Progress of the 110th-35th QM Collection

 

Marvin Cain wrote “Odell, Byfield, Hayes, Blank” Courtesy of the Cain Family

I love this picture of these four soldiers enjoying what may have been their first visit to a California Beach. It was taken when the 110th Quartermaster was sent to Fort Ord, California right after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. It was December of 1941 when they arrived, winter on the California Coast was cold that year according to my father’s letters.

I have been processing the Winquest-Johnson collection. The Rod Johnson’s part of the collection is what I am working on now. He was with Company A along with Marvin Cain and Harold Winquest. I now have 73 new Photo album pages that contain anywhere from one to eight pictures each page. These new pictures join my father’s, Marvin Cains, Murray Combs, Robert Winter, Harold Winquest pictures in the 110th-35th QM Collection. Comparing Mr. Johnson’s pictures with Marvin Cain’s I am able to put full names to some of the pictures I had only last names for. I get a rush when that happens, when I find a name in the Johnson Collection that gives me a clue to who that person was in the Cain collection who I only had a last name for. It is like a piece of a puzzle has been solved. Because of this cross referencing I was able to put full names all four of the men in the above picture!

I now have pictures that chronicle their time from 1941 when they were originally mustered into the Army and span through their training at Camp Robinson in Arkansas, Camp Rucker, Louisiana Maneuvers, Tennessee Maneuvers, California, then overseas. I have pictures of each of these places. I am blown away at how historical this collection has become.

Even though my father was not in Company A, he walked in their shoes, went most everywhere they did.

The men of Company A have become my family and through them I can see what my father saw all those years ago. I feel so blessed and thankful.

More to come…………………………………..