Uncle Jay
1922-2003
This handsome young man was my husband's Uncle Jay - a real hero. My husband has always told me about him and what he did in WW2 but wanted to know more. He said, his dad and his Uncle Jay would talk to each other for hours about what they saw in the war, but to no one else. So as a boy, my curious husband would hide behind the stairs and listen to the shocking stories.
Military records at the National Archives are hit and miss and sadly mostly a miss...Records were destroyed in a fire in 1973 in St Louis, MO. Over 80 percent of the Army personnel records from 1912 to 1960 were lost, as were roughly half of the Air Force records. This loss has affected millions of people across the country and is still something that staff at NPRC deal with every day.
It had been difficult to find Uncle Jay's records and we haven't found all of them and probably never will. I needed to tie up some loose ends and today I finally found what I needed to close up Uncle Jay's Military Career.
Uncle Jay was in the 82nd Airbourne Infantry Division. In a nutshell, He served in North Africa, Italy, and then on to D-Day, where his Division jumped out of perfectly good planes into Normandy. Operation Market Garden in the Netherlands, and later deployed to the Battle of the Bulge. And if that wasn't enough, the 82nd Airbourne liberated the Neuengamme Concentration Camp on May 2, 1945. My husband remembers the photos that Uncle Jay, a prolific photographer of his time in Europe had of this liberation. The impact of those photos jarred my husband, as he was only a boy and did not understand - I mean, really do we still understand any more as adults?
The 82nd Airborne Division was recognized as a liberating unit by the US Army's Center of Military History and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in 1991.
Uncle Jay's four children have now passed. But he has a nephew who still has a very special place in his heart for him and his service to our country and no doubt always will. It's been such a pleasure to dive into this and that sense of accomplishment is such a good feeling. I never knew Uncle Jay but in a way, he's been in my heart and will be there till I pass on.
I'm almost emotional that this part is done on Uncle Jay. We're satisfied that we have all that there is and I will now move on to another brick wall.
Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.
John 15;13
It's horrible when these records are lost. He was a hero and, like many soldiers, they felt they could only talk to each other. Does your husband have those photos? They belong in a museum
ReplyDeleteNo. He doesn't know which family member has them. They are all estranged from each other.
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