Local reenactment group honors Connecticut Military History during the New England Air Museum's First Annual WWII Weekend.

WINDSOR LOCKS, Conn. - On August 29 and 30, the New England Air Museum hosted its first annual WWII Weekend, a World War II reenactment that featured an Allied and Axis encampment, period vehicle demonstrations, as well as a historically themed hangar dance.

The event was organized by 43ID 169th Co. F, a World War II reenactment group that portrays and honors soldiers from the Connecticut Army National Guard’s 169th Infantry Regiment.

The 169th is one of the oldest continuously serving infantry regiments in the United States, tracing its lineage back to 1637. During World War II, the regiment served in the Pacific Theater of Operations, and participated in the New Georgia, Northern Solomons and Luzon campaigns. Today, the regiment serves as part of the Regional Training Institute based at Camp Nett in Niantic. Their mission is to provide national coordinating authority, quality assurance, and scheduling and accreditation assistance for functionally aligned ARNG elements within the Army School System.

43ID 169th Co. F was formed in 2020 by Tolland native, Douglas Crawford. Crawford’s father, Charles, was an infantryman assigned to Fox Company, 2nd Battalion, 169th Infantry Regiment, during World War II. He enlisted in 1939, was federalized with the rest of the 43rd Infantry Division in 1941 and, after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, destined for the Pacific. His unit would depart San Francisco on September 30, 1942, and spend 22 days out at sea before arriving in Auckland, New Zealand. Charles and the regiment engaged in an intense training regimen here as well as in New Caledonia. Following some time on Guadalcanal and Pavuvu, Charles and the 169th would participate in Operation Toenails, the drive on Munda Point to capture a strategic Japanese airfield.

“He remembered vividly [that] the Japanese [used] sleep deprivation as one of their tactics against American soldiers, keeping them up all night for days on end,” explained Douglas. “Sleeping in a foxhole back to back with your buddy. He always said how they would never strap their helmet’s [chinstrap] because the Japanese would sneak into your foxhole and pull you out by your helmet. If you had your chinstrap on, it was easy to pull you out.”

Charles would survive the war, eventually being evacuated back to the United States in 1944 for combat neurosis, an acute, and often debilitating, psychological reaction that stems directly from war trauma. Combat neurosis, and other combat related stresses, affected over 15% of 43rd Infantry Division soldiers during Operation Toenails, the highest rate of neuropsychiatric casualties for any division during one singular operation throughout the war. After the war, he would have 13 children, Douglas being his last.

Eventually, Douglas had a son of his own, Mason. As Mason grew older, he expressed an interest in history and began reenacting with his father. Together, the pair reenacted soldiers from the 5th Connecticut Regiment during the Revolutionary War. However, after portraying this era of history for a decade, Mason began expressing more interest in his grandfather’s wartime service.

“I was always interested in World War II; we watched The Pacific and we watched Band ofBrothers, and I knew both my grandfathers had fought [in the war],” explained Mason. “My mom’s father was on the USS New Jersey from ‘41 to ‘45, and my dad’s father was in from ‘39 to [‘44]. We started off doing Rev War because we didn’t know that there were too many World War II reenactment groups around, and not too many that were super interesting. I didn’t have that personal attachment to it. After, like, 10 years, I started getting really burnt out of Rev War and I really wanted to get into World War II. Me and [Douglas] sat down, and we had another couple guys who wanted to do World War II as well, we all kind of sat down and collaborated and we’re thinking about it, what should we do? Let’s start our own unit.”

Despite the pair now having a rich personal history to bond over, and a newly established reenactment group as the outlet for this passion, there still wasn’t any arena to expand this experience. In the reenacting world, there are two major types of events, living histories, and tacticals. Living histories are events put on for the public, allowing spectators to get a glimpse of what life was like during a particular era or among a certain group. Tacticals are immersive simulated combat events, normally conducted privately between multiple reenactment groups who will recreate a battle between opposing forces. Connecticut largely offered neither of these styles of events for those interested in World War II, as the bulk of the local reenactment community is largely focused on the state’s rich Revolutionary War and Civil War history.

To remedy this, Douglas worked with Tianna Darling, the New England Air Museum’s operations and program director, to establish an event.

