I know he was in Italy with the 10th Transportation Battalion and family lore suggests he won two Bronzes with valor. Where can I go to confirm these honors and view the citations?

I have used this guy, Bill Beigel. Had to pay some money. I got some good information about my uncle Buddy Lewis.

https://www.ww2research.com/locate-individual/

Military records process

Bronze Star Recipients

Hope this helps

My Grandfather served in Korea. Parachuted in with some engineers before hostilities to do some mapping and survey work apparently and then fought in the war. Apparently his records were lost im Missouri due to the fire according to family members that have tried to retrieve them.

Good luck and hope you are able to find what you are looking for.

Most of Uncle Buddy's records were lost in the Missouri fire.

A lot of military records were lost in a fire but I don't remember where. When I got divorced in 1984 my now ex-wife threw a lot of my stuff away out of spite including my military records. When I needed my DD214 I had to apply for another copy and it took quite a while to get it. I never could find my Father's records from WWll.

My mother's brother enlisted in the navy at 17, a few months before Pearl. He was at Pearl, temporarily on the USS Medusa, during the attack. He would never tell anyone about his service so all we know came from his best buddy and we haven't been able to verify much of that. We know he was at Tarawa, piloting a landing craft, and was badly injured when a mortar round landed in his boat. He spent a year in the hospital for that. We were told that besides the purple heart, he also got a bronze star but we haven't ever found any record of it. There were no tide tables so the navy could only guess at the tide level when they started the Tarawa invasion. They were wrong and the tide was out. The boats were hanging up on sand bars. My uncle had unloaded and was on the way back out for another load of marines when he stopped to help an incoming boat that was stuck. He was towing them when the mortar round got him.
It would be nice to find out if he really got the star but I doubt we'll ever know for sure.

My great uncle Arthur Gilman fought at Tarawa.
Family story was that he was so disgusted with the command that he threw his medals in the ocean.

He died when I was a late teenager but I have thought of researching his record. We were forever careful when we went out to a restaurant because he would lose his shiit if he saw a Japanese person.

Interesting, a many great dad was a Union solder.

For a start, check with the courthouse in his home county to see if he filed his DD214 there. That’s likely the only hope of getting his records since many guys never kept their own copies and a fire at the government’s storage facility destroyed most of them.

I have my father’s record from WW II and knowing how the orders and endorsements work, I’ve been able to see where he went and when. He was an Engineering Officer on an LST (LST 29) at Tarawa, Kwajelein (sp?), Eniwetok, etc.

One of the orders in his record has a list of the whole crew. They got on a newly launched LST in Pennsylvania, took it down the Ohio and Mississippi rivers to the Gulf of Mexico with an instructional crew. Then sailed to Key West where, I think the instructors got off

Then sailed to and through the Panama Canal and then on to WESTPAC for “the duration”. No tour length mentioned…it was ‘til the war was over.

I looked my mother’s younger brother’s records years ago. Uncle R P died when I was just a youngster leaving a wife and 5 small kids (my first cousins) in a very small Mississippi Delta town with a population of less than 300. Very poor growing up. Found out he enlisted before Pearl Harbor and unfortunately stationed in the Philippines. Unwillingly had to participate in the Battan Death March and was a Japanese POW survivor. He hated Doug Out Dougie and the Japanese. Nobody except my Dad knew the horrors he endured. He could not stand to be anywhere Asians. Luckily, we only have a few Chinese grocery stores
(Chinaman stores as they were known) restaurants and a few pharmacists. He died at age 42 mostly from his ill treatment as a POW. He was the first person I ever saw give himself insulin injections. I remember one time he had a low sugar and no hard candy in the glovebox of his farm truck. He pulled up to his garden, dug up a sweet potato and peeled and ate it raw. His children turned out well. The oldest girl had an aunt who was a nurse in Memphis who helped her to become a nurse. One boy joined the Navy to see the world and was stationed at Meridian Naval Air Station. But he served and retired from the Reserves. He was an anccountant with a national heavy equipment company.Another became a plumber and the other a farm manager like his father. The other girl married full time army guy and she was a computer tech. Gripes me that we spent trillions on “The Great Society” and the poor whites of the South never received any help or were denied services. Families helping kin to better themselves - the way of the poor in the South. Blacks weren’t the only ones to share crop.

My dad was in the Pacific Theater for a year, flying supplies in a C46 over the Himalays. He was stationed in India, and they flew to bases in China, the Chinese used the supplies to fight Japs. My dad's first cousin, my Uncle Buddy, was killed by a Jap sniper in the invasion of the Phillippines.

My dad always hated Japs and he hated MacArthur. Called him "Dugout Doug."

Most of the WWII records were lost in a fire.

I think St. Louis in 1974

its a damn shame too, a lot of hero's exploits were lost in that fire

Mine is still alive , just turned 100 few weeks ago .
Still gets about but a little wobbly , still likes to shoot his 32 and 357 magnums and not shabby across a bench
Served in Japan
Kenneth

God bless him!

I thank him for his service.

Coincide, just the other day I found a bundle of letters my father had written home to his mother during WWII. He was the youngest of three boys and afraid the war would end before he got into it. My grandmother wouldn’t let him drop out of school and enlist as soon as he turned 17, made him graduate. All three boys were in, the oldest was Army in Europe. My father and the middle son Navy in the Pacific.

My godfather was US Army Air Corps. When, as kids, we’d ask what he did in the war he’d just say, “Oh, I was just a test pilot.” They Had no kids and I ended up with all his military records and memorabilia. “Just a test pilot…” I guess he said that because he was the squadron maintenance officer and maybe test flew all the repair jobs. Maybe he thought if he talked about all the air battles and subsequent decorations he’d sound like he was bragging.

The fire was in 1973 at a National Archive facility.
National Archive fire

I would try this site:

https://www.nationalww2museum.org/s...67_Family_Research_Packet_8.5x11_r22.pdf

It explains that most of the Navy records still exist, those in the Army were the ones that were lost in the fire. I just sent in for my father's WW II navy records. I know that he was on a LSM in the Pacific and that he enlisted as a 17 year old. I would like to know more.

My Dad was a tin can sailor on this tin can, a gunner on a 40mm.

https://destroyerhistory.org/fletcherclass/ussevans/

One of the best lines in all of literature comes from John Milton, the closing line from Sonnet 19:

They also serve who only stand and wait.

The meaning is different from this application, but those who wore the uniform, regardless of battle experience, if any, still signed up for the possibility of going into harm’s way.

They all deserve the utmost respect.




P

My dad was stateside the entire war. First he was on a sub chaser doing convoy escort out of GA and FL. They'd escort a fleet of cargo ships half way across the Atlantic, meet up with a convoy coming this way, and escort them back to FL.
Later he trained for flying blimps, also doing coast patrol, watching for u-boats. He trained in NJ then was sent to GA. Later he was transferred to Tillamook, OR. There's now a naval air museum in the 1 remaining blimp hangar in Tillamook.

Here he is manning a radio on a blimp. He was a chief at this time.


I don't know where this was taken but it's one he was on.