What an awesome keepsake! Reminds me of the MASH episode where Radar shipped home a full Jeep piece by piece.
My dad served on a minesweeper in the Pacific during WW2. After he passed I became a WW2 history fanatic, I regret now never having the chance to hear his stories about it. Like many he kept quiet about the whole thing. After seeing so many of the horrors in documentaries it's understandable.
Happy Fourth, Folks... If you want to get the true flavor and the bedrock danger that the Early Colonists suffered under to achieve what Benjamin Franklin would reply to the Question after exiting the Independence Hall of what the Continental Congress would attempt to achieve when asked in Philadelphia. PA on this fateful day, "What have they been able to MAKE in there, Mr, Franklin?" and he solemnly replied....
"A Republic...*IF*... They can keep it..."
Do yourself a favor after watching this vignette done by the historian and author Mr. David Mccullough of his book, "1776" to download his OWN reading of the entire chapter and verse of the same non-fiction epic on the linked YouTube Audiobook ...and be ASTONISHED at his regaling modern Americans ...now more than ever...of what they might LOSE that so many fought and strove and perished to preserve that if lost... "We The People..." may NEVER, EVER be able to recreate for the rest of all time from our present to all future generations of America... as a Democracy:
From the Illinois Channel archives.. we offer an encore presentation of Author David McCullough talking to a Union League Club audience about his book, 1776....