where does the Kohanzi River go? Is it Kohanzi or Kohanzig? Kohanzig. Kohanzi River. And Bob said, France, Japan, Germany, wherever you want to go. Here's a picture of him in his later life. And he has a burger from Jim's lunch.

And of course, a Glastown Brewery right next door. I still think that Bob probably was the oldest person who ever had a beer for the Glastown Brewery Company. He was always in his 90s then. Good for him. We took Bob to a reenactment at Fort State Park. It was the Germans and the Americans and that's, he loved it, you can see. As you can see, he was using a walker and I asked one of the German reenactors if they'd surrender. Yeah. That's great.

Still got it. He had a sense of humor. That made us die. Yeah.

he went back to France. And he landed on D -Day, it appears. No, he did. He was in the 45th Infantry Division. He actually started in Africa, went to Sicily, from Sicily to Salerno, Italy, and then he worked his way up in Italy. He was in the 45th Division, which was called the Thunderbird Division.

There were a lot of Native Americans who were in this particular division and Bob was friendly with a lot of them. Bob got wounded and he was hit by shrapnel in the back in Italy and members of the 442nd Infantry, or I should say Regimental Combat Team, they were the Japanese -American unit, the most highly decorated unit of World War II. A lot of them settled in Seabrook after the war.

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Of course, that was going to be my follow -up question. I was going to try and sound smart. But yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Very interesting. So after he was wounded, guys from the 442nd picked up Bob and took him to a field hospital. And then, after he recovered, he was, like during the Battle of the Bulge, it wasn't quite the Battle of the Bulge, but it was still at the same time, January of 1945.

Bob was captured in a small village called Wingin -sur -Moder. I don't know if I'm pronouncing that right in French. But he was captured by SS troops. And a lot of soldiers will say, I was captured by SS men. And they were just captured by the regular army. Bob really was captured by the SS. For three days, he was held in the church with, we are guessing, about 90 other guys. They didn't have much to eat at all.

They only had a couple cans of peaches. I think he told me a little bit of water. All the while, there's shells blasting through the church. And one day, well, three days later, the doors busted open, and it was Americans. Do we have a picture of that church with the... Yeah, that might be in here, too. Right before the Germans were going to go in and shoot all the Americans, the Americans shot the Germans at the door going in, ready to... They were very lucky to live.

Here's the church. Here it is right here. Yeah, so see the dead Germans they were going into. Bob said they were coming to shoot the Americans and they were saved last minute when the door opened and they shot all the guys around, Germans around the church. Here's the pew and Bob went back there in 2011 and sat in the exact pew that he sat in in January of 1945.

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Wow, that's very interesting. He went on to the end of the war and he wound up in Munich, Germany and actually was one of the people who went to Dachau concentration camp which is located right outside of Munich. One of my favorite stories to tell about Bob is at the end of the war, he didn't have access to a lot of information but once you got into occupied Germany, there were plenty of radios around. So he...

went into an old couple's home and he took their radio and he took it back to his barrack or wherever he was staying and he said, you know, he'd listened to the radio that night and then his conscience got the better of him. He says, what the hell did I do? So he took the radio back to the old couple and when he gave it to them, they'd be all, both were crying. That's, I mean,

Seems forgivable to me. Like you've got that guy in warrior mode one minute doing all sorts of hell or high water stuff. Yeah, I mean I can see where it's a little bit of work to go from mode A back to normal, sort of civilized, I shouldn't take your radio mode, which is very different than battle mode. I'm not going to pick on a guy too much for that. Especially, like I said, he had just been in Doc -Hell concentration camp. Yeah.

They were blaming all the Germans, but I always admired him for giving that radio back.

Now it's good to keep your conscience for sure. And he was a, that's a local family? Well he was from Newark, Jersey, but he lived in Greenwich. That's where I met him. okay. And I knew him for about 25 years and he was a great guy. He was really, really funny.

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He walked into a liquor store in Salem one day when he was coming back from the daughters in Blue Bell, Pennsylvania. And there's two liquor stores there and they both have bars on the windows. So he wanted to make a hit and run and get a bottle of booze. I forget what type of booze it was. And he walked in there. There was a German Shepherd that was in attack mode, barking and trying to jump over the counter. So Bob said, I took that bottle of booze, put it on the counter, paid for it and got out of there.

