Company L, 424th Infantry Regiment, 106th Infantry Division
Theater
European Theater of Operations (ETO) - APO 443
Served
April 25, 1942 – June 16, 1945
Decorations
Combat Infantryman Badge · EAME Ribbon, 1 Bronze Star · Unit Citation · Good Conduct
For decades, Quinton's wartime service went undocumented — his family was left
with a headstone and a war. Everything below was rebuilt from the U.S. Army's daily
Morning Reports at the National Archives, found by searching for one thing — his service
number, 35 477 715 — across the rolls of microfilm his units left behind.
Each entry shows the page it came from.
And the discharge itself, Sullivan County, Indiana had all along: he recorded it at the
courthouse in June 1945, and that copy is here too.
Map of Service
Every numbered stop is a place named on a record that also names him — a
Morning Report page, or his discharge. The states he served in are shaded.
The American stations, 1942–1945 · Kansas, Indiana,
West Virginia, Kentucky — and, after Europe, Colorado
▼ 21 October 1944 — he sails with the 106th Infantry
Division; 28 October, he lands in the European Theater
The Ardennes, December 1944 · Co. L, 424th Infantry, APO 443
— the St. Vith sector, where the 106th Division was broken and his regiment held
▲ 24 February 1945 — he leaves the theater on a
hospital evacuation; 12 March, he is back in the United States, at stop 7 above
1Fort Riley, Kansas 1942 — replacement training; steered into medical service.
2Ft Benjamin Harrison, Indiana 1943 — Billings General Hospital. Promoted to Pfc.
3White Sulphur Springs, W. Va. 1943–44 — Ashford General Hospital.
4Camp Breckinridge, Kentucky May 1944 — 473rd Medical Collecting Co.
6St. Vith, Belgium Dec 1944 — trench foot; evacuated from the line.
7Camp Carson, Colorado 1945 — the hospital center where he was discharged, 16 June.
Service Timeline
Family record
September 15, 1911
Born in Hope, Hempstead County, Arkansas
Quinton Cecil McCammon is born in Hope, Hempstead County, Arkansas. His mother, Zula Ida Wittenmeyer, dies two days later. He is raised by his father and stepmother in Sullivan County, Indiana, among twelve half-siblings.
Context
October 16, 1940
Registers for the draft
Registers at Farmersburg, Sullivan County, Indiana in the first peacetime draft registration. He is 29, working as a farm hand for William Godfrey. 5 ft 9 in, 195 lb, ruddy complexion, brown eyes, brown hair.
Source: Indiana World War II Draft Registration Cards, 1940–1947
Confirmed — Enlistment record
April 25, 1942
Inducted at Evansville, Indiana
Inducted as a Selectee — a draftee — and enters active service as a Private. He is 30 years old, divorced, a farm hand with one year of high school. An older man than most of the soldiers he will serve beside.
Source: WWII Army Enlistment Records (Electronic Army Serial Number Merged File)
Confirmed — Army Morning Report
June 1942
Fort Riley, Kansas
The first time the Army's daily records catch him. His company's morning report for the 24th: “PVT McCAMMON, QUINTON 35477715 — duty to special duty, special training troop — left Co. 6 P.M. per S.O. 172, par. 12.” The company's remarks pages cite “MPRTC” — a replacement training centre. This is where he is steered into Army medical service, and it shapes the next two years. Newly discovered.
Source: Morning Report — NARA Roll 2201, part 21 (Jan 1940 – Jul 1943)
Confirmed — Army Morning Report
August 14, 1942
Transferred out of Fort Riley
A typed transfer roster: “Transferred 14 August 42 by S.O. #96, Par. 18” — and there he is, “McCammon, Quihton C.”, his name mistyped, in a column of men bound for Tennessee. Newly discovered.
The transfer roster. His name is in the third block, second column.
Source: Morning Report — NARA Roll 2201, part 21, page 47
Family record
January 4, 1943
Marries Lou Emma Brown
Married in Vigo County, Indiana — so he is still stateside, eight months into his service.
