I asked Jill how she came to find Randall's Dog Tag as well as Stanley Thompson's and here is her reply. It's fascinating and Jill deserves a huge thank you for her efforts.
My husband and I have had a interest in the many deserted sites of WW11 in the Northern Territory for about 25+ years. We have been to many crashed aircraft site and many of the camps set up as part of the Pacific war.
Fenton air strip was one of the larger ones and had a group of Americans stationed there for a period of time. There was a mulititude of services provided on the base, including a visit from Bob Hope in Nov 1943 to entertain the 380 Bomb Group. When the war finished the sites were just abandoned. Over the years some stuff was picked up for scrap and other stuff was collected by fossickers like me as something interesting.
I found the two American dog tags near what I named the canteen area. In this area I picked up numerous coca cola bottles that had been left by the Americans. There were many things left and it is still possible to find something lying around in the bush. And bush it is. It is about 300km away from where I live and there is no community close by.
My family had an interest with the serving Americans. During the War an American soldier returned home to his home in Wisconsin. An article was written about his time in my home town in South Australia. A lady (Rose Jahman) whose two sons were fighting in the Pacific wrote to the Mayor of the town in the hope her boys may have been there, The letter was passed to my mother who had just won a competition run by the Army Barracks to reply. My mother did and she continued to write to Rose until her death. I have been writing to her grand daughter for the past 50 years.
We are still looking for descendants of Stanley Thompson so maybe we can help Jill find a family member before Memorial Day!
No comments:
Post a Comment