Ottie Owen Oldham Jr.

Ottie Owen Oldham Jr. is born in Evans, Jackson County, West Virginia, the youngest son of Ottie Owen Oldham Sr. and Lillie May Miller.

At age 20, single and with four years of high school behind him, Ottie is living in the Ripley District of Jackson County, West Virginia, in the household of his married sister Isabelle Faye and her husband Clarence Ankrum, with his aging parents Ottie Sr. and Lillie and his younger sister Viola and brother John. He has no job yet; the census lists him as looking for work. Newly added from FamilySearch.

Ottie has left rural West Virginia for the steel town of Aliquippa, Beaver County, Pennsylvania, where he registers for the draft, about six months before he is inducted. It is the first record placing him in the town he would call home for the rest of his life. His registration card, signed in his hand, shows him working at Jones & Laughlin Steel Corp. in Aliquippa, the company he would retire from decades later. His mother, Mrs. Lillie Oldham, is listed at the same address, 133 Oliver St. Card image newly in hand.

Drafted from Aliquippa through Selective Service Local Board No. 7, Ottie enters active service as a Private at the New Cumberland, Pennsylvania reception center. He is a 21-year-old steelworker with four years of high school, single. His service number, 33 146 214, is assigned here, and it ties together every record in this timeline.

Five months after his induction, Ottie ships out. His discharge papers trace the crossing: he leaves the United States on July 1, 1942 and arrives in the European Theater — the United Kingdom — on July 12, 1942, one of the American troops gathering in Britain in the first summer of the war. He will not see home again for twenty-one months. Corrected: earlier versions of this timeline dated his departure to July 1943, an error in our reading of his bonus application. It cost him a year of his war. No record yet names his ship, convoy, or port of embarkation.

Ottie comes ashore in North Africa on November 8, 1942 — the first day of Operation TORCH, the Allied invasion of French North Africa and the first American ground offensive against the Germans in the West. His discharge papers record the crossing plainly: left the European Theater October 26, arrived the African Theater November 8. Newly discovered — this whole year of his war was missing from earlier versions of this timeline.

He fights through the Tunisia campaign that follows — the long, bitter winter and spring that ends with the surrender of a quarter of a million Axis troops in May 1943. He is an 81mm mortar crewman in an infantry regiment's heavy weapons company: in his own words on his separation record, “Set up, aimed and fired 81 MM mortar. Field serviced piece.”

On July 11, 1943, the second day of the invasion of Sicily, Ottie is wounded in action at Gela. His discharge papers name the place and the day outright — “Wounds received in action: Gela, Sicily, 11 Jul 43” — and his 1943 Army hospital admission card describes the injury: a lacerated bullet wound of the left forearm, “in line of duty — Battle Casualty.” For it he was awarded the Purple Heart, number 156 413. The date, the place, and the Purple Heart are all newly confirmed.

July 11 at Gela was the German counterattack: the Hermann Göring Division drove its tanks down onto the American beachhead and came within sight of the sea before the infantry, the artillery and the guns of the Navy stopped them. That is the day his son remembered him describing — “he was wounded during the invasion of Sicily … shot by a machine gun on a German tank” — and the records now put him there.

The wound changed the rest of his war. He was hospitalized in North Africa (a Jackson County paper told his parents in September that he had been released), and the Army reclassified him “Limited Service” — no longer fit for the infantry. Three months later it sent him to the 80th Station Hospital at Bizerte as a supply clerk, the job he held for the rest of his service.

Still unconfirmed: which regiment. He told the county in 1950 it was the 16th Infantry, 1st Division — the unit that landed at Gela — and everything in his record fits it, but no Army document we have found names his regiment.

Three months after Gela, the Army finds Ottie a new job. A transfer list of the 7th Replacement Depot, dated October 10, 1943, orders a group of men to the 80th Station Hospital at Bizerte — and the heading over their names reads “All EM Limited Service.” His line is number 11: Oldham, Ottie O Jr — 33146214 — Pfc — Inf. Newly discovered.

Two things stand out. His branch is still typed “Inf” — Infantry, in the Army's own paperwork. And “Limited Service” is the Army's term for a man no longer fit for full combat duty: this is the wound, three months on, in administrative language. The order sends them to the hospital on October 11, 1943 — the day he joined the unit he would serve with for the rest of his overseas tour.

The hometown paper carries the news to Jackson County: “Mrs. O. O. Oldham, of Evans, has been notified that her son, Ottie Oldham … has been awarded the Purple Heart … He has now been discharged from the hospital but his wounds were such that he will not see active front line service again but has been given an assignment of limited duty.” Newly discovered.

His discharge papers name the medal and give its number — 156 413 — but no date. This is the only record that dates it: the Purple Heart was awarded by late November 1943, while he was still in North Africa. And the phrase “an assignment of limited duty” is the family's plain-English version of what the Army had done to him six weeks earlier, when it moved him to the 80th Station Hospital under a heading reading “All EM Limited Service.”The paper says “wounded severely.” Three months earlier the same paper said “slightly wounded,” and the Army's medical record says a bullet wound of the left forearm, returned to duty. Small-town service columns dramatized; we take the date from this item, not the description.

