I’m presently working on a number of posts which are taking a measure of time to complete. In the meantime, here’s a very brief “interlude”: A short post “segue-ing” from the story of Major Milton Joel, whose all-too-brief life and military career I covered in a series of posts created from November of 2020 though early 2021. Barring the eventual and highly improbable discovery of the Major’s P-38H (42-67020, “CG * A” , the un-nicknamed “flying wolf”) there’s at present little more to tell of his story.
But sometimes, it helps to return to what has gone before…
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Case in point… I recently searched for further information about the pilots involved in the 38th Fighter Squadron’s aerial engagement with the Luftwaffe over the Netherlands on November 29, 1943. And? I was pleasantly surprised to find material pertaining to two of the pilots who were killed in action on that late November Monday: Second Lieutenants Albert Anthony Albino, and, James Michael Garvin, the latter of whom was Major Joel’s wingman. Though there’s no information that actually adds new detail to my account of the events of that day, the pictures are evocative in their own right.
This post specifically pertains to Lieutenant Garvin, and shows images and documents at the “My Mother’s Gordon Heritage” Family Tree at Ancestry.com.
It’s best to begin at the beginning: Here’s Lieutenant Garvin’s Draft Card. It was completed on October 16, 1940, when he was twenty-five years old. While the card lists his date of birth as July 3, 1915, according to the postwar “Application for Headstone or Marker” for his grave, completed by his mother Eliza (I suppose short for Elizabeth?), James Garvin was born on July 4, 1915, and enlisted in the military on January 11, 1941. At the time of his death on November 29, 1943, he was therefore twenty-eight years of age, unusually old (in relative terms!) for a non-career USAAF fighter pilot, and notably older than Major Joel himself, who on that date was twenty-four.
This image of Aviation Cadet Garvin was taken in Arizona in 1943. Based on the news article below the picture, the photo was probably taken at Williams Field, where he was commissioned on March 10 of that year.
I don’t know the name of the newspaper that served the Lieutenant’s home town of Marcus, Iowa, but notice of his “Missing in Action” status appeared there in December of 1943. Given the approximate one-month time lag – for American WW II servicemen – between the date when a soldier or sailor had become a casualty (killed, wounded, or missing) and the release of this information to the news media by the War Department, I assume that this article was published in the latter part of December.
Notice of confirmation of Lt. Garvin’s death appears in the following news article, which probably appeared in mid-March to April of 1944, the War Department having received notice of his death via the International Red Cross, from a communication to that organization by the German government. Though some sources report that he was shot down in the vicinity of the Leda Canal, east of the city of Leer, Germany, in reality, having somehow escaped the air battle which claimed four other 38th Fighter Squadron P-38s, his fighter crashed at Hondschoote, France, while (as I believe) he was attempting to return to England alone, at low altitude, in bad weather. (See here and here.)
Lieutenant Garvin was buried at his home town of Marcus in late June of 1949. (As for Lt. Albino, I hope to show the newly-discovered picture of him in the future…)