Sixty-seven years after leaving Vicksburg, even before that start of World War II, the leaders of a group of Vicksburg soldiers seemed a bit reluctant to again plan an annual celebration.

“In early November, I asked for a show of hands for planning the party,” said 89-year-old Dick Jacobson. “No hands went up, so you’re stuck with me again,” he said. The group laughed.

Tuesday’s annual gathering at Toney’s Restaurant honored the six local remaining members of Company B, 106th Engineer Battalion and about a dozen guests. The soldiers shared updates, stories and a toast from a bottle of bourbon reserved for their surviving members.

The unit, part of the Mississippi National Guard, was activated May 28, 1934, with three officers and 58 soldiers. In May 1940, the unit rose to 83 soldiers and in late November of that year, members of the company were called to service, dispersed for specialized training and then sent off to Europe and the Pacific to fight in the war that followed.

Because they were in a combat engineer unit, most members of Company B built and maintained bridges and highways to aid the war effort. They had diverse and wide-ranging assignments, however. Seven were killed in the war.

After the war, the members of Company B returned home and no organized reunions were held for decades. However, the desire to reconnect with old buddies and shrinking numbers prompted the group to organize an annual reunion in 1980. Since, the group has continued to meet annually and local members meet monthly to share a meal and memories.

In 1992, 23 members of the original group were in Vicksburg to dedicate a monument to the unit in front of the courthouse. Today, only 14 members are accounted for, Jacobson said. Many of the surviving members were not able to attend Tuesday.

Many of the soldiers were Carr Central High School students and graduates. Some worked at the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Waterways Experiment Station, now known as the Engineer Research and Development Center, on Halls Ferry Road. Still others, eager to join the war effort, spoke Tuesday of how they fudged their ages in documents and agreed to new, earlier birthdays. The men received their training at the local armory, located where Vicksburg Auditorium now stands on Monroe Street.

The idea of the bourbon toast was born in 1940 before the unit deployed. A member suggested that two surviving members of the group should share a bottle of Wild Turkey. However, the bottle was opened a little early, at the 2004 reunion, which was attended by nine members.

After the group raised their glasses and cheered “Company B, by God!” Jacobson, who has hosted the ceremony for the past several years, spoke again.

“Those of you who aren’t interested in the shot of bourbon, save it and I’ll drink it later,” said Jacobson to more laughs. After serving the bourbon, he studied the bottle. “I think we’ve got enough for another couple of years.”

“So many of the friends I knew way back in the early ’30s,'” are here, said Company B member Charles Gastrell, a World War II pilot who retired after more than 35 years in the military. He returned to Vicksburg from Washington, D.C., in 1980 and has joined the group since. He said he enjoys being around friends and in the company of Jacobson’s energy and wit. “We all admire this guy — he’s something else,” Gastrell said.

Tuesday, Gastrell passed around recently discovered photos and shared stories of members assigned to the Pacific.

In one story he recounted, Gastrell and several of his friends noticed a commander’s car that had been discarded in a military junk yard. Because his unit was small, it was not authorized to have the vehicle under normal circumstances. Gastrell and the group took the car back to their unit, discovered that the transmission was bad and swapped it out for another.

One day, while riding around, a colonel from another unit stopped them and demanded to know why they were riding around in an officer’s car.

Gastrell told the colonel they pulled the car from the junk yard after finding it needed only a transmission. Instead of being upset at the young soldiers, the colonel went after the unit that had discarded the vehicle. However, their free ride was short-lived. The colonel returned a few months later and took the vehicle for his own unit.

Several members of Company B and other World War II veterans in Vicksburg have been interviewed by Mississippi Public Broadcasting, which showed brief segments to accompany the nationwide showing of “The War,” a six-part documentary which debuted earlier this year. Expanded versions of the MPB interviews are expected to be shown in 2008.