Dear folks,

I am well, happy and safe and I hope you all are the same.

I haven’t heard from Vince yet although I wrote to him quite a while ago. However, I expect a letter from him soon. I also expect Mr. Morgan’s letter any day now.

I have a lot of letters to write in the next couple of days because I have to get a lot of people on the beam again. They haven’t been writing or their letters were lost, one or the other.

I haven’t received any packages yet but I will. If you ever need a letter from me to send a package, you write the letter yourself and put it in one of my old envelopes that I addressed to you. Put anything you want to in package and send it and I’ll find good use for it no matter what it is.

That’s about all I can say now so I’ll sign off.

Love & kisses,

Babe

P.S. Don’t forget to tell me where those people live.

PDF: ‘I have to get a lot of people on the beam’

One of them doesn’t shed much light beyond what I already knew. Maj. Gen. J.A. Ulio, adjutant general of the Army writes to my grandmother the oft-repeated line in the military documentation: Babe “died as a result of drowning when the vehicle in which he was riding was forced into a canal.” That wording appears verbatim in another letter I’ve written about, a letter from Col. Charles D. Carle, commander of the Records Administration Center in St. Louis, Mo., in October 1946 to my grandmother outlining the campaigns Babe served in.

In his letter, General Ulio indicates that “provisions have been made for the unit commander or chaplain to send a letter containing further information.” And that is the second letter, also dated May 22, that my grandmother received.

In that letter, Capt. James L. Carraway, a chaplain for the 168th Infantry Regiment, tells my grandmother in its second paragraph:

Frank was a radio operator of a section attached to one of our battalions as a relay station. While driving along a highway in northern Italy, the vehicle in which they were riding became out of control and was forced into the canal alongside the road. Frank was pinned between the truck body and the bottom of the canal and was unable to free himself. Some moments passed before his body was retrieved and at which time artificial respiration was administered, but to no avail.

I must say, Capt. Carraway’s letter, though matter-of-fact, is utterly sensitive and kind, perhaps a testament to the practice he’d had with these letters by that point. I’ve transcribed the entire letter for readers to see.

The new information? Well, apparently, Babe wasn’t the only person in the truck. And this letter describes for the first time exactly how he came to drown in this accident. What this letter takes pains not to do through the use of the passive voice, however, is assign any blame. So, this letter neither confirms nor disputes the account I wrote about in 2014, recounting a brief conversation with a friend of the Mauro family. That account suggests the accident might have been the result of some reckless driving while celebrating the Italian surrender effective May 2, 1945.

As an additional aside, Ulio served in the military for 46 years and became adjutant general of the army in May 1942. According to his Wikipedia page, “one of his most important roles was notifying families when their loved ones became casualties. Thousands of telegrams went out under his name every day.” He died in 1958.

I could not find much about Carraway beyond his obituary in The Indiana Gazette from Indiana County, Pennsylvania. He had apparently been promoted to major before he ended his army service. His obit refers to him as Dr. Carraway, suggesting he had earned his doctorate in ministry. He served as a minister in the United Methodist Church for 45 years. He died on April 2, 1990.

HEADQUARTERS 168TH INFANTRY REGIMENT
Office of the Chaplain
APO 34, c/o Pm., N.Y.

22 May 1945

Mrs. Florence Mauro
491 Lexington Ave.
Mt. Kisco, New York

Dear Mrs. Mauro:

By this time you will have received notification of the death of your son, Tec 5 Frank D. Mauro, 32810329, Anti-Tank Company, 168th Infantry Regiment. He died 4 May 1945.

Frank was a radio operator of a section attached to one of our battalions as a relay station. While driving along a highway in northern Italy, the vehicle in which they were riding became out of control and was forced into the canal alongside the road. Frank was pinned between the truck body and the bottom of the canal and was unable to free himself. Some moments passed before his body was retrieved and at which time artificial respiration was administered, but to no avail.

He was buried in an American Military Cemetery in northern Italy. Services were read at his burial by a Catholic Chaplain, and his body was laid to rest with the care and tenderness due one of our honored dead. The grave is marked with a white cross bearing Frank’s name and home address.

The Effects Quartermaster, Army Effects Bureau, Kansas City QM Depot, Kansas City 1, Missouri, is the only Army agency which is able to furnish you any information or inventories concerning the disposition of your son’s personal effects. Therefore, it is suggested that any inquiries you may have be addressed to that agency as personnel overseas are unable to supply this information.

