88th Infantry Division Blue Devils

88th Infantry
Division


Blue Devils

1942 - 1945

88th Infantry Division
Blue Devils
Archive

88th Infantry Division Trust Period 1947-1954

88th Infantry
Division

Trust Period

 

349th Infantry "Kraut Killers" Regiment - 88th Infantry Division
349th Infantry
"Kraut Killers"
Regiment

350th Infantry "Battle Mountain" Regiment - 88th Infantry Division
350th Infantry
"Battle Mountain"
Regiment

351st Infantry "Spear Head" Regiment - 88th Infantry Division
351st Infantry
"Spear Head"
Regiment


313th Combat Engineers Battalion - 88th Infantry Division
313th
Combat
Engineers
Battalion

313th Medical Battalion - 88th Infantry Division
313th
Medical
Battalion

337th Field Artillery Battalion - 88th Infantry Division
337th
Field
Artillery
Battalion

338th Field Artillery Battalion - 88th Infantry Division
338th
Field
Artillery
Battalion

339th Field Artillery Battalion - 88th Infantry Division
339th
Field
Artillery
Battalion

913th Field Artillery Battalion - 88th Infantry Division
913th
Field
Artillery
Battalion

Band-88th Infantry Division
88th
Infantry
Division
Band

Militart Police-88th Infantry Division
88th
Infantry
Division
Military Police Company

Quartermaster Company-88th Infantry Division
88th
Infantry
Division
Quartermaster Company

Recon Troop (Mech)-88th Infantry Division
88th
Infantry
Division
Recon Troop (Mech)

Signal Company-88th Infantry Division
88th
Infantry
Division
Signal Company

788th Ordnance Company-88th Infantry Division
788th
Ordnance
Company


88th Infantry Division Order of Battle



About This Website

Contact Us
Donations
Contributions
Scanning Wish List

Felix Belois Mestas, Jr. was my uncle.

He died in the invasion of Itlay campaign. His bravery that day was investigated for a Medal of Honor Citation and after years of delay he was awarded the Silver Star Medal. Later, a mountain in southern Colorado near his home was renamed Mt.Mestas i
n his honor.

In 2001 I learned how to make websites. One of the first websites I put up was MtMestas.com, a small 50 page website about my uncle and the 88th Infantry Division.

Not long after, people from all over the world started contacting me for more information about the 88th Infantry Division for their own family research or from World War II relic hunters in Italy researching the movements of the divisions that fought in their area.

Within a year, the MtMestas.com website had grown to some 1000 pages of unit histories, historical narratives, rare publications, monographs and pictures. Too many questions and not enough time led a few years later to my converting most of the files to the keyword searchable PDF document format and publishing it all to CD and putting it up on eBay so people could easily do their own research.

Along the way I also collected files on all the other divisions and have likewise taken on the mission of publishing a "Researching World War II" CD on each of the over 100 Divisions who saw action during World War II.

Along with my other three ww2 websites WorldWar2Files.com, MtmestasMemorialMonument.com and MtMestas.com, this will be my fourth website.

The purpose of this website is that I've been looking for a method to provide for these files after I die. I'm not there yet but the situatuation is, I'm getting older and nobody in my family has an interest in what I'm doing and when the time comes that I do die, all these files along with my many personal effects, will undoubtedly be tossed into some rented dumpster.

I've spent the last few years looking for a suitable steward of these Archive files that would promise to maintain them into perpertuity but even if I did find someone there's no guarantees.

So, I've decided my solution will be to forgo any further sales of my 88th CDs, publish this 88th Archive website and spend the next few years promoting the website, populating the internet with links to the Archive, etc., and getting these files into the hands of the people who would want them.

That, along with the maximum 9 year allowable prepaid domain registration and website hosting to keep the website online, should provide for the security and access to this Archive in perputity.

I hope you enjoy the new website. It'll be under construction for a little while as I continue to search through and organize the files to publish. About 90% of the reading files are up now and next will be the Rosters, Photos, General Orders (Promotions), Names, Bios, Obits, Trench Art and Collectables sections.

Feel free to send an email of your comments and requests or if you have something you want to contribute to the website. If something you want to know about isn't back up yet, send me a note and I'll see if I can send it to you or publish it to the website soon.

