Your mission this week, should you decide to accept it, is to:
1) To celebrate Veterans Day, pick one of your ancestors or relatives with a military record and a gravestone.
2) Tell us about your ancestor's military service.
3) Tell us about your ancestor's gravestone - where is it, what is the inscription, when were you last there? Show us a picture of it if you have one available.
Well the veteran I picked is my dad Claude D. Hansen, and he was in WWII. He was single and 35 when the war started, so he enlisted in the Army Air Corps hoping to not have to do much marching. He was in the 354th Service Squadron and they serviced the B-17s and B-24s. They went first to England, then to Africa where they spent most of the war and finally to Italy. Pop ran the motor pool that kept the jeeps, and trucks and the generator running. Because he was older than most of the others he was rotated home early, and was in Ft. Dix on VE day awaiting the paperwork to leave the Army, and home here in Spokane on VJ day. After VE day the squadron was packed on a ship and was in the Panama Canal when they dropped the bomb on Hiroshima, so they headed for San Francisco and were mustered out there.
Pop is buried next to mom at Fairmount Memorial Park in Spokane, and I was there last August for Walking With Ancestors.
On Memorial Day they have flags all around the cemetery blocks and all the flags are donated from veterans. You can see pops flag below and the plaque at the base, and a picture of the cemetery flags.
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