Memorial for 28th Inf Div in Wales bid launched

[Tin Shed Experience]

Hello all, please see the link below for our appeal which has been featured in today's Western Mail and soon to be on War History Online. Anyone who knows veterans or has relatives that have any tales of the 28th in Wales please get in touch

http://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/need-to-read/2013/01/04/us-soldiers-contribution-to-world-war-ii-wales-remembered-70-years-on-91466-32541679/

Best Wishes and a Happy New Year from everyone here at Tin Shed Experience

 

[B-24J]

Very nice!

You can try:

http://28thinfantrydivisionassoc.org/

http://pamilmuseum.org/

I checked a book of local veterans in my area of PA, and amazingly there were no 28th members.

John

 

[Captain Nemo]

A worthy endeavor! Best of luck on your project.

 

[Tin Shed Experience]

Very nice!

You can try:

http://28thinfantrydivisionassoc.org/

http://pamilmuseum.org/

I checked a book of local veterans in my area of PA, and amazingly there were no 28th members.

John

Hi John,

Been in contact with both of them some time ago, surprisingly the 28th Infantry Division Association responded with......

People often contact us looking for WWII soldiers and records. The problem is that the Association is only 30 years old so we only have modern records. Also we only have records for people that have joined the association, not records for the whole division as many people believe. We only have a few hundred members in the Association but hundreds of thousands of soldiers have served in the division. Plus we only have the service records for those members that provide us with that information. If they leave it blank on their membership form, then we don't have theirs either.

We probably have less than a dozen WWII vets left in the association. Many are not in good health. I don't know if any of them served in Wales. The other problem is that they are scattered all over the United States. The 28th ID was a national guard division that was put into federal service for WWII, so now instead of them just being from Pennsylvania, they came from all over the country.

We can’t count on the families of WWII veterans to help because they contact us all the time looking for information, saying that their father or grandfather never spoke about their service. It is almost an impossible request.


We kind of knew that the veterans would be hard to contact but thought they might have been able to point us in another direction or offer more encouragement at least. Unfortunately we are at that window of time when the veterans are becoming increasingly scarce. We are pressing on undeterred.....we produced a documentary about 10 years ago called 'Operation Bolero' about the troops coming to Wales and we were lucky enough to get some fantastic interviews from a couple of the veterans and the local Welsh people that remembered them. Many since have passed on sadly. We are currently offering the footage as a download on our website and are putting funds received for it toward a memorial for these guys. What we really want to do is get a memorial in place and highlight our small part of the world as a destination for the families of the veterans to visit. It hasn't been highlighted by the Welsh tourist board at all and it could see some great numbers starting their journey into Europe via Wales.

Best Wishes,

Matt