Jere Francis Palmes (August 5, 1919-April 25, 1945)

2nd Battalion, 222nd Infantry Regiment, 42nd Infantry Division

By Alexis Wood and Brendan Jordan

Early Life

Jere Francis Palmes was born on August 5, 1919, in Pensacola, FL to Russell and Golda Palmes.¹ Russell was born in 1887 in Jackson County, MS, where he stayed until the Palmes family moved north to Wayne County, MS, sometime before 1900.² His father, Jeremiah Palmes, worked as a lumber inspector at a mill in Wayne County through the first decades of the twentieth century.³ By 1910, Russell had also entered the lumber industry, serving as a bookkeeper.⁴ Lumber proved very lucrative in Mississippi at the time; the sawmills continuously produced millions of dollars for the state. By 1929, Mississippi was the leading lumber-producing state in the nation.⁵ Jeremiah, who sometimes went by the nickname Jere, passed away the day after Christmas in 1918, eight months before his grandson Jere was born.⁶ Given this, Russell and Golda likely named their son in honor of his grandfather. Jere’s mother Golda was born in Kentucky in 1895.⁷ In 1910, she lived with her parents, three siblings, and a sixteen-year-old servant named Murtie Lester on a farm in Metcalfe County, KY. Her father Robert worked the land on this farm while her mother Cora Ellen worked as a clerk in a general store, each laboring to financially provide for their family.⁸ On May 15, 1915, Golda and Russell married in Louisville, KY.⁹ Shortly thereafter, they relocated to New Mexico for a time, where they welcomed their first son, Russell Jr., on September 19, 1916.¹⁰

World War I continued to rage in Europe at this time. While the US maintained an isolationist position through the initial years of the war, this changed when German submarines struck and sank numerous civilian passenger ships in the Atlantic Ocean, including the RMS Lusitania in May 1915, which killed over one hundred American citizens.¹¹ While the Germans ended these types of attacks after this tragedy, they reinitiated unrestricted submarine warfare in early 1917. Additionally, when British intelligence intercepted the Zimmerman Telegram in January 1917, which suggested a German plot to help secure US territory in the southwest for Mexico, the US realized that they must act.¹² In April 1917, the US officially declared war on Germany and entered the European conflict.¹³ Around this same time, the young Palmes family relocated again, this time to Mobile, AL. Here, Russell Sr. registered for the draft on June 15, 1917. At the time, he worked as a bookkeeper for a local railroad. He filed for an exemption, as the sole provider for his wife and child.¹⁴ The US military either granted this exemption or never called him to service, as Russell Sr. did not identify as a Veteran in subsequent decades.¹⁵

1920 US Census, Jere Palmes and family, lines 94-97

By 1919, the Palmes family had moved south to Florida, where Russell and Golda welcomed their second son Jere in Pensacola.¹⁶ The growing family, including five-month-old Jere, can be seen here on the 1920 US Federal Census.¹⁷ Sometime before 1930, the family relocated to St. Augustine, FL. Throughout this period, Russell and Golda expanded their family with the arrival of three more children: Ellen (born 1922), Welton (born 1927), Betty (born 1928), and Mary (born 1931). Betty, their second daughter, was adopted; she may have only joined the family around 1930, when she identified as a lodger living with the Palmeses.¹⁸ By 1935, however, Russell Sr. and Golda had adopted Betty as their own daughter.¹⁹

The Palmeses raised their children during a tumultuous period as Florida experienced an economic depression beginning in the mid-1920s, years before the Great Depression impacted the entire nation. After land busts, devastating hurricanes in 1926 and 1928, and a decline in the previously-booming citrus industry after an infestation of Mediterranean fruit flies in 1929, Floridians struggled to find and maintain stable work by the end of the decade.²⁰ Despite this instability, Russell found employment with the Florida East Coast Railroad as a clerk in their freight office. Even with the financial challenges around them, the family managed to own the same home on John St., in St. Augustine, in both 1930 and 1940, an impressive feat to accomplish amidst the economic challenges of the Great Depression.²¹

Jere attended St. Augustine’s Ketterlinus High School as part of the class of 1939. There, he participated in several extracurriculars, including the 4-H club, where he fostered an interest in the domestication of farm animals and livestock. Additionally, he completed a four-year course with the Citizens Military Training Camp, through which he earned a certificate that later helped him receive a recommendation for the Officers Reserve Corps. After graduating high school in 1939, Jere worked briefly as a farmhand before joining the military.²²

Military Life

Setting aside his goal of attending the University of Florida to study animal husbandry, Jere instead enlisted in the Florida National Guard’s 124th Infantry Regiment on July 18, 1940, as the Second World War waged in Europe.²³ On November 25, 1940, the Department of War mobilized the 124th into federal service and attached the regiment to the 31st Infantry Division (ID). In December of that year, the 31st ID and its subordinate units formed together at Camp Blanding, near Starke, FL. Once its units filled out and completed initial training, the 31st ID went to Louisiana on August 4, 1941, where they completed an additional two months of training and maneuvers. After a brief return to Camp Blanding, the division participated in the First Army Carolina Maneuvers in October 1941.²⁴ These maneuvers, held in North Carolina, evaluated the nation’s readiness for war if the US did join the conflict in Europe.²⁵ Following these maneuvers, Jere and the soldiers of the 124th returned to Camp Blanding on December 2.²⁶ Two weeks later, on December 15, 1941, the 124th Infantry detached from the 31st ID.²⁷ Just one week earlier, on December 8, 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt had asked Congress to declare war on Japan following the Japanese surprise attack on Pearl Harbor the previous day. On December 11, Germany and Italy, then allied with Japan, declared war on the US. By the time Jere’s 124th Infantry detached from the 31st ID on December 15, the US had entered the Second World War.²⁸

