Here’s a really interesting note that came in as part of a large mixed lot that I received yesterday. It appears to have been signed by a group of soldiers during World War II. A fascinating piece of history. Was wondering if anybody knew if this was a common practice or just a random thing that ended up coming across my desk. Thanks for any input!
Wow! Great history on how the military leaders and non-leaders coped with the war and the reality of early death.
https://sites.rootsweb.com/~pawashin/military/wwII/jones-harold.html Nice piece of history. There are multiples of most of the names I could read. I would have to obsess over finding what unit these guys al belonged too!
It was a fairly common practice. I have hundreds of them. There are a lot of T/5s. This would suggest an air corps unit. I see no officers which probably means they are ground crew. I looked at the NARA records for Air Medals and DFC and none of them came up which would again suggest they are ground crew. None of the names I could read were on the Roster of WWII War Dead. A couple could be positively identified in ancestry records like William Barone and Leslie Beltramo but unit was not confirmed.
An aside about that series, it was issued by the American military in France and the De Gaulle government was livid that the American military government was issuing currency without the approval of the French. Because in the French version of events at that time, they were in the lead in the Normandy Landings and the invasion in the south of France beginning in August and the Americans and Brits were just the sideshow in the invasion. To soothe wounded Gallic pride Eisenhower had to let De Gaulle's forces be the first to march into Paris
Actually, this series (the FRANCE back notes) was issued at the request of the French Committee for National Liberation. The flag back notes were issued under Eisenhower's authority as Supreme Commander. The currency issue was serious enough that Roosevelt and Churchill discussed it many times. The flag back notes were termed supplemental currency and not occupation currency. This soothed DeGaulle enough that he did not publicly object to them being used although he did not publicly approve of them until August 1944.
My father served in the Navy Submarine service during WWII. Because of their dangerous missions, the men in the Submarine would sign something or leave some type of memento that would mean something to family with the name of the Sub on the outside of a sealed box in the case of being sunk. Thankfully, the sub was never sunk and my mother got whatever it was my father left. I was never told about it. They both passed without us knowing what it was.
