I was in another forum and someone was asking about COMPANY names in WWII. I threw in the fact that there was NO COMPANY J in WWII. Did ya know that.? They wanted to avoid confusion because the letter "I" looks too much like the letter "J", so they actually skipped it.

Here's more info on that:

The infantry regiment was organized with three battalions, twelve lettered companies (A-M, skipping J), an Infantry Cannon Company (first equipped with two halftrack-mounted 105mm howitzers and six halftrack-mounted 75mm howitzers or guns, and later with a towed short-barrelled 105mm howitzer), an Antitank (AT) Company (initially with twelve 37mm and later nine 57mm AT guns), and a Service Company. The fourth company in each battalion (D, H, M) were heavy weapons companies with sustained fire heavy machine guns and mortars. The regiment and each battalion also had a H&H Company. The regimental H&H Company included a Intelligence and Reconnaissance Platoon, the battalion H&H company included an Amunition and Pioneer (A&P, responsible for light engineering duties and for transporting ammunition forward to the line companies) Platoon and an AT Platoon (initially with four 37mm and later with 3 57mm AT guns).

If you want to read the entire article on army units during WWII, this is a good one:

Army Units in WWII

Al Schutte sent this to me this weekend. It's always great to hear more info on the members of the 540th Combat Engineers.

-------------------------------------------------------

Herman J. Dewald

Private First Class

U.S. Army

540th Engineer Regiment

35665426

Entered the Service from: Cincinnati, OH on October 13th 1942

Born: 1910 in Kentucky

Resident of Ft Thomas, KY

Died: March 1, 1944

Buried at: Plot D Row 8 Grave 14

Sicily-Rome American Cemetery

Nettuno, Italy

Awards: Purple Heart

>From the Cincinnati Enquirer March 27th 1944

SOLDIER

>From Fort Thomas Is Killed In

Action In Italy – Formerly

With Cincinnati Firm

Mr. and Mrs. Peter DeWald, 139 Sergeant Avenue, Fort Thomas, KY, were

informed yesterday that their son, Private First Class Herman J. DeWald was

killed in action in Italy March 1st.

Private DeWald was inducted in the Army October 27th 1942. He had been

overseas for 11 months.

Educated at St. Thomas grade school, Fort Thomas, he was with the Ever Seal

Company, Cincinnati, before entering the Army.

Besides his parents, Private DeWald, who was 34 years old, is survived by

two brothers, George, Cincinnati, and Andrew, Fort Thomas, and two sisters,

Mary and Mrs. Harry March, Fort Thomas.

Would like to get in touch with anyone who served or knows someone who was a member during WWII. I served in Europe & after war was over was sent to phillipines.

1945 War ended and we were advance Occupation Force Taegu,Korea.

We were the first Americans they ever saw. I told you about their tolets, a small hole in the floor and you sqwat on the floor. Four of us were picked to to guard a very large barn, and our out-post was a old 2 room building. We built a shower with wood and a barrel with a hole in bottom and a toilet seat to sit on over a hole in the ground. Every morning we found human waste on the seat, so one night we watched for a couple of hours. A Korean came and in-stead of sitting down he would sqwat on the toilet seat and miss the hole.

I don't know how far we were from our company camp but every morning a jeep would come with a stove and cook and we would have a hot breakfast. The rest of the day was K-rations. One day two of us went duck hunting with M-1 and a Carbine, and got 4 ducks.

Now if you are wondering what was in the barn so valuable that they kept for men there, we were too. So we broke the lock and went in-side and found the barn full of "RICE BOWLS. WHY -----.I don't know he's on second. Later we found that an other out-post had a barn full of Parachutes. I have some pictures of our out-post and our duty as M.P.s in Taegu,Korea. I do not know how to get them on a post but if you give me a e-mail address I will send them e-mail.

Another letter from my friend Ken

This happened on one of our missions---The weather was bad over England, so someone thought we should take off and climb to 14 thousand ft. over France. It is hard enough trying to form up in good weather, but this was crazy as hell. We could feel the plane shake from turbulense so you knew other planes were near and hoped you didn’t have a mid-air collision. At 14 thousand ft. we were still in the soup and finally broke out at about 20,000 ft.. In the meantime our nav. Aids went out—the mission was re-called and we didn’t get it.We were lost and circled around—the co-pilot trying to reach some one on the radio when we saw 3 fighters coming at us. The P-47 and FW-190 have the same shape head on so the pilot told us not to fire until we were certain what the plane was---thank god they were our P-47s and they led over to a group of B-17s. there was also another B-24 flying with them. We figured we would go with them , witch we did and dropped our bombs,then fly back to their base,and get a heading back to our base. Well they let down thru the soup knowing where they were going and we lost them. We had to climb up thru this mess and the co-pilot got some one on the emer. Freq. It was an English lass and did she ever sound nice. She made us fly a triangle, then gave us a heading back to England. We let down over the channel and a couple of Spitfires came and checked us out, then we were given a heading back to our base. We landed and got cedit for a mission and so did our group. This was some nerve racking flying and our pilot was glad to get us back on the ground. Now landing we found out 2 of our planes didn’t come back and one of them was a kid from Presque Isle that I had gone to school with. His father was a diary farmer and delivered milk to Dad’s store. I thought I would be writing his parents about Jerry missing and all that stuff. Well the next day both planes came back and the guys were hungover and had loads of booze, as they had landed in France. I told Jerry that was the last time I would worry over him!! They didn’t get credit for a mission either.