We were attending a conference in Penn State for the 2nd year in a row and this time I decided to visit the
PA Military Museum. The interior houses a small but interesting exhibit. The grounds are extensive and if I had time I might have explored it further.
This first picture is a panorama of the war memorial and front lawn. There is a merge problem between two of the frames, but the picture is still beautiful.
For the firearm buffs on the Cellar, here is the 'gun' collection. There are actually a lot more including a WWI German flamethrower, but I thought that would be a bit much.
In addition to guns, they had transportation. The WWI tank and WWII halftrack were out for restoration, but they did have a , a command vehicles, an WWI ambulance, a WWI repair truck and a wagon. The stiching was so bad on this panorama, that an entire truck is missing.
Here is the front of the building and adjacent memorial.
The "modern" horse drawn rig is evocative of a conversation I had last night with my kid's coach who was a big horseman. Just thinking about taking horses into a war zone after the advent of automatic weapons gives me a chill. My Dad's Uncles were teamsters in WWI, that couldn't have been a great scene for horses, but then again the Polish Cavalry was still hanging around when the Nazis came through. Of course, Tenneyson described an earlier missuse of horseflesh...
the Polish Cavalry was still hanging around when the Nazis came through.
One of the janitors at my High School was a high ranking officer in the Polish Calvary. He was one of three survivors in his group (regiment/brigade?). The horses didn't do any better.:(
I remember watching movies about WWI with the horses wearing gas masks.:thepain:
The Polish Cavalry has a pretty impressive history, including stopping the Islamic Turks invasion of Europe at Vienna in 1683.
Polish Cav history page