“I was on Facebook and I saw a post from the New England Air Museum, and they posted something to do with World War II and I wrote in the comments, we would love to do an event there, you know ‘hey, what about doing a World War II reenactment’, and not five minutes later I got a response from Tianna Darling, here at the museum, she was the new operations manager,” explained Douglas. “She's like, ‘oh my God, we were just having a meeting last night and I was mentioning we should do something like that’. So, it’s like, almost fate that night they were having that meeting. The next day they make that post. There I am. Every idea, every plan I submitted to her, she was like, ‘yes, let’s do it. Let’s do it.’”

Crawford and Tianna communicated back and forth for over a year via emails and zoom meetings. After working together for a smaller event as a test run, the pair went forward and green lit having a World War II weekend.

“We worked with them in a smaller capacity, and then finally we said, ‘yeah, let’s do it, let’s do something larger',” explained Tianna. “He brought to our attention that there is not a lot of reenactment of this scale in this area in Connecticut. There’s some up in Massachusetts with the Collings Foundation, and then there’s some smaller scale stuff, but there was kinda a need for that, and it really works with our mission. We work to preserve and educate on aerospace history, specifically in the New England region as well as around the country, so it fit really well with our mission and it was wonderful that they were able to reach out to us.”

For reenactors, events like these are very special as it gives them the opportunity to interact with and educate the public on the trials and sacrifices faced by service members during World War II. Most spend countless hours referencing historical reporting, analyzing period photographs, reading memoirs and watching veteran interviews related to the unit they are portraying. Additionally, they dedicate much time, and money, in acquiring period uniforms, equipment, and weaponry or accurate reproductions. Likewise, events like these bring the community together, as it gives veterans, their relatives, and friends, the opportunity to connect, share their experiences, and keep their memory alive.

“I had more people come up that had relatives that were in the 169th, that wanted to bring me their books, their info. This one lady had a complete photo album of her father, who actually served in I Company, my father was in F Company, they were in the same book. She had pictures I had never seen of the regiment,” explained Douglas. “Obviously this was something she put together, a labor of love for her father, but who really is she going to show it to? Yeah, she showed it to her family, but she doesn’t really get to show it to anybody else. Here we are, the 169th, bring it in here and show it to us, and I could see it in her eyes, the happiness that she could share that.”

In addition to the F. Co, 169th, over 200 reenactors dressed in authentic military uniforms were present throughout the encampment representing and recounting their unit’s histories and achievements, including the Capital Wing of the Airmen’s Preservation Society, portraying the United States Army Air Forces, Geronimo Foundation, Inc., portraying paratroopers from the 501st Parachute Infantry Battalion; Fox Company, 2nd Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment, Reenacted; and the New England Red Devils, 7th Parachute Bn Living History Association and 1st Canadian Parachute Battalion Preservation Association, representing the British Commonwealth, among others. An impressive armada of privately owned historic vehicles bolstered the museum’s static displays for the event, including jeeps, an M5 light tank, an M8 light armored car, and a Sturmgeschütz III assault gun. To make the event even more spectacular, nine WWII veterans including Technician 4th Grade Caster Salemi, 251st Field Artillery Battalion, and U.S. Marine Corps veteran Ted Marolda, 1st Marine Division, attended the event, giving attendees an unforgettable, and increasingly rare, opportunity to hear first hand accounts of what it was like to serve during the war.

“It’s such a different way to experience history because it’s something you’ll never get from a textbook, or even, you know, watching a movie,” said Tianna. “You’re able to talk with these people who are so invested in historical accuracy. They know in and out what they are portraying. Even if you’re someone who doesn’t think they’re interested in history or aviation, you’re able to learn something new and have a great time doing it. One of the groups we had here, we had them back a couple of times, they portrayed air raid precaution wardens in Britain during the war, and we were absolutely fascinated. They were showing us all of the different sirens they had, fire suppression systems, and all this stuff. They had the materials right there. They could talk to it, so even as staff, we were learning new things as we went. I think it is just a really unique way to experience history.”

The general public seemed to agree as they descended on the museum in droves. 984 tickets were sold on Saturday, not including the 200 tickets sold exclusively for the hangar dance later that night. Sunday, same similar attendance rates, even with the weather being cloudy with scattered bursts of light rain throughout the afternoon.

“It was fantastic,” explained Tianna. “We are so thrilled with how the event turned out. It is, anecdotally, our largest public weekend event in recent memory. That’s for sure. We had 1,700 people come through our doors between Saturday, Sunday and our hangar dance on Saturday evening. People came from all over…it was just a really cool experience to see all these people just so interested in coming and experiencing the museum, learning about this history. It went amazing, and we’ll definitely be doing it again next year for sure.”

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