Memorial

More information

Pfc Melvin S. Sheldon graduated from Bulkeley High School where he was a member of the honor society and president of the Classical Club

He could have gone to college. He preferred Syracuse university. He didn't go however. He worked for his uncle for a few months before he enlisted in Hartford, Connecticut on 10 December 1942.

On 29 November 1944, his regiment was ordered to take and hold some high ground between Lindern, Germany and the Roer river. Two platoons never reached the objective. Private Sheldon was in one of those platoons. His parents were notified that he was missing in action. They waited, and they hoped.

The war was over several months later and another notification came from the War department. Pvt Sheldon had been killed on 29 November 1944, according to three liberated prisoners of war who witnessed his death. He was declared dead. His body was not found.

His parents waited, and hoped that they could bury their son in the ground of his own land.

In 1948 and 1950 the Graves Registration Services conducted several searched in the area around Lindern. More than a decade passed and then one day the Sheldons learned their son had been found. For more than 17 years he had been buried in a grave in the heroes plot of the community cemetery in Brachelen, Germany, a town near Lindern. The heroes were German heroes, who had been killed during the Great War.

In 1961 a new heroes plot was created in the Brachelen cemetery and it was discovered that one of the graves in the old plot contained an American soldier, but the marker was that of a German soldier killed in November of 1944.

During the fighting in November of 1944, the German soldier was wounded and had lost some clothing and personal items including letters. They had been presumably found near where Pvt Sheldon was killed. The Germans buried him, as a German soldier, in Brachelen.

Early in 1962, the Sheldons were informed that their son had been located at last. He was buried in the Sheldon family plot in West Suffield.