PFC Anthony Peter Szabanowski

PFC Anthony Peter Szabanowski was born 28 Aug 1912 in Westport, Connecticut. He was the youngest of the 2 sons born to Konstanty and Marianna (Urbitis) Szabanowski. His father had immigrated from Suwałki, Poland in 1902 and his mother was born in Vilnius, Lithuania. His father worked as a laborer in Fairfield county, Connecticut but was lost to the family, we are unsure how, about 1914. Marianna remarried. Anthony's step-father, Aleksander Milewski, was also a native of Lithuania and and supported his family by working his dairy farm near Lisbon, Connecticut. It is illustrative of the effect of the Great Depression that the farm was valued at $4000 in 1930 but only $1000 in 1940. Anthony was still living with the family in 1930 but was working in a nearby cotton mill. He married Genevieve Dubrowski in 1938 and the couple lived in a home on Versailles Road in Lisbon which Anthony owned and which was valued at $1000 in 1940. Anthony was working as a driver for the state highway department at the time earning a reported 1939 income of $825. The couple had a boy and girl, twins, in 1940 and another son was born in 1943. Anthony said that he was unemployed when he registered for the draft.

Anthony was drafted in August 1943. After his basic military training he was sent to the European theater. PFC Szabanowski was transferred from the replacement depot to L Company 116th Infantry on 3 Sep 1944 while the unit was at Brest. He then fought with the unit until recorded as missing in action on 21 Nov 1944. The unit later corrected this in the morning report to killed in action on that day but for some reason his body was either not recovered or identified immediately.

Initially reported as missing in action he was memorialized on the tablets of the missing at the Netherlands American Cemetery. PFC Szabanowski's body was found and identified in 1973, repatriated and re-interred in the Long Island National Cemetery in East Farmingdale, New York.