Out On a Limb: D-Day took place 76 years ago today

Seventy-six years ago today a battle that would decide the fate of the world for generations to come was raging at Normandy, on the western shores of France.

Known by the military name of D-Day, it represented the allied nations’ biggest landing in Europe to date and was crucial to ending World War II, which had raged since 1939.

That heroic era, though, is now fading from living memory, and we genealogists should do all we can to gather information about our ancestors of that era.

Time is of the essence. A 2015 study by Freakonomics estimated that just 22 percent of the Americans alive at the end of the war (1945) were still alive. Many of them, however, had been children during the war years, and today would have little or no memory of the time. That 22 percent figure is certainly lower now, five years after the study.

Another set of figures, this time from the Bureau of the Census, showed this week that of the 16 million or so Americans who served in the armed forces during World War II, only about 500,000 are still with us.

While the pandemic forces a suspension of most research, you can still make a plan so that you’ll lose no time later.

For military personnel records your family doesn’t already have, you’d normally go to www.nationalarchives.gov. However, you’ll have to wait to make your request because the agency has suspended public services.

Likewise, standard local sources of information such as libraries, the Luzerne County Historical Society, the Northeast Pennsylvania Genealogical Society and the local historical societies are closed for the duration. Check for them online to see when they will reopen and what their policies will be.

If you have relatives who were of age during World War II – in the military or not – resolve to visit and talk with them (recording what they say) as soon as it’s safe and permissible to do so. Remember that this war was a total effort. While our men and women served on numerous fronts throughout the world, those here at home did their part as well.

Older men often served as civil defense wardens, while women of all ages prepared aid packages for overseas troops. Community leaders created newsletters, formed aid organizations for families and set up honor rolls. Students held scrap and fund-raising drives. Many people worked in defense plants, sometimes moving far away to do that vital work.

For information on rationing and the draft, search for the Luzerne County Genweb online and look up the yearly “events” sections of the Wilkes-Barre Record almanacs.

Resources: Among the recent offerings by FamilySearch, the free online data base, is more than 24,000 petitions for naturalization from the Eastern District of Pennsylvania (1795-1931). The Eastern District includes the Philadelphia area, precisely where many 19th-century immigrants landed before moving northward to Wilkes-Barre, Scranton and other regional communities.

News Notes: For only the second time in its 142-year history, the annual observance of the Battle of Wyoming has been canceled. Organizers blamed the ongoing covid-19 pandemic. The other cancellation came in 1972 after the flood spawned by tropical storm Agnes devastated Wyoming Valley in late June.

The last person receiving a Civil War pension died this week. Irene Triplett, 92, was the daughter of soldier Mose Triplett, who started out fighting for the Confederacy but fled a Virginia hospital and joined Union forces in Tennessee. He married late in life. She qualified for the Veterans Administration pension because of a medical condition.