Blast from the past: First guests view Armor, Cavalry gallery during soft opening at NIM

FORT BENNING, Ga., (Dec. 18, 2013) -- After more than a year of planning and work, the National Armor and Cavalry Gallery was opened to its first guests Thursday at the National Infantry Museum.

The soft opening, held in advance of the planned Jan. 30 grand opening, saw members of the National Armor and Cavalry Heritage Foundation, representatives from the National Infantry Museum, various guests and current Armor and Cavalry Soldiers come together to celebrate the gallery's opening.

The gallery contains artifacts and displays from throughout Armor and Cavalry history, and is intended to provide guests with an overview of the branch's role in American military history, one of the gallery's curators said.

"We really wanted it to be a good cross section of Armor and Cavalry history," Lindsey Williams said. "We wanted it to hit on the pinnacle points of tank development and maybe also focus on some portions of history that people outside of the Armor branch might not know about. We really focused on why the tank exists, what happened during World War II that led to the creation of armored tracked vehicles. We also focus on what happened after World War I … and how the Cavalry branch and Infantry branch took tanks and used them in different ways, which led to the Armor branch that we have today."

Williams said it was especially gratifying to see Soldiers enjoying the exhibit after the months of work that were put in.

"This has been over a year's worth of work, so it's good to finally see everything that was just on paper for so long actually in three dimensions," she said. "It's been quite the journey, but I'm glad that people are walking through and enjoying all of our hard work. We do this for Soldiers, and we're happy when Soldiers are happy with our work."

Col. David Davidson, commander of the 316th Cavalry Brigade, was on hand for the soft opening and offered high praise for the work done by the curators.

"The work's that's been done is phenomenal," Davidson said. "To take that small space and really show the progression over time of the Armor and Cavalry community is just amazing. The displays are great and it's all very professionally done. It fits with the rest of the beauty that is the National Infantry Museum."

Davidson said the exhibit does a good job of placing Armor and Cavalry artifacts within the proper historical context.

"It's more than just a memorial," he said. "It's more than just vehicles sitting somewhere on static displays that you don't give a second thought to. When you see them in context, in the dioramas and in the organization they've been put in and see what it looked like when they were being used, you just get a better feel for what those things were all about."

Getting those artifacts in their proper places, however, proved to be quite a challenge.

Williams said most of the artifact vehicles were too large to be moved into the NIM. In the end, three smaller vehicles were chosen to be part of the gallery, but even those required a concentrated effort to set up.

"We took the tracks off the vehicles and had to go … up a ramp and through the door," Williams said. "We couldn't turn them because we didn't want to damage the carpet, so we had to jack them up and pivot them on the jacks before we sat them back down and pushed them into the gallery. It took about a week to get all three vehicles into the gallery."

The gallery's opening is just the first part of a multi-phase effort the foundation has planned.

The next phase is the opening of Patton's Park, an exhibit near the NIM that will display larger vehicles. It is set to open in spring 2014.

After that, the next phase is set to include the construction of a new National Armor and Cavalry Museum, also planned to be built near the NIM.

Davidson said the effort to increase the presence of Armor and Cavalry history is vital as the Army increases its focus on combined arms training.

"We have spent a lot of time and effort bringing the Armor and Infantry schools together to train, so now Armor Soldiers, Cavalry Scouts and Armor lieutenants that come through the Army come through Fort Benning," he said. "They need the ability to see that history and lineage and to understand what has gone before them and to see those that rode the trail before them. As we continue down that path, this is just a start. Eventually, we want to have a full national museum that celebrates the contributions of that Armor and Cavalry force through time. This is a good first step, but we've still got a long way to go."

While Williams said she enjoyed the soft opening, she has already turned her attention to the new museum.

"We'll probably start working on that tomorrow," she said. "We've got quite a lot of work ahead of us, but we're looking forward to the future and the new museum."