I'm not feeding anybody's dog. That was Bob Jackson. He was so funny, really. He's a big guy. He's a big guy. He looks like a big guy in those pics. Yeah. All right, let me show you. Okay.

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Here we have one of the most significant items that ever walked into our shop. This uniform, which is from the GAR, which is the Grand Army of the Republic, it was the veterans organization for the Union Army after the Civil War. These items belonged to a man named William Jackaway. He was from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He was quite a guy. He was a fireman and he fought in multiple battles during the Civil War.

Oddly enough, he was never wounded. He's a big guy, like you, Tom. We figure he had to be at least 6 '3", or something like that. The way that we know that, not only from some of the photos that we have, but also the size of this uniform. Michelle will demonstrate how tall he was in a minute when we show you the pants. But we have his GAR kepi, and this would have been on his ammo box, a breastplate for his ammo box.

This is a GAR medal that he got after the Civil War. And this is an infantry bugle that would have been on the top of his original cap that he would have worn at Gettysburg. These two pieces definitely were at Gettysburg. What's interesting is that during Gettysburg, Jackoway was at the Bloody Angle, which you have to know your Civil War history, but you should read up on it if you don't know about that. But that's where the

During Pickett's Charge, that's where they breached the Union lines, and they actually did for a short distance, but the 72nd Pennsylvania was there, and if they couldn't fire their rifles, they were using their rifle butts as clubs. And Jackoway was one of the people who actually did that. Now what's really interesting too about Jackoway is that he was Philadelphia's oldest living Civil War veteran, and he lived to be...

almost a hundred and four. Let me see. No, he was a hundred. Yeah, a hundred and three. But you got to love this because in 1940 when he turned a hundred, he challenged Adolf Hitler to a fight. He said he'd fight him anytime, any style, anywhere. And he called the German Fuhrer a big bag of wind. And isn't that amazing to have a Gettysburg veteran challenge Hitler to a fight? That is amazing. And

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In this photo of Jack away, this is the exact keppy that you're seeing right here in the exact GAR uniform.

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Wow. That's the medal to the right of the image. Yep, that's right. And you know what's funny? He was a tall guy, but his tiny, tiny head. A very, very small head. If you look at the pants, this was dry cleaned after he wore it at the 75th anniversary of... I feel like a Civil War battlefield is a good place to have a small head. But this is how tall he was. Like, these are his pants. And that's the floor.

So that's what his legs are. That's pretty good. And we know that he attended the reunions at Gettysburg after the war and he was at the last reunion in Gettysburg in 1938. It was the 75th anniversary. Okay, here's a picture of Jack away shaking the hand of a Confederate soldier at the bloody angle.

This was at the 75th and last reunion of Gettysburg in 1938. And William Jackaway, who you can see right here with the cane, is wearing the exact uniform we just showed you. And he is shaking the hand of William O. Gillette of Louisiana. He was the last survivor of Davis's brigade, part of Pickett's men.

Wow. This is a really iconic photo. Well, anyone who knows a drop of Civil War history will know Pickett's Charge. Sure. And you're telling me that these fellows were at the breach point of Pickett's Charge at Gettysburg. That's a story. Yeah. July the 3rd, 1863. And here they are. 75 years. Yeah, 1938. And if anybody wants to read about William Jackaway, this guy from Philadelphia.

This guy from Philadelphia wrote a whole history on everything he did. It's a great read. It really is. Bob McNulty. Yep, and it's a great read about William Jackaway. He tells you his whole history from what he started as a kid to all the way through. It's pretty interesting. I want to say one more thing about this as soon as I find it.

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Back in November of 2022, Michelle and I actually went to the Bloody Angle and we brought Jack away's uniform with us. And this is the monument for the 72nd Pennsylvania. And you can see, as I said, swang about using their rifles as clubs. Wow.

Here's the photo of Jack away shaking the hand of the Louisiana rebel. And if you really look closely in the photo, you can see the top of the monument right there. And I had Michelle hold up the photo and she's standing about where they shook hands. Gotcha.

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my brother and my nephews were at Gettysburg last weekend. Yeah, it's a great place. Love it there. Great tour.

