52 Ancestors 2023: War and Peace
This one is a little hard for me. My oldest son, Army SPC Thomas Doerflinger, was killed in Mosul Iraq on November 11, 2004. He was 20. But, he wanted to serve, and he also was really proud of his two grandfathers who had both served in the Navy during World War II. I don't know much about my husband's family, but I do have a few snippets about my maternal family's history in the military.
The earliest one I know a little about is Moses Case (1749-1776) who served very briefly as a private or maybe a sergeant in the Connecticut militia. Moses sent a letter to his wife, scoffing at what he thought were Tory lies about smallpox. Yes, Moses died in August of 1776, probably of smallpox. He is my 5th great-grandfather on my mother's side. (This story and the letter were reported in a DAR application.)
More murkily, there appears to be a story of a Prewitt ancestor (on my paternal side) who gave the Continental Army 60 pounds of bacon. This seems a noble effort.
There were undoubtedly ancestors who served in the Civil War, on both sides. I know nothing of them, even though I occasionally run across a subtle hint of participation. My mother once told me a story of an ancestor who returned from the war on Christmas Eve, though everyone had believed him dead, but there were no names involved and the Christmas touch seems a little too good to be true.
My mother's paternal half uncle, Webb Belknap, seems to have served in the Spanish-American War.
Both my father, Cecil Prewitt, and my father-in-law, Eugene Doerflinger, were in the Pacific during the second world war, Dad at least part of the time in the Aleutians and Gene in the South Pacific with the SeaBees. Dad had been in the Navy before the War and rejoined during the year before Pearl Harbor.
Viet Nam brought husbands to two of my cousins, and also service for one of Richard's half-cousins. All of them are still with us so I will not say more here, except thank you for your service.
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