Artikel Wilmington StarNews
Artikel: Wilmington StarNews (StarNews Online)
Website: https://eu.starnewsonline.com
Door: Ben Steelman | StarNews Staff
Gepubliceerd: 12 december 2016
Story helps group locate relatives of M.I.A. WWII vet
Memorial Day meant a little more this year to Sandy Keith of Delco.
She knew her grandfather, Henry Herschell Mosley, had died in World War II, but didn’t know much about the circumstances.
“We always tried to find out about it,” she said.
This year, however, Keith was contacted by Stichting M.I.A., a Dutch volunteer group that tries to seek the stories of American soldiers missing in action on the World War II battlefields of Northern Europe. Bart Van Der Sterren, a member of Stichting (Foundation) M.I.A., sent Keith photos of Memorial Day activities at the Netherlands American Cemetery near Margraten, including flowers laid near Mosley’s inscription on the “Wall of Missing.”
Van Der Sterren started inquiries through the Cape Fear Museum and StarNews to contact Mosley’s surviving relatives.
Born in 1923 in Red Springs, Mosley worked as a driver with Corbett Packing Co. in Wilmington. He was the father of two children, Ted, born Jan. 19, 1942, and Joann, born Sept. 26, 1944. Records in the New Hanover County register of deeds’ office show that Henry Mosley was 19 when Ted was born, and his wife, the former Clotile Eason, was 15 in 1942.
“That’s the way it was, back in those days,” Keith said.
Being a husband and father would have kept Mosley out of the first rounds of the draft. By 1944, with manpower resources strained, even fathers were being called up, said military historian Wilbur D. Jones Jr., author of “A Sentimental Journey: Memoirs of a Wartime Boomtown.”
Army records show that Molsey was inducted at Fort Bragg on July 26, 1944. One of Keith’s few mementos of her grandfather was a letter from October 1944, saying he missed his wife and his little boy. At this point, Mosley apparently hadn’t yet learned Joann was born.
Mosley’s unit, part of the 84th Infantry Division, was crossing the Ruhr River in small boats on Feb. 23, 1945, when it came under heavy German fire. The Army counts him as killed in action, and his name appears on a roster of the New Hanover County war dead at the Hannah Block Historic USO building in downtown Wilmington. His body, however, was never found.
Ted Mosley, Keith’s father, had few memories of Henry Mosley. “He just said that he was mean,” Keith said, chuckling.
Ted Mosley died in 1999. His mother, Clotile, who remarried after the war and had two more children, died in 2002.
Plenty of descendants still live in the area, however, Keith noted, including her brother, Ted. Jr.
Reporter Ben Steelman can be reached at 910-343-2208 and Ben.Steelman@StarNewsOnline.com.
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