Ohio War Stories: Share Your Memories

As if the news reports from overseas weren’t bad enough, tragedies on the home front during WWII made for especially hard times. Author Scott Trostel, who’s written extensively about Ohio life and times during the war, writes about a train wreck in Piqua:

With the devastation of World War II coming to full reality and the surrender of Germany, many of the soldiers who had fought in the European Theatre were finally returning to the United States. Among the trains dedicated to returning the troops were the hospital trains, troop trains and the rare war bride trains. The Pennsylvania Railroad handled large numbers of these. At one o’clock in the afternoon on May 21, 1945, a seventeen car west bound troop train derailed at high speed at Piqua, Ohio, throwing eight cars down a 20 foot embankment, injuring 24 of the 400 soldiers on board. Keep reading…