Com-Central.net

Shortly before I PCS'd to Germany in July I was in the museum shop at lunch time, and I overheard an interesting conversation. A visitor was talking to someone on the museum staff whom I don't know, but he talked like he was in charge.

The visitor had apparently come from some distance, and had no idea about BRAC. He said the last time he was at the museum was 30 years ago. He was VERY disappointed that the tanks and armor-related displays were gone, and he was letting the museum guy know that in no uncertain terms.

Can't blame the guy, really ... I wonder how often this same conversation takes place these days, or will in the future.

Of course, the museum guy was telling him the party line - the tanks were the Armor School "study collection," they were directed by the Army to move all the tanks to Benning, the unfortunate thing about those tanks were that they were just "things," without stories (untrue, in many cases), and that the new museum would display artifacts that have stories, and that mesh with the overall history of the Army (I had to mentally bite my tongue to keep from saying, "you mean things and stories like that "Nazi SS dagger" on display, that is really just a common Lutfwaffe dagger?")

On another occasion, I heard a visiting WW2 vet giving a staff member a rather hard time because they didn't display the kind of tank he fought in, in WW2. I just had to step in to help, and I asked what kind of tank that was - the vet said a Sherman, and the staff member told them there was a Sherman out front. But the vet said that wasn't HIS Sherman, but a later kind (he was talking about the M4A3E8). So I told him about the M4A4 "Storm" that was still on display at that time in Keyes Park. The museum staff member didn't even know about this tank (or didn't know the difference between different Shermans). The vet was overjoyed that he could see "his" Sherman.

I think they ought to print up a little one-page explanation, and just hand that out to all the visitors. I bet the museum staff often wish that BRAC had NEVER happened!

BRAC was good and bad to many organizations on post. Bad to the Armor School and Museum (a part of the Armor School). Good for many businesses around post (replace a bunch of privates with senior servicemembers + their families who will live & shop off post). Bad for traffic to, from and on post (replacing trainees with civilian and military workforce that uses cars and clog up the roads). Bad for prestige (no longer home of armor, now a bunch of personnel HQs).