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Wars · War heroes — the decoration sweep, run as a sweep
Wars & Military Service carried one decoration, at boundary strength, and the depth audit scored the missing work plainly: no decoration sweep had ever been run as a sweep. This addendum runs it, person by person, through the three instruments the audit named — the Military Times Hall of Valor, the Home of Heroes database (the same Sterner compilation, hosted by Military Times since 2008), and the St. Joseph County Public Library's Military Service Notes Column Index, 1941–1979 — searched by hometown and birthplace for Granger and the two townships, with the county's city rolls read alongside so that a township man filed under a city address could not slip past untested. The result is printed whole, positive and negative alike. As of November 2026.
The sweep's yield: no decorated servicemember of this ground — and the boundary names it did find, kept at the boundary
Searched November 2026
The sweep, person by person: searched by hometown “Granger, Indiana” and by the township names, the Hall of Valor and Home of Heroes return no recipient — no Silver Star, no Distinguished Service Cross or Service Cross of any service, no Purple Heart citation of the valor class those databases carry — for any servicemember whose home or birthplace is this ground. The databases index by city, and the county's decorated men resolve, every one the sweep reached, to the sister cities or to ground already ruled boundary in this build. Named so they cannot be silently borrowed: Corporal Thomas Jesse Heltzel, Silver Star posthumously, born and home South Bend, killed in the Marianas in 1944; Technical Sergeant Robert E. Hannan Jr., Silver Star posthumously, home South Bend, killed over the Southwest Pacific on 12 October 1943; Colonel James Helms Kasler, the only triple Air Force Cross recipient in the service's history, with two Silver Stars and two Purple Hearts besides — born in South Bend on 2 May 1926, but his home town of record is Zanesville, Indiana, and he is the city's son, not this ground's. One sweep find stands on township soil and is printed at exactly that strength: Captain (Chaplain) Joseph D. Barry, Silver Star for gallantry as chaplain of the 157th Infantry Regiment, 45th Infantry Division, on 29 July 1943, whose Hall of Valor home is “Notre Dame, Indiana” and who lies in Holy Cross Cemetery at Notre Dame — Clay Township ground, but the university's ground, outside the CDP line, in the same boundary class this build already gives the Notre Dame GAR post and the Holy Cross sisters; he is entered here as boundary and no more, beside Master Sergeant Beard's two Bronze Stars on Penn Township soil, likewise boundary, likewise not promoted. Captain (Chaplain) Francis L. Sampson's Distinguished Service Cross of 6–7 June 1944 was tested and refused: Iowa-born, a Notre Dame graduate of 1937, his record is association, not home, and association is not a township tie. The third instrument states its own limit: the SJCPL Military Service Notes Column Index covers the Tribune's “Service Notes” for the whole county, 1941–1979, across the Second World War, Korea and Vietnam, but it indexes names and notes, not decorations, so no award-filtered sweep can be run from its public search. Named gap: a card-by-card reading of the Local & Family History notes file against Clay and Harris township addresses, at the St. Joseph County Public Library, is the settling instrument for any township decoration the valor databases missed; until that reading is run, the finding stands as tested negative at database strength — the decorated roll of this ground, at Silver Star class and above, is empty in every roll that can be searched by place.
From the Military Times Hall of Valor and Home of Heroes recipient records (Heltzel, Hannan, Kasler, Barry, Sampson entries as cited in the text), searched November 2026 by hometown and birthplace for Granger, Clay Township, Harris Township, Notre Dame, South Bend and Mishawaka; and the St. Joseph County Public Library's Military Service Notes Column Index (1941–1979), its scope read from the library's own description. Searches shown in the article.