1173 Engineer Combat Group - Researching my great grandather
#20

Hey Brendan,


I missed this string before and am just catching up. I notice that you have been focused on his time in the engineering unit. He only started that in early summer, 1944. Until then, he was with artillery units as he was, actually, a trained artillery officer. Your Record of Separation (ROS) mentions Construction Engineer in block 27, but he wasn't trained as such - at least not by the Army or officially. He may have been a civil engineer in civilian life (as was my grandfather before the war) but he went through artillery school in 42-43 (58 years before I did). Even prior to that, he was serving in Field Artillery (FA) units. I would do the same research but with the 172nd FA (Regiment) and the 941st FA Battalion and see what you get there. He only did the engineer thing for the last 5 months of the war. The ROS just recorded his last known gig, if you will.


I noticed he would have been in his forties during the war. They must have thought of him as the grand old man of his artillery battalions! In my battalions (very different time and make up, of course) there were maybe only a handful of folks over 40. CO, SgtMaj (maybe) and some of the master sergeants/first sergeants (E8s) (maybe).


And what did he do in Honduras? (Block 12 on the pink form). Seems he spoke a smattering of Spanish (block 18), so that ties back into spending so time in Honduras. Was there a job there he did?

Maj Todd O. USMC, Retired
Grandson of LTC John O'Brien
Reply


Messages In This Thread
1173 Engineer Combat Group - Researching my great grandather - by CaptO - 07-30-2019, 11:12 AM

Possibly Related Threads…
Thread Author Replies Views Last Post
  10th engineer combat battalion Walt's Daughter 18 586,843 10-27-2022, 11:42 AM
Last Post: mikel
  112th Combat Engineer BN WEAVER 0 3,352 12-20-2020, 09:58 PM
Last Post: WEAVER
  1284th Combat Engineer Company B Song (Elsie) Procyon2014 0 5,087 08-21-2019, 01:02 PM
Last Post: Procyon2014
  253rd Engineer Combat Battalion Walt's Daughter 22 993,754 03-05-2019, 10:06 AM
Last Post: Walt's Daughter
  Free History of the 1051st Engineer Port Constr & Repair Group SavageM1Thompson 3 5,832 12-02-2018, 12:00 PM
Last Post: Walt's Daughter
  H & S Co., 204th Engineer Combat Battalion Hingham History seeker 4 7,083 11-07-2018, 06:31 PM
Last Post: Walt's Daughter
  149th Engineer Combat BTN Company B Pappy 1 6,090 10-31-2018, 02:09 PM
Last Post: Walt's Daughter
  401st Combat Engineer Battalion from WW2 Jason Corliss 2 5,025 03-03-2018, 08:24 AM
Last Post: Walt's Daughter
  2756th combat engineer battalion julius spradling 5 7,506 12-01-2017, 02:08 PM
Last Post: Walt's Daughter
  266th Engineer Combat Battalion Peggy Kennedy 3 6,792 10-18-2017, 08:31 AM
Last Post: Walt's Daughter



Users browsing this thread: 1 Guest(s)