As of this writing in June 2024, Arthur Gamache is 90 years old. His memories of his time in the military, 5th Army, 5th Division are rather hazy. Of these times, he speaks rather hesitatingly. “It was a long time ago” he notes.

Conversely, Gamache is a Nashua native and lifelong resident. After his military service, he spent 41 years working in downtown Nashua and coaching kids’ baseball – of that, he is most animated. He says, “I got to know a lot of people in Nashua – all the people who worked downtown, all the painting contractors, all the people associated with baseball. I knew them all.”

Arthur Gamache graduated from Nashua High School in 1951 and entered the Army in 1953. The Army made him an ammunition specialist. He said: “Back then we had all kinds of weapons. They taught us how to fire everything from rifles to machine guns to bazookas to grenade launchers and mortars… we threw grenades. You name it, we fired it!” But by the time he was fully trained and ready to ship out overseas; the fighting in Korea was over. (Author’s Note: The United States was involved in the Korean War between June 25, 1950, and July 27, 1953.)

Gamache never went overseas. His entire military time was spent in the US, with some time in Lacrosse, WI and serving as an MP at Camp Carson in Colorado Springs, CO. What chafe’s him about that duty was having to stand guard on Christmas Day.

Gamache remembers pay-day back then, “We all lined up to get our pay. We made $75 per month and we got paid in cash. That’s not a lot today and even then, wasn’t too much. I sent my money home to help my parents. My father was sick and my mother didn’t work.”

He left the service when he was still in Colorado. One of his friends, a soldier named LaSage, had a car so they drove home from Colorado to New Hampshire. Before leaving, he signed on for eight years of inactive service. “If things heated up in Korea again, or anywhere else in the world, he said, “I would be one of the first guys they would call.”

He said signing on for the inactive duty was not a bad thing. “Between that, and being partially disabled during my service time, I still get a pension from the Army. All that ammunition fire damaged my hearing. So, the Army gives me a new pair of hearing aids every five years.”

Long-time Nashuans will likely remember one of the first places Gamache worked upon returning home; it was Pizza by Charles on West Pearl St. This restaurant was only feet away from another iconic Nashua business, Nashua Wallpaper, and this is where Gamache went next and made a career of 41 years. He says, “I started there as a clerk inside the store, then went on the road to sell paint and paper commercially, then I became the store manager.”

Being civic-minded, Gamache served on the Nashua Housing Board, and coached kids baseball for many years. He notes, “In my later years, Nashua mayor Bernard Streeter gave me a certificate for all the different things I had done for the city.”

Arthur’s wife, Pat Gamache noted that both she and her husband loved downtown Nashua. She would walk down to the Rosebud Restaurant on the corner of West Hollis and Main St. to have lunch. It was after one of these lunches that the two met – right in front of City Hall.

Pat Gamache mentioned that their family was involved in military service before Arthur went into the Army. Pat’s grandmother, Mary Charpentier, was a nurse for the Red Cross. In 1945, as soldiers were returning from the European Theater in WWII, those who needed medical care were being sent to a facility in Georgia. Charpentier was sent there to help care for the men. Pat Gamache remembers, “Back then we didn’t have email, or social media, and making a phone call from Nashua to Georgia was rather expensive. So, my grandmother and aunt wrote letters back and forth. We saved them all and put them in a book. Read in their entirety, it gives one a personal look inside life in America in the 1940s.”

Arthur and Pat Gamache still live in Nashua on the west side of town.

Author’s Note: If you have read this far, you must be wondering about the photo of the kid on a bicycle at the top of the page. In September 2021, Nashua historian and resident Den Levesque posted this photo on the Facebook page, “Nashua NH, Past, Present, and Future” and on this author’s Facebook site, “Nostalgic Nashua” and asked, “Does anyone know this guy?” I looked at it and thought, “Who is ever going to be able to identify what appears to be a random photo of a random kid on a random day in Nashua? That will never happen.” But I left it posted anyway.

After several wrong answers were given, Pat Gamache posted, “That is my husband, Arthur Gamache riding his bike on Main St.” Pat says that the picture was taken by a photographer taking random pictures of Nashua to be put on a postcard. Den Levesque claims that this photo was taken for a traffic survey conducted in 1947. Either way, it seemed entirely unlikely, and I was stunned when someone was able to identify this person from 74 years ago. It was good for a chuckle, and then I forgot about it.

Fast forward…. Today, on June 14, 2024, almost three years later, and in preparation for this article, I got to interview that random kid on the bicycle in the random photo, taken on a random day in Nashua, 77 years ago. What a small world!