Pvt. Ralph (Nick) Kious

Start by looking up the organizations he served with , 117th Inf. Div. etc., and see if they have a historical site. The US Army Center of Military History may have information you can use.

Are you sure it was the 117 Infantry Division? I find this. Log into Facebook

If you have documents you can take pictures of them and upload them here. We do this a lot.

 

Are you certain of the unit designation?

Was he perhaps in the 117th Infantry Regiment of the 30th Infantry Division? The 117th IR/30th ID was fighting near St Lo on the given date. They had just crossed the Vire River, actually, which flows North and West of St Lo.

If the below is him, his gravestone shows 117th Inf(antry Regiment) and the 117th was one of the three infantry regiments of the 30th Infantry Division.

Ralph Adam Kious (1925-1944) - Find a Grave...

 

@Jane McMeekin You mentioned "Company A" in your above post.

If he was in A Company of the 117th Infantry Regiment, that would place him in 1st Battalion of the 117th (1/117 in the maps above).

Do you have any verification he was in A Company?

 

I found this:

30th ID

Jim West at IndianaMilitary.org has him listed as A/1/117.

It shows him WIA 9 Jul 1944 with KIA 10 Jul 1944. I suspect this shows his injury/death on the 9th, but possibly not recorded by the company clerk until the next day?

Use this link to access 30th ID page at Indiana Military, as the internal page link to the 30th ID page within the website appears to be broken.

30th Infantry Division

 

I don't guess she is coming back to see what we have provided.

 

Or maybe she has kids?

 

After.

The 30th ID landed across Omaha beach starting on 10 Jun 1944 and some units (120th IR) went into action the next day south of Grandecamp. For the most part, though, they were still consolidating the division north of Isigny sur Mer (Isigny on the Sea) for several more days. An interesting aside, Disney is derived from Isigny.

The beach was still within artillery range at this point and was receiving intermittent fire and rare air attacks, but the 30th ID did not land under direct fire as an assault formation. For the most part, they landed around the Vierville Draw, on the western side of the beach near the Douve Estuary, and used the roadway in the draw to exit the beach. A gentleman who was with the 30th ID and with whom I was intimately associated with stated there was large amount of damaged and destroyed vehicles and equipment on the beach and dead grouped about, awaiting burial. Also present were various groups of soldiers up close the base of the cliffs that he suspected were communications and command units.

The initial landings at Normandy were on 6 Jun 1944 with the 1st and 29th ID making the initial assaults across Omaha Beach. The next division to land across Omaha was the 2nd ID, on the 8th and was fully ashore the next day. The 2nd Armored Division was also beginning to land around this time too.

The timetable to land follow-on divisions slipped by several days due to the difficulty the 1st and 29th ID experienced trying to get off the beach and deep enough inland to allow the next echelons to have a enough space to operate.

 

To absent friends.

 

Salute to the eternally young man.

 

Absolutely no apologies needed. I joined WW2f many years ago for exactly the same reason : Searching for Family history. Since then I've filled in much more than I ever imagined.
The best part of being here is the eagerness of everyone to jump in and help.