Wilbur C. Caudill: One Enlistment Record, 1942
The Caudill family carried the line out of the Kentucky mountains and, for one branch, south to Florida. There, on 22 October 1942 — less than a year after Pearl Harbor — a nineteen-year-old motor mechanic named Wilbur C. Caudill (b.1923) volunteered for the Army. A single record, his enlistment, opens the story; this post is careful about what it does and doesn't prove.
What the record proves
📜 U.S. Army WWII Enlistment Record (NARA)
- Wilbur C. Caudill, born 3 February 1923, Sanford, Florida.
- Residence: Hillsborough County, Florida (the Tampa area). Single, no dependents; two years of high school.
- Civilian trade: semiskilled mechanic / repairman, motor vehicles.
- Enlisted 22 October 1942 at Camp Blanding, Florida — a voluntary enlistment, Private.
- Branch: Air Corps (the Army Air Forces). Army Serial Number 14084305.
Each of those is a fact drawn straight from the NARA enlistment database — the kind of primary record that anchors a story. Two details do real work: the Air Corps branch, and the serial number, which is the key that can unlock his later records.
What the family remembers — not yet documented
The family account is that he served as a turret (aerial) gunner on a bomber, was in a crash, and received a Purple Heart. Here the discipline matters:
Family account (unverified): the gunner role, the crash, and the Purple Heart. The enlistment record corroborates the branch of service — he was in the Army Air Forces, exactly where an airman would be, and his civilian mechanic's trade is the sort the AAF funnelled toward armorer and aircrew roles. But the record does not by itself prove the gunner assignment, the crash, or the medal. Those are remembered, and consistent — but not yet on paper here.
Where the proof would come from
The honest next step is to chase the records that would document the rest — and the serial number makes that possible:
- His discharge paper (WD AGO 53–55), likely among the family's papers, which names his unit, aircraft, campaigns, and any decorations directly.
- His Official Military Personnel File (OMPF) at the National Archives in St. Louis, now requestable with the serial number (WWII records are archival and open — though many burned in the 1973 St. Louis fire; wounded servicemen often have surviving medical records).
- An aircraft-accident report, searchable once an approximate unit or date is known — which would confirm or correct the crash account.
Find the unit, and the rest follows: the bomb group's path, the campaigns, and — if the crash account holds — the place it happened. That is a story worth getting right, which is exactly why the parts that aren't proven yet are labelled here as what they are: a family's memory, waiting for its records.
Sources
- U.S. World War II Army Enlistment Records, 1938–1946 (National Archives and Records Administration database) — Wilbur C. Caudill, ASN 14084305, enlisted 22 Oct 1942, Camp Blanding, FL (Tier A, primary).
- Family account — the gunner role, crash, and Purple Heart (oral history, unverified pending the discharge paper and OMPF).
- For verification: National Archives at St. Louis (OMPF); the discharge form WD AGO 53–55; WWII aircraft-accident report indexes.
Part of an ongoing, source-disciplined family history. The record's facts are cited; the family's memory is labelled as such until its records are found. Corrections welcome.