T5 Harry Norman Stone Jr

courtesy of Darrell Landrum

T5 Harry Norman Stone Jr was born 18 Sep 1919 in Lynchburg, Virginia. He was the 3rd of 5 children and oldest of the 2 sons of Harry Norman and Jane Maude (Tolley) Stone. His father worked as a street car conductor in Lynchburg. The family lived with grandfather James Stone at 918 5th Street before renting at 700 Polk Street. By 1940 the elder Harry had begun working in a retail grocery earning a reported 1939 income of $1040. Harry Jr. was working as a truck driver for a dairy but his income is unknown but by October 1940 was unemployed.

It is very possible that PVT Stone had been wanting to earn the $1 a day that service in the National Guard paid when he enlisted in B Company 116th Infantry. He was serving with the unit when it was federalized in February 1941 and trained with the unit at Fort Meade, Maryland, in the Carolina Maneuvers near Fort Bragg, North Carolina and at Camp Blanding, Florida before the unit was sent to England aboard the Queen Mary in September 1942. Once in England he trained with the regiment as it prepared for the amphibious landing as a planned part of the effort to liberate Nazi occupied France. He was hospitalized with acute appendicitis in February 1944. This may be why he was not with the unit on D-Day, 6 Jun 1944, and T5 Stone is recorded as having been transferred from the replacement depot to B Company on 17 Jul 1944. He fought with the unit from St-Lo to Vire and through the campaign to liberate Brest. T5 Stone stepped on a land mine on 24 Oct 1944 near Aachen, Germany and evacuated to hospital. He died of his wounds on 29 Oct 1944.

T5 Stone was repatriated in 1947 and re-interred in the Fort Hill Memorial Park in Lynchburg, Virginia.

Great-grandfathers served in the Civil War. Macajah Stone served as a PVT in E Company 34th Virginia Infantry (CSA). William B. Petticrew (Pettigrew) served as a PVT in B Company 8th Virginia Infantry (CSA). Thomas S. Cumby served as a PVT in H Company 18th Virginia Infantry (CSA).