Two days before his hospital morning report, Pfc Oldham appears on Roster No. 128 of the Headquarters, Eastern Base Section & 8th Port (Bizerte), the personnel roster cutting orders to send a group of men back to the United States. Newly discovered.

The Morning Reports name him at last: Pfc Ottie O. Oldham Jr., serving in the Medical Detachment, 80th Station Hospital (a supply clerk, not a hospital medic), at APO 763 (Bizerte, Tunisia). On this day the Army reassigns him to the Personnel Centers, the pipeline that sent him home a month later. Newly discovered.

Ottie arrives back on American soil, ending his overseas tour. A month earlier his Morning Report had pulled him from the 80th Station Hospital into the ‘Personnel Centers’, the pipeline that rotated men home. The hospital itself stayed on in Tunisia. That this was an individual rotation rather than a unit move is our reading of the records, well-supported but not stated outright in them.

Three weeks after stepping off the boat, Ottie is at his parents' house in Evans. The Jackson County paper: “Pfc. Ottie Oldham, son of Mr. and Mrs. O. O. Oldham, of Evans, is spending a furlough with the family, having arrived back in this country only a short time ago from the European theatre of the war. He was wounded in Africa and was awarded the Purple Heart but has now recovered from his wounds received.” Newly discovered.

This is the only record of the five weeks between his return to the United States on April 17 and his appearance at Camp Reynolds on May 22. He spent them at home — the first time his family had seen him in nearly two years.

Five weeks after returning to the States, Pfc Oldham appears at the Army Service Forces Redistribution Station, Camp Reynolds (Greenville, PA), the system that received and reassigned troops rotated home from overseas, in Company E, 3rd Group, 1st Training Regiment. Beside him is Pvt Kenneth L. Doty, who shows up next to him in every one of his Pennsylvania reports. Newly discovered.

The 1st Training Regiment moves Pfc Oldham (now carrying MOS 835) from Company E to its Headquarters Detachment, Casual, and back to Company E two weeks later (Oct 18). This is routine processing while he awaits his next assignment; Pvt Doty moves with him. Newly discovered.

The Army attaches Pfc Oldham to the 1325th Service Unit at Indiantown Gap Military Reservation, PA, joined from Camp Reynolds, the staging point weeks before his discharge. He remains a Pfc with MOS 835, and Pvt Doty is beside him again. From here he went to Fort Dix for separation on December 13, 1944. Newly discovered.

Ottie is honorably discharged at the Fort Dix separation center on December 13, 1944, while the war still had five months to run. He leaves the Army a Private First Class, with 2 years, 10 months and 17 days of service behind him — twenty-one of those months overseas. His character of service is recorded as “Excellent.”

The reason for letting him go early is written on the form, and it leads straight back to Gela: “below minimum physical standard for induction.” The wound had made him a Limited Service soldier in 1943, and eighteen months later the Army separated him on those grounds. He was, the form notes, in good physical condition on the day he left.

He was paid $198.61, given his discharge lapel button, and went home to Aliquippa — back to the boiler shop at Jones & Laughlin Steel, the job he had been drafted out of three years before. His discharge papers were assumed lost in the 1973 fire that destroyed most Army personnel files. The family had them all along.

His discharge papers list what he earned, and the list is now complete:

The Purple Heart — number 156 413, for the wound at Gela.
The Combat Infantryman Badge — the Army's mark of a soldier who fought as infantry.
The Good Conduct Medal.
The European-African-Middle Eastern Campaign Ribbon, with credit for three campaigns: Algeria–French Morocco, Tunisia, and Sicily.

Newly confirmed. Until now we could only reason that he was probably owed a Purple Heart; his own discharge names it, and gives its number. The hometown paper shows it reached him in the field — his mother was told of it in November 1943. This is the whole list — no Bronze Star, no unit citation. His character of service is recorded as “Excellent.”

Five years after coming home, Ottie applies for Pennsylvania's WWII veterans' bonus at an Aliquippa service center. The Beaver County application record preserves details no other surviving document carries: his organization, “16th Inf 1st Div.”; the “Wounded” box marked; his theater (EAME); and a note that his discharge certificate was recorded at the courthouse in Ripley, West Virginia (Volume 2, Page 129), where a copy of the document that burned in the 1973 federal fire still sits today. He lists his mother, Lillie, of Evans, West Virginia, as beneficiary. The state paid him $140 for domestic and $330 for foreign service. Newly discovered.

Died June 27, 1983 (age 63) and was laid to rest in Woodlawn Cemetery, Aliquippa, Pennsylvania, the steel town he came home to. His VA headstone reads Ottie O Oldham · Pfc US Army · World War II. We offer this timeline in his memory.