Leland L. Barnes was born 8 September 1922 (just one month before his future wife Hope, b. 22 October 1922 in nearby Clay County). Family nickname 'Bud' all his life; Brant remembered his middle name as Lemuel. Husband of Georgia Hope Blair; father of three daughters Judy (Farmer), Janice (Brant's mother, b. ~1949), and Jill (b. 26 Dec 1950). Died 24 April 1982 in or near Iola, Clay County Illinois at age 59. Buried Iola Cemetery, Iola, Clay County IL, alongside his parents Ora J. Barnes (1892-1958) and Bessie M. Barnes (1893-?), and his wife Hope's parents Garnet Othal Blair (1897-1965) and Margaret Angeline Zink Blair (1898-1967). After Bud's death Hope eventually remarried Robert Deister of Decatur and was buried with him (and daughter Jill) at Graceland Cemetery, Decatur. Brant Hindman's maternal grandfather. WWII SERVICE RECORD (per the National WWII Memorial Registry of Remembrances + Find a Grave memorial 22830919): Entered active service as a DRAFTEE on 30 December 1942 at Camp Grant Illinois. Selected for the COAST ARTILLERY CORPS. Completed basic training and qualified in the Military Occupational Specialty of Anti-Aircraft Artillery (Automatic Weapons) Crewman, MOS 601. Assigned to Battery B, 48th Anti-Aircraft Artillery Battalion. Departed the Continental United States on 12 February 1944 bound for the European Theater of Operations. Fought in the NORMANDY, NORTHERN FRANCE, RHINELAND, and CENTRAL EUROPE campaigns. Earned the Good Conduct Medal, American Campaign Medal, European-African-Middle Eastern Campaign Medal with 4 BRONZE BATTLE STARS (one for each of his four ETO campaigns), WWII Victory Medal, and a Certificate of Merit. Honorably discharged as a CORPORAL on 12 December 1945 at the Separation Center, Camp Grant Illinois. THE UNIT AND WHAT HE DID (per deep ETO research 2026-06-06): The 48th AAA AW Bn was a non-divisional Antiaircraft Artillery Automatic Weapons Battalion equipped with 32 forty-millimeter Bofors guns and 32 fifty-caliber quad mounts, about 800 men in four firing batteries plus a headquarters battery. Battery B's gunners ran the 40mm Bofors crew: an 8-man team with the corporal as gun commander calling fire orders. Bofors fed in 4-round clips at a sustained 100 rounds per minute and could engage low-altitude aircraft out to 12,000 feet or fire flat across open ground at house-windows and machine-gun nests. The unit's exact higher headquarters by month is the one open question; the campaign-credit pattern Bud carries (Normandy, Northern France, Rhineland, Central Europe with NO Ardennes-Alsace) is the diagnostic signature of a battalion that landed early with First US Army for D+3 to D+15 beach-defense duty, then transferred to the Ninth US Army under Lt. Gen. William H. Simpson when it became operational on 5 September 1944. The Ninth Army held the Roer River line through the Battle of the Bulge, then jumped off across the Roer in Operation GRENADE on 23 February 1945 (a 1,500-gun preparation at 0245 hours, with the 40mm Bofors batteries firing flat across the river at German strongpoints in support of the infantry assault — almost certainly the action behind Bud's Certificate of Merit) and across the Rhine in Operation FLASHPOINT on 24 March 1945, then drove to the Elbe by 12 April 1945, where SHAEF halted to let the Soviets take Berlin. The Certificate of Merit on Bud's record is NOT the obsolete 1905-1918 Spanish-American War medal; it is a WWII-era unit or individual commendation, most likely a Battery B citation for action on the Roer crossing. He came home a corporal because by 1945 he was running a Bofors crew. Bud rarely talked about what he had seen. The pattern of his service tells the story he wouldn't.
Occupations
- US Army Corporal, Coast Artillery Corps, WWII veteran
