At the suggestion of my daughter I joined an English organization called GITRACE. Their mandate is  helping reunite and or find the families of the children born of American fathers that were posted in the UK during WW II. Do you know there are thousands of us that never knew their real fathers ?!!!

I posted information about myself and got assigned a searcher, Sally . I joined 'AWON', the  American War Orphan Network, an organization with the same mandate as GITRACE, again with the thought of perhaps ideas may come in to help me in this difficult search – a needle in a haystack. Can you believe how many John's from Illinois were killed in action? Hundreds !!!!

I posted messages all over the web, including US army sites and  US legion sites asking fo r information and I  got leads and information on searches from my 'new family' members  at AWON and  GITRACE. I had one lead about a company that was posted at a US base in England called G-25 Ordnance Depot that was  in Ashchurch, Tewkesbury  during the right period – June '44,  to  mid October of '44 – fitted perfectly, could this be the unit my dad was in?  Then, out of the blue,  I received an e-mail from an 86 years old man living in Texas a Bobby McAninch* – he had been surfing the web, and had seen one of the many many messages I had posted on various US army web message boards asking for information on Ashchurch.  He said he was in the 346^th and he had some 'interesting stuff' on his unit if I would like to read through it – he would put it in the mail. Included in the mail was a list of the solders in the unit  and photos of all the men taken Christmas Eve 1944 – There was just one John from Illinois – but he didn't have a foreign last name.