calherewecome

Time for another dive into the records and archives of the Stanley family. Paula discovered an envelope in one of the albums that several artifacts including newspaper clippings, photos and letters. This post is about one of Harold’s cousins, Orin Taylor.

Orin was a couple of years younger than Harold and both of them grew up in Lawrence Kansas. The first item that I have scanned was a high school graduation announcement in 1938. So our estimate, is that Orin was probably born around 1920. Here’s the graduation announcement and picture.

So Harold received a letter from Orin in November 1942 while Orin was in the US Army. At the time he wrote the letter, Orin was stationed in South Carolina for training. We don’t actually know when Orin joined the army. Perhaps, he joined after Pearl Harbor. Perhaps he went to college for some of that time seeing as he was an officer. Here is the scan of the letter to Harold.

Harold never served in the Army during WW2. He had hearing problems dating back to his childhood. He had many ear infections some of which grew into mastoiditis (infection of the mastoid bone behind the ear.) In those days, there were no antibiotics to knock out the infection. He did his part in the war effort working for Douglas Aircraft in Long Beach where of course we know that’s where he met Mary.

So the next point that this story picks up is the Battle of Anzio in Italy. Orin died in the Battle of Anzio in January 1944. Here’s the death notice and action report. Unfortunately, there weren’t any dates on the clippings.

We didn’t find any other clippings on Orin’s life and death in the US Army. From his letter, life in So Carolina was pretty good. Once they shipped out for Italy, my guess that things got serious fast.

That’s all for now.   

This entry was posted on May 16, 2016 at 11:59 am and is filed under History. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments.

Tags: US Army