Currahee Military Museum, Toccoa, Georgia

Currahee Military Museum is located in historic downtown Toccoa's restored train depot. It is home to the WWII history of approximately 18,000 soldiers that trained at Camp Toccoa to become paratroopers. Located in the museum is a horse stable, built in Aldbourne, England in 1922 that served as housing for Able and Easy Companies of the 506th PIR prior to and after D-Day 1944. History of 501st, 506th, 511th and 517th Paratrooper Infantry Regiments is on display for visitors seven days a week.

The first part of the museum houses memorabilia from the area during the 1800's -- desks, clothing, machinery, etc.

Plantation Desk, circa 1898

Stephens County was established in 1905, formed from land taken from Habersham and Franklin Counties to include the towns of Toccoa, which is the county seat, as well as Eastanollee, Martin, and Avalon. While Toccoa was at the time considered a fairly big town with businesses, industry, and residential areas, there were still parts of the country that were farmland. The furniture in these exhibits are similar to those used in the homes in the area. At the turn of the 19th century it was still very common for an area in the house to serve as the gathering place for the family. Often it was around the kitchen table or fire place.

Eight-day wall clock,
Martin, Georgia Post Office

Hand-whittled baby cradle, constructed
with wooden pegs (no nails), circa 1870

Child's hearth-side chair, circa 1850

Silk for bonnet and coat spun from silkworm off Mulberry trees at Travelers Rest about 1850. Silk and garments made by slave labor. After the lady of the plantation finished using them, she gave them to a black family on the plantation. They were handed down through the family and presented to the museum during Black History month in 1992.

Spinning wheel, circa 1825, from the Pinkie Ware estate

For over 100 years, from the time cotton was first planted in Georgia in 1733, until the beginning of the Civil War in 1861, it was the most successfully grown commercial crop in the state. That's because Americans loved their "homespun" cotton fabric. It was also an important export, especially to the English textile mills. A Massachusetts teacher, Eli Whitney, revolutionized the cotton industry when he invented the labor-saving cotton gin while visiting Georgia in 1793. He called it a "gin" -- short for engine, and he claimed it replaced the work of 50 men. The gin simplified the process of separating the seeds from the cotton fiber or lint. The invention was considered so significant to America's economy that the patent issued Whitney was signed by the President of the United States -- George Washington.

Cotton Cards

Cotton cards were used to card cotton for all the quilts that covered the 1400 children who lived in the Craft Orphanage. As the cotton mattresses wore out, the cotton from the mattresses would be carded to make quilts. These covers were the quilts which were quilted by girls in the Orphanage from 1911 to 1941.

Japanese Glassware, circa 1920; Pre WWII

We were in a thrift store one day and I was looking for a dish for Jim's pill container and other little paraphernalia that we accumulate. I found this little Japanese dish and when I saw the above dish highlighted in the Museum, I thought I would put a picture of our dish in here as well. I have documented that it is Japanese with the little insignia that is on the bottom.

This stringed instrument is known as a "ukelin." It has 32 strings and was made sometime during the 1890s. Ukelins combine two sets of strings, one group of 16 strings tuned to the scale of C (from middle C on a piano to the C two octaves above) plus four groups of four strings, each group tuned to a chord. The instrument is meant to be placed on a table with the larger end toward the performer, and while the right hand plays the melody on the treble strings with a violin bow, accompanying chords are played on the bass strings with the left hand using either the fingers or a pick. Each string and chord is numbered, and sheet music is provided in a special numerical system intended to simplify playing for persons unable to read standard musical notation.

Aunt Pinkie Blake's Auto Harp 

This traveling show became known as "Doc," Real Old Time Medicine Show.

Tommy with his wife, "Frankie" Thomas Scott,
daughter Sandra Scott Whitworth, his sidekick "Luke McLuke"
and the band members

Tommy Lee Scott grew up on a farm with his family, teaching himself to play the guitar. His nickname was "Ramblin' Tommy Scott," due to his many talents as a song writer, country singer, actor, and owner of a travelling medicine show. In the 1930s as a teenager, Tommy joined a travelling medicine show run by "Doc" M.F. Chamberlain. This show entertained with music, ventriloquists, and hawking Mr. Chamberlain's Herb-O-Lac Laxative.

