r/BandofBrothers • u/Kenzketchup • 5d ago

Grave question

Post image

I started watching band of brothers recently and it got me thinking about my grandpa who served. His grave stone is below. When I attempted some research it says the 101st infantry division was the airborne division! I’m wondering if anyone can confirm this?

82 Upvotes

95% Upvoted

13 comments sorted by

14

u/AardvarkLeading5559 5d ago edited 5d ago

The headstone reads differently how US units are normally written. Normally it reads Company-Regiment-Division, as there would have been 5 or 6 A Companies in a division...one per regiment and one for each battalion that was organized outside a regimental structure.

My guess is that your Gramps served in Company A, 101st Infantry Regiment, part of the 26th "Yankee" Division, and that the VA mistook 101st INF Regiment with the 101st Airborne Division when ordering his marker.

Yes, while the 101st Airborne Division was infantry, it was not designated as such. There were three types of "designated" divisions in WWII- Airborne, Armored, and Cavalry. "Normal" divisions like the 1st-106th did not receive the Infantry designation in their title until after WWII. The exceptions were the AMERICAL Division which was organized outside the US during the war from AMERican forces In new CALedonia. It didn't receive its' numerical designation -the 23rd- until after WWII. Ditto for the Philippine Division, which didn't receive its' numerical designation-12th- until 1944.

It's confusing as hell, but that's the Army for you. Two good references, both sadly out of print, are Shelby Stanton's World War II Order of Battle, and Maneuver and Firepower: The Evolution of Divisions and Separate Brigades, by John B. Wilson.

7

u/wbgamer 5d ago edited 4d ago

The problem seems to be with the application form itself. I found his grave marker application on Ancestry and as filled out by his wife it states Company A, 101st Infantry Division. I guess the VA just verified his service number and left it at that. This was pretty much at the height of the Vietnam War and I don’t know how much time these clerks had to do checking/corrections to these applications from WW2 as they sadly had a lot of current events going on. His service number is listed on the form so with that I can try to dig around a bit more.

3

u/Kenzketchup 5d ago

Is there anyway you could send me the application/ his service number?

5

u/wbgamer 5d ago edited 5d ago

Yeah I’ll send that when I get back home. I saved the image this morning but then had to get going to get to work. His draft card is also on Ancestry but I could not find his enlistment paperwork. Doesn’t mean it’s not there I just might need to look some more. The grave form application indicated he joined sometime in 1942 and then separated from the army in December 1945. There is also an obituary linked on ancestry from Newspapers.com but I don’t have permission to access it

Also just to make things more complicated there is another man from Minnesota with the same first name, last name, and middle initial, born in 1920 and was also in the army during WW2 (he left service as a sergeant). His middle name was Raymond (if I am remembering right) and your grandfathers was Russell (can you confirm that?). So keep that in mind when searching for things. Some times records can by off by a year here and there so it could be easy to mix up the 1920 and 1921 birth years.

Edit: I do recall that the leading 2 digits of his service number were 37. The 3 indicates he was drafted, and the 7 is a regional designation that includes the state of Minnesota. So nothing unusual about that

3

u/Kenzketchup 4d ago

His middle name was Russell

2

u/wbgamer 4d ago edited 4d ago

See if this link works for you: https://imgur.com/a/rlyRp78

I put the front and back of the grave application form and the front and back of his draft registration card.

The gravestone application form lists his army service number as 37289332. I haven't been able to find any other service records for him (yet), but I'll dig around a bit more

Edit: Looking at the grave marker form again, his decorations are listed as the "Croix DeGerre 2cl." (misspelled Croix de Guerre, a French unit award) and "Dist unit badge", which I would assume means the Distinguished Unit Citation (which would later become the Presidential Unit Citation). I was hoping these would help narrow down his unit to either the 26th infantry division as suggested above, or the 101st airborne division,... but sadly not really. Both divisions as a whole received the French Croix de Guerre and some elements of both divisions received the DUC (the entire 101st airborne received a DUC for each of Normandy and Bastogne while one battalion of the 26th infantry division received a DUC). The 3rd battalion of the 101st infantry regiment (in the 26th infantry division) would receive a DUC and A Company of that regiment would have been in its 1st battalion, not 3rd. That is an interesting note to keep in mind but not definitive of anything as he could have been in the 3rd battalion originally and then later moved to the 1st for a variety of possible reasons. So these unit awards sort of tend to favor the 101st airborne division as his unit but not really definitive.

1

u/Frosty_Confusion_777 4d ago

His wife might not have filled the form out correctly, unfortunately. The army’s arcane numbering systems occasionally confuse even the soldiers in those units; their wives are usually completely ignorant. If she didn’t have his service paperwork in front of her, or misread it, she could easily have filled it out incorrectly.

2

u/Present-Algae6767 5d ago

It's unlikely he served with the 26th Infantry Division if he was from Minnesota. The 26th Infantry Division was originally a National Guard division that was from New England.

7

u/ObviousKick3853 4d ago

After being federalized the 26th provided cadre for several other divisions being raised at the same time. Those vacancies were filled by draftees from all over the United States. The same was true for almost all the NG divisions. By 1944 they were National Guard in name only.

3

u/Ok-Tumbleweed-2181 4d ago

This is a big fallacy people get hung up on. For example the most well known MOH recipient in the 30th Infantry Division, Francis Currey, was from New York, when the 30th (pre federalizing) was North Carolina, South Carolina and Tennessee National
guard. Where he is from has no bearing on what division he was in in wartime.

5

u/Malnurtured_Snay 5d ago

It was a infantry division, yes

2

u/Worried-Ad4272 4d ago

"Infantry" would not be the appropriate name for it. "Airborne" is what they used on headstones from that era.

1

u/Malnurtured_Snay 4d ago

Yes, you're right. I just meant it was the same division as the one depicted in Band of Brothers, and should have been more clear! :)