8/17/1944
Corporal Norman Reynolds was born in 1918, to Ralph and Blanche Reynolds in Essex, Massachusetts. He enlisted in the U.S. Army on 20 June 1942 in Boston, MA. Corporal Reynolds graduated from the Army’s Bomb Disposal School in Aberdeen Proving Grounds, Maryland. CPL Reynolds was assigned to the 234th Ordnance Service Platoon (Bomb Disposal).
Corporal Reynolds and his platoon arrived in France on August 4, 1944 and proceeded to Cherbourg, France to participate in the clearance of an important harbor there. The platoon also assumed the duty of the segregation and disposal of the contents of a German ammunition dump with an estimated 100,000 tons of ordnance in storage. An explosion occurred during this disposal in an area where German hand grenades and detonators had been stored. The body of CPL Reynolds was not recovered, and he was presumed killed-in-action on August 17, 1944.