Operation Benjamin (website)
I have been asked many times to do some freelance work that requires some "out of the box" thinking, one of the organizations that asks me to do some freelance work is Operation Benjamin, more information about the organization can be found in the link to their website in the title of this page.
Usually this means photo cataloguing work on American military cemeteries from the First or Second World War, photographing headstones of Jewish American soldiers that got killed in the war.
Jewish soldiers being buried with a "Star of David" as headstone.
However ... this latest assignment has kept me busy for more than a year already and I 'm not finished yet!
The story I will tell does not contain any names for confidentiality reasons but the general details are just as interesting without names.
In the First World War the US Army helped out in Europe and by 1917 even introduced the so called "dog tags" in order to identify fallen soldiers more easily afterwards. In 1918 there was a Jewish Private in the US army who was stationed in Saint-Juvin in the French Ardennes, he was part of the 302nd Engineers Co D/77th Infantry Division.
On October 31, 1918, he was part of a detachment constructing a bridge over the Aire River when the bridge came under fire from enemy artillery killing him instantly. His body was carried by his fellow soldiers to an area south-west of the bridge near a spot where his company had been camped. Following the construction of Star of David grave marker and a service administered by regimental chaplain Wallace Hayes, he was buried in a temporary grave. In accordance with army regulations, Chaplain Hayes prepared a Grave Location Form (GLR) recording certain particulars regarding the location of his temporary grave. Fast forward to November 11, 1918 ... The Great War ended! The next year the army went back to recover all the fallen soldiers that were buried in temporary graves in order to bury them correctly on dedicated Military cemeteries that we can still visit today and are taken care of by US military personnel on assignment. There is only one small problem in the story ... the body of this Private was never found and so he was then listed as "Missing in Action"!
Fast forward to 2024 ... Operation Benjamin has collected all the documents and reports regarding this Private and has done some research as to where his body was most likely buried, comparing the Military maps of 1918 with current day Google Maps views.
In comes JGADV ... I was asked to go on a reconnaissance mission to the area in Northern France to see if the elements from the 1918 military map were still visible in the landscape and noticed that many of the forest boundaries and roads are still where they show up on the old maps. One of the roads however is missing and has been missing for ages.
