South Dakota XIII

Wandering through the many exhibits at the Old Court House Museum in Sioux Falls, reveals any number of interesting sights and details. In this third post from there I will highlight just a few.

"Sand bags" and photos tell some of the story of everyday life. I was briefly in charge of a sand bag filling operation while on light duty due to a severe infection of some, still, unknown origin. We filled thousands and thousands of these ubiquitous reminders of ever present danger, but I never saw them placed. It makes you very aware of the magnitude of the efforts to protect ourselves and our people, equipment and facilities.

The state has an exhibit touting the beautiful memorial in Pierre. Each vet who attended was given one of the special License plates shown here to proudly display on their cars.

This will surely bring back some memories. In an effort to not give away position, dog tags were often taped together or one laced in a boot and the other around your neck. We used band-aids as they were easier to come-by than tape.

 

More of the story is told on a nearby panel and as you may know, eventually "tags" were edged with rubber or plastic (I never had any of these so I am not sure which) eliminating the need for rubber bands, tape, or band-aids.

Those that participated in the interviews for Vietnam in our words are given recognition throughout the displays.

Next time, on the 22nd, we will visit the last few exhibits from this site. Join me at 9:00am on the 22nd.

To see additional memorials from South Dakota, or any other state, click the state name on the left side of this page.