744th Railway Operating Battalion

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745th Railway Operating Battalion

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746th Railway Operating Battalion

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748th Railway Operating Battalion

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749th Railway Operating Battalion

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750th Railway Operating Battalion

War time editions of N.Y. Central Railroad Headlight are a goldmine and this edition includes mentions of soldiers in these units:

• 2^nd MRS Rhine bridge photo
• 712^th ROB Mulligan
• 138^th Hospital Train Maintenance
• 735^th ROB M.P. Wood
• MRS McGlynn
• MRS thefts
• 744^th RGD
• 715the ROB Runion
• 723^rd POL in Germany
• 721^st ROB Ryan
• 721^st Tracy and Iran
• 701st RGD DeLisle

 

 A little more from Andy about his dad, Sergeant Henry Espinosa. His Dad's "War chest" is picture below and a photo after liberation.

He writes ..

Here’s an excerpt from a letter about his baseball playing to my grandmother, the letters all written in Spanish had to be translated. 

Aug 6th, 1945 Brussel Belgium …

Mom, right now I’m in the capital Brussels and I’ve been here for 2 days. We came to play ball. Possibly today at 2pm I will leave to go to Charleroi. All of our games went very well - we didn’t lose a single game - we played 7 games and won them all. The colonel brought us a pallet of beer as thanks for having won all of the games"

 

 

744th abdill history by Nancy on Scribd

https://www.angelfire.com/va2/worldwar2family/744.html

 Great stuff shared by Andy about his dad

He writes "View the below reprint from the Military Railway Service Journal – Jan 1959; Paragraph 7, third line down. It seemed that after the war there were lots of GI’s waiting to come home and needed to be entertained. The European Battalions organized baseball teams and my dad was the 744th’s star pitcher and team captain (of course). See attached travel orders to play baseball. They actually went 7 wins, 0 losses, undefeated. As my dad described it to me, they were given a train travel-car, a sleeper-car and a kitchen-car and cook, and were pulled over Europe to play their games. Interestingly, I found out about my dad’s ability at baseball pitching, hitting...years later at our family picnics. All the other uncles were ok, but he seemed to be a cut above. He could pitch like a semipro and I always wondered why. Then he shared that he led his Battalion team and his European baseball story. "

 Check out the web page dedicated to his service created by his grandson here : 

https://www.angelfire.com/va2/worldwar2family/raoul.html 

 

The website acts weird now - here is text and photos from the site

744th Railway Operating Battalion History Greenfield by Nancy on Scribd

744th ROB Milwaukee Magazin... by on Scribd

744rob.pdf by Nancy

thanks tim

744th ROB Co B Roster by Nancy

Drackert, Donald William -- Technician Five, Army Veteran  744th ROB World War II, 1939-1945 - Fort Snelling, Minnesota; Camp Shanks, New York; France; Belgium; Germany; European Theater

Edelmann, Herbert M. -- Technical Sergeant, Army Veteran  733rd ROB World War II, 1939-1945 - Pacific Theater

Eschbaugh, John Thomas -- Technical Sergeant, Army Veteran  500th Transportation Railway Grand Battalion World War II, 1939-1945 - Fort Devens, Massachusetts; Fort Eustis, Virginia

Fender, Ernest E. -- Corporal, Army Veteran  752nd  ROB World War II, 1939-1945 - United States; European Theater Digitized content includes: sound recording(s), text transcription(s)

Veterans History Project Rail vets
http://lcweb2.loc.gov/diglib/vhp/search?query=%2Brailway&start=0