Letters from George

One of George's V-mails is postmarked North Africa in December 1943, which is something of a puzzle. The 49th Engineer Combat Battalion's campaign credits begin at Normandy, and the unit is generally recorded as staging in England before D-Day — not as serving in the North African campaign, which had ended months earlier.

The likeliest explanation is the convoy route: troopships bound for Britain in late 1943 often sailed in escorted convoys that touched the Mediterranean or routed by way of North African ports. George's note from here is short and gives little away. We've kept it on the map as he wrote it, and flagged the date and place as something to confirm.

George's own medals quietly settle the question. His government-issued set carries no North African service entitlement, and the silver star on his European-African-Middle Eastern ribbon stands for his five European campaigns — Normandy, Northern France, Rhineland, Ardennes-Alsace, and Central Europe — not a campaign on African soil. If he had fought a North African campaign, the ribbon would say so. So the December 1943 postmark almost certainly marks a passing stop on the way to England, not a chapter of his war.