It is doubly tragic that his death came at a time when victory was so near, yet it is undeniably true that his sacrifice played a great part in the bringing about of conclusive victory. I am confident it was a sacrifice the extent of which only you and God know. May I offer my own personal sympathy to you who have lost so much. I pray God’s blessing and comfort may be yours in this hour of great sorrow.

Sincerely yours,

JAMES L. CARRAWAY
Chaplain, Captain

PDF: Letter to Florence Mauro from James Carraway, chaplain

In more than two years since I last posted to this blog, a lot has happened. There was a pandemic, of course. And my younger brother died July 16, 2020, two months after that last post. This is the obituary I wrote just before members of my family finally met this month to bury his ashes in Mount Kisco, New York. He’s laid to rest beside my mother, about a mile from her childhood home on Lexington Avenue, the home referenced often on this blog.

One happy occasion during the trip was reuniting for lunch with my Aunt Terry, the widow of my Uncle Bob. That’s Babe’s younger brother, whom he references as “Bib” in his letters home. Terry had two thin manila folders my uncle had saved with more documents, many of which I had never seen. Some are related to Babe, others to my parents, still more to my grandmother Florence, Babe’s mother.

Among them: two copies of Babe’s birth certificate, which I’d never seen before. One was issued Oct. 11, 1924, two days after Babe was born. The other, obviously a certified copy, was issued July 19, 1945, nearly two and a half months after Babe was killed.

Now, I’ve mused in this space before about the mystery of Babe’s name. He’s referenced as Frank David Mauro on numerous documents—particularly military documents, including his dog tags. But there are also documents that refer to him as Frank Vito Mauro. Hilariously, the birth certificates don’t shed any light on the subject because—get this—one uses Vito and the other uses David.

On the 1924 birth certificate, on the line “full name of child,” is written Vito Frank Mauro. A handwritten arrow on the document indicates “Vito” should move to the middle between “Frank” and “Mauro.” Meanwhile, on the 1945 version of the birth certificate, the corresponding line says Frank David Mauro. The folder Terry gave me also included Babe’s baptismal certificate, which refers to him as Francis Vito Mauro, which I assume is aligned with Catholic tradition.

I assume there was a reason my grandparents needed another copy of Babe’s birth certificate. Maybe it had something to do with securing military benefits in the wake of his death.

And I’m just going to get comfortable with the fact that Babe had two names, which perhaps shouldn’t be a surprise. His grandfather was named Vito Martinelli.

This memorial, signed by President Harry Truman, was mounted in a 13.5×15.5-inch frame on my grandmother’s wall—next to her front door—for decades. It now hangs on my wall. It’s a tribute to my Uncle Frank “Babe” Mauro, killed near Novara, Italy, four days before V-E Day.

As it happens, yes.

I came across FindaGrave.com, where Marvin and Samme Templin had created a profile page for Babe and someone (we don’t know who) posted a photo of the headstone to further enhance the profile.

FindaGrave.com has been in the news in the past. I found stories about the site on National Public Radio (from 2010); on the Philadelphia Daily News/Inquirer website from 2016; and on the BBC site from just a few months ago.

It’s been described in at least one media report as “Facebook for dead people.”

The Salt Lake Tribune wrote a short piece about FindaGrave in 2013 after it was acquired by Ancestry.com.

The site is not without controversy. There are a number of people who have written unflattering pieces about how the site deals with privacy issues and how it responds to complaints. The BBB has not been kind in its rankings of the site in the past, though Ancestry has said it is committed to improving any issues in that area.

I was just happy to have a chance to see the profile page for Babe, the nice photo of his grave marker, and to have a great email exchange with Samme Templin.

“We work with a group of folks who add veterans and their spouses to national cemeteries on Find-A-Grave,” she wrote in our Aug. 19-20exchange. “Just so happens that I worked on Long Island National Cemetery and added the memorial for your uncle.”

She and her husband do this as a hobby, working their way through national cemeteries around the country as a way of honoring veterans. Their profile page on FindaGrave indicates that they’ve created a staggering 505,000 online memorials and posted nearly 147,000 photos. Marvin, she said, is a veteran, “so I honor him in doing this.”

