A lot of the details are lost now — lost to memory, lost in closets, lost in other places folks just overlook. But this much about Edwin Attaway Wilcher is known:
He came from Augusta and enlisted in the Army in 1942. He and thousands of other troops found themselves in the North Africa campaign in World War II. He got shot and taken to a POW camp in Italy. He escaped.
Wilcher and a handful of other guys found their way to a helpful Italian family. Their hosts, and others living in and near the village of Ascoli Piceno, spirited the soldiers away to nearby caves. And there they stayed for nearly a year.
For Wilcher, the war was over. He came home, but left a small memento behind. Last month, it came back, too.
Wilcher’s ID tag, or “dog tag,” is now in the hands of that old soldier’s great-grandson, John Garner.
For Garner, the artifact’s return stirs personal and professional feelings. Yes, it was his great-grandfather’s, a tangible reminder of someone who died in 1989, when Garner was 6. And, yes, he’ll proudly show it to students at Newnan High School’s History Club, which he sponsors.
On a recent morning, he brought the tag to class. Hardly larger than a raffle ticket, the metal tag contained the basics: name, service number, mother’s name and home address. And this: In a corner is the letter “P,” for Protestant. It’s the sort of thing a chaplain would want to know before committing the dead to the Lord.
“This,” Garner said, “connects me to the past.”
A past he began researching six years ago on a man his family called “Big Daddy.” Wilcher, a cotton-mill worker, stood 6-foot-3 and topped the scales at 240.
Garner, who has a master's degree in history, knew enough about his great-grandfather for a simple Internet search. According to family lore, Wilcher had been incarcerated at Camp 59. A simple inquiry turned up a website about the camp. Encouraged, Garner sent an email to the site's administrator, Dennis Hill. Did Hill have any information about a Pvt. Wilcher?
For Hill, the query struck close to home. His father also had been at the camp. His website, while focusing on Camp 59, is a wealth of information. About 80,000 Allies were held in campos di prigionia — POW camps — in Italy.
Hill told Garner that Wilcher had been incarcerated and eventually rejoined the Americans. He almost surely was one of an estimated 2,000 prisoners who fled the compound when the Allies and Italians signed an armistice in 1943. Rather than wait for advancing German forces to keep them imprisoned, the POWs took flight. They placed their fates in the hands of contadini, locals who farmed the rocky hillsides.
That brief outline left so many unanswered questions: Where had Wilcher been? Who’d been with him? How did he survive?
Learning more, Garner knew, was not guaranteed. For a while, Garner set Big Daddy aside.
Then, earlier this year, Garner got another email from Hill. He’d received an email from a woman in Italy.
“She told me her uncle found one of your great grandfather’s dog tags near her grandmother’s home,” Hill wrote.
Stunned and delighted, Garner took it from there.
In a series of emails about Wilcher, a rifleman in the 133rd Infantry Regiment, 34th Division, Garner and his correspondent struck up a friendship. That led to a letter that came to Garner’s home in Temple last month. It was tantalizingly thick, as if it contained more than a sheet of paper. Garner tore it open. Inside the letter was a smaller package. He carefully unwrapped it. The item inside shone.
For a moment, Big Daddy was back.
Allevi Chiara, who mailed the dog tag to Garner, recalled that her grandfather found it years ago while farming. He brought it home and apparently mislaid it. It came to light only recently, when Chiara was renovating the house.
In an email, she recalled connecting with Garner.
“I’m really happy that finally this military plate (has) come back in the hands of loved ones of its owner,” she wrote.
Hill, whose website brought the two together, said he frequently gets inquiries from relatives of old soldiers who were in the campos. He’s helped unearth a few old documents, and the occasional photo of a POW hiding from would-be captors. But returning a dog tag?
“It really is remarkable.”
In fact, it’s so noteworthy that Garner plans to lend the tag to the National Prisoner of War Museum in Andersonville, site of an infamous Civil War prison camp.
“This is, for a history teacher, and from a personal standpoint, a piece of history,” Garner said. “To get it back is amazing.”
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