PFC Charles Gilbert McSkimming

PFC Charles Gilbert McSkimming was born at 2609 Glasgow Avenue in Saint Louis, Missouri on 11 Oct 1909. He was the youngest of the 10 children born to George Francis and Mary Teresa (McCann) McSkimming. Mary was the daughter of Irish immigrants who had settled in Poughkeepsie, New York, her father working as a shoe maker. Charles' father George worked as a type composer for the Post-Dispatch in Saint Louis until his death in 1916. Mary died in 1938.

Charles married Patricia Alice Rickart in April 1939. The couple lived in the Laclede Hotel at 518 Chestnut Street in Saint Louis which was razed and is now a part of Keiner Plaza Park. Although 3 of his brothers had gone into the newspaper business, Charles went into government service and worked as a payroll clerk for the Federal Housing Authority. It is believed that he was transferred to Washington, D.C. before February 1943.

Charles was drafted in February 1943. After his basic military training he was sent to England and probably assigned to A Company 116th Infantry in April or May of 1944. PFC McSkimming was killed in action on 6 Jun 1944 in the assault on Omaha Beach. PFC McSkimming was shot in the arm coming off his boat and was on the beach begging for morphine when he was found by PFC Gilbert Murdock. Murdock gave him some of his own morphine but Charles was apparently unable to move inland and is presumed to have drowned along with many others as the tide rose.

PFC McSkimming was repatriated in 1947 and re-interred in Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington, Virginia.

Charles had had a relationship with a girl who became pregnant. They had a daughter born in 1932 but she never told him about the child and soon after married another man. Charles and Patricia had no children.

Brother Dent Archibald McSkimming served as a PhM2c aboard the USS Isla de Luzon during WW1. Brother Hugh Ignatius McSkimming served as a PVT in the U.S. Army during the first WW.