Ciao' mates,

Gary Smith
www.88thInfantryDivisionArchive.com

17 May, 2021



This is me and here's my address and contact information.

Mailing Address:

Gary Smith
1130 Fremont Blvd.
Ste. 105-252
Seaside, Ca. 93955

Email:
info@88thInfantryDivisionArchive.com  
Phone:
831-801-9261


Money
Donations*

Money donations in any amount are
appreciated and can be made via US mail or
to my PayPal account.

To avoid Paypal fees ..

Please use the free "Sending to a friend" option
rather than "Paying for item or services"
.

www.Paypal.me/GarySmith831



Contributions

Pictures - Diaries - Documents
Personal Histories - Artifacts

Decades after the end of World War II both veterans and first, second and even third generations of families of ww2 veterans, have turned to the internet searching for something to learn more about their veterans time in the war.

There were over 15,000 men who were in the 88th Infantry Division during World War II. The division personnel records were destroyed in a Chicago warehouse fire in 1971.

Sadly, most ww2 veterans and their wives today are either no longer living or reaching 90 years old or more and, as they pass on, their cherished ww2 pictures, news paper clippings, pictures and veterans histories of ww2 are lost, sometimes taken to the dump by unsuspecting, good intentioned relatives clearing out a garage or closet of some relative going to a "rest home" or who may have died.

I'm trying to preserve this information.

The biggest advantages of having a website is that many veterans and their families who arrive here looking for information become interested in contributing their own pictures, documents or diaries to the MtMestas.com archives and roster.

If contributing interests you, please send me an email or phone call about what you have and I'd be happy to talk to you. And if you have any questions or need any help with scanning or emailing let me know.

If you have a lot and need help scanning let me know. You can send it to me in the mail and I'll scan it and send it back.

Personl Items and Artifacts

If you have any ww2 related Personl Items or Artifacts that you want to share, contribute or donate or otherwise need a home please I'd be glad to accept them.

Scanning:

Scanning Pictures and Documents

Resolution = Quality

In scanning, the resolution of the scan determines the quality of the picture and is measured in 'dots per inch' or dpi. The higher the quality / resolution the bigger the file size.

Low resolution or poorly scanned images in many cases won't be usable or will degrade when enlarged enough to try to identify faces or details in the pictures.

A group picture scanned at a low 72 dpi resolution may be too blurred when enlarged to see the faces in the picture clearly.

The preferred resolution for scanning is at a medium or 300 dpi resolution. The resulting file size will be around 500k to 1mb +/- and will be small enough in file size to email without too much trouble, time or inconvienence.

Scans with file sizes in the range of 300k or more are fine most the time depending on the content of the picture but if your scan results in a file size of 100k or less then it will probably be too small in physical size and low of a quality to use because it can't be enlarged without it becomming too blurred to see anything in the picture.

If you have a lot and need help scanning let me know. You can send it to me in the mail and I'll scan it and send it back.

You can also go to any KINKOS, FEDEX or mailbox type store and get your items scanned there and then given back to you digitized on a low cost storage device small enough to keep in your pocket.

To learn about these, go to any office supply store and ask to see the 'thumb drives' or 'portable storage drives' or something like that. They're priced at about $10 for a good quiality one that has 4 gigabytes or more of storage, which is enough for several books.

Be careful you don't keep everything you want to protect on one of these without backing it up on another back up storage drive as they can become damaged and suffer from the same file corruption problems experienced with any other storage drive used.

Format:
I can accept scanned pictures and documents in any format. Preferred formats are pdf, tiff, jpg and gif. Please feel free to ask questions.

Wish List:

Pictures

Any pictures or picture albums of the 88th,
ww2 Italy, Triest post ww2 or boot camp.

Documents

Letters Home
Medal Commendations
Bios and Obits
Newspaper Clippings

Books and Booklets

88th Blue Devils Newspapers / Newsletters
88th Division Association Newsletters
Division Histories
Regiment Histories
G.I. Stories
ww2 Italy
Boot Camp
Visiting Foreign Countries
Embarkation / Going Home



Copyright Gary Smith 2021
All Files on This Website Are Free to Download.
88thInfantryDivisionArchive.com
An 88th Infantry Division Blue Devils World War II Research Website
email : info@88thInfantryDivisionArchive.com