Tommy Scott took over Mr. Chamberlain's show in the late 1930s after Mr. Chamberlain's retirement. This traveling show became known as "Doc" Scott's Last Real Old Time Medicine Show. Tommy Scott was a prolific song writer, writing over 300 songs. He was a member of the Grand Ole Opry in the 1940s. He was inducted into the Georgia Music Hall of Fame in the 1980s and the Atlanta Music Hall of Fame.

About 1945, just before the still was blown up

Traveler's Rest, State Historic Site

This stagecoach inn and plantation home was built around 1815 by James R. Wyly. He strategically located it along the newly constructed Unicoi Turnpike, a busy highway over the Appalachian Mountains. Wyly operated the Inn until 1833 when he sold it to his neighbor Devereaux Jarrett, the "richest man in the Tugaloo Valley." Jarrett continued to operate the Inn, but doubled its size to make it the homeplace of his 14,400 acre plantation along the Tugaloo River. Three generations of Jarretts inhabited the site until the state of Georgia purchased the remaining few acres of the once vast plantation for $8,000 in 1955. Thanks to both its architectural significance and its role in the early history of the area, Traveler's Rest was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1964. 

Special Train of President Franklin D. Roosevelt

On March 23, 1938, President Franklin D. Roosevelt made his way to Toccoa, Georgia. He was met by the Governor who handed him the microphone:

"I am nearly six months late. I intended to come down back to Georgia last autumn, but I had a bad tooth, which is a very human feeling, so I could not get down last November, but here I am again. I am going to have a ten days' holiday. I am going to spend most of the time sleeping, (laughter) because, as you probably know, with forty-eight states to think about up there in Washington, I ought to have forty-eight hours in every day. Somehow it does not work out that way and even though I do stay up until midnight or one o'clock in the morning pretty nearly every night in Washington, I manage to get by with it if occasionally I can come down to Georgia.

"So, it is good to see you all at the beginning of his holiday I am getting. I expect also while I am down here to look into some of the problems of the state; in a holiday spirit to talk to people, to talk to my neighbors about the problems of agriculture, to talk to people who are engaged in running stores, drugstores, and general stores and factories, about the problems of this part of the country.

"I do not have to tell you that I am very deeply interested in the State of Georgia. You go hand in hand with the rest of the nation. If anything happens to you, it hurts the rest of the nation, and if anything happens to the rest of the nation, it hurts you. So, we are all in the same boat; we are all plowing the same furrow.

"It is good to be back and I hope to see you again very soon because this year I hope there won't be another tooth and I hope to be able to come back in the fall." ~~Franklin Delano Roosevelt

George Washington Hitt 1913-1958
Artist, Humanitarian, Philosopher

Almost completely disabled from rheumatoid arthritis -- all of his joints are rigid or out of joint -- yet he helps support his family by cutting silhouettes. George Hitt led an active, creative life as an internationally known silhouette artist, reporter and technical writer. His philosophy was "no person is handicapped unless he perceives himself to be." He received the Army-Navy E Award in 1945, the same year the U.S. Dept. of State distributed the story of his life abroad. In 1954 he received the national Who's Crippled Award. His delicate silhouettes depicted people and events, but his most beautiful were of nature. His feeling for composition and sensitivity in artistic portrayal ranked him among the foremost silhouette artists of his day.

Here are some of his pictures:

Scale and Balance

The scale is used for develop color recipes or dye for formulas for specific shades, weighing dyes and chemicals, which was replaced by electronic and computer scales. This scale was used in early years in the laboratory research of Coats and Clark until the early 1980s.

The Dictaphone

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That's the end of the first section of the museum where we saw memorabilia from the area during the 1800s. Next we went into the military museum to learn about that.

The Currahee Military Museum and Toccoa's annual Currahee Military Weekend celebrate and preserve the legacy of Camp Toccoa, a bold experiment that was designed to take men directly from civilian life to the battlefields of World War II as paratroopers. The old train depot is where soldiers arrived before they made the five mile hike to Camp Toccoa. 

