Former workers of the Springfield Armory are getting together this weekend.  Saturday’s reunion will focus on those who made weapons for the military during World War 2.

Between 1940 and 1945, the Springfield Armory, now a national historic site, employed more than 13,000 ordinance workers – nearly half of them women.  They made the M-1 Garand semi-automatic rifle, the main weapon for the U.S. infantry during the war. The Armory’s Joanne Gangi-Wellman says the reunion will give workers and their families who lived on the Armory grounds the chance to record oral histories.

“We’re used to thinking about the Armory as a big factory that produced firearms. But it was also a community. It was a place for people to get along, and to have a good time, and all the things we think about if we lived in our neighborhood,” says Gangi-Wellman.

The event will also feature a big band commemorating the Benny Goodman Orchestra’s 1943 concert at the Armory.