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courtesy of Kathi Lynn King
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CPL James Willard Williams was born 10 Apr 1915 in Fayette, Pennsylvania. He was the 2nd of 4 children born to James David and Della U (Gillingham) Williams. Della had 3 children by her previous marriage, she died in July 1921at the age of 35. Father James was a coal miner for more than 30 years. He remarried in 1938 and Sarah Catherine (Liston) Zebley and her 10 children became part of the extended family. All the men in the family had worked in the coal mines but in 1939 young James, whose education had ended at the 8th grade, was working for Pittsburgh Steel as a handyman reporting a 1939 income of $305.
James was drafted in February 1942. After completing his basic military training he was sent to England and assigned to D Company 116th Infantry. He trained with the unit for the amphibious assault in which it would participate as part of the effort to liberate Nazi occupied France. CPL Williams was killed in action in that assault on 6 Jun 1944.
CPL Williams was repatriated and re-interred in the Mount Auburn Cemetery in Fayette City, Pennsylvania.
Brother, Thomas Russell Williams, served as a CPT in the 150th Infantry Regiment in the South Pacific in WW2.
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