PVT Walter Douglas Sink Jr

courtesy of Deena Sasser

PVT Walter Douglas Sink Jr was born 21 Mar 1920 in Franklin County, Virginia. He was the 4th of the 5 children born to Walter Douglas and Maude Fannie (Peters) Sink. His father worked for many years as a traveling salesman. In 1940, the family was renting a home at 360 Mountain Avenue in Roanoke, Virginia and young Walter was working as a delivery boy for a druggist. While his father reported a 1939 income of $730, Walter only earned $52 in the same period. He would later find a job as a clerk, probably helped by having graduated from high school.

Walter joined a local National Guard unit, probably for the $1 a week pay (and that may be the source of the $52 he earned in 1939). He was still a PVT in D Company 116th Infantry when the unit was federalized on 3 Feb 1941. PVT Sink then trained with the unit at the various locations including Fort Meade, Maryland, in the vicinity of Fort Bragg, North Carolina and Camp Blanding, Florida before being sent with the unit to England in September 1942. Once in England he trained with D Company for the planned invasion of occupied France and the amphibious assault that was to be a part of that operation. PVT Sink was reportedly wounded in the D-Day amphibious assault and evacuated to hospital where he died on 7 Jun 1944.

PVT Sink was repatriated in 1948 and re-interred in the Mountain View Cemetery in Roanoke, Virginia.