Seeking how Staff Sergeant Louis Mingione was killed

Andrew,

Here is some information below.  I would also suggest obtaining his IDPFs Individual Deceased Personnel File you can obtain through the following.

The specific information you seek may be contained in your relative’s Individual Deceased Personnel File (IDPF). IDPFs from 1940-1976 for personnel with surnames that begin with A-L are in the custody of the National Archives at St. Louis (RL-SL). For access to these records, please contact RL-SL via email at stl.archives@nara.gov.

For the IDPFs of personnel with surnames that begin with M-Z, please write to U.S. Army Human Resources Command, Casualty & Memorial Affairs Operations Division, ATTN: AHRC-PDC, 1600 Spearhead Division Avenue, Department 450, Fort Knox, KY 40122-5405. They are being scanned by the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency in order to properly identify remains of those still listed as missing.

Dear Mr. Prudente,

Thank you for posting your request on History Hub!

In addition to the IDPFs suggested by Mr. Schneider, we suggest that you request a copy of his Official Military Personnel File (OMPF). OMPFs and individual medical reports for enlisted men of the U.S. Army who were separated from the service after October 1912 and before 1959 are in the custody of NARA's National Personnel Records Center (NPRC) in St. Louis. In many cases where personnel records were destroyed in the 1973 fire, proof of service can be provided from other records such as morning reports, payrolls, and military orders, and a certificate of military service will be issued. Please complete a GSA Standard Form 180 and mail it to NARA's National Personnel Records Center, (Military Personnel Records), 1 Archives Drive, St. Louis, MO  63138-1002. If there is any information requested by the form that you do not know, you may omit it or provide estimates (such as for dates), but the more information you provide, the easier it will be to locate the correct file if it survived the fire. For more information see Official Military Personnel Files (OMPF), Archival Records Requests.

With the unit information from the IDPF or the OMPF, you may be interested in reviewing unit journals and after action reports about the activities of his unit at the time of his death. We searched the National Archives Catalog and located the World War II Operations Reports, 1940-1948 in the Records of the Adjutant General's Office, 1917 - 1985 (Record Group 407) that includes records of many of the Army units that served during WWII. For more information about these non-digitized records, please contact the National Archives at College Park - Textual Reference (RDT2) via email at archives2reference@nara.gov.

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic and pursuant to guidance received from the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), NARA has adjusted its normal operations to balance the need of completing its mission-critical work while also adhering to the recommended social distancing for the safety of NARA staff. As a result of this re-prioritization of activities, you may experience a delay in receiving an initial acknowledgement as well as a substantive response to your reference request from RDT2. Also, NPRC will continue servicing requests ONLY associated with medical treatments, burials, homeless veterans seeking admittance to a homeless shelter, and those involving the VA Home Loan program. If your request is urgent, please see Emergency Requests and Deadlines. Please refrain from submitting non-emergency requests such as replacement medals, administrative corrections, or records research until NPRC returns to pre-COVID staffing levels.  Please check archives.gov/veterans for updates to the NPRC operating hours and status. We apologize for this inconvenience and appreciate your understanding and patience.

We hope this is helpful. Best of luck with your family research!

Mr. Atkinson

Thankyou for your prompt reply to my issue. I filled out form GSA Standard Form 180  up to the point where it asks for your relationship. It only  allows immediate family to access the records. You need to be brother, sister, Mother or Father. All of those people are deceased. I am the next of kin to him because I am the oldest surviving nephew. So, I was not able to take advantage of that form, but I thankyou very kindly.

regards,

andrew prudente

Dear Mr. Prudente,

Thank you for posting your follow up request on History Hub!

You do not need to be immediate family to request these records.  Personnel records of military members who were discharged, retired, or died in service 62 or more years ago are open to the public and may be requested by anyone.

The advice to request his IDPF isn't bad, but you'll be waiting a long time.  It could take a year even pre-pandemic.  Sometimes the IDPF has information about cause of death, and sometimes it doesn't.  Requesting the OMPF is standard advice, but with the backlog from the pandemic it will likely take years at this point to (most likely) learn that the file was destroyed in the 1973 fire.

While you wait, the good news is that there are digitized hospital admission cards available under his service number available on Fold3 and Ancestry.  These are basically digitized punch cards.  They were filled out even when a soldier was killed in action and didn't make it to a hospital.  Sometimes there's a lot of information and sometimes very little.  Theoretically errors could creep in when being made or digitized.  It's just a general impression but they usually seem to be fairly accurate, though sometimes there are contradictions with other sources.

