A chance encounter with FindAGrave.com in June, 2009, was my first real break in solving yet another family history mystery—what happened to my uncle, Sidney Francis Atkins, Jr., during World War II?
I blogged about it when it happened, but it’s time to write “the rest of the story”—or at least the story as it’s been revealed up ‘til now. First, though, I want to express my undying gratitude again to Judy Rogers, the FindAGrave volunteer whose effort to survey the Lockhart City Cemetery in Caldwell County, Texas, set this long, crooked, wonderful chain of events in motion in the first place.
Judy was prompt in getting the photograph of Sidney’s headstone to me, and from the photograph, I was able to determine that Sidney had served in the 502nd Parachute Infantry Regiment of the 101st Airborne—otherwise known as “The Widowmakers.” Many attempts to locate an obituary in any of the Texas newspapers came up empty, but my request for an obit from the Lockhart County Historical Society resulted in a virtual gold mine of information about the other residents of Sidney’s cemetery plot. Judy had told me that Sidney was buried next to William J. Scott and Willie Atkins Scott. When the Lockhart County Historical Society couldn’t find an obit, the volunteer who handled my request went above and beyond the call of duty (bless her too!) and suggested I check the then-new pilot.familysearch.org website to see if I could locate any Texas death records there. Holy. Frigging. Cow. That website—which I should have been familiar with but wasn’t—turned up records galore on the Scott family AND on Sidney’s father and stepmother.
With dead people coming out of the woodwork, it was hard to drag my attention back to Sidney, but I mentioned my search for his obituary to a colleague at work. His subscription to GenealogyBank.com yielded TWO newspaper articles in about three clicks of the mouse. Resisting the impulse to leap across the desk and kiss him, I printed them both. One was an article printed in 1948 about Sidney's reburial service in the Lockhart Cemetery. The other article was worth it’s weight in gold. Written in July of 1944, it was one of those hometown newspaper gems with quotations from a letter Sidney had written home to the folks about his experiences on D-Day. “It’s a heck of a lot easier to run and kill Jerries than it is to sell chili, only I would rather be a salesman,” he wrote. “We were with the air-borne division that spearheaded the invasion and were the very first to land. In fact, I was the jumpmaster in No. 7 plane, and can also claim the honor of having the first combat platoon to land…it makes me feel kind of big.” WOW.
After I found the newspaper articles, I promptly fired off a standard request to the National Personnel Records Center in St. Louis to see if I could score a copy of Sidney’s service record. Not surprisingly I got the standard response—it was burned in the 1973 fire—but they did suggest that I contact the US Army Human Resources Command in Virginia to see if they had any casualty records for Sidney.
I wrote the HRC in late January and received a reply in late February stating that my request could take up to TWENTY-FOUR weeks to process. It did. One day in August, I came home to find a large manila envelope in my mailbox from Alexandria. I almost drove the car through the garage in my haste to get inside and open it.
I blogged about it when it happened, but it’s time to write “the rest of the story”—or at least the story as it’s been revealed up ‘til now. First, though, I want to express my undying gratitude again to Judy Rogers, the FindAGrave volunteer whose effort to survey the Lockhart City Cemetery in Caldwell County, Texas, set this long, crooked, wonderful chain of events in motion in the first place.
Judy was prompt in getting the photograph of Sidney’s headstone to me, and from the photograph, I was able to determine that Sidney had served in the 502nd Parachute Infantry Regiment of the 101st Airborne—otherwise known as “The Widowmakers.” Many attempts to locate an obituary in any of the Texas newspapers came up empty, but my request for an obit from the Lockhart County Historical Society resulted in a virtual gold mine of information about the other residents of Sidney’s cemetery plot. Judy had told me that Sidney was buried next to William J. Scott and Willie Atkins Scott. When the Lockhart County Historical Society couldn’t find an obit, the volunteer who handled my request went above and beyond the call of duty (bless her too!) and suggested I check the then-new pilot.familysearch.org website to see if I could locate any Texas death records there. Holy. Frigging. Cow. That website—which I should have been familiar with but wasn’t—turned up records galore on the Scott family AND on Sidney’s father and stepmother.
With dead people coming out of the woodwork, it was hard to drag my attention back to Sidney, but I mentioned my search for his obituary to a colleague at work. His subscription to GenealogyBank.com yielded TWO newspaper articles in about three clicks of the mouse. Resisting the impulse to leap across the desk and kiss him, I printed them both. One was an article printed in 1948 about Sidney's reburial service in the Lockhart Cemetery. The other article was worth it’s weight in gold. Written in July of 1944, it was one of those hometown newspaper gems with quotations from a letter Sidney had written home to the folks about his experiences on D-Day. “It’s a heck of a lot easier to run and kill Jerries than it is to sell chili, only I would rather be a salesman,” he wrote. “We were with the air-borne division that spearheaded the invasion and were the very first to land. In fact, I was the jumpmaster in No. 7 plane, and can also claim the honor of having the first combat platoon to land…it makes me feel kind of big.” WOW.
