Restoring a Vandalized Band of Brothers Site | History Traveler Episode 135

well last night i had the opportunity to do something pretty dang cool uh i got to sleep in an old world war ii bunk in a reconstructed world war ii barracks at camp toccoa at kurahi where the men from the 506th parachute infantry regiment and three other parachute infantry regiments trained in preparation to fight in world war ii so this was my bedroom last night i am back in toccoa where i visited last fall and i am so excited to share everything that's going on here and and what we're going to be doing over the next few days but as for right now it's dark so i can't really show anything so uh you can't come to toccoa where men like uh richard winters and george luz and bill garnier and car would lift and trade and not do a little bit of training yourself so i'm going to go out and uh put myself through some sort of rigorous uh physical exercise and then whenever it gets daylight we're gonna circle back around here and show some pretty cool things that are going on at toccoa [Music] well got our workout in uh got a quick shower and now we've got some daylight can explain what it is that we are doing here uh so just for the sake of context last year i came here with my son to toccoa we came to camp tacoa at currihi went to the kurihi military museum and if you watched those videos you saw one in particular where we went to the the very top of kurahi and found just an insane amount of graffiti and vandalism so i made an offhand comment about you know getting a group of people together and coming back and cleaning up well turns out that video sparked a considerable amount of outrage across the world and that outrage led to action now we didn't go in and burn anything down but instead a whole bunch of people literally from around the world came together we raised a bunch of money and now we are back here at the base of karahi and we are going to go back up that mountain and clean it up and get it to looking closer to the way that men like dick winters and bill garnier and uh popeye win and some of those other guys who trained here uh would have seen it now before we do that we're gonna have a bunch of people coming in later but uh there have been a lot of changes here at camp tacoa that i want to show [Music] so do you remember the c-47 that i showed in the last video that was all in pieces and strewn about well look at it now now it doesn't have its wings attached yet but they've got it up on its wheels and have a really nice paint job so if you look there's the entrance to camp tocoa at kurahi so as people come in this is going to be one of the first things they see crazy to think of all of the work that the volunteers have done here just in the time that i left they have been quite busy oh and i don't think i'm supposed to be here now you may remember in those earlier videos here at camp toccoa where i showed the barracks just in short after the war these barracks were torn down by locals you could i think for 25 dollars per building you could have the wood the wood was stored in a barn here locally and they are using that wood to rebuild these barracks well here's the one that i looked at in the earlier video but look at the work that they've done since i left so there's one two foundations and another barracks that has been completely built so they're gonna have four total to represent the four parachute infantry regiments that trained here a lot of people associate camp toccoa with uh easy company because of band of brothers but there were a lot of men who who trained here and uh and a lot of men who who didn't come back but you can come here and stay in these barracks all right now i really want to go inside and show some of the updates all right so we've already got a little bit of a glimpse in here already but look at how nice this is so there's where i stayed last night but some cool additions that they have is uh these old original uh world war ii bunks um and then if you go and look here all of these window frames are original to uh the the barracks here at tacoa and uh they have this available for groups to rent out and and you can stay here right in the same place where the men who trained here stayed pretty cool experience and of course like i said each one represents the different parachute infantry regiments each barracks represents the different parachute infantry regiments that trained here this particular one being for the 506th and since we are going to need plenty of clean energy this weekend with our cleaning efforts brought a few cases of the old jocko discipline go this one no offense to the others but the old sour apple has to be my favorite george i promise you that i did not carve my name into one of your old world war ii army bunks that was somebody else so please do not ban me from ever staying in the barracks again [Music] all right well those are just a few of the updates that have occurred here at camp tocoa since my last visit and all of this has been done with volunteer labor and with money that has been donated to camp toccoa uh pretty amazing i didn't even mention the giant pavilion that they've built back here which is equally amazing so this would be a great place to come not only to visit for the history but if you want to have like leadership retreats or reunions or get togethers or anything like that it's an absolute great space and the people that do the work here are really uh my own personal heroes all right so anyway we have some more volunteers who are coming in here in a little bit uh we're going to tour the facilities and some other areas here around toccoa and then we are going to be getting to work upon currihi mountain [Music] all right well uh pretty exciting we have most of our crew that has rolled in and uh i opted not to get the camera out whenever people were showing up because it seems kind of weird to meet somebody for the first time just shove a camera in their face but anyway i got people from all over the u.s really really exciting they are inside the campsicoa museum right now checking out a little bit of the history of this place so yeah going to go ahead and jump in there now okay so we're kind of continuing our tour through uh toccoa here and we're just rolling in to really one of my favorite museums the kurihi military museum so i'm anxious to get in here and kind of uh share this experience with everybody since i've been here but i haven't been here with with other people so anyway getting ready to go in and see what i missed the first time [Music] now here's something that i missed my first time through this is an elevation marker that used to be on top of kurahi and this is what the the men would go up to the top of the mountain and touch whenever they were running the three miles up and three miles down but yeah pretty cool okay so there's so much that i missed on my first trip here if you look on this list uh in this column see if i can point it out with my finger like right in there uh there's the name nyland well that is one of the nyland brothers who the movie saving private ryan was based off of and in this yard long photo let me adjust my lighting their seventh from the right in that front standing row is fritzen island so cool that they have this all right here is yet another item that i missed my first time through i've talked about meehan on a couple of different videos he was one of the men who was killed in a plane crash on d-day one of the first men killed well these are items that were recovered from the crash site including uh wristwatch also a clicker wow all right what do you think it's honestly it's hard to put it into words um for me personally i think the most difficult thing to take in is that this building came all the way from england where these men were staying themselves in the middle of this great war and the fact that we can stand here in the united states see where they carve their names on the wall where