Remembering the sacrifice of Sergeant Henson H. Hailey

I'm seeing a trend of more and more "third party" WWII postcards showing up on eBay. By "third party" I mean correspondence a soldier sent to someone outside his or her immediate family, such as a person they met in the service or a distant relative. I suspect that the people who received the cards kept them in a box in the attic all these years. When they die, their children have no reason to keep a postcard from someone they don't know, so they put it in an estate sale and it ends up on eBay.


That appears to be the case with a postcard written in 1943 by Corporal Henson H. Hailey from Kentucky, who served with the 459th Bomb Group. The card is addressed to Mr. and Mrs. John Barker in Ft. Collins, Colorado. I was able to determine that Corporal Hailey (later promoted to Sergeant), died in Europe on June 3, 1945, about three weeks after V-E Day (May 8, 1945). I also found him listed in a family tree on Ancestry.com and contacted “Lynn,” the person who maintains the tree. She explained: "This story didn't have a happy ending. Sgt. Hailey was a crew member on a B24 Liberator. The day he died their plane crashed into the side of a mountain in Austria due to pilot error. He is buried in the American cemetery in Lorraine, France."

Photos of the postcard and Corporal Hailey's grave in France are below. Lynn doesn’t know who Mr. and Mrs. Barker were or why Corporal Hailey was writing to them. She did a cursory search of her family tree and found no connection. Mr. and Mrs. Barker were in their early 40s and had a six-year-old son, Keith. The 1940 census show Mr. Barker being a clerk in a grocery store. In the card, Corporal Hailey wrote, "Hoping to see you all again soon. Hello Keith." I believe one possibility is that Corporal Hailey met the Barkers while stationed somewhere in Colorado and stayed in touch with them by mail.

As often happens, this story led to another one. Lynn pointed me to an article about the sole survivor of that crash, Basil Ricci. A few minutes before the crash, he traded places with the tail gunner, a move that saved his life. He later wrote a personal letter to the mothers of each of the men killed in the crash. It’s an amazing story with too many twists and turns to be told here. You can find the full story of Basil Ricci at http://www.catholicplanet.com/articles/article38.htm

The Mystery of PFC Breslen's World War II Letter

After my parents died a few years ago, my brother and I found among their possessions a diary that revealed a family secret we didn’t know. Our paternal grandfather had a wife and child before he married our grandmother, and it appears he left the first wife under less than honorable circumstances. Likewise, a World War II letter I found on eBay a while back held a surprising secret for a family in Vermont. Let’s start at the start.

I periodically search eBay for postcards and letters written by soldiers during WWII. If I see an item where I can identify and locate descendants of the soldier, I alert them to it in case they want it. Over the course of this year I’ve connected several families with letters and postcards, along with one heirloom Bible carried by a pilot who was killed in the war.

A few weeks ago I spotted a letter that was written by Marine PFC George Breslen in 1943. The letter was addressed to Mr. and Mrs. Allen C. Greer in Indianapolis, parents of one of PFC Breslen’s Marine buddies. The salutation was, “Dear Mom and Pop Greer,” and the letter went on to assure them that their son Johnny was doing fine in the Marines.

My research showed that PFC Breslen survived the war, married, and had children. His wife, Josephine, died in 1974, and he died in 1979 at age 56.  With a little more research I located his son, Jeff Breslen, who lives in Vermont, and sent him an email telling him where to find the letter on eBay. He replied with a very cordial note thanking me for the information. He said the letter was especially important to him because he was only 11 when his dad died and he knew very little about his father’s WWII service.

Jeff and I both wondered why PFC Breslen was writing to the Greers. He contacted the eBay seller and learned that the seller had bought a group of letters from an estate sale for the Greers, and had even more letters from PFC Breslen to Mr. and Mrs. Greer. Jeff bought all the letters, and they contained a surprise. As Jeff tells it:

“The most perplexing thing in the letters was when my father references ‘his new wife June!’  My older sisters recall that my father was engaged during the war to a June from Australia but they were, according to them, never married.  In fact they remember occasionally when my mother was angry with my father making comments like “You should have married June!”  He references June as his wife several times in the letters.  We’re all curious if in fact he was married to her and that little fact wasn’t made known to anyone else.  I guess maybe one day we can ask him!!”

