The Roster

Melvin Johnson's Death

website bigpigeon.us, webpage WWII Roster > The Roster - © 2022 by Robert A. Christiansen, updated 11 May 2022.

The Pottawattamie Area WW II Dead Roster

Each roster member has a multi-line roster record consisting of three or four parts:

the initial line, which includes the member's service number.
personal data
military data
sometimes notes

Because of length the roster is broken up alphabetically into multiple parts. Click to access ==> A B C D EF G H IJ KL M NO P QR S TUV WXYZ Other In-Service Post-Separation

For brevity, I used many abbreviations in my roster and the associated lists. You'll find these abbreviations and other information herein.

The Initial Line.
Each roster record begins with †, followed by member's name, service number, service branch, county or counties where member lived. Service branch abbreviations:

US Army – United States Army (included the National Guard after January 1941).
USAAF – United States Army Air Force (called Army Air Corps until 1941, became USAF in 1947).
US Navy – United States Navy.
Naval Aviation - primarily carrier and patrol aircraft.
USMC – United States Marine Corps.
USMC Aviation - generally aircraft that supported ground troops and provided air cover.
USCG – United States Coast Guard, under US Navy control in WW II.
Merchant Marine – civilians who were not part of the military.
Civilian – Several thousand other US civilians died in WW II from enemy action, friendly fire, and in captivity.

Personal Data follows the initial line and includes as much of the following as I know :

birth date and place;
parents' names (w/ mother's maiden name);
family residential summary;
any marriage information;
service entry date and residence at time;
burial location, when available.

Personal Data Abbreviations:
Co. Bluffs – Council Bluffs, Iowa; Pott. Co. – Pottawattamie County, Iowa; Omaha – Omaha, Douglas Co., Nebraska.
b. (born) s/o (son of) ss/o (stepson of) gs/o (grandson of), m. (married), b/o (brother of), d. (died), div. (divorced), bur. (buried).

Military Data follows the personal data and includes all or some of the following:

member's military unit;
unit location;
aircraft information if an aircrew member;
death code, death date, and death location;
sometimes death circumstances;
sometimes battle or campaign name;
relevant bigpigeon.us webpage;
BNR or BAS if body not recovered.

I use many abbreviations in unit names:

US Army and USMC: Co. (company), Bn. (battalion), Regt. (regiment), Div. (division); Inf. (infantry); FA (field artillery); AAA (anti-aircraft artillery); Eng. (engineer); Recon. (reconnaissance); Cav. (cavalry).
US Navy: For named ships, I use both the ship's name (e.g., USS Iowa) and the hull number (e.g., BB-61).
US Naval Aviation: NAS (Naval Air Station)
USAAF: Sqdn. (Squadron), Gp. (Group), AF (Air Force), Bomb. (Bombardment), AAF (Army Air Field)
C.O. means Commanding Officer. I generally don't include rank.

I use the following death codes:

KIA – Killed in Action.
MIA - Missing in Action, death code seldom used in WWII, most WW II missing were declared dead after one year.
DOW – Died of Wounds.
DNB – Died Non-Battle, used for deaths caused by disease, accidents outside the combat zone, and other miscellaneous causes.
FOD – Finding of Death, sometimes used with those previously listed as missing.

I use the following casualty codes:

POW - Prisoner of War.
BNR – Body Not Recovered.
BAS - Buried at Sea.

Death locations:

I use directional abbreviations such as NE for northeast and W for West.
I tend to use place names in use during WW II, rather than today's place names; for example, Dutch Indies instead of Indonesia, Formosa instead of Taiwan; Burma instead of Myanmar.

+=>=> Website Usage Tips.

Generally you can enlarge an image by clicking on it.
To search the bigpigeon.us website for the webpages that mention a roster member, e.g. Eldred Welbourn, use a search string like Welbourn Eldred or "Welbourn, Eldred" from the Home > Usage Hints webpage.
The text within a webpage, my reports, and many of the sources I reference are also searchable; I use Cmd/F and Cmd/G on my Mac.

+=>=> To search the web for a death in service during WWII:

First, locate the decedent's service number.
Then do a google search with last and first name and service number, e.g.: wwII newman shelby 351381. A middle initial and parentheses around the name are helpful, e.g.: wwII "brown ralph r" 17019024.
There is a good chance you will get some relevant hits.
Standard Army/AAF record name format is last first initial, e.g., Smith John J; don't use a middle name.

Header Images - the WWII Roster > The Roster webpage and its 17 subpages:

The webpage header photo, Melvin Johnson's Death, is courtesy of grandson Michael Ketchum and was found at http://www.worldwar2letters.com/ARTIFACTS/Western_Union_Death.pdf. In WW II, roster member Melvin Johnson's wife, like other next of kin, learned of deaths and other casualties via Western Union telegrams.
A - Slapton Sands Tank, courtesy of https://www.submerged.co.uk/slapton/, was recovered from the sea by Ken Small in 1984. It serves as a memorial to the nearly 1,000 Americans, including my roster's Alvin E. Aid, who died during bungled training exercises on the south coast of England in 1944.
B - Cabanatuan List of Dead, courtesy of en.wikipedia.org. The three Bostedt brothers, Joe, John & Glen, died with other roster members at the Cabanatuan POW Camp in central Luzon, Philippines.
C - 8th AF Base Duxford, courtesy of airspacemag.com. Duxford, England, south of Cambridge, has Europe's largest air museum and was a 8th Air Force base during WW II. 26 men in my roster died on 8th Air Force planes. One was a pilot, Irving Cohen, whose family ran the Iowa Clothes Shop in Council Bluffs. Irving died with his crew on their first mission.
D - Barak Obama at Midway Island, courtesy of Reuters News Service. Roster members Richard C. Decker & Robert E. Mowrey were killed during the Battle of Midway.
EF - Linz, E bank of Rhine, near Remagen, courtesy of en.wikipedia.org. Roster member Darrel Frost's unit was attached to the 9th Armored Division, which seized the railroad bridge at Remagen on 7 March 1945. Darrel crossed early on the 8th and was killed on the 10th, upstream a few miles near Linz. This photo points out the rugged topography near Remagen; the Remagen bridgehead was not conducive to a major breakthrough into the heart of Germany.
G - B-29 Over the Hump in Burma, courtesy of en.wikipedia.org. Operation Matterhorn in 1944 was the first attempt by the new B-29 very heavy bombers to attack the Japanese home islands. B-29s would fly over the Hump from their bases in northeastern India to forward bases in southern China, from which they would bomb the corner of Japan that was within range. The cost in resources for Operation Matterhorn were enormous, the results were meager. As soon as possible, the strategic bombing of Japan switched to new airbases in the Mariana Islands. Two members of my database, August Davis and Robert Gidley, died in Operation Matterhorn.
H - Red Oak Victory, courtesy of https://redoakvictory.us. In February 1943, the National Guard company from the small Iowa town of Red Oak incurred large casualties when it was captured in Tunisia in the early stages of the Battle of Kasserine Pass. To honor Red Oak's losses, a Victory ship, one of the few surviving today, was named for Red Oak. Fortunately, most Red Oak casualties were prisoners of war who survived captivity and were released in April 1944. Dean W. Halbert of Red Oak, working as a forced laborer in northern Germany, was an exception. He was executed after failing to return promptly from a toilet break.
IJ - USS Arizona Memorial - Pearl Harbor, courtesy of visitpearlharbor.org. Roster member Robert W. Jackson died on the Arizona, while Charles V. Booton, & Bert E. McKeeman also died at Pearl Harbor.
KL - National D-Day Memorial, courtesy of cbs.com. This memorial, in Bedford, VA, lists all 4,400 Allied troops known to have died on D-Day. 19 were from the small town of Bedford. In my roster, Ross L. Kendle died in a tank on Omaha Beach, while Paul H. Fulk died inland with the 101st Airborne. Francis F. Arkfeld & Robert W. Saunders died offshore on landing craft.
M - Marines near Bairoko, New Georgia, courtesy of en.wikipedia.org. Twenty men in my roster died in or near the Solomon Islands, including Dale Maassen of rural Avoca who died in the assault on Bairoko on the north shore of New Georgia.
NO - Pacific War Memorial, courtesy of http://ttnotes.com/pacific-war-memorial.html. This memorial is on Corrregidor Island, which guarded the entrance to Manila Bay in the Philippines. Of the forty roster members who died in the 1944-45 liberation of the Philippines, one of the last was Merle Oltmans, the cousin and neighbor of my uncle, Oscar Torneton.
P - Hiroshima Memorial was found at https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/775/. All but two of roster member Roy M. Pedersen Jr.'s fellow crew members died in the atomic bombing of Hiroshima on 6 Aug 1945.
QR - Ploesti, 15th AF, courtesy of historynet.com. Several times from August 1943 to August 1944, 15th Air Force B-24 Liberator heavy bombers attacked oil production facilities in the Ploesti area in Romania, with the loss of hundreds of planes and around 1,800 men. Paul Rink, buried in Shelby, was killed on 17 August 1944 on one of the last raids. Shortly thereafter advancing Russian forces overran the Ploesti area.
S - Marine Corps Memorial - Arlington, VA, courtesy of wikimedia.org. This memorial depicts the second flag raising on Mt. Suribachi, Iwo Jima. Six men in my roster died on Iwo Jima, including Robert E. Schuelzky whose company provided most of the personnel for the flag raisings. All six were still alive when the flags were raised early in the battle.
TUV - Battle of the Bulge Memorial, courtesy of dreamstime.com. The memorial is in Mardasson, just northeast of Bastogne, Belgium. One of the nineteen men from my roster who died in the Battle of the Bulge was Clifford Vanderpool, whose parents lived near Bentley in Pottawatamie County. The Vanderpool family had eleven children; Clifford was the only son.
WXYZ - Twenty men in my roster died in or near the Solomon Islands, including Edmund Wunder of Harlan, lost when the destroyer USS Laffey sank during the Naval Battle of Guadalcanal. At close quarters using its 5" guns, the Laffey raked the superstructure of the Japanese battleship Hiei, which was then disabled by a shell from the USS Helena, further damaged by naval aircraft, and finally scuttled. This was the first Japanese battleship loss of WW II

Images not used:

QR - USS Indianapolis, courtesy of the National WW II Museum in New Orleans. Roy E. Rhoten from my roster was lost on the Indianapolis, which the Navy forgot was sailing without escort in the western Pacific. Four days passed between the torpedoing of the Indianapolis and the accidental sighting of survivors.
TUV - Wereth 11 Memorial, courtesy of http://lestweforget.hamptonu.edu. The Wereth 11 were eleven members of the Black 333rd Field Artillery Bn., prisoners of war executed by German forces on the outskirts of Wereth, Belgium in the early stages of the Battle of the Bulge.
WXYZ - Okinawa - American Dead, courtesy of https://www.dvidshub.net, a Defense Department service. All known dead from the Battle of Okinawa are listed on the panels at the Okinawa Peace Memorial Dead. Something like 200,000 military and civilians died, including 12,500 Americans.