they hid their letters it it honestly cannot really be put into words for me personally yeah it definitely has a cool vibe to it yeah it's it brings you there a little bit here's a division that just simply does not get the attention that it deserves and that's the 11th airborne which also trained at toccoa very good a chance look up the raid at los banos these guys did some amazing amazing things over in the pacific theater and also fun fact rod sterling the guy who created the twilight zone or was the host of the twilight zone was in the 11th airborne all right so we've had a pretty full day today uh went to a couple different museums tomorrow we're going to be heading up to the top of curry heat to clean it up but uh this evening we're doing things proper here at toccoa and watching the curry heat episode together from banded brothers so uh anyway pretty uh pretty cool experience yes all right but tomorrow tomorrow the work begins [Music] all right well it is saturday morning before memorial day and uh we're here on top of kurahi getting ready to clean stuff up so i'm gonna i'm gonna show some of the vandalism and graffiti because i want people to see what it looked like before and whenever you have people getting together for a common cause to do some good what it looks like after and we have some crazy people who even though we have a full day of work ahead of them are making the decision to hike up kirahi like this guy right here we got chris from uh vlogging through history so three miles up three miles down now i can say i did the up anyway awesome you sound like you could use a glass of water i've got some in my backpack awesome so how was the hike it was wonderful because it was cooler this morning and a lot of uphill yes very especially at the end there's a lot of uphill on the way down i know i know but i loved every minute of it it was very cool now i need some water well look at this mess if you saw the first video that i put out well then this looks all too familiar uh and this is just one small part that we're going to be attacking today i do want to say something to some heroes of mine at punisher blasting puncher mobile blasting this is mark right here who's uh local owner of uh sandblasting company and uh mark i like what you had to say we're about ready what would you say what is it that you said wreak havoc yeah that's it oh man but uh yeah mark's a good guy and uh is doing this free of charge you're a good man mark now this is an area of the mountain that i did not come to before so might want to come up here to reflect on the beauty of god's creation and the sacrifice of the men who fought in world war ii but man instead you're distracted by all of the defacement to these stones here this this is exceptionally bad but we're going to clean it up though right [Music] do [Music] patrick doing a good job cleaning up the rocks there well you know i'm trying to do a trick here all right let's get to it kelly you look like a ghostbuster these two right here came from nevada came all the way to toccoa from nevada so you you all get the the distance prize red eye finally paid off [Music] okay hang on a second and i'm craving oysters right now oh what's dude whenever they call that elephant snot they meant it ash what do you think of all this up here what can i say chance of a lifetime [Music] all right so uh up here on top of curry he and dad gum look at the view and i i would be remiss if i didn't give credit to to the guy who is responsible for all this and that is sam he is the founder of the uh curry he clean up project so he's the one who's doing all of the heavy lifting and the hard work so uh it's pretty cool to see all of these different groups coming together to make this happen when i was a kid i mean there really wasn't much and there was like a few things on the outside but this rock was mostly pretty bare and now it's just it's gotten worse the graffiti is not cool it's kind of it's not it's annoying and it looks like crap [Laughter] emily we slinging some snot yeah it's not sleeping that's what i mean okay so this is kind of a funny story this is emily you're from west virginia yeah that's right okay so how what grade are you in i'm a sophomore in college sophomore in college oh okay all right basically she watches the channel and uh signed up and then told her parents that they were going to so it's been it's been pretty cool [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] all right well we are kind of wrapping up a long and difficult day of work with really some of the the best people that i have ever been around and we didn't get all of the graffiti because this was a huge job but we got a lot of it and you know what it looked like before i cannot wait for you to see what it looks like after my gosh take a look at this and tell me that this doesn't look so much better than all of that nasty spray paint caked up on these rocks so if you remember from that earlier video that i did i don't even know where it was now is right here in this area where somebody had painted that awful i love hitler statement in uh spray paint so it's it's very cool to see this area in the process we're not done yet but in the process of being restored to its natural state and to the state that the toccoa men would have known it whenever they were training here on the mountain i'll tell you what whenever you step back and look at what happened here today it really is quite amazing we had people traveling from all over the u.s we had people donate from all over the world all with different interests and and backgrounds we had people that were interested in history we had rock climbers we had people from the online gaming community we had local businessmen like mark and jeremy from punisher mobile blasting we had cooperation from the u.s forest service we had all of these different groups that all came together for a common cause because they saw a wrong that needed to be righted and they were willing to take their words and put them into action and start pushing back on something that that really really needed corrected now we we do need to be real about something um in the short term this this isn't going to to last the the people who who vandalized this area will be back and they will do it again until this area achieves a protected status but that doesn't mean that we give up if there's one thing that we can learn from history it's that there are just some people who define themselves by what they can desecrate and what they can destroy the the men who ran up this mountain in training to go to world war ii knew that all too well but again that doesn't mean that we give up there there are always going to be people who are going to try and tear things down and try and turn the world in into an ugly place and it's in those times whenever good people have to band together they have to make a firm stand and say no you you will not do this uh you you will not destroy our history uh you you will not desecrate and take the things that god has made beautiful and turn them into something ugly uh you're not going to take our society and and grind it into the dirt there are a lot of good people who came out here today from literally all over the united states and uh committed themselves and their time and their money and their resources to to doing a a good work and there's still a lot more to do here at kurahi and i'm sure that we will be back but until then go out and do something good [Music]

Channel: The History Underground

Views: 234,296

Keywords: history, history traveler, history travel, band of brothers, wwii, world war ii, easy company, dick winters, camp toccoa, toccoa georgia, currahee, currahee graffiti, vandalism, graffiti, sandblasting, currahee band of brothers, currahee mountain, currahee mountain trail, graffiti tagging, toccoa ga, jocko, jocko fuel

Id: Vg2a_f2es_s

Length: 24min 26sec (1466 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 02 2021