Vintage

(A few weeks ago, I requested readers to email stories of the Viet Nam era to share. This is one of the stories emailed to me. I will be publishing several more in the month of January. Tony recently informed me that he will be deploying once again as a Department of Defense employee to Afghanistan at the end of January. Please remember him in your prayers for his safe return.)

MY VIET NAM EXPERIENCE

by

ANTHONY FRANK ZIMMERMANN

I left my young wife and yea- old daughter in the states after a harried move from Germany and a quick wedding ceremony of a pair of college friends and processed through Ft Lewis Washington.  I arrived in RVN in time for our personnel replacement center to react to rockets’ red glare.  There we were all five of us officers in a “bunker” made of a steel culvert covered with a single layer of sandbags.  We saw men walking toward the defensive inner perimeter.  Then in the glare of the fires we saw them walking back to the arms room to return with weapons visible.  Shortly after, we saw some of the clerks walking back to the arms room returning carrying ammo boxes.  This was what was between us and the Viet Cong attacking the base.  We took inventory of our weapons: two pocket knives and three P38 can openers.

GENEALOGY BOOKS AVAILABLE

Through the Valley: Vietnam, 1967-68 (Stackpole Military History Series)

UNITED STATES COURT IN ALABAMA

(transcribed from History of Alabama and dictionary of Alabama biography, Volume 2  By Thomas McAdory Owen, Marie Bankhead Owen Vol II)

Alabama came into the Union by resolution of December 14, 1819. As a territory it had no Federal courts, as organized and provided in the States. Congress, therefore, on April 21, 1820, established a district court, and extended over the new Alabama judicial district all laws of the United States, not locally inapplicable. The judge was to have and exercise the same jurisdiction and powers as were conferred on the judge of the Kentucky district. Provision was made for the appointment, not only of a judge, but also of an attorney, clerk And marshal. Four terms of the court yearly were to be held alternately in the towns of Mobile and Cahaba, beginning with the former.

On May 20, 1820, Charles Tait was commissioned first Federal District Judge, and William Crawford first District Attorney. David Files, on May 13, 1820, had been commissioned as marshal.

Democracy and Judicial Independence: A History of the Federal Courts of Alabama, 1820-1994

Biographies of Notable and Not-so-Notable Alabama Pioneers Volume II

MAJOR EVENTS IN MY LIFETIME

Jean Butterworth, born 1935

Written at the request of a grandson who ask me, "What has happened of great significance in your lifetime?”

The Great Depression

This was the period of time after World War I when the economy of the United States became even worse than today. Banks failed, unemployment was at the lowest in history, and food supply was low. The government set up programs to assist the people by provided work in the environment. One such program was called the WPA. Under another government program called the CCC program, men were assigned to camps all over the US. Men were put to work on roads, bridges, and parks and in soil conservation. In Germany the Nazi’s Third Reich rose with the beginning of the WWII.

BOOKS AVAILABLE

UNION LEAGUE OF AMERICA

(This is transcribed verbatim from: History of Alabama and dictionary of Alabama biography, Volume 2 By Thomas McAdory Owen, Marie Bankhead Owen)

"UNION LEAGUE OF AMERICA is a secret political society, which originated in the Northern States in the latter part of 1862, whose members were pledged to uncompromising and unconditional loyalty to the Union, and to the repudiation of any belief in State rights. The objects of the league were "to preserve liberty and the Union of the United States of America; to maintain the Constitution thereof and the supremacy of the laws; to sustain the Government and assist in putting down its enemies; to protect, strengthen, and defend all loyal men, without regard to sect, condition or race; and to elect honest and reliable Union men to all offices of profit or trust in National, State, and local government; and to secure equal civil and political rights to all men under the Government" The movement which crystallized in the organization of the Union League originated among the attaches of the United States Sanitary Commission, and the first local league is believed to have been organized in Ohio, in September, 1862. In December of the same year, the Philadelphia Union League was organized, and it was followed, in January, 1863, by the New York Union League Club. Within a few months, similar leagues or clubs had been installed in nearly every part of the North.

The Union League Movement in the Deep South: Politics and Agricultural Change During Reconstruction

Glory, Darkness, Light: A History of the Union League Club of Chicago