13551 Fort Washington Road

Fort Washington, MD 20744

Dear Volunteer:

Once again I have the pleasure of announcing that the next Universal Soldier program will be held on September 24 & 25, 2005. If desired, you may set up Friday evening and overnight camping will be allowed Friday and Saturday nights. The park will provide firewood, water and straw.

As always, we still need groups to represent additional periods and in some cases to represent different types of units within the time period. We are particularly interested in expanding impressions of the French and Indian War, American Revolution, War with Mexico and modern periods such as World War I, Korea and Vietnam. These periods had a great influence on our social and economic history.

This year we will be posting the Universal Soldier information on our web site at nps.gov/fowa. The volunteer information pages does not have a link so you will have to type in "/vip.htm" to access the web pages. If you know of other units that would like to participate, have them either contact me or you can send me their address and I will mail the information to them. They can also print the registration form from the web site and mail it in.

I would appreciate receiving your registration forms prior to September 1 so that I can mail the last minute information by September 10. If you need straw be sure to indicate the number of bales your unit will use on the registration form. Please note that straw is limited and should not be used as seating or displaying items.

Feel free to call me if you have additional questions. I look forward to seeing everyone this fall and let’s hope for another weekend of perfect weather.

Sincerely,

Barbara L. Wadding