F Troop Museum honors veterans

    The F Troop Historical Museum on Sitler Drive in Washington houses countless artifacts from local people who have served in the armed forces. The museum features period memorabilia ranging from the Civil War to the Persian Gulf War. Residents can get a glimpse of history on the first Sunday of the month when the museum is open to the public.

    The building is owned by Dave Stoufer and Rachel Nicola. They opened the museum about a dozen years ago, and have now run out of space to display all the collectibles. The artifacts go through a rotation on a yearly basis to ensure that each souvenir is made available for public viewing.

    Stoufer said that when the museum opened, it had a great deal of memorabilia from World War II. Now the museum receives more and more mementos from the Korean War and Vietnam War.

    ?Whatever comes through the door is meaningful,? said Stoufer.

    The museum contains numerous full-body uniforms of infantrymen, pilots, sailors, secretaries and more. Mike Worley, a Vietnam War veteran and the museum?s curator, said the flight jacket from World War II on display in the museum is lined with camel hair that keep the pilots warm at high altitudes.

    ?Those planes were not heated,? he said. ?At 25,000 feet, it was 20 below zero in those cabins.?

    Worley said he is in the process of acquiring new mannequins to display more of the uniforms he has in storage. He said that even if he had a mannequin for every uniform, he wouldn?t be able to display them all because the building isn?t big enough.

Museum director Gary Snyder commented, ?It?s difficult to find space every once in awhile.?

Denise Lynn lent to the museum the burqa she wore while stationed in the Middle East during Operation Desert Storm. Lynn and other women were required to cover their bodies from head to toe when they went off the military base.

The museum also features a musket from the Civil War, pistols from the turn of the last century and a .50 caliber machine gun. The museum contains cookbooks for mess sergeants and ration books from World War II that were used to buy food such as flour, sugar and eggs and luxuries such as gasoline and rubber tires.

The museum offers guests the opportunity to look back at the origins of the F Troop, which began as the Iowa Army National Guard Cavalry unit ?F Troop? in 1886. The museum contains photos of the early years of the F Troop and a ?McClellan saddle? common in that era.

?Anybody who knows saddles knows exactly what it is when they see it,? said Worley, referring to the saddle designed by the Civil War General George McClellan.

The F Troop exists to this day, but instead of riding horses, the unit rides Blackhawk helicopters. Worley recalled that the 113th flew their helicopters to a veterans? appreciation gathering he attended a few years ago, and when they stepped out from the choppers, the soldiers revealed the spurs they wore on their boots ? an homage to the early mounted F Troop.

For more information, see our August 11 print edition.