WWII medals awarded

[Bernadette]

WWII medals awarded to dad she never knew

Honor comes 64 years after death

By MICHAEL BARBER
P-I REPORTER
As he prepared for the invasion of Sicily on the day he was to die, Army Pvt. Howard Carl Miles on July 10, 1943, had not yet received the letter from his wife at home in Idaho, telling him that he was the proud father of a baby girl.
Rosalie was her name. She was 3 months old by then. She grew up to go to college on a war-orphans scholarship. She married David Francisco and together they had two sons, Christopher and Matthew. For 30 years Rosalie Miles Francisco taught at public elementary schools in Seattle; she retired two years ago. Her husband taught middle-schoolers.
But she always yearned to know more about her dad. Howard Miles was tall and liked to joke and loved his family and her mother very much, people told her. She guarded what precious little he had touched: A table he built in high school. The flag that draped his coffin when his body was reburied in the U.S. five years after his death. A broken watch he wore when he died.
"My mother was not afraid to talk about him, but it made her sad," Francisco said Wednesday. As she gathered information through the years, Francisco also resolved to correct an injustice -- to receive the medals her father had earned but never been awarded.
For the past 10 years, she compiled more paper than a tax auditor. Her rejections by Army personnel records officials starting sounding offensive. She was refused on grounds that medals were no longer being given for World War II service. A suggestion was made that she simply buy some on the open market for herself.
So Francisco went to Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., for help last fall.
On Wednesday, 64 years after her father died in the bloody landing of Operation Husky on Sicily, she stood with liquid eyes, surrounded by her sons and husband in Murray's Seattle office, and received all six of the medals her dad had earned.
"These he never held, but he earned them," Francisco said, fighting emotion. Murray presented the family with Miles' Purple Heart, awarded to those wounded or killed in action against a foreign foe. She also awarded the family Miles' Air Medal with an oak leaf cluster, a World War II Victory Medal, the Europe-Africa-Middle East Campaign Medal, the U.S. Army Campaign Medal and a Good Conduct Medal.
"We said oh, no, no," Murray recalled after hearing of the government's rejections and reasoning.
Francisco, she said, "was born to a family that has given the ultimate sacrifice."
Francisco paid a price, too, growing up without ever meeting or knowing her dad, Murray said.
In place of her dad, Francisco built a scrapbook. It begins with pictures and her dad's draft notice ordering him to report for duty Oct. 6, 1942. "You are now part of the United States fighting forces ...," it begins.
The battles in which Miles fought, how he died, even the units he served with, remain hazy, his daughter said. Miles' records were sealed even to his wife who tried to see them; she was never informed when they were unsealed.
What the Francisco family knows is that when Miles died, he was with the 16th Infantry Regiment, a highly respected, battle-hardened outfit that landed on the beaches of North Africa and later the first to land on Sicily. Francisco said she got good advice from the American World War II War Orphans Network that helped her acquire the medals.
Three of its members were present Wednesday when Miles' service was finally honored: Barry Barr-Finch of Seattle, Mary Kenny of Bellevue and Judi Kramer of Bremerton. "A lot of us grew up never knowing," Kramer said.

[PatoLoco]

Very nice. Thanks.