Saving CPL Ryan
Saving CPL Ryan
Three soldiers, a medal box, and the thoughtfulness of strangers
CPL Edward J Ryan was Killed in Action in Dinslaken, Germany when a shell hit his tank. He served with the 3rd Platoon, C Company of the 717th Tank Battalion, 79th Division.
According to the unit history:
“The third platoon lost Corporal Edward J Ryan G when an 88 shell hit the tank, and although LT Tom Carr and PFC William Kane went back to get him - and won the Silver Star for doing so - Ryan’s wound was a mortal one. PFC Kane’s gallant action also cost him his life – he died of wounds received three months later”.
Their citations tell us that when the men went to retrieve CPL Ryan from the tank, it was hit by another shell.
That day, CPL Ryan was one of two KIA. There were also eight wounded and four captured.
It was their second day in combat.
76 years later in Minnesota, a young man named Ben lifted a compartment inside an old metal box his father Scott had purchased at a second hand store for a dollar or two.
Inside was a Purple Heart.
Scott didn’t know until then there was a medal inside. “I just thought it would make a great tackle box”, he told us.
Immediately, Ben googled the name engraved on the Heart, and was led to the Lost Hearts database on our website.
Subsequently, he contacted us for help in connecting with CPL Ryan’s family.
You see, a few years back and from across the country, CPL Ryan’s great-nephew Kirt had entered his name into our Lost Hearts database “on a whim”, he said, and didn’t expect to ever hear anything from us.
According to CPL Ryan’s family, CPL Ryan’s mother died when he was 3. His father was arrested for grand larceny for selling a car that didn’t belong to him in order to pay for her funeral.
Eventually, all of the Ryan children were taken away on an ‘orphan train’. CPL Ryan is the only one who remained in the state of Minnesota.
The documentation trail points to CPL Ryan’s posthumous Purple Heart likely being sent to the owner of a farm he worked on at the time of enlistment.
This farm is 19 miles from where Ben found the Purple Heart in the metal box.
We are so grateful to our new friends Ben and Scott, two conscientious men who knew that this Heart belonged someplace other than an old metal box, and took action to find that place of belonging.
Happy to play a role in this team effort, we were thrilled to place this hero’s Purple Heart into the hands of Kirt, whose own actions a few years back called his great-uncle’s Heart home.
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