Stanley Halldin, 981st Field Artillery Battalion

In visiting with Joe Miller today he says he was in A battery, a Long Tom gun, and that the pill box incident occured at Cherbourg, the unkown LST Joe landed in became grounded on the obstacles in the water at the beach, and the 'swede' Joe recalls was a man named Halverston, sorry he is not the man you were looking for here.

 

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heres a slice of history...

Unexplained Mysteries :: The battle of Los Angeles

 

Hello pitbullstew and everybody else.
I don't know why but I haven't been able to visit the WW2F site for some months now, I thought the site was offline or something but apparently it isn't.
Your posts are great contributions to the thread, pitbull, thank you.

Well I guess my search is over, everytime I meet a relative on my fathers side I ask about Stanley but no one seem to know anything about his military service.

 

Glad you got it figured out, im on a mission to find my grandfathers info as well. All seems to be correct here.

Teddy
B-1/258th FA

 

MUST HAVE BEEN M12'S. OLD LONG TOMS FROM WW1, VONVERTED ONTO SHERMAN CHASSIES. MY UNIT (991ST) WAS ORIGINALLY 2/258TH FA, REDESIGNATED TO 991ST FA FOR SERVICE IN WW2 EUROPEAN THEATER OF OPERATIONS. MY UNIT WAS FIRST TO SHELL GERMANY. IF HE WAS 981ST HE MAY HAVE BEEN IN THE ARMY NATIONAL GUARD. I KNOW THE 991ST WAS A NATIONAL GUARD UNIT FROM BRONX, NY. GOOD LUCK ON YOUR SEARCH. I WILL SEE IF I CAN FOND SOME PICS OF THE 981ST FA.

 

Hello everybody.
Don't know if anybody still cares, but a relative sent me some pictures of Sten and for the first time I could see how he looked:



This is in Pomona, California, summer of 1943. Must have been just before he was transfered to civil service.



This is Sten in New Jersey in 1938.

 

ERC today is called IRR (Individual Ready Reserve). The unit you list above is simply the one that got his paperwork so that if the Army wanted to call him back into service that would be the unit doing it.
Basically Enlisted Reserve Corps consists of soldiers discharged from service that have training etc., and are considered eligible for recall to service in the future if the Army was to need them. Today the IRR consists of literally tens of thousands of people that have previously been on active duty. They have a red ID card and once a year have to send a postcard to their "gaining command" (some reserve center usually) letting the military know where they are and that they are still alive.
Its all just a paperwork thing. The reality is he would have been given his discharge papers and possibly a bus or train ticket from Pomona CA to New Jersey (the Army has to provide transportation to the place you enlisted at) along with his final pay of $30. That would have been the last time he really had any thing to do with the military.

 

Thank you T.A. for that info! I'm dying though to know why he was transferred, but I guess we'll never know.

@Slipdigit: I will try to confirm that information.

 

Thanks again, I really appreciate every piece of information from you guys!

 

Hi Erik,

Newbee here but ..... just browsing the site and came across your thread and have found it very interesting, I am sorry your search has not found the answers you were looking for.

I'm a little confused however. If I have read the thread correctly you started this search for the military history of a relative that fought in th Pacific and at Okinawa. Is this correct? My confusion is because of the following.

1, Okinawa (The battle) was in early 1945
2, Yet the paperwork you have states your relative left the army in 43?

Your family is confidant that he served in the Pacific and at Okinawa. Though times and dates get confused, geography on an area like the size of the Pacific does not. So in other words this can't be a mistake on your families memory.

I would suggest that the paperwork you have been supplied with, may well be incorrect. In other words it was originally of someone else or later where you have a copy of the Final pay voucher showing him leaving the army that that is someone else.

After all, you have stated he changed his name to Stalney ..... not STANLEY. Stanley is the christian name stated on the Final pay voucher. I do not know how common the surname Halldin is, but this voucher could be someone totally different.

The dates are just so far out from when leaving the army and the battle for Okinawa.

Just a thought

 

I find these stories, mysteries really, intriguing. Great bit of leg-work from Halldin to get the Final Pay Voucher. Sorry I don't have any new information I just wanted to offer my observations.

It seems we have an individual born in Sweden and while in New Jersey he joins the US Army. It would seem strange to me if he was drafted, but maybe I am learning something new here. He does have an Army Serial number starting with 3, common for a Selectee, where volunteers for the Regular Army start with 1. But at this stage (inducted December 1942) the Army may have stopped volunteers and everyone went in through "the draft".

Second bit of strangeness is the incredibly short time in service. Transferred to the ERC (Emergency Reserve Corps) in July 1943. And he is "discharged" from a unit engaged in their final train-up before shipping out. In the mysterious ways of the military, maybe he was intended to be a top-off of personnel (the term might be Basic Private) to ensure the unit gets overseas at full strength.

And while it was common for units in WWII to provide basic and advanced training for new inductees (not yet soldiers), these activities usually delayed shipment overseas, but as previously stated, this unit was preparing for their final training at the Desert Training Center. So it seems likely to me that he received basic training somewhere else but then, if so, the timeline gets really short and he would arrive at his unit in the middle of a DTC training cycle.

Last bit of oddity is he is "discharged" in California presumably to work as an essential worker in agriculture. I would think that makes him more than a farm laborer. Interestingly his enlistment record says for his civilian occupation code: "Farm hands, fruit". Makes me wonder, his unit went to the DTC in March 1943 in the California and Arizona area. I know other units at the DTC ran "passes" to cities such as Los Angles. Did he encounter someone that was convinced of his "special agricultural skills" and "sponsored" his "release" from the military? That makes a consistent story but so could any other with so many facts unknown.

He is older, born 1905, so maybe everyone realized he was not a good fit for the military and took the first opportunity to part amicably.

 

This is a HUGE bump and I'm sorry for that! Haven't been here for a while..
You might onto something Earthican, I'm thinking that he made up the Okinawa story maybe to impress his family in Sweden.
Thank you all for your answers.

Halldin

 

Greetings found my Dad’s discharge papers he too was in Okinawa as the 981st motor ambulance company. Discharge was April 1946. He was in reserve but recalled to prep for pacific invasion. Also was in the Japanese occupation under the 8th army in Japan. Heard many a story and had a few photos of “Oki” even was on land during the big typhoon that hit at that time. His patches were 8th army Hawaiian garrison no sign of 981.

Wonder if the Army used the 981 designation for another reason the on line records show they were in Europe and disbanded in NJ