Post by connie on May 3, 2009 15:16:49 GMT -5
Sometimes with the search it seems to be like the butterfly story -- where you can chase and chase it directly without success but you sit down to rest and it comes and sits on your shoulder. Finding people and answers seems like an impossible chase, but just when you think you are not looking, sometimes amazing things happen.
This one happened slowly with a link on this site. Two of us found that our fathers were in the Service Battery of the same Field Artillery Battalion. Obviously we had some information to exchange. But, one father was a 28 year old officer and one was a young man driving in the ammunition train. The father from the Ammo train did not even recall the officer's name at first. Then, maybe he remembered. But, of course, what he wondered about was his buddies. And, he had wondered for over 60 years about the fate of a fellow who had disappeared from the end of a line of trucks on December 16th.
The tough time came in early 2008 when the officer's daughter was helping clean out her Dad's house. In the back of a notebook in the attic was found the first of two pages on which her dad had kept track of men missing from his unit and had scratched down notes when anything was learned of their whereabouts. "MIA" with a date was the first entry. Sometimes there was more like "POW" or even a return home date. If the second half of the list was there... It would have been nice to tell the fellow from the ammo train (through his daughter) that someone had been thinking about him when he disappeared and later when he became a POW. Wishing for this, the discovery of the second sheet of paper in a dresser drawer was like finding gold! E-mails were exchanged.
But this was not the end. OK. this third person bit is get awkward. Dad was the officer. I also discovered a complete list of the service battery personnel for this unit and sent copies to the other service battery daughter and Jim West.
With this information, the other daughter (Gail) now had the spelling of the name of the fellow her father had wondered about and she started doing web searches for the name -- first name Calvin.
Here's the really wild part of the whole connection thing. Calvin's son had been searching for his father's history. His dad had been snapped up from the end of the ammo train on the 16th and had become a POW. After his release he had returned to the states and lived a long and good life. But, all the son had of his father's history was a POW bracelet. He knew only that he was a private in the army and had become a German POW. He did not have a division name and certainly not a battalion or battery. But, he wrote an inquiry giving his dad's name on a POW site and this is what Gail found.
The connection was made. Could this really be the son of the man Gail's father had wondered about all these years? The Service Battery photo confirmed it. There was Calvin.
This son had made the most impossible search of all, and he now knew his dad's division, battalion, and battery! And, he could give Gail's dad a positive ending to the story that had haunted him for 60 some years.
This one happened slowly with a link on this site. Two of us found that our fathers were in the Service Battery of the same Field Artillery Battalion. Obviously we had some information to exchange. But, one father was a 28 year old officer and one was a young man driving in the ammunition train. The father from the Ammo train did not even recall the officer's name at first. Then, maybe he remembered. But, of course, what he wondered about was his buddies. And, he had wondered for over 60 years about the fate of a fellow who had disappeared from the end of a line of trucks on December 16th.
The tough time came in early 2008 when the officer's daughter was helping clean out her Dad's house. In the back of a notebook in the attic was found the first of two pages on which her dad had kept track of men missing from his unit and had scratched down notes when anything was learned of their whereabouts. "MIA" with a date was the first entry. Sometimes there was more like "POW" or even a return home date. If the second half of the list was there... It would have been nice to tell the fellow from the ammo train (through his daughter) that someone had been thinking about him when he disappeared and later when he became a POW. Wishing for this, the discovery of the second sheet of paper in a dresser drawer was like finding gold! E-mails were exchanged.
But this was not the end. OK. this third person bit is get awkward. Dad was the officer. I also discovered a complete list of the service battery personnel for this unit and sent copies to the other service battery daughter and Jim West.
With this information, the other daughter (Gail) now had the spelling of the name of the fellow her father had wondered about and she started doing web searches for the name -- first name Calvin.
Here's the really wild part of the whole connection thing. Calvin's son had been searching for his father's history. His dad had been snapped up from the end of the ammo train on the 16th and had become a POW. After his release he had returned to the states and lived a long and good life. But, all the son had of his father's history was a POW bracelet. He knew only that he was a private in the army and had become a German POW. He did not have a division name and certainly not a battalion or battery. But, he wrote an inquiry giving his dad's name on a POW site and this is what Gail found.
The connection was made. Could this really be the son of the man Gail's father had wondered about all these years? The Service Battery photo confirmed it. There was Calvin.
This son had made the most impossible search of all, and he now knew his dad's division, battalion, and battery! And, he could give Gail's dad a positive ending to the story that had haunted him for 60 some years.