Source: Indiana marriage record (FamilySearch)
Confirmed — Army Morning Report
August 1943
Promoted to Private First Class
At Billings General Hospital, Fort Benjamin Harrison, Indiana. A promotion order lists, under “TO BE PRIVATES FIRST CLASS”: “Private QUINTON C. McCAMMON, 35477715”.
His headstone reads PVT, and for a long time this research assumed he had never been promoted. He had.Newly discovered.
The promotion list. His name is eleventh under “TO BE PRIVATES FIRST CLASS”.
Medical Section, 3591st Service Unit — Billings General Hospital
Special Order 236 releases him and nine other enlisted men of the Medical Section from duty at the hospital, attaching them to Hq & Hq Co, 3587th SU, MDITS.
This settles what he was: not a patient at Billings, but staff — an enlisted man of its medical detachment. Newly discovered.
“Pfc QUINTON C. McCAMMON, 35477715” — second name on the order.
Ashford General Hospital, White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia
Transferred with five other men to the 3590th Service Unit at Ashford General Hospital — the requisitioned Greenbrier resort. The receiving unit's report notes the hour of arrival, 0830, and adds, drily: “(had breakfast here).”Newly discovered.
Source: Morning Reports — NARA Roll 36, image 1352; Roll 41, image 1521 (Nov 1943)
Confirmed — Army Morning Report
January – February 1944
Ashford General Hospital — furloughs, and a hospital bed of his own
Through the winter he appears again and again in the Hq Detachment's reports: 12-day furlough, a 3-day extension, 15 days' furlough to duty. Then, in late January, the line turns: “Dy to hosp — Ashford Gen Hosp, W. Va.” — he is admitted as a patient at his own station. He returns to duty on 21 February 1944. Newly discovered.
Late January: admitted to hospital.21 February: hospital to duty.
Source: Morning Reports — NARA Roll 44 (Jan 1944), images 2095, 2118, 2122, 2132; Roll 120 (Feb 1944), image 2362
Confirmed — Army Morning Report
May 16–22, 1944
473rd Medical Collecting Company — Camp Breckinridge, Kentucky
Released from the 3590th SU into a casual company, then transferred in grade to the 473rd Medical Collecting Company (AGF) at Camp Breckinridge, Kentucky. The order carries his job code: MOS 345 — Truck Driver, Light.
A collecting company is a front-line medical unit: it clears casualties from the battalion aid stations back to the clearing station. He is being moved from a hospital in West Virginia toward the war.Newly discovered.
16 May: the transfer roster. “Pfc Quinton C. McCammon, 35477715” — and in the right-hand column, his MOS: 345.22 May: “Above 7 men … trfd in gr to 473rd Med Collecting Co (AGF), Camp Breckenridge Ky.”
Company L, 423rd Infantry — Camp Atterbury, Indiana
He is now in the 106th Infantry Division, and he is now an infantryman. The same report that places him there strips his stripe: “35 477 715 McCammon Pfc — Rd to gr of Pvt per Co. O #6.”
Reduced to Private. This is the rank that will go on his headstone thirty-two years later. Newly discovered.
Company L, 423rd Infantry, Camp Atterbury — reduced to the grade of Private.
A bad few weeks. On 15 September he is returned “fr conf Post Stockade to dy” at 1000 hours — out of the Camp Atterbury post stockade and back on the rolls. Two weeks later, on 3 October, he is away on a furlough when the clerk marks him “fur to AWOL (0615)” — absent without leave. He turns up the next morning at the same hour, “AWOL to dy (0615)” — gone almost exactly twenty-four hours.
The setting fills in the story. Camp Atterbury sat in southern Indiana, about ninety miles from his home at 315 East Harris Street in Sullivan — and from his wife, Lou Emma. A furlough put him within reach of home. And the calendar was closing fast: the 106th Division was in its last weeks of stateside training, and within three weeks the whole outfit would be on a troopship for Europe. A furlough that runs a few hours long, in the final autumn before a division ships out, is one of the most common entries in any morning report of the war — men stretching a last visit home as far as it would go.
