July 13, 2018 Happy Friday! I hope everyone has had a good week. At Mistletoe Enterprises and Victory & Valor our week has been typical: we’ve been busy researching, writing and posting stories about history & heroes. Typical. Most of our posts fall under the “On This Day” category, as you might already know. And yesterday we posted about a news event from July 12, 1973: a devastating fire at the National Personnel and Records Center (NPRC) in St. Louis that destroyed between 16 – 18 million military personnel files. Lost were the records of Army veterans discharged between 1911 and 1960, and those of Air Force personnel discharged between 1947 and 1964. No duplicates of these records were ever maintained. There were no microfilm copies. And there were no indexes. The loss of service records impacted World War I, World War II, and Korean War era veterans… and nobody can say with certainty how many more. As a history buff, I shudder at the loss of all those records. More personally, as the son of a World War II combat veteran, I am at a loss that words simply cannot express. To be clear: the story of the 1973 fire at the NPRC is not news to me. I’ve heard about this fire many, many times over the last 45 years. There’s no shortage of duplicate records of this story. It has been repeated many times. It has been documented and preserved, in fact, in the collective memory of our nation. The sad truth is, I probably know more about the fire than I have ever learned about my own Dad’s military service. As the regular followers of this Victory & Valor Blog may remember, I wrote about my Dad’s military service last month around Father’s Day. My Dad passed away when I was only three years old, so learning about his military service was through occasional stories told by my Mom, my older siblings, and relatives. Naturally, any information contained in the stories was priceless information. But over the years, there still was very little I learned about my Dad’s time in uniform.
Sometimes, little treasure troves of mementos would emerge from a dusty shoe-box in the attic, or a box in a closet. Pictures, letters from overseas, and a few military insignia helped fill in some more details of the years my Dad spent in the military. And a couple times, a dusty old box would contain a jackpot: a military document, a discharge document, or notes written by my Dad in a small pocket-book - issued by the Red Cross to military personnel during WWII. With everything collected, I can give a fair account of his timeline and travels in the military… in very general terms. I know most of the dates, locations, and durations of his various duty stations and while training stateside and while deployed to the European Theater of Operations. I know the campaigns in which he participated: Northern France, the Rhineland, and Central Europe. And I know that he was awarded the Combat Infantry Badge (CIB), and by virtue of that award, he received the Bronze Star after the Army conducted a review of the CIB justifications, post WWII. I have no document that tells the story of the hellish combat my Dad experienced to earn the CIB and Bronze Star. It was lost in Saint Louis in 1973. This is one reason Mistletoe Enterprises and Victory & Valor are strong advocates for the Library of Congress Veterans History Project. We have posted about this several times. And we will continue to promote it. The stories of history & heroes are at the core of our values at Mistletoe Enterprises and Victory & Valor. And the Veterans History Project documents and preserves the stories of our veterans who want to tell the stories of their military service. More than 90,000 veterans have shared the stories of their time in the military through the Veterans History Project. Since it began in 2000, veterans from every conflict and era since World War I have been interviewed. They share what they want to share… sometimes what they need to share. And sometimes, it is the first time they have ever told their story. I told my story to a classroom full of history students at Stivers School for the Arts in Dayton, Ohio. The history teacher, Bridget Federspiel, has helped her students conduct more than 500 veteran interviews since 2005. There are some required formats specified by the Library of Congress that interviewers must adhere to. And the veteran is not required to share any more than what they want to tell. But the end result is often an interesting personal account of military service experiences. For more information about the Library of Congress Veterans History Project, please visit: http://www.loc.gov/vets/ If you are a veteran, I encourage you to share the stories of your military service. Reach out to local schools, universities or veterans service organizations to facilitate an interview. If you are a veteran who wants to tell your story of service and if you need help finding someone to interview you, contact Mistletoe Enterprises and Victory & Valor via the contact tab at www.mistletoetom.com/contact.html or by use of the comments to this blog below. Likewise, if you are a teacher or school administrator who wants to help veterans share their stories, please contact us! Have a good weekend! See you Monday
4 Comments
Irene Alberto
7/15/2018 08:08:43 pm
Very interesting and moving!
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Irene Alberto
7/15/2018 08:24:21 pm
Correction: Very interesting, subservient and touching!
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Thomas Davis
7/15/2018 08:31:59 pm
Thank you for your loyal support!
Thomas Davis
7/15/2018 08:30:57 pm
Thank you!
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AuthorTom Davis is the owner of Mistletoe Enterprises LLC. He also publishes and distributes the Victory & Valor Flyer, it tells the stories of heroes from all walks of life. Archives
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