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This A2 jacket, which was issued to Air Force, well I shouldn't say Air Force, it's Army Air Corps during World War II. The Air Force was under control of the Army, so it was called the US Army Air Corps. I acquired this jacket about 15 years ago, directly from the veteran. His name is Charles Sandy Wenzel. He lives in Salem now. He is 101 years old.

and he will be 102 in September and He was a radio operator on a B -17 he flew the first mission over Berlin Germany on March the 6th 1944 and He flew 25 missions and was never wounded, but this is his a2 jacket that he actually wore during all of his missions he was a

His bomb group was a 95th bomb group and that was part of the 8th Air Force based out of England. This is the 95th bomb group insignia. On the back of it you can see the name of his plane which Sandy himself named Ready Teddy and a bomb for each of the missions that he participated in.

This is handsome. And I asked Sandy, how come they call you Sandy? Where'd you get that nickname? He said that when he got on a school bus for kindergarten, God, what year would that have been? He was born in 1925. That had been 96 years ago. He got on the school bus and the bus driver gave everybody a nickname. And because Sandy had Sandy hair, he called him Sandy and that's a nickname that stuck. That's all it takes.

really proud to have this jacket. That's an amazing, that's one of the things that jumped out at me in the whole building just looking around. You bring this in special for us? I did. Thank you, it's gorgeous. Yeah, that's... He lives in Salem still today. Michelle and I visit him every once in a while. We used to take him to dinner with his girlfriend who's 20 years younger than him. She's 80 something, 85 actually. My mom's 80 something. So, but now he's kind of not real mobile.

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He gets around but slow. Good.

Here's one more uniform I'd like to show you, mainly because it's related to the area. This is the Ike jacket of my Uncle Joe. Joe Walensky, he was in the 88th Division, which served exclusively in Italy during World War II. And it's great to have a photo of him wearing the jacket and even the scarf. You can see it's the exact scarf that he's wearing.

the photo.

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Very dapper. And at the very end of the war, the last three days of the war, he was captured by the Germans. But they knew the war was over, so he wasn't treated badly at all. He was born in 1918 and he died in 1999. He lived in Fairton. He was a refrigerator and air conditioning repairman. So a lot of people knew my Uncle Joe. Those Ike jackets are pretty great too, actually.

So on the US side that might be one of the cooler garments I've seen. Yeah, yeah Yeah, throw a little scarf in there and you are really really Shined up. I'm not gonna lie Yeah handsome. So you forgot to tell about Sandy was captured and he was not only one or two He was in Korean War and he got captured Sandy was captured. Yes, and he was captured. Yeah

And during the Korean War, he fought the second war after World War II. Sandy was involved in the Korean War also, too. I think he volunteered for it, which he didn't have to do. But I forget how long he was over there. But he was captured in a firefight with the North Vietnamese. And he was actually the operator of a... North Korea? In Korea, yes. I'm not sure what area of Korea he was in.

But a North Vietnamese unit came toward them and slaughtered most of the guys in the unit. Sandy happened to be captured. He was taken to a small prison camp. It was really an old farmhouse that had an entrance and an exit on each side, and there were guards there every day. Sandy kept an eye on those guards because every once in a while they'd take a break for lunch for maybe 10 or 15 minutes. So...

He kept an eye on it for several weeks and one day he made a break for it. He took his jacket, or no actually it was just his shirt. He took their shoes. He took their boots. So he took his shirt and ripped it up and made improvised shoes out of his shirt. And this was in the winter time, there was snow on the ground and ice. So he had just a t -shirt on, pants on, and no shoes other than his shirt. So he made a run for it when a guard was taking a break.

 (43:57.611)
and for eleven days he was on the run. It's an amazing story really. It was bitterly cold. He was hiding in the trees during the day and running at night. And this is in Korea? Yeah. You said a couple times the North Vietnamese taught him. sorry about that. The only thing that he had to eat the entire time was on a fly for eleven or twelve days. He found a turnip in a field.

He ate that, it's the best thing he had. I was gonna say that's the best turnip he ever had. Yeah, and he found streams too. When he would find a stream, he'd use his hands to scrape the water and get just enough in his hands to have a little sip. But I said to him, well, how did you get to American Lines? He goes, one day he heard some firing going on and he just ran toward that firing. He said he took a 50 -50 chance. And he...

Pick right. Wow.

And then they put him in a hospital because he had frostbite on his feet. Really bad. And the doctor wanted to cut his feet off. And he told the doctor that if he cut his foot off he'd kill him. And didn't he get court -martialed? He was threatened with a court -martial. But he still has his feet today. good for him. Yeah. Alright. Now this is a Vineland related war story.

