Julie’s Jewels and Junque

Nom­i­nated by Mimi Lenox at Mimi Writes.

The story of a goal accom­plished, a dream ful­filled, a jour­ney home com­pleted, an injus­tice righted.

The post hon­ored today fits into all of those lofty cat­e­gories. But more impor­tantly, it is about a daugh­ter of a mem­ber of what Tom Brokaw termed “The Great­est Gen­er­a­tion” who wanted to honor her father’s ser­vice to his coun­try by pre­sent­ing him with the tan­gi­ble record of his accom­plish­ments. Dur­ing World War II, Pri­vate Harold H. Schultz served with the 134th Infantry Reg­i­ment, part of the 35th Infantry Divi­sion. Between July 5, 1944 and Sep­tem­ber 5, 1945, its mem­bers lib­er­ated or cap­tured 124 towns, suf­fer­ing more than 10,000 casu­al­ties. Over 1,200 sol­diers made the ulti­mate sacrifice.

Staff Sergeant George W. Daugh­erty, Sergeant Penn D. Soland, Sergeant Harold H. Schultz, and Pri­vate First Class Hobert Hunt like­wise found them­selves iso­lated. They kept up sniper fire until three of them decided that they could infil­trate through the enemy posi­tions to rejoin their units. Sergeant Schultz remained in posi­tion to fire while his com­pan­ions made the attempt. They were suc­cess­ful, and some time later, Schultz too was able to make it to safety …

Pri­vate Schultz was awarded Bronze and Sil­ver Stars, as well as a Pur­ple Heart, and numer­ous other medals and rib­bons. How­ever, for rea­sons that are not entirely clear, he did not receive them. So Julie deter­mined to secure them and present them to her father for Christ­mas 2003. Unfor­tu­nately, the task was com­pli­cated by the fact that records were destroyed in a fire at the National Archives in 1973. Sadly, Mr. Schultz died on April 6, 2004, so Julie never got to gift her father with the phys­i­cal memo­ri­al­iza­tion of his ser­vice to Amer­ica. But she forged ahead with her efforts to obtain the spoils right­fully due her father … and his descendants.

In Finally, Julie details her father’s accom­plish­ments and gives read­ers a glimpse of the emo­tions her quest to locate and finally receive his medals evoked. The Ris­ing Blog­ger rec­og­nizes and hon­ors Julie’s descrip­tion of her effort to secure her father’s legacy by bestow­ing The Post of the Day Award upon her. The sig­nif­i­cance of Julie’s labors was sum­ma­rized best by one of her read­ers, Hope:

His ser­vice and char­ac­ter and love of coun­try not only is dis­played in those rib­bons and pieces of metal, but in your love for him and in the spirit that moved through him and onto those he may have saved, touched and inspired and to those sol­diers’ familes, friends and peo­ple of cir­cum­stance who in turn may have ben­e­fit­ted. The per­pet­u­a­tion will have been and still is, endless.

To Julie, we extend con­grat­u­la­tions on many lev­els but, in par­tic­u­lar, for shar­ing her story with all of us.  It stands as a reminder of the sac­ri­fices made qui­etly, and with­out fan­fare or expec­ta­tion of reward or celebrity, by our Vet­er­ans. Julie, you and your father have both made us proud.

Tech­no­rati Tags: Julie’s Jew­els and Junque, Post of the Day Award, The Ris­ing Blogger

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