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Personal info

Full name
GARON, Alexander
Date of birth
20 September 1925
Age
20
Place of birth
Castle Shannon, Allegheny County, Pennsylvania
Hometown
Allegheny County, Pennsylvania

Military service

Service number
33716065
Rank
Private First Class
Function
unknown
Unit
C Company,
1st Battalion,
422nd Infantry Regiment,
106th Infantry Division
Awards
Bronze Star,
Purple Heart

Death

Status
Finding of Death
Date of death
8 March 1946
Place of death
Mühlberg, Germany

Grave

Cemetery
American War Cemetery Henri-Chapelle
Tablets of the Missing
* This soldier has been accounted for. A rosette has been placed next to his name.

Immediate family

Members
Samuel Garon (father)
Elsie Garon (mother)
John Garon (brother)
Sam Garon (brother)
Francis Garon (brother)
Julia Garon (sister)
Anna Garon (sister)

More information

Pfc Alexander Garon was employed at Hussey's Copper Mine.

He enlisted on 12 January 1944 at Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

He was taken prisoner on 16 December 1944, east of Schlausenbach, Germany.

He was interned first at Stalag IV B and later at Stalag IV A and died most likely on 10 January 1945. His official date of death is 8 March 1946.

He died of unknown causes sometime after January 1945 and before the camp was liberated by Soviet forces. Pfc Garon was buried in the cemetery of the nearby village of Possendorf, but the record of his burial was lost. His remains were not recovered after the war and for several decades the area around Stalag IV-A was inaccessible to American officials due to Cold War tensions. In 1998, a German civilian discovered a cemetery record indicating that Pfc Garon had been buried in the Possendorf cemetery. In 2007, the German War Graves Commission contacted an American soldier about the potential recovery of Pfc Garon and a JPAC team subsequently travelled to Possendorf and investigated the Evangelical Lutheran Church where they found a burial entry for Pfc Garon. They excavated the site in 2008 and recovered human remains which analysts successfully identified as belonging to Pfc Garon.

Source of information: Raf Dyckmans, Terry Hirsch, Peter Schouteten, www.wwiimemorial.com, http://aad.archives.gov, www.ancestry.com, IDPF of Willard Bostrom, WWII Draft Card, 1940 US Census

Photo source: www.findagrave.com