Research, Research, Research, and even more Research

Wicked cool slip of an overlay I found in the files. The declass slip is 2” even, so use that for scale. This shows locations for the infantry regiments of the 34th Infantry Division.

There is a particular smell in old papers and maps and books. It's not unpleasant, just musty. The smell of things that have sat for long periods of time. I legit enjoy it, hell I’ve even posted a video of myself sniffing an old book ROFL. And I look forward to it, whenever I get to go to an archive.

I want to talk about what archival research is, because I think its fun and I wanted to share that process with you. It is sitting at a table in a quiet room, going through folders one piece of paper at a time. It is reading the same forms: morning reports, unit journals, messages…over and over, until you understand what “normal” (normal in a war LOL) looks like so I can recognize when something isn't.

It is also lonely. But lonely in the way that any work is lonely when it requires you to be completely inside your own head for hours at a time. I’m in a room full of paper and silence, and the people whose words I’m reading have been dead for decades. It’s blissfully relaxing and exhausting all at the same time.

My typical set up at NARA, got everything I need right at hand.

I’ve got more trips to make. NARA again (there's always more at NARA LOL) and a trip to Camp Ripley in Minnesota, which holds 34th Division archives. The 34th is a National Guard division, upper Midwest, and their story is different from the Regular Army divisions. These were farmers and factory workers and small-town men; you get a very different perspective from them. And gd I can’t wait to knock Minnesota off my states list (every new state is a thrill!)

Visualization of every state I’ve visited (drive throughs don’t count…though damn the number of times I drove between Augusta, GA and Asheville, NC…)

Every trip into an archive is a commitment: I am going to sit in this room for as many days as I can (hotels ain’t cheap y’all), and I am going to go through every box on my list, and I am going to find what's there. Sometimes what's there is disappointing. Sometimes a box that the finding aid describes in promising terms turns out to hold nothing I can use. That's part of it too. Write it down, note that the box was examined, and move on. And sometimes I find the letter, or the journal entry, or the messages. The diaries. The story that hasn’t been told yet...

That's why I go.