The discharge later totals his time lost at ten days “under AW 107” — the Army’s rule that a soldier make up time lost to absence or confinement. This one-day AWOL is the only page we have found for it; the rest is almost certainly the stockade confinement that ended on 15 September, whose start date we have not yet located.
A 33-year-old who had spent two years driving trucks for Army hospitals was being turned into a rifleman, and — reduced in rank, in and out of the stockade, a furlough run long — he did not go through the change quietly.
15 Sept: from confinement in the post stockade to duty.3 Oct: furlough to AWOL, 0615.4 Oct: AWOL to duty, 0615 — back after almost exactly a day.
Source: Morning Reports — NARA Roll 229, image 2777; Roll 86, images 1735, 1736; discharge (Sullivan Co. Instrument No. 54099)
Confirmed — Army Morning Report
October 7–8, 1944
Transferred to the 424th Infantry — the order that probably saved his life
“McCammon Quinton C 35477715 Pvt — Reld fr asgmt, asgd to 424 Inf, departed. Par. 8, S.O. #240, Hq 106th Inf Div, 7 Oct 44.” The next day he joins his new regiment at Camp Atterbury.
It reads like paperwork. Ten weeks later it is the difference between a rifle and a prison camp — see below.
7 Oct: released from the 423rd, assigned to the 424th.9 Oct: on the rolls of the 424th Infantry. MOS 521.
His discharge records the crossing in two lines of a table: date of departure 21 Oct 44 — destination ETO — date of arrival 28 Oct 44. Seven days at sea.
The 106th Infantry Division moves up through England and France to the Ardennes, taking over a supposedly quiet stretch of front on the German border in early December.
For two years this was the one leg of the journey we could not date. The Morning Reports never caught his sailing. The discharge gives it to the day.Newly discovered.
Source: Enlisted Record and Report of Separation (WD AGO Form 53-55), 16 June 1945
Confirmed — Unit record
December 16, 1944
The Ardennes — the 106th Division is destroyed around him
The German offensive opens against the thinly-held Schnee Eifel. The division's 422nd and 423rd Infantry Regiments are surrounded and surrender — some 6,800 men marched into captivity, one of the largest mass surrenders in American history.
The 424th — his regiment since 7 October — is the one that fights its way out.
Checked and confirmed: he is not in NARA's World War II Prisoners of War Data File. All 143,374 records searched; his service number does not appear. Had he stayed in Company L of the 423rd, this timeline would almost certainly end in a Stalag.
Source: AAD — World War II Prisoners of War Data File (negative result); 106th Infantry Division history
Confirmed — Army Morning Report
December 26, 1944
Trench foot — evacuated from the line
Company L, 424th Infantry, APO 443. Ten days into the worst fighting of the division's existence, in the coldest European winter in decades, his feet give out:
“McCAMMON, QUINTON C. 35477715 Pvt — SSN 345 Truck Driver Light — NBC, SK TRENCH FOOT, LD yes — dy to trfd to Evac Hosp per Sec. 2, Cir. 69, ETOUSA. Dropped fr asgmt.”
Three other men of Company L go out on the same page, for the same reason.
Note what the clerk still writes beside his name, in the middle of the Ardennes: Truck Driver, Light. That was his trade on paper from 1944 onward — but by December he was carried in a rifle company, and it was a rifle company's winter that took his feet.Newly discovered.
26 December 1944, Company L, 424th Infantry — his line is the fourth entry.
He appears on the patient rolls of the Detachment of Patients, 4322d U.S. Army Hospital Plant, arriving from the 77th Evacuation Hospital, still carried as “L 424th Inf”.
This is the last record of him that exists in the digitized archive.
“35477715 — McCammon, Quinton C — Inf Pvt — L 424th Inf.”
Here the day-by-day record genuinely stops — and it is worth being precise about the reason: it is not that he disappears. It is that the archive does. NARA's digitization of the Army Morning Reports ends on 31 December 1944 — there are 786 rolls of film for that December and not one for January 1945.