She said they’ll spend time going through cemeteries collecting information, creating profiles and adding photos of grave stones to existing FindaGrave profiles.

“You can get hooked on this big time,” she said. “We’ve been doing (FindaGrave) for over 17 years and work on it as much as we can. Most of our trips are cemetery tromping, looking for relatives. We also look to see if there are requests in that particular cemetery and hopefully can fill some request along the way. Our way of paying forward for those who have filled our requests.”

Quite a number of years ago, I found myself confused by references to “Vito Frank Mauro” that I couldn’t square with what I knew about Babe. As I continue to prance through the documents I’ve collected over the years, I found more papers that make it clear: Somewhere along the line, Babe was known as Vito.

Why? I cannot tell you.

But I have four documents that are obviously, definitely about Babe—but that do not refer to him by his birth name of Frank David Mauro. Well, let me modify that statement: One of them refers to him as Frank David Mauro, which is crossed out and replaced by Vito Frank Mauro.

I have a parental consent form for military service signed by Babe’s father allowing him to enlist in the naval reserve as an aviation cadet. This itself is interesting enough because we know that he did not enlist in the navy, but the army. This is the document that refers to Babe by both names.

I have two letters of reference (one and two) from The Bullard Company, the machine works in Connecticut where Babe worked briefly after high school. One refers to Babe as “V.F. Mauro,” the other as Vito Frank Mauro.

Babe’s high school transcript from Mount Kisco High School also mysteriously refers to him as Vito Frank Mauro.

Alas, I have no great insights to share about this. With no relatives left to consult about it, it’s just a curiosity.

The documents that follow the army’s “disposition of remains” letter confirm or call out a number of pieces of information: Babe was indeed buried in only a cloth shroud in his temporary grave in Mirandola, Italy. When he was disinterred, his remains were, at that point, skeletal. His remains were escorted to their final resting place by Sgt. John D. Tiger, “a service man who is of equal or higher rank, of the same branch of service, of the same race and sex of the deceased.”

In the “Request for Disposition of Remains” form included with the letter, the army itself suggested his remains be returned to the United States and reinterred at Long Island National Cemetery, a suggestion to which my grandfather assented. Though not the closest military cemetery—Cypress Hills National Cemetery may be a smidge closer—it would certainly have been acceptable.

At this point, it’s fairly easy to assemble a timeline of what followed the army’s letter requesting a decision from my grandparents about the disposition of Babe’s remains. That timeline follows a few other brief observations.

In a fairly lengthy telegram dated Jan. 26, 1949, my grandparents learned that Babe’s remains were en route to the United States and that it might yet take another five days to four weeks before a funeral could take place. In fact, it took a little longer.

“Military escort will accompany remains to national cemetery,” read the telegram from G.H. Bare, Colonel, Quartermaster Corps. “Appropriate joint military honors and religious services will be provided at graveside by veterans’ organization or by military or naval personnel.”

I do not know whether my grandparents attended. I have no reason to think they didn’t.

A later document called “Information for Next of Kin of World War II Deceased” refers to the telegram and goes into greater detail about what would happen upon the arrival of Babe’s remains on U.S. soil.

“Remains are escorted home individually by a service man who is of equal or higher rank, of the same branch of service, of the same race and sex of the deceased,” the form explained. “Military honors are always provided by the U.S. Government at the national cemeteries.”

As it turns out, Babe’s remains were buried for the last time on March 8, 1949—nearly four years after he was killed. An article from Archives.com explained the process and, in part, why it took so long.

“This was due in part to a shortage of materials for cases for the coffins and a shortage of metal for the coffins themselves,” author Jennifer Holik wrote in the 2014 article. “The coffins were ‘made of steel with bronze finish’ and ‘were seamless, a cover set on a rubber gasket is sealed with thirty-two lugs.’”

