Deep Roots Family Tree Blog

Paul Link is one of the veterans assigned to me as a volunteer story writer for Stories Behind the Stars. When given a story to write, a lot of details are already provided for you, but it’s up to you to write the narrative and bring the veteran back to life. This blog post is a lot more subjective than the story I wrote for his Fold3 page because I kept jumping down rabbit holes and I felt like there was more to his story that needed to be explored.

On a spreadsheet, Mr. Link’s details weren’t super exciting. It was when I really started digging into his past that I found that although he died at a very young age, a lot had happened in his short life and Paul ended up being pretty interesting.

Paul Link was born in Madison, Wisconsin on January 27th, 1919 to Carl Andrew Link and Clara Muehlback Link. He went to school at – He was an only child. By 1940 at 21 years old, he was still living with his parents and attending college at the University of Wisconsin. During his time there, Carl participated in ROTC and became a member of the Scabbard and Blade, an American collegiate military honor society.

Rabbit hole #1: Scabbard and Blade

Scabbard and Blade (S&B) was founded in 1904 at the very school that Paul attended, the University of Wisconsin. According to the Baird’s Manual of American College Fraternities, “the badge is a gold American eagle, holding a shield over its breast, crossed with two swords. The scabbard features small jewels that represented five stars. The society’s colors are red, white, and blue. The society’s mission was developing aspiring and current military officers that emulate the Five Star qualities while fostering strong joint-service relationships.”

Paul graduated from the University of Wisconsin in 1940 and became a second lieutenant upon graduation due to his involvement in ROTC and S&B.

Prior to his first assignment, Paul was involved in an automobile accident where he hit a women with his can while she was walking across a street. Fortunately, she lived.

I was lucky enough to find two newspaper articles that featured letters that Paul wrote to his mom while he was away. The first one was written in July of 1942 after he was ordered to Alabama and the second was after he was transferred to Camp Adair in Oregon. There will be a second post with the articles and transcriptions. During the same year, he was made an intelligence officer.

Lieut Link married Agnes Moquin on June 30th, 1943 in Salem, officiated by Rev. Fr. Murray, a chaplain at Camp Adair. It is unclear how Paul and Agnes met. They both went to the University of Wisconsin and they were both members of the United States Army. Did they meet in college? Were they stationed at the same Army base?

Rabbit hole #2: Who was Agnes Moquin?
After a quick search, I found that Agnes liked to go by the name “Pinkie” and she war turning out to be a bit of a character. Her obituary reads: “She was known to all as Pinkie. She was a catcher on the girl’s baseball team at Madison West High School. She attended the University of Wisconsin and was a meteorologist at LaGuardia Field during WWII. She was a Lieutenant in the Civil Air Patrol where she learned to fly in 1942.” She did get married again after Paul had passed to Jerome Baer and they had one child together. Pinkie passed away on July 6th, 2008 at the age of 87.

Rabbit hole #2.5: the women of WWII
As stated above, Agnes Link was a Lieutenant in the Civil Air Patrol and a meteorologist. With men being drafted or enlisting, there was a need for skilled meteorologists with backgrounds in mathematics. After the war, as the lucky men returned home, women were expected to return to domestic roles, sometimes getting laid off.

Almost exactly one month after Paul and Agnes got married, he died.

Some of the training that was taking place at Camp Adair included night operations, and maneuvers/simulated combat. Of note, the 104th Infantry Division was the first Army division trained to fight in nighttime conditions. According to his father, Lieut Link was on duty and was “struck by a car in the blackout on western maneuvers”. Blackout conditions involved completely extinguishing or shielding light sources as a defensive measure against potential air raids. Lieut Link died on September 1st, likely preparing for the Oregon Maneuver which was a training exercise held in central Oregon from September 13 to November 8, 1943. He never saw battle.

Lieut Link was buried at Resurrection Cemetery in Madison Wisconsin. You can see on the right of the headstone that he was buried with his parents, Carl and Clara Link. Under his name on the headstone is “Kathleen”.

Rabbit hole #3: Where did Kathleen come from?
I was able to find a Kathleen Link that was born in 1922, died in 2010, and lived in Wisconsin. Her parents were Leo Peter Link (1891-1961) and Celia Amelia Hanley Link (1893-1988) who are also buried in Resurrection Cemetery. On Leo and Celia’s headstone, we also see John and Theresa who, according to FindAGrave.com, were Leo’s parents. So it looks like one child and a spouse were buried near each other and shared a headstone. The headstones also seem to have the same emblem on either side of “Link”. But it still doesn’t explain how Kathleen and Lieut Paul Link were related, so I headed over to ancestry.com to see if I could find any census reports. It looks like Kathleen lived with her parents for quite some time, graduating high school, attending college, and eventually becoming a librarian. She never married. Despite the paper trail, I could not figure out how they were related. I might come back to this.

Anyway…story doesn’t end there. Unfortunately, there was another tragedy shortly after Lieut Link’s death.

Carl Link, had a heart attack while visiting his sons grave, and was taken to a nearby home, where he had a second heart attack and passed away.

Lieut Paul Link was 24 years old when he died, and in my opinion, didn’t really get a chance to live. Don’t get me wrong, he did a lot! He went to school, immediately went to college, became a 2LT in the United States Army, got married to a very smart and beautiful woman, became an intelligence officer, and was part of the first group to be trained in nighttime combat. But he did not get to really experience marriage, grow old with his wife, have children and watch them grow. He was taken too soon.

Thank you, Lieutenant Paul M. Link, for your service to our country. 

References:

Robson, John, ed. (1963). Baird’s Manual of American College Fraternities (17th ed.). Menasha, Wisconsin: The Collegiate Press, George Banta Company, Inc. pp. 690-691.

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/101478819/agnes_eloise-baer
https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/104423122/paul_m-link