So we know he spent these weeks being treated for his feet, and we know how it came out, because the discharge tells us when he sailed home. Where he was treated, and how badly he was hurt, is the one stretch of his war still missing.
Confirmed — Discharge
February 24 – March 12, 1945
Home
Departure 24 Feb 45 — destination USA — arrival 12 Mar 45. He leaves the European Theater and does not go back to it.
His foreign service comes to 4 months and 21 days, of which perhaps ten were spent in the line. The rest was hospitals.
The whole of his overseas war, in six numbers: out 21 Oct 44, back 12 Mar 45.
Source: Enlisted Record and Report of Separation (WD AGO Form 53-55), 16 June 1945
Confirmed — Discharge
June 16, 1945
Honorably discharged — Camp Carson, Colorado
In June 1945 he walked into the courthouse at Sullivan, Indiana and had his discharge recorded as a county deed — Instrument No. 54099, entered on 25 June 1945 at 8:55 in the morning. We found that certified copy in the Sullivan County Recorder's Office, and it is the single most detailed document in this research.
He is discharged at the Hospital Center, SCU #1748, Camp Carson, Colorado, as a Private of the 424th Infantry. The reason is given as CDD — Certificate of Disability for Discharge, under Section 1, AR 615-361. The trench foot ended his war and then ended his service.
The sheet settles, in one page, nearly everything this research spent months chasing:
• Highest grade held: PFC. The Army's own summary confirms the promotion, and the demotion. • Decorations: the EAME Ribbon with one bronze battle star, the Combat Infantryman Badge, a Unit Citation, and the Good Conduct Medal. • Wounds received in action: None. There was no Purple Heart — trench foot was carried as a non-battle casualty, exactly as the December morning report said. • Time lost under AW 107: 10 days. The stockade and the AWOL, totted up. • Total service 3 years, 1 month, 22 days. He is 33, married, and going back to 315 East Harris Street, Sullivan, Indiana.
The Combat Infantryman Badge is the line to sit with. It is not given for being present. It is given to an infantryman who was under fire — and it was awarded to a man who, nine months earlier, was driving a truck for a hospital in West Virginia.Newly discovered.
The county-recorded copy of his discharge, certified “A TRUE COPY” by Lorella E. Hallbeck, Recorder of Sullivan County.“EAME Ribbon 1 Bronze Battle Star Combat Inf Badge …” and, below it, “Wounds received in Action — None.” The photocopy clips the line's right edge; it continues “Unit Citation Good Conduct.”
Source: Enlisted Record and Report of Separation (WD AGO Form 53-55) — certified copy, Sullivan County, Indiana, Recorder's Office, Instrument No. 54099, recorded 25 June 1945
Family record
July 8, 1945
A son
Twenty-two days after he is discharged, at the Mary Sherman Hospital in Sullivan, Indiana:
“Mr. and Mrs. Quinton McCammon of 315 East Harris Street, are the parents of a baby boy born at the hospital here July 8th. He has been named Ronald Quinton.”
He had sailed for Europe on 21 October 1944, gone to the Ardennes in the worst winter in living memory, held a rifle in a company that lost its feet to the cold, and come home in March. His son was born three weeks after the Army let him go.
His wife and the baby came home from the hospital on 17 July. The birth announcement is the only notice the Sullivan Daily Times ever printed about him. It ran photographs and headlines for other local soldiers — the wounded, the killed, the returning. For Quinton, nothing: trench foot was a non-battle casualty, and it was not news. The town never learned what he had done.Newly discovered.
“He has been named Ronald Quinton.”
Source: Sullivan Daily Times, 9 July 1945, p. 1 (Birth Announcements) — Hoosier State Chronicles
Family record
June 7, 1976
Quinton Cecil McCammon dies, aged 64
He dies at Carmel, Indiana, and is buried at Payne Cemetery, Brocton, Illinois, under a government bronze marker that reads only PVT · US ARMY · WORLD WAR II.
It does not mention the 106th Division. It does not mention the Ardennes. It does not mention the Combat Infantryman Badge. He had earned all three. This timeline is offered in his memory.
