Searching for Private First Class Roberto L. Lopez

  • Published
  • By Col. Erwin Gines
  • 60th Inpatient Squadron

This is a brief and microscopic view of another person’s service.

When I started military service in 1993, I was given an artifact with a story behind it. It was a Silver Star in an old, worn case.  The story came from his relatives who said it belonged to an uncle, Roberto L. Lopez. The name was written on the back of the medal. They told me he served as a medic in World War II and died in battle somewhere in Europe. I knew of other stories of Filipino veterans in World War II but this was the first I had heard of one in Europe.  The fact that he was a medic interested me more since I was one too. 

The other artifact was a flag, which was draped over his casket. He was buried in Europe but the flag and medal were delivered to his family in the Philippines. They did not know where the flag was currently, but recalled seeing it in the past. There were no other documents or artifacts known.

As the story was told to them by Lopez’s brother and sisters, they remembered that he was a college educated economist from a poor, rural town and immigrated to the United States through California in search of work.  It was not uncommon for his family members to go elsewhere for work. His brother-in-law, for example, spent six months in Hawaii working in pineapple fields. He sent his earnings back to his family. Lopez came from a fairly well-to-do family of civil engineers, but life was tough. His parents raised him and his siblings–one brother and two sisters–so males earn money and females attend to the household. Each had an important role to the welfare of their family.

I asked what life was like for Lopez and his siblings, but they would only answer that it was very hard. Even though they made more money than others in his community, their difficult life was worsened when World War II engulfed their town.  I imagine it became much harder with the loss of Lopez.  His siblings grew to old age.  Their children grew to be parents themselves; many of them also served full careers in the U.S. military.  As time progressed, the story of Lopez began to fade as there were fewer people who knew him.

Searching for World War II veterans’ records was difficult in the 1990s.  Many of their records were lost in a fire in the early 1970s.  My early attempts to seek records were met with unanswered mail.  My search was hampered because I did not have his service number.  As my own career progressed, I tried to learn as much as I could about him and the units he may have been assigned to. As quoted from the Steven Spielberg movie, Saving Private Ryan, it was like “finding a needle in a stack of needles.” Life continued, wars started, I deployed a lot, I grew my own family and I still had his medal. I paused my efforts to search for his story.

When stationed at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center, Germany, in 2012, I continued to search.  This was not the first time in Germany for me. On deployment, I stopped through there many times. This was the first time I had time to research.

When I visited Normandy, I did not find his name on the cemetery roster. Later, I met a few great people who also searched for veterans and their stories.  They noted that many records now available were on the internet via the National Archives and Records Adminstration.  Additionally, they supplied me a contact at the American Battle Monuments Commission, an entity that manages the cemeteries where U.S. service members are buried. As chance would have it, I found only one Roberto L. Lopez in the record. I was astonished to see how close his record met the story given to me in 1993. He joined the Army on July 22, 1943, at Los Angeles, California, as a Filipino immigrant.  For the first time, I had a serial number.

Citations of World War II veterans are also available online.  Using his Army serial number, I found out more details that were similar to the original story.

Private first class Lopez’s records indicated that he was a combat medic. He was assigned to Medical Detachment, 357th Infantry Regiment, 90th Infantry Division and was killed in action on Oct 11, 1944, in France.  He was awarded the Purple Heart and the Silver Star. His Silver Star citation is short, noting that it was awarded posthumously.  I also found his gravesite though the ABMC. I looked as far as Normandy before, but he was only 45 minutes away from Ramstein Air Base at Lorraine American Cemetery in St. Avold, France. I was amazed that he was so close.

In 2015, I visited his gravesite for the first time with my family.  The online history of the 357th Infantry Regiment documents a 22-day battle on the town of Maiziere-Les-Metz between the dates of October 7-29, 1944.  It states a brutal house-to-house, day and night urban fighting against the German army.  I have much more to learn from this battle as it may be the location where Lopez perished. It felt a little surreal to be at his gravesite and it now felt like the beginning of a new story.

I do hold some reservation as to whether these two people are the same.  However, the majority of similarities between the stories as told to me by his relatives and the record are remarkable. The contradictions between his family story and the online record have plausible explanations.  Two differences were his occupation and education. The record states that his occupation was as a farm hand and his education was some high school.  His 1940s college education and job in the Philippines would probably not have transferred well in the 1940s U.S. education system or culture. Filipino immigrants of that time would most likely have sought other work and daily farm labor was common. 

I am more likely to determine the exact battle of his death than know what he was like as a person. I know that he came to the U.S. to help his family. Why did he join the Army? Was it for better money?  Better possibilities? Did he feel a sense of duty? I may never know. I do know that he was missed and remembered by his family.  I know this because Lopez was my grandmother’s brother, a distant relative who I am trying to know more. Today, there is no one else alive in my family who knew him personally. His story fades a little, but I continue on my journey of research and will continue to tell more about him.

Every Airman, every service member, has a story and a reason for serving. Whatever the reason – they serve. They join thousands of others in their storied legacy of service and valor. Learning more about them helps me understand where I came from and where we come from.

A casket-sized 48-star U.S. Flag was found in the Phillipine house where that Silver Star was originally kept. Now I have two artifacts.  Just before I visited his grave for the first time in 2015, my family and I visited the Philippines and went to a beach he most likely enjoyed. I brought a few pebbles from that beach and my children put them on his white stone military grave marker.  

Tell your stories, tell the stories of others.