134th Infantry Regiment Website "All Hell Can't Stop Us"

Pfc Earl J Leadon

60th Engineers Combat Battalion, Company B

Earl Jerome Leadon, son of Michael James and Mary Louise Delphine (King), was born March 5, 1924 in Grant County, North Dakota. The family moved to Washington State in 1936. He registered for the draft on June 30, 1942. At that time, he was living in Tacoma, Washington and working at the Seattle and Tacoma Shipyards in Tacoma. His draft record lists him as 6' 1" tall, weighing 150 pounds, with blue eyes, brown hair, and a light complexion. He was inducted into the Army on April 8, 1943 in Seattle, Washington.

Pfc Earl J Leadon served in Company B, 60th Engineers Combat Battalion. The night of October 10, 1944, the 60th Engineer Combat Battalion, 35th Infantry Division, was laying down a mine field near Ajoncourt, about 18 miles northeast of Nancy, France. Trucks carrying the mines were parked along the Moselle River just south of town. At about 11 PM that night one of the trucks exploded, causing another truck and nearby stacks of mines and other ammunition to also explode. Thirty-three men died in that explosion and fourteen were wounded. Pfc Leadon was one of the men who was killed in that explosion. He is buried at Calvary Cemetery, Yakima, Washigton.

The Spokesman-Review, Spokane, Washington, December 5, 1948