After I found the newspaper articles, I promptly fired off a standard request to the National Personnel Records Center in St. Louis to see if I could score a copy of Sidney’s service record. Not surprisingly I got the standard response—it was burned in the 1973 fire—but they did suggest that I contact the US Army Human Resources Command in Virginia to see if they had any casualty records for Sidney.
I wrote the HRC in late January and received a reply in late February stating that my request could take up to TWENTY-FOUR weeks to process. It did. One day in August, I came home to find a large manila envelope in my mailbox from Alexandria. I almost drove the car through the garage in my haste to get inside and open it.
I can’t even express the range of emotions I felt while sorting through the contents labeled: Individual Deceased Personnel File. A sterile and businesslike label for an envelope full of pain. The papers seemed to be in reverse order, so among the first pages I found a Receipt of Remains stating that Sidney’s body would arrive on Train Number Seven of the Missouri Kansas Texas Railroad. Ironic. My grandfather Jackson, Sidney’s stepfather, worked for the MKT for a number of years while Sidney was part of his little family.
Moving on, I found that Sidney had been buried in the United States Military Cemetery at Champigneul, Chalons Sur Marne, France, but that the War Department had, in 1946, received authorization to “remove at Government expense, to the final resting place designated by the next of kin, the remains of those American citizens who died while serving overseas.” A letter from the Red Cross to the Quartermaster General’s office stated that Mrs. J. F. Arnold (Blanche Atkins Arnold) was Sidney’s next of kin because she “reared the serviceman since his mother’s death when he was a very small boy.”
And then, buried about midway through the packet, there it was—a routing slip bearing the news that “First Lieutenant Sidney F. Atkins, Jr., died on 22 March 1945 due to a mortar shell that fell short.” Mystery solved. It was essentially friendly fire. A training exercise gone terribly wrong. More pages offered more details. He was posthumously awarded the Bronze Star. More details—some gruesome. The condition of his remains—fractured skull and mandible. The condition of the shipping casket. More details—more poignant. His personal effects. Souvenirs. An autographed $1.00 bill. Some French francs. “Religious articles.” A billfold.
“…his property is being forwarded to you in one package and one footlocker.”
I’m still sorting through those papers and each time I do, I tend to find another detail or two—another piece to another puzzle. Many questions still remain. Blanche Atkins Arnold isn’t buried in the plot at Lockhart. The papers state that she lived with her sister, Willie Atkins Scott, but what happened to Blanche? She worked long and hard to see to it that her beloved nephew finally came home. Her name isn’t mentioned in the reburial notice as a surviving family member. It was Willie Scott who filled out the paperwork requesting Sidney’s headstone. Did Blanche live to see him reach his final resting place?
One day I hope to find a descendant of the Arnolds or the Scotts who might be able to provide me with a photograph of Sidney all grown up. But for now, my father’s big brother will remain this sweet, smiling little boy.
Moving on, I found that Sidney had been buried in the United States Military Cemetery at Champigneul, Chalons Sur Marne, France, but that the War Department had, in 1946, received authorization to “remove at Government expense, to the final resting place designated by the next of kin, the remains of those American citizens who died while serving overseas.” A letter from the Red Cross to the Quartermaster General’s office stated that Mrs. J. F. Arnold (Blanche Atkins Arnold) was Sidney’s next of kin because she “reared the serviceman since his mother’s death when he was a very small boy.”
And then, buried about midway through the packet, there it was—a routing slip bearing the news that “First Lieutenant Sidney F. Atkins, Jr., died on 22 March 1945 due to a mortar shell that fell short.” Mystery solved. It was essentially friendly fire. A training exercise gone terribly wrong. More pages offered more details. He was posthumously awarded the Bronze Star. More details—some gruesome. The condition of his remains—fractured skull and mandible. The condition of the shipping casket. More details—more poignant. His personal effects. Souvenirs. An autographed $1.00 bill. Some French francs. “Religious articles.” A billfold.
“…his property is being forwarded to you in one package and one footlocker.”
I’m still sorting through those papers and each time I do, I tend to find another detail or two—another piece to another puzzle. Many questions still remain. Blanche Atkins Arnold isn’t buried in the plot at Lockhart. The papers state that she lived with her sister, Willie Atkins Scott, but what happened to Blanche? She worked long and hard to see to it that her beloved nephew finally came home. Her name isn’t mentioned in the reburial notice as a surviving family member. It was Willie Scott who filled out the paperwork requesting Sidney’s headstone. Did Blanche live to see him reach his final resting place?
One day I hope to find a descendant of the Arnolds or the Scotts who might be able to provide me with a photograph of Sidney all grown up. But for now, my father’s big brother will remain this sweet, smiling little boy.
Sidney, Nettie, Jackson, and my Dad, circa 1920
Sidney Francis Atkins, Jr. circa 1920
