Samuel James Larson

Samuel James Larson
9-13-1907 (Duluth, MN) to 6-5-1985 (Phoenix,AZ)

During WWII, my Grandfather, Samuel James Larson, who was named Ingve Larson at birth, went into and across North Africa with General George Patton and the 2nd Armored Hell On Wheels Division which was made famous by the movie Patton. He then went up into Sicily and later in the war, hit the beaches of Normandy, France on D-Day at Omaha Beach. He finished the war in Germany. Sadly he died of lung cancer before I realized where he had been, so I never got to ask him the zillion questions that I have.

I do have grandpa's mess kit which looks like a tin cup with a handle. He had engraved the names of all the places that he went in WWII. You will notice that on the bottom it says ''Irene'', which is the name of his wife, my step-grandmother, also deceased. When she gave me the cup in 1986, the first thing I did was pop the handle up, revealing her name which the handle had hidden. She immediately got tears in her eyes. She knew he had engraved the cup, but she had no idea he had engraved her name on it. She had never seen it with the handle popped up. I did the best I could photographing it. Below is a list of the engravings:

Casablanca, Rabat, Port Lyauty, Fedala, Meknes, Fes, Sidi Bel Abbes, Oran, Mers El Kebir, Arzew, Mosta ganem, Tlemcen, Bougie, Taza, Guercif, Port Au Poule, Tunis, Djedeida, Ferryville, Bizerte, Sedjenane, Mateur, Beja, Souk El Arba, Tabarka, Ain Draham, Bone, Constantine, Affreville, Morrocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Sicily, Normandy, Germany, Wales, England, France, Belgium, Holland, Mons, Albert, Canal, Vire, Falaise Gap, Evreux, Uback, Roer River, Maastricht, Omaha Beach, Carentan, and St Lo.

These are the best I could do photographing the mess kit. The bottom couple of rows look
much better when viewed full size, even though they don't make real good thumbnails.

Below is a press release put out by the 2nd Armored Division on 10-12-44.

Grandpa had a little diary that he kept for a short period of time on the journey by ship from the Mediterranean Sea to England prior to D-Day. These are the pages from it:

The rest of this is just other pages from the diary:

Here Are A few Trinkets that Grandpa brought back from Germany.

Grandpa was a 33rd degree mason. I don't know, or want to know, anything about
freemasonry. This is for info only. Click the below picture to see a bigger picture.

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