Daniel M. Jackstadt (WWII Casualty)

UNIT: Company A, 133rd Infantry, 34th Division

RANK: Private First Class

BORN: May 18, 1918

WHERE: Collinsville, Madison Co., IL

DIED: December 1, 1943

WHERE: Italy

CAUSE OF DEATH: Killed in Action near Mount Patano, Italy

BURIED: Saints Peter & Paul Catholic Cemetery

MARKER: Military Marker & Private Headstone

Collinsville Herald – December 23, 1943
Provided by Gene Beals (2007)

Dan Jackstadt
First Collinsville Boy Lost in Italy
Killed in Action December 1
After Year of Service

Pfc. Daniel Jackstadt, 25, son of Mrs. Agnes Jackstadt of 900 Vandalia street, became Collinsville’s first fatality in the Italian Campaign when he was killed in action December 1. The news was received by his mother last Saturday morning in a telegram from the War Department.

Jackstadt, who was employed by The Herald as a printer before entering service, was born May 18, 1918. He attended Catholic school and was a graduate of CTHS with the class of 1936. As a youngster he passed papers on the Vandalia street route.

He entered service January 5, 1943 and was shipped to North Africa after five months training and without furlough. He had been in Italy about two months. His most recent letters spoke cheerfully of eating meals under scant protection from driving rain.

Jackstadt had been betrothed to Miss Mary Cordera of 125 Mound avenue. A younger brother Louis Jackstadt, is a chief petty officer in the U.S. Guard. His father, Michael Jackstadt, died several years ago.

The following Congressional Record of the 1944 Senate was contributed in 2007 by Eric D. Jackstadt, nephew of Daniel M. Jackstadt who added in his notes: Dan Jackstadt "used to work for The Monroe family at the Collinsville Herald and the Editor James Monroe wrote a very eloquent editorial eulogizing Uncle Dan. Collinsville native and Post-Dispatch journalist Irving Dilliard picked it up and re-published the editorial in Stars & Stripes. The editorial was then placed into the Congressional Record when Illinois Senator Lucas read the tribute on the Senate floor.

Congressional Record-Senate: Tribute to Danny Jackstadt

1944, page 3617

Mr. LUCAS. Mr. President, will the Senator from Iowa yield to me in order that I may read a short editorial into the Record?

Mr. GILLETTE. I am very glad to yield to the Senator from Illinois.

Mr. LUCAS. Mr. President, recently I received from Capt. Irving Dilliard who is with the Allied Expeditionary Force in Italy, a letter and a copy of the Stars and Stripes. In the copy of the Stars and Stripes appears an editorial entitled “Undestroyable.” The editorial merely quotes another editorial, written by James O. Monroe, editor of the Collinsville (Ill.) Weekly Herald, which pays tribute to a printer named Danny Jackstadt, formerly employed by Mr. Monroe, who made the supreme sacrifice on the Italian battle front. The tribute is so touching and beautiful that I shall take the time of the Senate to read it into the Record. It is as follows:

"I am framing Danny Jackstadt’s picture and putting it on the wall above the desk where I write. Nearly every time I look up I will see the broad grin of that young printer of ours who a month ago gave his life in Italy to help keep us safe from savagery and let us continue to live our lives as we all lived them together here before Danny went away. And I will smile back at Danny now and then, as I used to when he was here, and behind my smile there will be a firm determination, as there always was behind Danny’s, to live life faithfully and well the daily life ahead. And while I shall not be called on to make the sacrifice which he made all in one sudden, sharp, unheralded moment, I am called upon by his smile above me to make every sacrifice of time and effort, every exertion of heart and brain, to be worthy of him, to carry forward the cause for which he lived and fought and died–the cause of a good life in a free world.Danny was good. To see his picture every day will make me better. And that will help me to help others to make their lives better. And thus, in God’s strange way, will Danny’s sacrifice weigh in the moral scales, creating a balance of good in others equal to the good life he himself would have lived if he had been permitted. It must be that no good is ever lost."

Senator Scott Wike Lucas (1892-1968)

Index of Collinsville WWII Casualties

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