My great-uncle passed away about 30 years ago, but his younger brother, my grandfather, is still alive. As a nonagenarian widower, the coronavirus has made him even more isolated than usual, but he's become a voracious reader, so I'm trying to put together a package for the next few weeks.
My great uncle was awarded the Purple Heart and two Bronze Stars for his service, but he was also in the part of the archives where his military records were burned up, so I wasn't able to get much more than we already had when I sent in a records request last year, no real context or anything. From family tales, he was the only person in his unit to survive a bombing (I don't know if that's squad or platoon), and his transport ship hit a mine was caught in a storm on the way back home and split in half. But it's all murky, and even to my grandfather, my great uncle didn't like to talk about his service much because it wasn't happy times for him.
My great uncle's discharge records are about all I have to go on, but Google has not been super helpful finding me good books that cover that area, time, and division specifically.
Any recommendations y'all have to help fill my grandfather in about his brother while he's stuck inside would be greatly appreciated. Thank you in advance.
So, of a fairly minor note- your great-uncle’s discharge papers list him as a member of Able Company, 14th Armored Infantry [Battalion], which is a subordinate unit of the 1st Armored Division- which fought in Africa and Italy. Are you sure that he fought as a member of the 14th AD during his time in Europe? If so, the paperwork discrepancy is a likely result of him being transferred when the 14th AD was inactivated.
With that out of the way, and provided that he did indeed serve with the 14th Armored Division, the division has an outstanding website at 14thad.org that has subordinate websites to the various subordinate units. If he served as an armored infantryman with the division he would have been a part of one of the three armored infantry battalions organic to it: the 19th, 62d, or 68th. All three host copies of the battalion histories as well as the divisional history. There’s a tab on the division site that gives a brief overview of the division’s combat history, and under this tab a link to the official US Army history for the Seventh Army’s campaign in France and Germany is included. Several battalion sites include a link to an Armor School paper on the Battle of Hatten-Rittershoffen as well. All of the battalion sites host battalion histories and several documents and photographs pertaining to that particular battalion and the division at large. There is also a contact tab where you can get in touch with the division association as well as the site manager. They may be able to help you learn more about your grandfather, while the materials on the division and battalion websites should be more than enough to inform you on the war as the outfit experienced it.
As an aside I did some looking in the files hosted by all three battalions on their websites and did find several photographs on the 19th AIB website that include a “Johnson” that resembles your grandfather. You can find them at http://14thad.org/19thaib/- scroll down to “19th Armored Infantry Battalion Photos” and there’s about a dozen. I’m not sure that it’s him; but its worth looking at.
