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.

After about seventeen months of stateside duty, Ottie's foreign service begins and he ships out for the Mediterranean Theater. Within two weeks the 80th Station Hospital he serves with opens at Bizerte, Tunisia, where his own records later place him. July 1, 1943 is his recorded foreign-service start date; no record yet names his ship, convoy, or port of embarkation.

The 80th Station Hospital, the unit his March 1944 Morning Report places him in, opens in the Bizerte area as a 500-bed fixed hospital just after the fall of Tunisia, caring for casualties and prisoners of war evacuated from the Sicily campaign and for Navy personnel of the Bizerte port. His foreign service had begun on July 1, 1943. The hospital's opening is documented; the exact date Ottie joined it is not yet on record, so we cannot place him there on opening day.

The Army's own 1943 hospital admission card settles what family memory and his 1950 bonus record had only claimed: in July 1943, in Sicily, Ottie was a battle casualty, wounded in action “in line of duty.” The card describes a lacerated bullet wound of his left forearm and lists his branch as Infantry. The Army returned him to duty the same month. Newly confirmed by his 1943 medical record.

This matches, in detail, the story his son carried (“wounded during the invasion of Sicily … shot by a machine gun”) and his own 1950 county bonus record, where he gave his organization as the 16th Infantry Regiment, 1st Infantry Division and the clerk marked the “Wounded” box. Having left the U.S. on July 1, he would have joined the fighting as a replacement during the campaign. The wound also explains the rest of his record: once recovered, he stayed on in the hospital complex at Bizerte as the 80th Station Hospital's supply clerk, then rotated home to a December 1944 discharge, while the war was still on. Confirmed: the wound, the theater (Sicily), the branch (Infantry), and the return to duty are all in the 1943 admission card. Still to confirm: the specific regiment (16th Infantry is his own 1950 statement; its morning reports are the test) and a Purple Heart award document, the usual companion of a battle-casualty wound.

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.

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.

After processing back through Camp Reynolds and Indiantown Gap, Ottie is separated from active service at Fort Dix, New Jersey, a little under three years after his induction. He leaves the Army a Private First Class: his Morning Reports show him as Pfc through November 1944, and his VA government headstone records the same terminal rank. The separation date and place are documented, and PFC is confirmed by the headstone. An honorable discharge is a reasonable inference: his VFW membership required qualifying war service, and no record notes anything adverse. The discharge document itself most likely burned in the 1973 NPRC fire.

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.