The museum tells the story of trainees who spent time in Toccoa to become some of the most physically fit soldiers in the Army. More than 18,000 paratroopers trained at Camp Toccoa prior to and after D-Day. including an actual stable that housed members of the PID before and after D-Day.

One of the most popular exhibits is a horse stable from Aldbourne England that served as housing for 506th PIR, American paratroopers. The stable 17x70 feet long serves as a reminder of some of the finer living conditions during the war. Located in the depot are local exhibits that tell the history of Stephens County for the last 100 years.

The Barn in England

The Barn being dismantled

The Barn at the Museum

Built in the 1930s under FDR's "Works Projects Administration" the camp originally served the National Guard. Five thousand men arrived at the remote Currahee Mountain training camp five miles outside of Toccoa in 1942 for training as a new type of soldier - paratroopers. Over the next few years 18,000 soldiers from  501st, 506th, 511th, and 517th Parachute Infantry Regiment (PIR) trained at Camp Toccoa in preparation to defend the free world from the German offensive that was World War II.  The 511th fought in the Pacific, defending against the Japanese.

Originally called Camp Toombs, named after Confederate Civil War General Toombs, the name was changed to Camp Toccoa after the camp commander pointed out the irony that arriving recruits passed the Toccoa Casket Company on their way to Camp Tombs.

It seemed fitting that Currahee was the name of the mountain at Camp Toccoa as it is an Indian word for "Stand Alone" - significant that paratroopers do "stand alone" as they drop behind enemy lines.  Today Currahee" is the motto of the 506th Infantry Regiment.

Camp Toccoa subjected the young men who trained there with many rigorous physical challenges to help prepare them for battle.  One notable event was the 115 mile march from Camp Toccoa in December 1942, where they boarded trains for the remainder of the trip to Fort Benning. The four day hike was a challenge to best the Japanese record of a similar maneuver.

Soon after the war Camp Toccoa was dismantled. Little remains - some roads and curbs, fire hydrants, the old well house, a water tank, and a block building either used a recreation center or bunk house.

The roads up Currahee Mountain remain as U.S. Forest Service roads and as a reminder of the quote from training soldiers, "Three Miles up, Three Miles down," as they used these roads for their hikes and runs.

In recent years Camp Toccoa has become a destination for historians, tour groups, reunions, and especially veterans returning to visit their "home" during training. Currahee Mountain is part of the Piedmont province and rises sharply about 800 feet above its surroundings and is the highest peak in Stephens County Georgia. Also adjacent to the Chattahoochee National Forest, Camp Toccoa has become a favorite place to camp, hike, horseback ride, sightseeing, and to run footraces following the footsteps of the soldiers run of "Three Miles up, Three Miles down".

Sixteen hundred men from the first 5,000 who came to Camp Toccoa became the 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment (PIR) of the U.S. Army’s 101st Airborne Division. Nicknamed "Easy Company," their story is told in the award winning HBO series "Band of Brothers"  - The story of Easy Company of the US Army 101st Airborne division and their mission in WWII Europe from Operation Overlord through V-J Day.

Band of Brothers

Band of Brothers is a 10-part, 11-hour television World War II miniseries, originally produced and broadcast in 2001, based on the book of the same title written by historian and biographer Stephen E. Ambrose. The executive producers were Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks, who had collaborated on the World War II film Saving Private Ryan (1998). The episodes first aired in 2001 on HBO and are still run frequently on various TV networks around the world.

The narrative centers on the experiences of Easy Company, 2nd Battalion, 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment assigned to the 101st Airborne Division of the United States Army. The series covers Easy's basic training at Camp Toccoa, the American airborne landings in Normandy, Operation Market Garden, the Siege of Bastogne, and on to the end of the war, including the taking of the Eagle's Nest.

The events portrayed are based on Ambrose's research and recorded interviews with Easy Company veterans. A large amount of literary license was taken with the episodes, with several differences between recorded history and the film version. All of the characters portrayed are based on actual members of Easy Company; some of them can be seen in prerecorded interviews as a prelude to each episode (their identities, however, are not revealed until the close of the finale).

