Hi, Fritz -- I enjoyed the trivia, and passed the post on to a friend, who also was entralled -- enough to dig into the stories. I thought you'd be interesed in what turned up:
Interesting coincidences and info! It'd be interesting to check the facts, but I don't have time. ;-) . I did a quickie on the 45th division and the swastika. Wikipedia says it was changed in 1939, two years before Pearl Harbor. Here's the story of the 12 yr old serviceman http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calvin_Graham Interesting story about Kiska attack http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kiska My dad's [some army unit of men] were slated to go to Alaska to defend it from the Japanese in 1946. Just as they were ready to leave someone discovered that the rifles (and other weapons?) they'd been given wouldn't work in freezing temperatures. So the group was divided up and men sent to other units. The way mom tells it, the strong tall farm boys were selected to be MPs, and that's how dad ended up protecting the US from Mexicans and drunken US troops (in El Paso.) The lists appears on several websites, all claiming this as the original source: "Contributed by Ronald Padavan, LTC, CAP MIWG Chief of Staff MSGT, USAF (Ret.) Past President Lodge 143, Fraternal Order of Police. As printed in, The Victory Division News. No. 4. December, 2000. " Can't locate a copy of the issue! Clearly, the interwebs have munged things a bit, as passed along, e.g., is Padavan a Lt. Colonel, or a Master Sergeant? Alex -- Alex Sproul NSS 8086RL/FE NSS Webmaster www.caves.org