FOSTORIA | For Veterans Day: T/5 James G. Kinsley, Captured in the Bulge, Lost After Liberation

Author: FFP Ai Bot

T/5 James G. Kinsley, from a 1945 Fostoria newspaper clipping

FOSTORIA — The headline is blunt, the way wartime headlines often were: “Fostoria Boy Dies After He Is Liberated.” Beside it, under the words “War Casualty,” a young soldier in a garrison cap looks straight at the camera.

He was T/5 James G. Kinsley, 23, of the 9th Armored Division, U.S. Army. He survived wounds, capture and months as a prisoner of war, only to die in an Army hospital a few weeks after he was freed. For Veterans Day, this installment of our local history series tells his story as the 1945 newspaper and federal records preserve it.

Quick timeline

A local man with a future

According to the clipping, Kinsley graduated from Arcadia High School in 1939. Before the war he worked for the U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey in Washington and for the Electric Auto-Lite Co.’s spark plug division in Fostoria, one of the city’s biggest employers. He married in October 1943, and he was a member of the Evangelical-Reformed church in Fostoria. His family lived about three miles west of the city on the South Ridge Road.

He entered the armed forces in October 1942. National Archives World War II enlistment records list a James G. Kinsley, born in 1921, with Army serial number 35343295 and an enlistment date of Oct. 8, 1942. The same serial number appears in the burial records of the American Battle Monuments Commission. He trained at Fort Riley, Kansas, in the California desert and at Camp Polk, Louisiana, before shipping overseas in August 1944.

The Battle of the Bulge

Kinsley’s rank, technician fifth grade, was a corporal-level grade given to soldiers with technical skills. Federal burial records place him in the 27th Armored Infantry Battalion of the 9th Armored Division.

On Dec. 16, 1944, the German army launched a massive surprise attack through the Ardennes forest of Belgium and Luxembourg. It became known as the Battle of the Bulge, the largest battle the U.S. Army fought in World War II. Units of the 9th Armored Division were in the path of the attack and fought in some of its hardest early days, including the defense of St. Vith in Belgium.

The clipping reports that Kinsley was wounded on Dec. 23, 1944, in Belgium, and was captured by the Germans. We do not know where he was held. He was liberated in April 1945, as Allied armies overran German prison camps in the final weeks of the war.

His division, meanwhile, had pushed on. In March 1945, troops of the 9th Armored Division captured the Ludendorff railroad bridge at Remagen, giving the Allies their first crossing of the Rhine River. The 27th Armored Infantry Battalion was part of that action.

“Passes away in hospital”

“Fostoria Boy Dies After He Is Liberated,” 1945 newspaper clipping

Kinsley’s freedom did not last long. According to the clipping, he was taken to a U.S. Army hospital after his liberation and died there on May 12, 1945, less than a month later and just four days after the war in Europe ended. He was 23. He was survived by his wife, his parents and a sister.

He received the Purple Heart. Today he rests at Cambridge American Cemetery in England, in Plot E, Row 1, Grave 55, according to the American Battle Monuments Commission. The cemetery, west of the university city of Cambridge, holds the graves of more than 3,800 American service members.

Seventy names, and counting

The same article gave a sobering tally. Fostoria’s Roll of Honor, it said, then included the names of 70 men who had given their lives, seven reported missing, five listed as prisoners of war and seven former prisoners who had been liberated. Each of those numbers was a family in Fostoria or the farms around it.

Veterans Day, first observed as Armistice Day in 1919, honors all who served in the U.S. armed forces, living and dead. The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs has more on the holiday’s history. Families researching a World War II service member can start with the National Archives World War II records and the ABMC’s burial database.

If you have a photo or letter from a Fostoria-area veteran of World War II, we would be honored to help tell that story.

More from FFP: Main, Perry and Sandusky: Downtown Fostoria at the Turn of the Century.

Photo note: Photographs and images published before 1931 are in the public domain in the United States. Historical images in this article are shared for educational and historical purposes.

Sources

• “Fostoria Boy Dies After He Is Liberated,” Fostoria newspaper clipping, May 1945 (photo collection)
• American Battle Monuments Commission, burial search (James G. Kinsley, T/5, 27th Armored Infantry Battalion, 9th Armored Division; Cambridge American Cemetery, Plot E, Row 1, Grave 55; Purple Heart; died May 12, 1945): https://www.abmc.gov/database-search
• American Battle Monuments Commission, Cambridge American Cemetery: https://www.abmc.gov/cambridge-american-cemetery/
• National Archives, World War II Army Enlistment Records (serial 35343295, enlisted Oct. 8, 1942), as indexed at SortedByName: https://sortedbyname.com/letter_k/kinsley/index_28.html
• National Archives, World War II records research guide: https://www.archives.gov/research/military/ww2
• ArchiveGrid, 27th Armored Infantry Battalion, 9th Armored Division unit histories (Ludendorff Bridge): https://researchworks.oclc.org/archivegrid/collection/data/57447544
• U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, History of Veterans Day: https://department.va.gov/veterans-day/