Timeline to Babe’s Burial

• Nov. 20, 1947. This is the date stamped on what I presume is the returned “Request for Disposition of Remains” form the army sent my grandfather a couple of weeks earlier. This is the form assenting to Babe’s relocation to Long Island National Cemetery. It’s a little confusing because I also see several other dates either written or stamped on the form, including Nov. 19, 1948 (which honestly looks like a mistake, to me); and June 3, 1948 (seven months later).
• June 15, 1948. This is the date of the “Disinterment Directive” form, which must be the order to dig up Babe’s remains.
• July 28, 1948. The date Babe’s remains were actually disinterred, according to the “Disinterment Operations Record.”
• Aug. 4, 1948. The date Babe’s remains were placed in his final casket (from the same form).
• Jan. 26, 1949. Date of the telegram from the Quartermaster’s Corps I mentioned earlier.
• March 8, 1949. The date of the “Receipt of Remains” at Long Island National Cemetery. The form indicates Babe’s remains were escorted by Sgt. John D. Tiger. Another form indicates this was the date Babe was buried.

Note: The photo above is of Long Island National Cemetery, taken by Wikipedia user Jim Henderson and given to the public domain.

The date typed on the letter is “& November 1947,” which I assume was meant to be Nov. 7 (the ampersand appears on the same key as the number seven). A stamp on the bottom of the letter also indicates Nov. 7 as the date.

I have a poor photocopy of the letter, which actually appears to be a photocopy of a carbon copy. I’ve attached a portion as the featured image and a PDF of the document, although it’s not very good.

It is addressed to my grandfather, Frank Mauro, at the Lexington Avenue house in Mount Kisco.

30 months since Babe was killed

Dear Mr. Mauro:

The people of the United States, through the Congress, have authorized the disinterment and final burial of the heroic dead of World War II. The Quartermaster General of the Army has been entrusted with this sacred responsibility to the honored dead. The records of the War Department indicate that you may be the nearest relative of the above-named deceased, who gave his life in the service of his country.

The enclosed pamphlets, “Disposition of World War II Armed Forces Dead,” and “American Cemeteries,” explain the disposition, options and services made available to you by your Government. If you are the next of kin according to the line of kinship as set forth in the enclosed pamphlet, “Disposition of World War II Armed Forces Dead,” you are invited to express your wishes as to the disposition of the remains of the deceased by completing Part I of the enclosed form “Request for Disposition of Remains.” Should you desire to relinquish your rights to the next in line of kinship, please complete Part II of the enclosed form. If you are not the next of kin, please complete Part III of the enclosed form.

If you should elect Option 2, it is advised that no funeral arrangements or other personal arrangements be made until you are further notified by this office.

Will you please complete the enclosed form, “Request for Disposition of Remains” and mail in the enclosed self-addressed envelope, which requires no postage, within 30 days after its receipt by you? Its prompt return will avoid unnecessary delays.

Sincerely,

THOMAS E. LARKIN
Major General
The Quartermaster General

PDF: Letter to Babe’s parents about disposition of his remains

With this letter, Grandma tried, but did not succeed in making it happen.

My grandmother’s Dec. 17, 1946, letter:

Office of the Quartermaster General
Memorial Division
Washington, D.C.

Re: Frank D. Mauro (SU 32 810 329)

Dear Sirs:

In your kind letter of October 16th, 1946, you informed my husband and myself of the exact place of burial of our son, T/5 Frank D. Mauro Su 32 810 329.

He is at the U.S. Military Cemetery, Mirandola, 18 miles northeast of Modena, Italy.

Since then we have made contact with some native Italians who knew him and liked him. They have offered, and I could like very much that they take some pictures of his burial place. However, it seems that their son is not allowed to do this without a pass, which I assume can be obtained through your office.

The person is Antonio Apuzzo, Raviscanino, Caserta, Italy.

You know that any assistance which you will give would be more than deeply appreciated. Please let me know of any action taken.

Respectfully yours,

Florence Mauro

And the reply from the Quartermaster General’s office:

27 December 1946

Dear Mrs. Mauro:

Your letter concerning your son, the late Technician Fifth Grade Frank D. Mauro, has been received in this office.

It is regretted to advise you that the War Department regulations prohibit the photographing of individual graves overseas; therefore, this office cannot comply with your request for an admittance pass for Antonio Apuzzo who desired to take a picture of your son’s grave in the United States Military Cemetery, Mirandola, Italy. It is anticipated that, in the near future the War Department will provide the next of kin with a photograph of the military cemetery in which rest the remains of their loved ones.

FOR THE QUARTERMASTER GENERAL:

Sincerely yours,

JAMES L. PRENN
Major, QMC
Assistant

Above: Memorial Day 2017 at the Florence National Cemetery, which is where eight temporary military cemeteries, including Mirandola, were later consolidated.