The 124th Infantry Regiment moved up to Fort Benning (now renamed Fort Moore), GA in January 1942 and joined the base’s Infantry School.²⁹ During this period, Jere began a relationship with Mary Rebecca Boles.³⁰ Born in 1924 in Texas, Mary attended high school in St. Augustine, FL, where she and her family had relocated by 1940.³¹ She and Jere likely met each other here. In 1941, Mary competed in the local beauty pageant circuit.³² On June 7, 1942, the couple married, and later had a daughter named Rebecca Ann (born c.1945).³³ In July 1942, the 124th shifted over to Fort Benning’s Replacement & School Command.³⁴ The Army used commands like these to assign replacement soldiers to units preparing to deploy overseas. Jere likely earned his commission as an officer in the Army during his time at Fort Benning. Sometime after July 1943, he transferred to the 222nd Infantry Regiment, 42nd Infantry Division at Camp Gruber, OK.³⁵

The 222nd ID trained at Camp Gruber until November 12, 1944, when it moved to Camp Kilmer, NJ in preparation for its deployment to Europe. The 222nd and other elements of the 42nd ID departed from New York Harbor on November 25, 1944 and arrived in Marseille, France on December 8.³⁶ Once on the ground in France, the 42nd joined with two other divisions to create Task Force Linden. The 222nd Infantry began combat operations for Operation Nordwind along the Rhine, in the Alsace-Lorraine region, and repelled numerous attacks by German troops. Throughout the subsequent spring, the 42nd ID continued along the Rhine and pushed back German forces as it encountered them.³⁷

On April 25, 1945 the 42nd ID was in Donauwörth, Germany. It fought to take control of the territory as it warded off enemy counterattacks. By this time, Jere had earned the rank of captain and worked as a staff officer in the Headquarters Company of the 222nd Infantry Regiment’s 2nd Battalion. As such, he helped organize a coordinated attack which permitted the rifle companies of 2nd battalion to establish a firm hold in south Donauwörth. In response, the Germans reorganized their defensive positions to prevent the battalion from further penetration into the town. Instead of a direct assault, the 2nd Battalion decided to use armored tanks to encircle the enemy. Disregarding his own safety, Jere led the encirclement from atop the lead tank, encouraging his comrades to continue fighting. During this courageous action, an enemy mortar struck and mortally wounded Captain Jere Francis Palmes.³⁸

Legacy

Four days later, on April 29, the 42nd and 45th IDs went on to liberate approximately 30,000 prisoners at the Dachau concentration camp, in southern Germany.³⁹ By the end of the war, the 42nd ID had secured about 6,000 miles of territory from the Germans during their fighting in western Europe. The US military inactivated the division in June 1946. At the time, the 42nd ID occupied Austria.⁴⁰ Jere and his comrades earned various distinctions throughout the war. Jere received a posthumous Silver Star for his bravery and leadership in combat, while the 222nd Infantry Regiment he served with earned a Presidential Unit Citation for their actions during Operation Nordwind.⁴¹ Individually, Jere greatly impacted the men he served with. In a letter home to his widow Mary just a month after her husband’s death, Jere’s commanding officer, Colonel M.L. Luongo remarked that “his spirit and the principles for which he died will always be an inspiration to officers and men of his regiment, as well as for all Rainbow soldiers to follow.”⁴²

Golda Palmes at the flagpole illumination for her two sons, Jere and Russell

Jere’s comrades initially interred his remains in a temporary cemetery that later became the American Battle Monuments Commission’s Lorraine American Cemetery in Saint-Avold, France.⁴³ In the years following the war, Congress approved the World War II Return of the Dead Program, which offered families of those killed overseas the opportunity to repatriate their loved ones’ remains back to the US.⁴⁴ In 1949, Jere’s family decided to have his remains reinterred in St. Augustine National Cemetery, in St. Augustine, FL, so he could be closer to home. He now rests there among his fellow Veterans in Section D, Plot 94.⁴⁵ Jere’s headstone remains a unique one in the cemetery. Shortly after his burial, cemetery officials included an epigraph for his older brother, Russell Jr., on its reverse side. Russell Jr., who served in the Navy during World War II, passed away on April 24, 1945, just one day before Jere, when German submarines sank the ship he served on, the USS Frederick C. Davis, in the Atlantic Ocean. Russell Jr.’s remains could not be recovered from this incident. As a result, one marker serves as a dedication to both brothers who made the ultimate sacrifice for their country.⁴⁶ Golda Palmes, their mother, honored her sons and the other Veterans buried in the cemetery when in 1975 she had the special honor of lighting the US flag that flies over all those buried there. The flag has remained continuously illuminated twenty-four hours a day since she lit it. Golda, seen here at the flag-lighting ceremony in 1975, earned this honor as a Double Gold Star mother, which she became after losing two of her sons in service.⁴⁷

Mary, Jere’s widowed wife, moved to Ithaca, NY after the war, where she attended Cornell University in the School of Industrial and Labor Relations.⁴⁸ She remarried Kenneth W. Moore, a mechanical engineering student at Cornell, in December 1948.⁴⁹ In 1950, Mary, Kenneth, and Mary and Jere’s daughter Rebecca Ann lived together in Ithaca.⁵⁰ Russell Sr. and Golda continued to live in St. Augustine, where Russell Sr. worked as an accountant before passing away in 1966.⁵¹ Golda lived a long life, passing away in December 1997 at the age of 102.⁵² Jere and Russel Jr.’s younger brother, Welton Wade Palmes, also served in World War II as a Private in the Army. He survived the war and had two daughters with his wife before passing away in 1991. He now also rests in St. Augustine National Cemetery.⁵³

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