Two sergeants at a wedding in Tyler

Update, September 18, 2026. Homer's discharge papers have now been read. He was a staff sergeant, with three stripes and a rocker, not a sergeant; the newspaper used the shorter title. His discharge names his unit at separation, the 133rd Quartermaster Truck Company, and credits him with three campaigns: Normandy, Northern France and Rhineland. It also shows seventeen months in the American Theater, from August 1942 to January 1944, before he went to Europe. The details are on his page.

On Thursday, January 13, 1944, at noon, a soldier was married at the home of his bride's parents in Tyler, Texas. The Tyler Courier-Times covered it three days later. It printed the violin solo, the gardenias, the three-tiered cake with a miniature bride and soldier bridegroom on top, and one line that matters to this Foundation:

The bridegroom was attended by his brother, Sgt. A. L. Hanes.

The groom was Sgt. Homer B. Hanes. In the middle of the war, the two eldest of the Four stood side by side in a living room in East Texas, and both of them had three stripes on their sleeves.

That notice arrived this week with a batch of family records. Two other documents came with it, and together they explain how each brother got to that room.

Homer: called up with the Guard

The National Archives keeps a public database of World War II Army enlistment records, built from the punch cards the Army made for each soldier. Homer is in it:

HANES HOMER B · 20426339 · enlisted 25 November 1940 · Corporal · Quartermaster Corps · source: National Guard · born Texas

Two things stand out. The first is the date. The plate in Homer's medal case, which his granddaughter keeps, gives his service as beginning on November 25, 1940. Until now, that plate was the only source for the date. Now the Army's own record agrees with it.

The second is the source. Homer did not come in through the draft. He was already a National Guardsman, and he went into federal service with his unit, more than a year before Pearl Harbor, two days after his twenty-first birthday.

November 25, 1940, is also the day the 31st Division was called into federal service. The 31st was the National Guard division of Alabama, Florida, Louisiana and Mississippi, and it went to Camp Blanding, Florida, to train. A clipping from the Alexandria Town Talk finds Homer there. On Sunday, May 11, his parents gave a dinner at Rigolette for "their son, Corporal Homer B. Hanes of Camp Blanding, Fla., who was home on a week's visit." Lunch was served picnic style on the lawn. The clipping carries no year, but May 11 fell on a Sunday in 1941, and no other such year fits his service.

The enlistment record does not name his unit, so the Foundation does not claim the 31st Division for him yet. The date and the camp point that way. His discharge paper will name it.

Aubrey Lee: enlisted in the war, an officer after it

Aubrey Lee is not in the enlistment database. The National Archives notes that the file does not hold every soldier. His record came from a different place.

After the war, Aubrey Lee became an officer in the National Guard. The Official National Guard Register, a printed roster of Guard officers, carries his entry in four editions. Each one is a single dense line of abbreviations, and it is worth reading one slowly:

HANES Aubrey L · Maj · La · B-La 12 Aug 17 · BSM · BS Northwestern State Colg of La 50 · Enl 10 Sep 35 to 10 Jan 39 · 19 June 40 to 16 Oct 40 · (F-20 Nov 42 to 15 Mar 46) · 12 Nov 46 to 6 Dec 47 · 2 lt QMC 7 Dec 47 · maj Inf 15 Jan 60

In plain words: a major, Louisiana, born in Louisiana on August 12, 1917. BSM is the Bronze Star Medal. He earned a bachelor of science at Northwestern State College of Louisiana in 1950. Then comes his enlisted service. He first enlisted at eighteen, in September 1935, and served until January 1939, and again from June to October 1940. Next, marked F for federal service, he served from November 20, 1942, to March 15, 1946.

That federal period sits inside his enlisted service, and no grade is attached to it. In the same register, men who held commissions during the war show them in the form "(F-2 lt …)". His entry has none. He served the Second World War as an enlisted soldier, and the wedding notice of 1944 calls him a sergeant. His first commission came on December 7, 1947, as a second lieutenant in the Quartermaster Corps. The later editions carry him forward: first lieutenant in 1952, captain in 1953, major in 1960. His obituary says he retired as a colonel from the Army Reserve. A Shreveport Times photo negative from 1969, indexed as a promotion to colonel, fits that path.

The Bronze Star is the largest new fact on his page. The register records the award but not the citation, so the Foundation does not yet know what it was for.

The Rainbow Division

His obituary adds one more line: "He served in the Rainbow Division of the U. S. Army during World War II." The Rainbow Division is the 42nd Infantry Division. Its infantry landed at Marseille in December 1944 and fought in France and Germany, and the division ended the war on occupation duty in Austria. On April 29, 1945, units of the 42nd liberated the concentration camp at Dachau, outside Munich.

The family holds photographs of Aubrey Lee at Dachau. The Foundation has not yet examined them. The family account is also that he did intelligence work. That work was not reserved for officers, and many enlisted soldiers did it.

An obituary is written from memory and passes through a newspaper, and newspapers get details wrong. So the division is marked partially confirmed on his page, and Dachau is marked as the family's account. His service file will name his unit.

Did the brothers go in together?

The family account is that Homer and Aubrey Lee entered service together. The records now show that they did not enter federal service together. Homer went in with the Guard in November 1940, and Aubrey Lee went in two years later, in November 1942.

But both brothers were soldiers before the war. Aubrey Lee had more than three years of enlisted service behind him by 1940, and Homer was a Guardsman by the time he was twenty-one. If they served together in 1940, before the call-up, that may be what the family remembers. The records of the period can settle it.

What the record proves, and what it does not

Documented: Homer entered federal service from the National Guard on November 25, 1940, as a corporal in the Quartermaster Corps. Aubrey Lee served as an enlisted soldier from November 1942 to March 1946, was awarded the Bronze Star Medal, and was commissioned in December 1947.

Partially confirmed: Homer at Camp Blanding in 1941, and both brothers as sergeants in January 1944, from newspaper notices. Aubrey Lee in the Rainbow Division, and his retirement as a colonel, from his obituary.

Family account: Aubrey Lee at Dachau, and his intelligence work.

What comes next

Aubrey Lee's service file. His officer service number, O-955811, is now known, which makes a request to the National Personnel Records Center stronger. The file should name his unit and hold his Bronze Star citation. This guide explains how to request one.
The photographs from Dachau. The Foundation will examine them and publish what they show.
Homer's discharge paper. It is held by his granddaughter, a member of the Foundation's board, and it will name his units, his campaigns, and his rank when he came home.

Sources

Official National Guard Register, four annual editions of the 1950s and 1960s, entry for Hanes, Aubrey L. Copies in the Foundation's research files.
National Archives, World War II Army Enlistment Records, Record Group 64, Access to Archival Databases. Record of Hanes, Homer B., serial number 20426339.
Wedding notice of Sgt. Homer B. Hanes, Tyler Courier-Times, January 16, 1944, section II, p. 5.
"Honoring Corporal Homer B. Hanes," Town Talk, Alexandria, Louisiana, May 1941 (year from the calendar; not printed on the clipping).
Obituary of Aubrey L. Hanes, Shreveport, Louisiana, March 2001.
31st Infantry Division (United States), Wikipedia.
42nd Infantry Division (United States), Wikipedia.