This card was for when he was wounded:

Race: White, includes Mexican

Admission Age: 26

Admission Date: Oct 1944

Admission Type of Injury: Casualty, battle

Military Service Number: 32000603

Rank: Enlisted Man

Branch: Infantry, Airborne or Glider Units

Length of Service: 4 Year(s), 0 Month(s)

Injured in Line of Duty: In line of duty

Medical Diagnosis: First Location: Back, generally; Causative Agent: Artillery Shell, Fragments, Afoot or unspecified

Discharge Type :Duty

Discharge Date: Oct 1944

This card was filled out after he was killed:

Gender: Male

Admission Age: 26

Admission Date: Feb 1945

Admission Type of Injury: Injury Type: Battle casualty; InjuryType2: All battle casualties, and all battle injuries not intentionally inflicted by self or another person

Military Service Number: 32000603

Rank: Enlisted Man (includes Aviation Cadet or Student)

Unit:3

Branch: Infantry, Glider Units

Length of Service: Unknown

Medical Diagnosis: Diagnosis: Wound(s), character not stated (includes Wound(s), multiple, Not Elsewhere Classified; Wound(s) unqualified) with no nerve or artery involvement; Location: Abdomen, abdominal wall and pelvis: Back, generally; Location: Buttock and hip; CausativeAgent: Artillery Shell, Fragments, Afoot or unspecified; Diagnosis: Wound(s), character not stated (includes Wound(s), multiple, Not Elsewhere Classified; Wound(s) unqualified) with no nerve or artery involvement

Discharge Date: Feb 1945

Discharge Place: Not in Medical Installation Prior to Death

In this case, only the Ancestry version tells the full story, Fold3's being cut off for some reason. 

Unit numbers are pretty rare in the cards.  I guess the 3 is from the first digit of his unit, Company "A," 325th Glider Infantry Regiment, 82nd Airborne Division.  Date of death February 2, 1945, per the roll of honor here.

Hope this helps.

https://www.google.com/books/edition/All_American_All_the_Way/KY_672qQf0kC?hl=en&gbpv=1&kptab=sideways&bsq=SGT%20Louis%2…

He's name is in this book "All American, All the Way."

Dear Mr. Silverman,

I read with interest your post about your finding two hospital admission cards for Staff Sgt. Louis E. Mingione, Service No. 32000603. Two comments/questions for you:

1) I have found relevant hospital admission cards in the course of my military history research but the existence of cards with no service member name on them? I never thought of that possibility. That was a great idea of yours to search on the service number.

Have you come across that much in your research, where there is no service member name on a hospital admission card?

Any idea why a service member's name would not be listed on a card?

Also, what drives me crazy is the fact that these cards, in general, do not give a location for where the "hospitalization" took place.

2) Just wondering, how did you go from the first digit of the service number ("3") to identifying Louis Mingione's unit? Were there many glider units beginning with "3" that you had to sift through?

Stephen Carfora

Dear Mr. Silverman,

It turns out that I have answered part of my inquiry by checking the description provided by Ancestry.com for its "U.S., World War II Hospital Admission Card Files, 1942-1954" record collection. It reads (I highlighted in red the text of particular interest to me):

https://www.ancestry.com/search/collections/61817/

About U.S., World War II Hospital Admission Card Files, 1942-1954

The files contain records pertaining to some 5.3 million patients, mostly U.S. Army personnel wounded in battle during World War II and the Korean War. The World War II records include only Army personnel treated at Army facilities, but the Korean War records include a few records (approximately 5 percent) for non-Army personnel and non-Army treatment facilities (approximately 4 percent). The records contain various medical treatment information about each patient including diagnoses, operations, and dates and places of hospitalization. The original records do not contain the name of the hospital patient, but list military service number, age, race, sex, place of birth, rank and unit. The names of some patients were identified and added to the record by comparing the service number to other military record collections available on Ancestry.

Mr. Carfora:

1) It is my understanding that all the hospital admission cards originally had only service numbers.  Ancestry/Fold3 then added the names by crossreferencing the service numbers to another set of digitized cards: U.S. Army enlistment data, which includes both ASN and full name.  To the best of my knowledge, no other sources were used in filling out the names.  Of course, this omits all officers, as well as people for whom there was no successfully digitized enlistment card (at least 15% of soldiers).  I've also found plenty of hospital cards on Fold3/Ancestry with the name field blank even when there was an enlistment card that should have resulted in an update.  For that reason, I tend to search for these cards using service number only.

2) Most of the cards don't have any unit listed (at least not what's on Ancestry or Fold3).  The 3 really isn't meaningful on its own.  I searched in the airborne honor roll because he was listed as being a glider or airborne soldier.  That was the helpful detail, not the 3.  I found him on a roll of honor for the 325th Glider Infantry Regiment, leading to my speculation that the 3 stood for 325.  But it could just has easily have been a glitch, I suppose.

I did a search of U.S. WWII Hospital Admission Card files on Ancestry.com for him using his Army serial number and am attaching a copy of that record.  It lists his Military Branch as "Infantry, Glider Units".  Hope this helps.  Good luck with your research.