Hi Jeff, I had a similar experiance concerning my Dad and Grandfathers stuff. My oldest Brother can be an asshole at times. This was shortly after my Father had passed away in 1988, and we were going through a bunch of stuff in a quansit hut that we owned and had been running a business from out of.

Well, as im the only person in my family at that time (and probably still now) that had any interest in "that old war junk" as my older bro deemed it so, that that stuff HAD to be chucked in the garbage.

Well, we had a large BFI Dumster in back and it was about 1/4th full, when something possessed me to go take a look in the dumster, so I climbe in and moved some paper around and saw something that looked like a coat, and naturally I picked it up and discovered it was my Grandfathers WWII Captains jacket. Naturally it went back out of the dumpster and I went to go hide it in some bushes-so that my older brother would not see that it was rescued.

Well, after hiding the jacket, I thought i'd better look through everything and again climbed into the dumpster and started chucking everything back out. I soon found my Dads WWII G.I. Steel Pot, and two of his Airforce tunics (one was of the "Ike" style) and those were set aside as well as the few ribbonbars and his WWIIVictory Medal. I did not find any other ribbonbars and medals that were my dads and suspected my brother threw them away somewhere else.

Before I was through, I also found my grandfathers Doughboy overseas cap, all of his WWII ribbonbars, Mariners Medal (which is quite rare and getting more expensive these days) and the two sets of "award cards" that showed in color, a fascimilie of the award he recieved as well as being signed by some high upper-up, and a pair of binoculars that my grandfather took from a German officer, and also, I found that Kriegsmarine Destroyer badge that had been given to my grandfather. Sadly, I think my brother burned all of their military documents as well as most of their photos.

Like I said, my oldst brother can be an asshole.

PS, everything I found that day and rescued, I have in MY collection with the exception of one of thos esets of award cards-which was stolen from me by a former friend and member of this site.

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Lost are only those, who abandon themselves) Hans-Ulrich Rudel.