L/Cpl D. Lloyd Pulsifer

My brother joined the military when he was nineteen leaving our newly widowed mother to run the farm with the help of an older brother who was not well enough to serve overseas. At Aldershot he was chosen for a special group of about forty men who took a specialized training in combat duty for which they were to travel to various camps in Canada to demonstrate their skills. It so happened that some members of the group wanted to go overseas, and they did so much griping that the officers became angry and shipped off the whole group. We were expecting my brother to come home on scheduled leave when we received a letter from him from England, where they had been sent without furlough or any chance to say good-bye to their families.

From England he was sent to Africa and on through Sicily to Italy where he had a hand injured, but he soon returned to duty. He wrote of a short leave spent in Rome and he sent is a photo he had taken in Florence shortly before he was killed by a mortar bomb on December 10, 1944 at the Lamone River Crossing. We received word of his death two days before Christmas, the day I received a C Christmas card from him saying. "No matter where I am on Christmas Day, you may be sure I will be thinking of you." In January I received a letter he had written to me on December 9, the night before he was killed.

I have visited his grave, which is in a small but beautifully cared for cemetery in Ravenna and a stone is erected to his memory in the family cemetery in his home village.

Milfred Pulsifer Burrows (sister)