Post #2352926

2026-04-17 18:26 UTC

Thank you SO much for the overwhelming support. Gotta love the fediverse ❤️ Some more context (1/x): German Father-in-law's biological mother gave him up for adoption. Decades later, he found her family, she already had passed. No one knew his father, but she left behind pictures - showing her with this man. And from the same pictures series, portaits with his signature on it. First one reads "Will You Remember Edward J. Garth", second one "I no speak [unreadable] - Edward J. Garth".

Replies (3)

@azett@mastodon.online 2026-04-17 18:35

(2/x) Went searching for "Edward J. *B*arth" first. Turns out, there was in fact a prisoner-of-war camp in the German Town of Barth*. This is where a US/UK airman and a German interpreter could actually have met during war. Museum staff researched but could find neither her name (Irmgard Steppat) nor a matching "Edward J." in their documents. *: https://stalagluft1.de/

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@angelfeast@blorbo.social 2026-04-17 20:52

@azett@mastodon.online for what it's worth, i showed these pictures to some people i know who are very knowledgeable about wwii uniforms. they're pretty confident this is an american uniform. hard to say which branch. they did also point out that a lot of the allies manufactured each other's uniforms which means there's some stylistic drift among nations, so don't treat their conclusion as the final word. you could try plugging some different possible last names into that AAD database, or see if any of the free-to-access databases listed here have something helpful: https://www.militaryindexes.com/worldwartwo/ since you don't have any more info at the moment, it wouldn't be worth contacting the national archives/national personnel records center. i used to work there and we couldn't fill requests that didn't have even an approximate date of birth or other information. but i hope you can find some more clues with everyone who's trying to help you! another edit: is it possible he was canadian and the germans were a little confused with their language? since canada and the usa are both in north america :p

Open ##2352977
@steveyaeger@mastodon.social 2026-04-18 10:40

@azett@mastodon.online Have you done a name search on Newspapers.com?

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