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Our friend who was in the Marine Corps in 1980s, late 1980s, he was part of Operation Just Cause, which was the invasion of Panama, which lasted from December of 89 until January of 90. Our friend Jim Lidke, let's see, we have a picture of him.

Yeah, there he is. He was getting married. Jim Litke, he was in an armored vehicle outside of Noriega's home. And a lot of people know that they thought he was in the home at the time. And people like Jim were blasting music into the complex. And I asked Jim, I said, what kind of music were you playing? And I said, what kind of songs? And he goes, well, of course, Panama by Van Halen.

Perfect. So he wound up going inside of the home and he says... Here's his picture of the rooms when he got married. It was right around Christmas and he said that they had left the house abruptly and there were Christmas presents that were half wrapped on the table there and in the middle of the living room was a rack of all of his clothing. So...

They were told not to take anything out of the house whatsoever. He says there were drugs in there, there's tons of money, and of course other valuables were in there. But Jim said, you know, I think I'd like to have one of these uniforms. So he actually took two of them. And we were able to get one from him a couple years ago. And...

It's unquestionably his. We have it fully documented too. If you look up Emmanuel Noriega, and you'll see him wearing this exact style uniform with the exact patches. A lot of them I don't think he qualified. A lot of these specialty patches. The reason he went in to get the uniform was because he ripped his pants.

 (47:31.947)
and he needed a new pair of pants and he ended up putting a pair of Norraggers pants on then he took two uniforms but he had to rip his pants out, his crotch out. But that's not the reason he went in the house. no, no, no. That's the reason he took the uniforms, he said he wanted a pair of pants. And since he was not allowed to take anything out of the house, you might say, well how did he get these things out of the house? While he was stationed in the house, his mother sent him a care package.

I think he said that there were cookies in it or something like that. So the guard said, okay, here's your package. Well, what he did was take everything out of the package and he packed these two uniforms up and wound up going to a post office. I said there was a functioning post office there. He goes right up the street. He wound up taking the package there, handed it over to a postal person and he says, I didn't know if it was gonna get home or not.

and he sent it home and sure enough it got there. He put a little note in there to his mother. He said, do not wash these. Wow. Very interesting. Yeah, Manuel Noriega, a name that I wonder if he's probably not even covered in your average high school history book.

But I remember he always had camo on yeah, Manuel Noriega always had camo on the other uniforms like a different color camo Jim was actually mentioned in these two well -known magazines Leatherneck magazine, which is the Marine Corps publication and soldier of fortune Vineland proud. Yeah good stuff

Hopefully when we open our museum across the street we'll get the other one. When are you opening a museum across the street? Hopefully before the end of the year. Very cool. Hopefully sooner than that, but it's a lot of work. Yeah. The plan is because we're going to display things from all wars we're going to call it Uncle Sam's Military Museum. If anybody has anything they would like to sell, World War II or before mainly is what we're interested in. Well actually Vietnam items too.

 (49:54.091)
feel free to bring it out here. No obligation to sell, I can tell you what you have at least and be happy to look at anything. We're located at 21 Peterson Street at the Millville Executive Airport in Millville, New Jersey and our hours are Tuesday through Saturday 10 to 5. We're by appointment. We also do appointments and we'll come to you if you have larger gun and military license, we'll come to your house.

And we do have a website too if anybody's interested in. TheWarStoreandMore .com. One word. TheWarStoreandMore.com . Look, that's pretty good. What it lacks in brevity, it makes up for in wit. You're right. Not too shabby. We buy and sell new and used guns. We order new guns for a lot of people. And we also sell every type of ammunition you could think of. We have thousands of rounds of ammunition available for sale.

Going back to sort of when we came in, anybody who's a family member who's got old what looks like memorabilia or something from great -grandfather, great -grandmother, and they don't know, this is a great place for them to come sort of figure out if it's something they should keep or if it's something they should give you to keep or if it's something of sort of heirloom value from back in the day. That's one thing I picked up here that I didn't expect to walk in the door was, is like,

It's, you're like a repository for the end of life for these historic artifacts. If a family doesn't have the room or if it's just not appropriate for their house or whatever, you can give it a good home and sort of honor it appropriately for the historical artifact that it may be. You're right on target. Well, thanks again. Everybody head out to Smith and Jackson and we'll see you soon on The Beacon.