I have been working on the Reading’s Boys project since May 2020. As a supporter of my project, I want you to know what’s happening, why it’s happening, when it’s happening, what the result is, and where I’m heading. Below will be an outline of each phase of this project. The phase that is underlined & italicized is the phase that I am currently in.

Collecting Data on Individuals

The first step in the project is to collect a group of individuals who fit the following criteria:

• Lived in Reading or North Reading, MA at some point in their lives, ideally for more than a few years.
• Served in World War II abroad or at home.

Technically, this part of the project never really stops since people can and do reach out to me at any time to help me learn more about their relative who I may not have had on my radar previously. As of right now, I have 847 files on 847 individuals. Each file contains at least a name, date of birth, date of death, and Reading or North Reading address. About 95% of them have dates of entry and discharge from service, as well as a serial number. In some cases, I supplement this information with the state of Massachusetts’s collection of Statements of Service or DD-214s (aka as discharge papers).

Determining Units

The next logical step in a project like this is to nail down the unit with which an individual served. Sometimes this is simple and other times it is incredibly difficult. What is most important, though, is knowing when someone joined, left, and then returned to a unit (if they did).

From July 10-14, 2023, I will be at the National Archives in St. Louis, MO to view the documents that will help me do this important work thanks to grants from the Reading and North Reading Cultural Councils. Without an individual’s unit, the chance that I can actually include them in my project and work is incredibly slim.

Do you have a relative who served in the Navy, Coast Guard, or Marine Corps during World War II? Would you like to see their personnel file? If you do, all I would need from you is the cost that I have to pay to hire someone to get it for us! That price usually sits around $75 USD but can vary. If you are interested, you can email me at readingsboys@gmail.com!

Acquiring Operations Reports

The last research based task of this project is probably also the hardest. In order to effectively tell the stories of the many individuals I am researching, I need to be able to find out what their units were doing while they were assigned to them. At face value, this might not seem like a difficult problem, but let me explain it further. First of all, After Action Reports, which is the Army’s name for most operation reports, don’t exist for all units. In fact, there are many other documents which are named very different things and are also technically different from an After Action Report but can sometimes do the exact same thing as one. There is no readily available finding aid to help me determine if a unit has one, all, some, or none of these documents which makes it incredibly difficult to efficiently request them. Additionally, another problem that comes up is the unwillingness of the National Archives at College Park, MD to work with researchers closely. Due to the sheer number of requests they receive, they expect any requester to know exactly what they want and where it is and they simply do not have the time or energy to find that information for you. As an example, about 6 months ago, I requested scans of the After Action Reports for a battalion of the 60th Infantry Regiment for a selected time period. Two months later, I received a reply informing me that those reports did not exist at the battalion level. Instead of asking me if I wanted the regimental reports (which I did), or suggesting something else that might do the same thing, they simply closed my request even after I replied asking for the regimental reports.