The title for the book and the series comes from a famous St. Crispin's Day Speech delivered by the character of Henry V of England before the Battle of Agincourt in William Shakespeare's Henry V; Act IV, Scene 3. A passage from the speech is quoted on the first page of the book, and is also quoted by Carwood Lipton in the final episode.

Information for this section excerpted from the Camp Toccoa at Currahee Project website. The purpose of the project is to celebrate the lives and contributions of the Airborne paratroopers who trained at Camp Toccoa at Currahee Mountain during World War II.  Each of these boys left Currahee as “Toccoa men”  and have since carried on the tradition of "Currahee - We Stand Alone".  These American Heros deserve to have their legacy of leadership  preserved. The Camp Toccoa at Currahee Project started as a dream that “should be” done and has now become a project that “must be” completed for the stories of these true American heroes to be told on the hallowed ground where their lives were changed forever.

Jake McNiece

During World War II, McNiece said, he had a knack for fighting, whether it was against the Germans or while he was on leave or had gone AWOL. "That's McNiece and no telling what he has done. He's been in the stockade for ten days," commented a soldier the day before the 506th left Camp Toccoa on a 136 mile march to Atlanta.

Currahee Mountain was selected as the site for the first Parachute Infantry Training Center. It was named Camp Toccoa and the Regiments trained here for combat during World War II. 

.45 Caliber Thompson Machine Gun

These are the types of guns that Jim's Dad carried during his service in the war. He did not care for that as he said they were pretty heavy to carry all the time.

General Patton's Miraculous Talk With God

Granite from Adolph Hitler's Eagle Nest

This piece of granite was from Adolph Hitler's Eagle's Nest in Berchtesgaden, Germany. Some personal items were removed from the Eagle's Nest during the war and the following years. 

The White Table, A Remembrance
to our POW/MIAs

Though no one is able to trace the history of the White POW/MIA Table back to its very beginning, it is believed to have originated by the River Rats during the Vietnam War. Once the war was over, it is believed the tradition continued state-side as a commemorative to the fallen comrades as well as the men who were still missing in action. It wasn't long before the tradition became a part of each military branch. Over the years, the "table" has evolved and there are some slight differentiations that exist between the tables set by each branch of the military. The general principle, and most of the setting, is similar.

Those who have served and those currently serving the uniformed services of the United States are ever mindful that the sweetness of enduring peace has always been tainted by the bitterness of personal sacrifice. We are compelled to never forget that while we enjoy our daily pleasures, there are others who have endured and may still be enduring the agonies of pain, deprivation and internment. They are referred to as POWs and MIAs. We call them comrades.

This small table, which occupies a place of dignity and honor, is set for one, symbolizing the fact that members of our armed forces are missing from our ranks. They are unable to be with their loved ones and families today, so we join with them to pay our humble tribute to them, and bear witness to their continued absence. 

This table, set for one, is small, symbolizing the frailty of one prisoner, alone against his or her suppressors. 

The tablecloth is white, symbolic of the purity of their intentions to respond to their country's call to arms. 

The single red rose in the vase, signifies the blood they may have shed in sacrifice to ensure the freedom of our beloved United States of America. This rose also reminds us of the family and friends of our missing comrades who keep the faith, while awaiting their return.

The yellow ribbon on the vase represents the yellow ribbons worn on the lapels of the thousands who demand with unyielding determination a proper accounting of our comrades who are not among us tonight.

A slice of lemon on the plate reminds us of their bitter fate.

The salt sprinkled on the plate reminds us of the countless fallen tears of families as they wait.

The glass is inverted -- they cannot toast with us tonight.

The chair is empty -- they are not here.

The candle is reminiscent of the light of hope which lives in our hearts to illuminate their way home, away from their captors to the open arms of a grateful nation.

Let us pray to the Supreme Commander that all of our comrades will soon be back within our ranks. Let us remember and never forget their sacrifices. May God forever watch over them and protect them and their families.