Stanley George Cornish
PVT in 603rd Engineer Camouflage Bn : Co C
ASN#11088789 Casualty: Killed
Born 1921 in NY, Died 1944
Artist
County of residence at enlistment: Suffolk County, MA
Other residence(s): Springville, NY; Buffalo, NY; Westville, NH
United States Army, European Theatre of Operations
Occupation before the war: student
College education before the war: Harvard
Stanley Cornish was born on April 5, 1921 in Amsterdam, NY, an only child. His father worked in the county home, and later was a private school teacher. His mother was a teacher and social worker.
He graduated from The Park School of Buffalo, NY in 1938, and was an active participant in the Boy Scouts. After high school he matriculated at Harvard University in Cambridge, MA, where he majored in anthropology and sang in the Glee Club. A 1940 newspaper story describes his participation in a Dunster House bike race from Cambridge to Wellesley, where "despite the fact that he had given a blood transfusion at a Cambridge hospital in the morning" he finished with the leaders.
Stanley registered for the draft in the second semester of his senior year, on February 15, 1942. By that time his parents had moved to Westville, NH, a small town just over the Massachusetts border.
He graduated from Harvard in June, 1942 and enlisted at the end of the summer, on September 8, 1942. He had planned a career in architecture, which appears to have gotten him assigned to the 603rd Engineer Camouflage Battalion, and he was part of the unit that Christmas.
But at some point he left the Ghost Army and became part of the 104th Infantry Regiment, 26th Infantry Division. He went to Europe with his unit on August 27, 1944, landing on September 7.
From the World War II Memorial at the Memorial Church, Harvard University; photo from Harvard University website
PVT Cornish lost his life from wounds from an artillery shell on December 30, 1944 during the Battle of the Bulge; he was one of 38 members of his Harvard graduating class to die in the war. He is buried at the Luxembourg American Cemetery in Hamm, Luxembourg.
Photo:
1942 Harvard yearbook (see link below)
1944 Photo of the list of World War II dead at Harvard's Memorial Church
https://memorialchurch.harvard.edu/world-war-ii-memorial
Sources:
1930 census
1938 article in the Buffalo News (NY) about his high school graduation
https://www.newspapers.com/image/840351671/?terms=stanley%20cornish&match=1
1940 census
1940 article in the Boston Globe (MA) indicating he is in the Harvard Glee Club
https://www.newspapers.com/image/428554470/?terms=stanley%20g%20cornish&match=1
1940 article in the Boston Globe (MA) about a bike race
https://www.newspapers.com/image/428677080/?terms=stanley%20cornish&match=1
1942 draft card
1942 Harvard yearbook
1942 enlistment record
1944 World War II Hospital Admission Card Files
1944 US Military Cemeteries on Foreign Soil