Levi Garland Coleman
PVT in 603rd Engineer Camouflage Bn : Co D, HQ Platoon
ASN#33049742
Born 1914 in VA, Died 1983
County of residence at enlistment: Middlesex County, VA
Other residence(s): Christiansburg, PA; Pilot, VA
United States Army, European Theatre of Operations
NOTE: His enlistment record says his middle name is "Garvin", but his tombstone and family Ancestry sources say "Garland."
Levi Coleman was born on August 20, 1914 in Montgomery County, Virginia, most likely in or near the town of Christiansburg, where he was living in 1920 and at the time of his death. He was the fifteenth and last child of his mother, the tenth to survive past childhood. His mother had had at least three children before she married Mr. Coleman. She died in 1925, and in 1930 Levi and his father and two other siblings were living with his sister and her husband and children in North Fork, West Virginia.
The slightly built man had a grammar school education. When he registered for the draft in 1940, he was living with his brother Hughie in Pilot, Virginia, (just outside Christiansburg) and working for the Wytheville Building Corporation in Wytheville, Virginia.
He enlisted on June 23, 1941 in Roanoke, Virginia.
His gravestone indicates he achieved the rank of Tec 5 in World War 2. After the war he found work as a jeweler. (His death certificate says he is a retired jeweler.) He died of congestive heart failure, complicated by emphysema and diabetes, on February 17, 1983 in a hospital in Blacksburg, Virginia.
Sources:
1920 Census
https://search.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/sse.dll?ti=0&indiv=try&db=1920usfedcen&h=23420711
1930 Census
1940 Draft card
1941 Enlistment record
1983, Virginia death certificate
1983, Find a Grave record; photo of gravestone (IDs him as WW2 veteran)