Ohio War Stories: Share Your Memories

News from local historian, Scott Trostel

The local American Legion at Piqua, Ohio, (66 miles west of Columbus) through the efforts of many local donations, is sending 44 of the local WW II vets to visit the WW II memorial in Washington, D.C. on May 2 and eight of Troy Ohio’s original canteen girls are coming to hand those veterans cookies and snacks, just as they did 66 years ago at their canteen in Troy, Ohio, where they met and fed over 600,000 troops on passing trains. This is the first time since September 12, 1970 a canteen girl has met a veteran with the purpose of serving them food, smiles and cheer. For the sake of history, just to the back of the departure site from the American Legion is the site of a nasty Troop Train wreck on May 21, 1945, where the canteen girls packed up and went mobile from their Troy, Ohio canteen site, eight miles south and came to serve the hundreds of veterans who were stranded and some injured at Piqua. These were ALL teenage girls and theirs was the only canteen staffed by teenagers during the war. You can read their story at this URL www.canteenbooks.com/Junior%20Girls%20Canteen.htm

In the words of Phyllis Gass, from Troy, Ohio, one of the canteen girls from Troy, here it is:

“By the way, did I tell you that we Jr. Canteen gals - 8 of us local gals - will be handing out cookies to the 40 WWII veterans who are leaving May 2 on a bus trip to Wash DC to see the WWII monument, etc.? Marlene Reid found out about the trip and someone asked if we might want to do that as a rerun of serving cookies during WWII. They also told her that during the bus trip, they have mail call for the guys so the 6th graders at Troy Christian School for whom we made our presentation earlier are writing letters which I will pick up in 2 weeks and then some of us canteen gals are writing letters. I’ve got mine written but I want to get some patriotic paper to run off 40 copies so that each of the guys on the bus will get one. Marlene has hers written and she ran off 40 copies also but I’ve not said anything to the other gals yet. We will get together closer to May 2 to bag our cookies so that each vet gets several kinds of cookies. Seems our work is still going on after 60+ years!”