The veterans' museum is pretty cool.

I took a Friday off and we went to the Veteran's Museum as part of our bumming around Madison.

Here's the first ever USS Wisconsin:

An eagle. You probably guessed that.

It took SEVEN tries to get a picture of the boys that was at least acceptable. 

Here are the top 3. There are:

1. Security guard coming over to see if Mr F is still sitting on the display case:

"Mr F has had it with pictures": 

And my personal favorite "Dad, dad, these are the good guys right?"

Moving on to more modern eras:

Vietnam.  It was while I stood under this helicopter that I was a bystander to one of the saddest things I've seen in a long time.

As we were looking around, Mr Bunches had to go to the bathroom, which was just the other side of the helicopter display. So while he was in there I waited outside the door with Mr F, who was drinking from the bubbler.

As we waited, an elderly woman came in. She was wearing all sorts of red, white & bluish stuff, a scarf, a shirt, a flag pin, etc. She was accompanied by a woman who I took to be her daughter, about 50ish.

The elderly woman was talking about her service in Vietnam, and went into a lot of detail about what her life was like there. I was listening to her because she was only a few feet away, and Mr F was still getting water, while Mr Bunches was still in the bathroom.

This woman went on for probably 5 minutes about her experiences, including pointing to the helmet in the display and saying it looked like the one she wore, and how hot it was, and the noise, and all kinds of detail.

Then, at the end of her story, there was a pause, and as Mr F rejoined me, the woman's daughter said "I'm sorry, were you talking to me?"

The elderly woman didn't say anything else.

That's another USS Wisconsin there.

A little better picture. The blurriness comes from the fact that if you get the boys into position Mr F gives you 0.00000000001 seconds to snap the photo before moving, and Mr Bunches then tries to get him not to move, or if he can't stop him from moving, moves himself because Mr Bunches will not let Mr F be first in anything.

This is a scene from the War In Australia in World War II, which apparently was a real thing I'd never heard about before seeing this.

 This is I believe a torpedo or maybe a shell from one of the USS Wisconsins.  It wasn't labeled but it was by the rest of the USS Wisconsin stuff, and it looks like the kind of thing that would be used to blow something up.  It was nearly as big as me, although that's hard to tell from the shot.

They had a periscope in the museum and you could look out to see Capitol Square. This is a church Mr Bunches likes to go to when we go downtown and walk around.

And this is the view of the Capitol itself through that periscope.

"Hey guys I want to just take a picture of you in front of the cannon before we go."

They were pleased to do it.