In the early part of my research I was able to come across a few neat documents from various sources. I’ve used a few to make additional contacts and I’m waiting to see if they bear fruit.

This is my grandfather’s draft card. It’s pretty cool to see his actual handwriting on a document from 1942. My best guess is he would have signed this card sometime in November or early December of 1942 after legislation was passed that obliged 18 and 19 year-old men to register for the draft. Shortly thereafter (December 5), President Roosevelt signed an order that precluded men between 18 and 37 from volunteering so that there were sufficient able-bodied men in the US to defend the homeland.

I remember grandpa telling me a story about how he ‘became’ a medic and it was basically a sergeant going down the line of new draftees and saying “infantry, infantry, infantry, medic, infantry, infantry, infantry, support, infantry…” and he got ‘tapped’ as a medic and assigned to the Medical Detachment:

Hard to read, so here’s an enlargement from the center column:

According to his Report of Separation, he was formally inducted on February 19, 1943 so at least he didn’t have to sweat it too long between signing his draft card and actually getting called up. The odds at that time were about 1 in 5 and, if his luck wasn’t great before entering the service, he traded it in for divine protection once he was in.

I’ve mentioned his actions that earned the Silver Star being the catalyst for my research and I had more information sent to me by a member on one of the WW2 history forums I frequent. Below is the Awards Report for November of 1944 for the 71st IR.

There he is – Private McCarty earning the Silver Star. I currently have a full set of operations reports from the National Archives on its way to me and I’ll bet I come across this report there as well.

Last, but not least (for now anyway), is a clipping from the Chillicothe Constitution Tribune from July 13, 1945.

I’m hopeful I’ll hear something back from the Ft. Leavenworth Historical Society in the next few days about the time between when Grandpa was drafted and when the 71st left for Europe. If not, I’ll jump ahead and we’ll pick up his story as they landed in Cherbourg, France in September of 1944.

 

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It may be April 7th, 2018, but this blog really started several years ago. My wife and I have four boys and as they’ve gotten older it’s become important to us to share the meaning behind certain things in society, whether it be traditions or holidays. My wife thought it was important to teach them the meaning behind Memorial Day, as she put it “so they don’t think it’s just a three day weekend full of barbecues.” As a family we take an annual drive to the National Cemetery just outside Ft. Leavenworth to visit my Grandpa Dan’s grave.

This last time we went I started telling the boys about grandpa’s service in WW2 using his headstone. I told them “TEC 5” meant he was a medic and had earned the Silver Star for bravery. I launched into the story I heard of grandpa braving artillery fire to pull some wounded soldiers out of a foxhole and patch them up. I thought they were French since he also earned the French “Croix de Guerre” from that action. I told them about the time Grandpa asked me to come upstairs because he wanted to show me something: a nondescript box that he opened up to show me some medals, a bunch of ribbons and three “Iron Crosses”. I was really fascinated by the German medals and grandpa told me how his unit came across an abandoned truck that was just full of boxes of them. Evidently the Nazi high command was trying to boost morale with field decorations for their men. Grandpa explained our forces were moving so fast the Germans were leaving stuff, like this truck, if it broke down. He and his buddies grabbed the medals for souvenirs.

As I was telling my sons these stories (which I’m sure I’ve told them many times before) I really started to wonder if I had my facts straight. I started to wonder where he was when he saved those men. I wondered where that truck was. I wondered how many more stories he had that I could share with my boys. The only problem is that he’s not around to ask and he never really shared a lot with his immediate family.

These nagging wonders started to turn into motivation to do some research. My first thought was to reach out to my college friend Jed Dunham. Jed is a modern day Renaissance man. I’m still not sure what his major was at K-State but he was the heart and “motivational speaker” for the lacrosse team. After college he bicycled across the country and wrote a book about it. More interesting to me was his research into our lacrosse coach (KIA in Desert Storm) and the KSU alumni who served in WWI and were memorialized at the old “Memorial Stadium” on campus. I sent him an email and he sent me back a PDF scan of the 71st regimental history book from the Bangor, Maine library. A few pages into that book was this little nugget:

I was over the moon with this information. Here it was, confirmation of the family lore. What was even more fascinating to me was grandpa’s actions happened just three days after his Regiment entered combat. Beginning October 23rd, 1944, the 71st was in combat for 203 straight days until V-E day (May 5th, 1945). Attached to the 44th Infantry Division and part of General Patch’s Seventh Army, grandpa’s unit blitzed through the south of Germany and ended the war in the Austrian Alps. I started to realize that I didn’t just want to learn about that one day when grandpa earned his Silver Star; I want to learn about every one of his Regiment’s 203 days.

One of my main purposes for this blog is to share with my family what I’m uncovering. The story of the 71st is the story of our family. While I’d love to sit and tell every one of them what I’m learning I couldn’t do it justice. I also want to make sure my mom, aunt and uncle can go on this journey with me. He’s my grandpa but he’s also their dad and since he didn’t share much about the war with them I’ll do it for him. I’m confident there will be a book that comes out of this but I don’t want them to have to wait until I have it completed.

I’ve named this blog “Pro Aris et Pro Focis”, the motto of the 71st Infantry Regiment. It can be translated as “For our freedom and our home” or “For our country and our families”. I don’t know if any of these might make a good book title but I’ll be giving it some thought. In the meantime, I like it as the title of this little endeavor for my family.

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