Seeking photographs of 102nd Infantry Division, 406th Infantry Regiment, Company L

Question

My Grandfather, James H. McTamney was a Technician Fourth Class in the 102nd Infantry Division, 406th Infantry Regiment, Company L. He was killed in action on 2/25/45 in Boslar Germany. I have no photographs of him. If someone out there has any pictures of the men in this company that they would share it would be greatly appreciated. I know this is a needle in a haystack but I remain hopeful.

Special Media Division · Answer

Thank you for posting your question on History Hub!

The Still Picture Branch does not have collections of portraits/headshots, group photos, or yearbooks created during basic training. According to the military, graduates&rsquo; formal photos, both individual and group as well as yearbooks, were created by private local commercial photographers/companies and offered for sale at the time taken. Unfortunately, those items rarely became part of official military records nor were they retained by the commercial photographers responsible for shooting the photos. We do have many candid photos of U.S. military personnel but many of them do not provide identification for the people shown.

Our Army personality index can be found as 111-PX: Index to Personalities in the U.S. Army Signal Corps Photographic Files . A tutorial on how to use the Army, WWII and Korea digitized section can be found at: https://historyhub.history.gov/military-records/army-and-air-force-records/b/army-air-force-blog/posts/researching-personalities-in-u-s-army-photographs .

If you have not done so already, you can request his Official Military Personnel File (OMPF). It is possible that a photograph could be attached to the OMPF. For more information about how to request personnel records from the National Archives' National Personnel Record Center (NPRC), please visit our website here: https://www.archives.gov/veterans . Specifically, members of the military who separated between 1962-present can be found at the NPRC, while those who separated between 1912-1961 can be found at the National Archives at St. Louis . For the most complete copy of a personnel file, in Section I of the SF-180, on the line for "Other" (Specify), write "Complete copy of every page of personnel file - not an extract." Please note that in 1973 a fire at the NPRC unfortunately destroyed a large number of US Army and US Air Force personnel records. You can find more information at https://www.archives.gov/personnel-records-center/fire-1973 . 
 
 For more information regarding military personnel photographs, please visit our page via https://www.archives.gov/research/still-pictures/military-personnel-photographs 
 
 For photographs of the 102nd Infantry Division, 406th Infantry Regiment, Co. L, we did find some indexed under the "406th Infantry Regiment" from our Army Signal Corps series Photographs of American Military Activities (111-SC) . We should note that, typically, unit information was censored during the war by the US Army for security purposes. Unfortunately, that information was not added back into the captions afterwards, so it is possible there may be additional photos of the unit under different subject headings. 
 
 For searches of our records that are not yet digitized, we encourage researchers to visit our research room in College Park, MD for research and reproductions. If you would ever like to schedule a Still Picture research room appointment, please visit https://www.eventbrite.com/o/national-archives-at-college-park-still-pictures-48193105693 , and you may email consultation.stillpix@nara.gov with any questions. Alternatively if you are unable to visit, you may wish to hire an independent researcher to search and copy images on your behalf. 
 We invite you to continue the conversation with community members on History Hub, but should you have follow up questions for the staff at Archives II, please email us at stillpix@nara.gov so that we can assist you further. We hope this assists you with your research!

Sincerely, Still Picture Branch Special Media Division (RRS) [RRSS-24-35414-AH]