The only things left in the estate to identify the former homeowner as a military veteran were several patches, an Army reunion brochure, and something unusual for a reunion souvenir- a tissue box cover. All our customers could see was that the homeowner had been a rather successful white-collar professional. Before accumulating all that wealth, he was but a young man thrown into war.
This post is part of an ongoing series called ‘Workplace discoveries’, which documents interesting Second World War related artifacts that I discover at work. My regular job is to manage an estate sale company. Artifacts documented in this series are not necessarily in my possession, and may been saved by the homeowner or sold to another customer. Any item I do buy has first been made available to the general public.
A husband-and-wife couple with exquisite taste
Very rarely does the company I work for come across an estate where the homeowner’s art has greatly appreciated in value. Nor do we sell a significant amount of furniture on the first day of a sale, as customers typically wait for a discount- applied each day thereafter. But sometimes we come across that gem of a sale that defies norms and exceeds expectations. Just like the one we had this past weekend.
Our client contacted us to liquidate the estate of her parents. The father passed away in 2020 after sixty-seven years of marriage. Joining him in death was his wife in March 2022. Judging by the quality of their estate, the husband had done well for himself as a certified public accountant.
All throughout the family home was mid-century modern furniture in good, protected condition. There were multiple teak dressers and Lightolier Atomic Age lamps. Antique oil paintings by artists including Leonard Ochman (Dutch, 1954-1934) and John Francis Murphy (American, 1853-1921), hung off the walls, alongside modern pieces like an optical artwork by Victor Vasarely (Hungarian-French, 1906-1997). Then there was the oriental art.
A family friend travelled regularly to China for business sometime in the 1970s and 1980s, bringing back with him oriental treasures for our client’s parents. These included a small collection of carved jade sculptures. Considerably more valuable was an antique Chinese famille porcelain vase which our art specialist dated to the late eighteenth to nineteenth centuries!
One of the more insignificant items in the estate, however, had the most meaning. It was a souvenir tissue box cover from an Army reunion identifying the homeowner as a proud veteran of the Second World War.
Souvenir tissue box from an Army reunion
Sitting on top of a cabinet in the living room was a tissue box cover. Hardly an exciting decorative piece on its own. But there was an inscription on its body which drew me in for a closer look. Printed in black lettering on a metal mirror-finish surface was: ‘280th F.A. BN. Reunion Association; 40th Annual Reunion; Sept. 9-13, 1998; Boise, Idaho’. This was the homeowner’s old Army outfit.
The 280th Field Artillery Battalion received its baptism by fire in the Battle of Bulge in late December 1944. Never permanently assigned, the battalion instead bounced around different divisions providing artillery support. Then on 23 February 1945, while under enemy fire, the battalion made the first of four river crossings as it advanced into Germany. The artillerymen traveled as far as the village of Glaisin, Ludwigslust, which it occupied on 2 May and remained until 9 May. Here the Americans met up with their Soviet allies.
Statistics of the 280th Field Artillery Battalion as recorded in its official wartime history:1
Total rounds fired in combat. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27,338 Total miles travelled (from Camp Miles Standish, Massachusetts, to Glaisin, Germany; 7 September 1944 to 2 May 1945) . . . . . . . . . . . . 4,376 Soldiers lost. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 Silver Star medals awarded. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 Bronze Star medals awarded. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75 Purple Heart medals awarded (not posthumously) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
Returning to the United States after occupation duty in Austria, the battalion disbanded in March 1946 and its personnel, except for career soldiers, received their discharges. The veterans returned to civilian life, picking up where they left off or embarking on new endeavors. They were rather busy settling down in the decade that followed. It was not until 1958 that the veterans held their first formal reunion and continued to do so until 2003.2
Our client’s father was one of the last surviving members of his unit. He left the Army as a Technician Fourth Grade, along with a Bronze Star medal- his highest decoration. Going unrecognized was that the Jewish-American veteran used his knowledge of Yiddish to interpret German!
Sources
- Stanley H. Levin, 1st Lt., An Informal History of the 280th Field Artillery Battalion, May 1943 to May 1945 (Germany: 280th Field Artillery Battalion, 1945). Available at: https://www.genealogycenter.info/military/wwii/search_280fieldartillery.php (accessed 31 May 2022).
- Jack F. Lindsey, ‘Commands: 280th Field Artillery Battalion’, in World War II [magazine], October 2005, p.10.