As for why PFC Breslen was writing to the Greers, the letters were inconclusive. Jeff explained:

“(The letters) were very interesting.  Unfortunately they didn’t shed any light on why he was writing to the Greers.  It sounded like their son also wrote to them so I think my father also did to emphasize that the Greer’s son was doing well.  I sensed that maybe their son asked my father to do it to ease some fears of the war and to confirm he was safe. The letters didn’t have a lot of details about the war or what they were doing.  Quite a few comments about how important it was to be serving and that they were hopeful it would end soon.  There were two letters from late 1943 and two from 1944 – April and June.  It appears that based on what he talks about there must have been more letters but for some reason they weren’t in the box that the seller bought at the estate sale.

Jeff said his brief searches for a “June Breslen” in Australia have not turned up anything. Maybe I’ll join the search . . .

The Long Journey of Private Walter A. Riggs and His World War II Postcard to Mary

For several years now I’ve been finding long lost WWII postcards and returning them to the families of the soldiers who wrote them. I’ve sometimes wondered if I’m the only person who does this. Turns out there’s at least one other – Arden Anderson of Palo Alto, California. He and I have never met in person, but we collaborated online to return a postcard to a family in Texas who lost a loved one in Italy in World War II. Here’s how it happened.

I recently spotted a card for sale on eBay postmarked Feb. 8, 1943. It was mailed from Italy by Private Walter A. Riggs to Miss Mary Clausen in Spokane, Washington. The photo side of the card depicts a "Femme Maure" (Moorish woman). In his return address, Private Riggs included his Army Service Number (38111307). Having that number makes it much easier to track down a soldier. From the National Archives database of WWII enlistments I learned that Private Riggs was born in 1918 and was from Lavaca County, Texas. Further searching revealed that he died in Italy on July 16, 1944, and is buried at the Sicily-Rome American Cemetery in Nettuno, Italy. When I learn information of this sort, I sometimes pass it along to the eBay seller to add more detail to the listing. I sent the seller (who turned out to be Arden Anderson) a message through eBay, giving him a link to Private Rigg’s memorial listing on the web site of the American Battle Monuments Commission.  He replied:

“Thank you for pointing this out and for the great web address. I bought this post card in an antique shop in Spokane, WA. After getting home I thought that it should go to this guy’s family. I searched the internet and found a Walter A. Riggs from Seattle who died at 92 years old and I tried to contact his family without any luck. I will search for a Walter A. Riggs from Texas. Thanks, again.”

I was pleased to find another person who shares my interest in returning these postcards to families. I began searching, and from information on Ancestry.com was able to identify some of Private Riggs’ relatives in Texas.  I passed this information along to Mr. Anderson. He's even more diligent than me, because a few hours later he emailed me:

“This morning I spoke to a nephew of Walter A. Riggs and I am sending the postcard to him. The sister of Walter A. Riggs is still alive at 96 and so is the girl he was going to marry. The nephew told me that he was killed in a truck accident in Naples, Italy. They were just about to go home after the war and they were sightseeing before heading home.”

The nephew sent Mr. Anderson a collage of photos of Private Riggs, and he forwarded them to me. They show a handsome, strapping young man. In one photo he's posing with a car, and in another is with a group of friends, wearing a letter jacket.

Photos of Walter Riggs provided by his family.

I was curious as to how Private Riggs, from Texas, was connected to Mary in Spokane. Mr. Anderson's research showed that Mary was about 19 years old at the time. I did some more searching and learned that Mary married Howard Grimsrud in 1946. She died in 2012 at the age of 90. Her obituary (http://tinyurl.com/omoqszr) revealed that she volunteered at a USO and worked in personnel at Galena Field in Spokane during the war. It's likely that she met Private Riggs at the USO or Galena Field, he asked for her address, and she obliged. I contacted Mary's sons in Spokane, and they confirmed that she received and wrote a number of postcards to soldiers during the war.

So the story of Private Riggs and his postcard has come full circle. He survived combat, only to die in an accident before he could return to the States and marry the girl back home. Mary married a soldier and lived a long life. Walter and Mary briefly crossed paths, and the postcard that connects them is with his family. And now I know at least one other person who shares my interest in the stories behind these WWII postcards.