PFC Robert White Stover

courtesy of KSWY

PFC Robert White Stover was born 1 Aug 1919 in Shenandoah County, Virginia probably in Strasburg. He was the 5th of the 7 children born to Howard William and Anna Elizabeth (Ritenour) Stover. His father worked in a lime works as a fireman and farmed near Cedarville. Robert at first farmed with his father and then worked Earl Legg in Middletown earning a reported 1939 income of $200. 

Robert was drafted in April 1941. Sent to Fort Meade, Maryland, he was soon assigned to D Company 116th Infantry with which he trained at Fort Meade, in the Carolina maneuvers near Fort Bragg, North Carolina and at Camp Blanding, Florida. He shipped out for the England with the unit in September 1942 and once there took part in the intensive training preparing for the amphibious landings that were to be part of the effort to liberate occupied France. The training may have contributed to an injury because Robert went to hospital in December 1942 and was diagnosed with arthritis in his right ankle. However, that didn't stop him from continuing his service and he was with the unit on 6 Jun 1944, D-Day, when he was killed in action.

PFC Stover was repatriated in 1949 and re-interred in the Riverview Cemetery in Strasburg, Virginia.

Robert's great grandfather, John Peter Boyce, served as a PVT in D Company 33rd Virginia Infantry (CSA) in the Civil War.