OK, So I have some information from the gentleman who was in granddad Burke's unit... I can post the entire timeline in another area showing exactly where they were and when, but I see here at the end of it, they were in Konigsberg Germany on 18th May 1945. There is nothing after this. A conversation I had with him, he said after the war was over, the men were allowed to come home. So I will get the discharge papers from the VA to be sure that grandpa came straight home since the gentleman who provided this information from the same unit stayed on in Paris for a year. He said that they went thru Camp Lucky Strike in France and were processed to come home. Perhaps grandad didn't have enough points to be discharged until end of war +6months? Anyway this is huge for now.

Yes, not everyone in the same unit were discharged at the same time. Very, very common, since it depended upon points.

Based on everything, I'd say he came home immediately. Just took a while for prosessing.

I am still hanging out there on this issue. I have 2 letters out to the VA-- one to the local office and one to records. Hoping for a bite. I did some digging to try to figure out how many points he had and from what I KNOW he had at least 52. There may have been some other things that I don't know about that gave him more points... I think the book said they needed 85.

I plan on going to College Park in January to pull the morning reports, the field orders and general orders to check it out and see what I can find.

I found a GREAT book that has been SO helpful (bc I am not a seasoned pro at this)-- called Finding Your Father's War: A Practical Guide to Researching and Understanding Service in the WWII US Army by Jonathan Gawne. Its been a good source of information, sources and a refresher from HS history class!