37th Infantry Division

Hope everyone on the list is well. I am still working away on this. I have the chronology from the back of the Frankell book now and am hoping to have time soon to try to begin to plug my Dad into it. Here are a couple more of those photos my Dad had - just for the archives.

 

Not that far from Glenmont - Wooster, Ohio. I may have to have a blast going through those boxes for a year some month. I'll check to see if Mindy has any of it digitized - unless you already have Tommy?

 

I have not gotten any documents from the OHS Beightler collection. It's possible that some documents I coped when I went to EPL are duplicates of what OHS has. However, I've found that sometimes the files contain more than what the abstracts indicate.

 

I'm still plugging away on my father's history, Pfc. Laird Wilcox, Jr.. He served in the 129th Regiment, Company I, 37th Division during World War II. He came late to the war, arriving on Luzon in February, 1945, but was in the battle for Baguio and then in the drive through the Balete Pass and up the Cagayan Valley. He was wounded on 7 June 1945 about 1000 yards north of Bayombong. He was hit by schrapnel ricocheting from a tank. Several were wounded and one man was killed. After field surgery he was airlifted back to the United States. He had a combat infantryman's badge and a purple heart. I later understood that people who were wounded in combat on Luzon were supposed to receive a bronze star as well.

I've accumulated quite a few books on the fighting in Luzon and I have histories of the 37th Division and the 129th Regiment. Also a biography of General Robert Beightler who led the 37th and a couple of books by soldiers who served in that part of the war on Luzon. Be happy to help anybody. My own email is lwilcox3 (at) aol.com. The "at" should, of course, be the ampersand symbol @ but email addresses sometimes get scrubbed out of posts like this.

If you're trying to learn more about the windup to the invasion of Luzon, at least this part of it, let me know.

 

Hello. I am back after a break engendered by the holidays and a bout with the flu to ask more questions. <G> I sent a letter to find out if there was anything else associated with my Dad that could be found by a search of Army records. I am attaching a copy of the paper I got in reply. Can anyone give me an explanation of what this is precisely and what the different notations mean?

I m still hoping to get to OHS this winter to search the papers there related to the military police.

Marla

Veteran Dale Cummins, WWII, Military policeman

 

Welcome back, Marla! Sorry to hear you were ill, but I hope you were able to have a great time during the holidays anyway.

Lou is correct. For many of us, this is the only document that we get from the NARA because of the 1973 fire. And, as Lou also pointed out, there is very little info on it that you didn't need in order to fill out the Form 180. Are there any notations in particular that you have in mind?

 

Hello again. I wanted to check in and let everyone here know I am still researching my Dad's records and service. Life has been busy and I have done little other than pick up a few books and DVDs on the Pacific Theater conflict lately, but I hope to continue researching when life slows down as of the Autumn and my work schedule shifts. At the moment I have another matter I wondered if you could help me with?

My daughter has an estate sale company in the Dayton OH area. I was helping her this week to clean out a house after the sale and found there were two WWII uniform coats that no one in the family wanted. I could not stand to see them get pitched or go to a thrift store, so I took them home with me. I know the name of the man whose house the coats were in. He was a Veteran of WWII. I am attempting to do research on him before I donate the coats to a local veteran's museum and wondered if any of you would be willing to help me ID the badges, etc. on the coats and tell me what they mean. I can take pictures of them and post them if someone is interested. One shows a Native American man in full headdress.

According to Ancestry.com: Leonard Hypes, born 1925, enlisted at Fort Benjamin Harrison on June 19, 1944, for the duration of the war. That's about all I have.

Since Mr. Hypes was not a member of the 37th, if nothing else, maybe you could direct me to the correct forum to ask my questions?

Thanks, Marla

 

Welcome back, Marla. You're in the correct forum section. You just need to start another thread/topic. Follow this link: Information Requests, and click where it says "Start New Topic" on the right side of the page.

 

Thanks for the info and help on what to do. I started a new topic: WWII Uniform and Badge identification request. Hopefully I can find something out about this veteran's service. Marla

 

I know of Earl Hawins - Silver Star with Oak Leaf cluster - awesome. My Dad, long deceased, and he were friends and both served for 5+ years in the 37th Div.

 

So, was your father also in Company E of the 145th?

 

Hi Guys and Gal!

Some good news,...but still confused!
I found a picture of my Dad and his discharge papers...wow.
Thanks to the great help of Tommy and others, I thought I had narrowed down the unit that Dad served with. His name was Arthur
"Art" Rasmussen and was with the 37th Division from Camp Shelby to the end of the war. He said he was 1st. Sergeant Headquarters Battery, and I assumed he was with the 145th Inf., and either the 135th or 136th FA. This info came thanks to my buddy as Dad
always mentioned that New Zealand was the most beautiful place he had ever seen. A small advance force including the above units
did indeed go to New Zealand first, and then joined up with the rest of the 37th on Fiji about a month later before heading to
Guadalcanal.
But...his discharge papers only state "Headquarters Battery, 37th Division". Hmmm. So did they just skip mentioning the specific
units or could he have actually been assigned to Division Headquarters and worked for Gen. Beightler?
I would sincerely appreciate you Vets taking a shot at interpreting the discharge form, and giving your opinion. Thanks in advance to all!

 

View attachment 23520 View attachment 23520 Well, woops....
Dad's picture will work but I guess the file is too big of the discharge papers....rats!
I'll try to work on it but I'm computer impaired so...

 

You may want to try using an image hosting website like PhotoBucket. You just upload the file to their website and they provide a URL for the photo that you can copy and paste using the Forum toolbar. With this method, you avoid the 500kb size limit, and it is relatively easy.

 

Discharge papers aren't always accurate. If he said he was in "Headquarters Battery", then he was probably not in the Division HQ. It is more likely that he was in the HQ Battery of a Field Artillery Battalion. I did mention in post #10 that the 136th FA Bn was also in NZ. However, I just reread the pages that I subsequently posted (#12 & #13) and it does not mention the 136th. I will go back to the Division history to determine whether or not I erred in listing them.

 

Thank you Sir!
I was thinking the same thing,...that he was with one of the FA units with the 145th Inf.

I'll try the website. By the way, I waited a bit too long to get Frankels's original book. By the time I got the $ together and was ready to pull the trigger it was sold. Lesson learned, dang. Hopefully another will pop up one of these days.

D

 

Well, I checked the Division History again and did not find any mention of the 136th FA going to New Zealand. Assuming that they were not in NZ, that would mean he was most likely in the HQ Company of the 135th FA. Of course, this is based on a few assumptions and should be confirmed through some other source. Just as a point of clarification, the FA Battalions would have been under the Division rather than the Infantry Regiments. Under certain circumstances, they may have been placed under a particular Regiment, but that was not the norm.

 

Hi T and everyone,

I still have not narrowed down my Dad's unit...either the 135th FA or 145th FA. However, I stumbled on to this site and I will try to make a link. Bangor Community College? Looks like a lot of info...scrapbooks and pictorial histories of many Regimental Units. I have not seen it listed here so maybe you folks can make use of it.

http://digicom.bpl.lib.me.us/ww_reg_his/182/

Hope this may help someone.

Dave