She was named Leona Marie Elizabeth Seyfert[i] when she was born in Fowler, Kansas on July 14, 1915.[ii] Her mother was Emma Fredericke Trimpe Seyfert and her father was John Barney Seyfert. Her dad was from Wisconsin and her mother from a German immigrant family settled in Kansas.

She grew up in a spirited home filled with six children. She had one older brother, Martin Wilhelm Seyfert and one older sister, Melvina Seyfert Hitzeman, and three younger sisters, Bernice Melusine Seyfert Hitzeman, Lorene E. Seyfert Brown and Emma Maxine Lydia Seyfert Lingenfelter, who went by Maxine.

In 1920 and 1930, Leona’s dad was a farmer in Logan, Kansas.[iii] She graduated from Meade High School,[iv] although the date is unknown, it was most likely 1933 meaning that Leona had spent her high school years in The Great Depression.

HER LIFE BEFORE MILITARY

By 1935, at age 20, Leona is no longer a farm girl. It is also the year she loses her brother, Martin. She is living in the big city of Chicago, Illinois. At 25, Leona lived as a lodger in a boarding house on Armitage Avenue. She was employed in a laundry as a press operator.[v] She was making 40-cents an hour. The census shows she had completed one year of college and is working 35 hours per week. Her obituary in 1945 stated that she had graduated from a business college in Chicago.[vi]

In 1938, she loses her mother. At some point after that, her father leaves the farm. By 1942, John Seyfert is living without any of his children in a rooming house in Portland Oregon. He is working as a day laborer. The family has scattered.

While 40-cents an hour may not seem a lot, Lorena is doing much better financially than the rest of her family in 1940. Dad is a day laborer with no fixed workplace. Sister Melvina is attending teacher’s college in Emporia, Kansas. Her sister, Bernice, is teaching public school in Byron, Kansas for 33-cents an hour. Both of her teenage sisters are living with families in Kansas as live-in servants. Emma is making 9-cents an hour plus room and board in Hutchison, Kansas while Lorene makes 15-cents an hour and room and board in Kansas City, Missouri.

Before the war, Leona had left the laundry and was employed as a machinist,[vii] according to her sister, Maxine. By 1945, sisters Lorena and Maxine Seyfert lived in Chicago too. Maxine was enrolled in the United States Cadet Nurse Corps at St. Luke’s Hospital.[viii]

HER MILITARY STORY

Private First Class (PFC) Leona Seyfert was in the US Army Air Corps[ix] and she served with the Women’s Army Corps of the 1202nd Army Air Force Base Unit WACS.

She enlisted on April 5, 1944 in Chicago,[x] service number A-606171. After finishing basic training, she was able to return home from Romulus, Michigan and visit with her sisters Melvina and Bernice in Madison, Kansas.[xi]

According to HonorStates.org, the women who were in the 1202nd were older, with an average age of 28, than the usual recruit and were chosen for their “maturity and work experience.”

In November of 1944, Leona was one of 159 WACs in Accra, British West Africa to serve with the Air Transport Command. Her job was to deliver troops and supplies as well as transfer aircraft.[xii]

HER LAST DAY

PFC Leona Seyfert was with 18 members of the Women’s Army Corp on a normally routine 776- mile[xiii] flight from Accra, British West Africa to Robert’s Field[xiv], Liberia. The WACs were onboard as they were being transferred to a new assignment. There were scattered showers that morning but no other weather of note.[xv]

Her plane, piloted by a crew of three[xvi], a C-478 #44-76406, disappeared.[xvii]

The plane was last reported over Takoradi, British West Africa, about 150 miles west of Accra, shortly after departure.[xviii]

Little is known about what transpired aboard the plane that day but several calls of “Mayday,” an emergency procedure used as a voice distress signal, were heard. The distress signal was loud and clear, lasting five minutes.[xix] A search was conducted by aircraft and surface craft over a wide area of the French Ivory Coast.[xx]

The plane is believed to have crashed into the sea near Takordi, Ghana.[xxi] The Chicago Tribune reported the “[xxii]18 WACs were the first ever reported lost overseas.”

She went missing on May 30, 1945 and was declared dead while missing in action off the coast of Ghana, Africa.[xxiii]

**READ THE STORIES OF ALL 21 ON THIS FLIGHT **

Click here- https://www.fold3.com/page/653613892/flight-c-47b-44-76406-stories-of-21-missing-in-action/stories

COMMENDATIONS

Purple Heart

World War II Victory Medal

American Campaign Medal

Army Presidential Unit Citation

Army Good Conduct Medal

European-African-Middle Eastern Campaign[xxiv]

MEMORIALS

On June 16, 1945, a memorial service for the missing women was held by the WACs’ leadership in Portman Square in London and over 660 WACs attended.[xliii]

Leona Seyfert is remembered on the Tablets of the Missing, an American Battle Monument, North Africa American Cemetery in Carthage Tunisia.

HER GRAVE

A memorial grave marker can be found at Fowler Cemetery in Fowler, Kansas.[xxv]

ABOUT THIS STORY

This story is part of the Stories Behind the Stars project (see www.storiesbehindthestars.org). This is a national effort of volunteers to write the stories of all 400,000+ of the US WWII fallen here on Fold3. Can you help write these stories? Related to this, there will be a smart phone app that will allow people to visit any war memorial or cemetery, scan the fallen's name and read his/her story.

[i] https://www.honorstates.org/index.php?id=334268

[ii] https://www.honorstates.org/index.php?id=334268

[iii] https://www.ancestryinstitution.com/imageviewer/collections/6061/images/4300866_00063?pId=86670129

[iv] https://search.ancestryinstitution.com/cgi-bin/sse.dll?indiv=1&dbid=8939&h=1088914&ssrc=pt&tid=47669062&pid=180178986766&usePUB=true

[v] https://www.ancestryinstitution.com/imageviewer/collections/2442/images/M-T0627-01007-00577?pId=145536788

[vi] https://basic.newspapers.com/image/11973094/?terms=Leona%2BSeyfert

[vii] https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/56250251/leona-marie_elizabeth-seyfert

[viii] https://basic.newspapers.com/image/11973094/?terms=Leona%2BSeyfert

[ix] https://www.fold3.com/page/638493932-leona-m-seyfert

[x] https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/56250251/leona-marie_elizabeth-seyfert

[xi] https://basic.newspapers.com/image/10196275/?terms=Leona%2BSeyfert

[xii] https://www.honorstates.org/index.php?id=334268

[xiii]https://chicagotribune.newspapers.com/image/?clipping_id=22956270&fcfToken=eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJmcmVlLXZpZXctaWQiOjM3MDE5ODM5MSwiaWF0IjoxNjAwNjUzOTMxLCJleHAiOjE2MDA3NDAzMzF9.GGROPxU0pGgcIxOv2cUjLCtQalRy9746RfogyVqiR44

[xiv] https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/56250251/leona-marie_elizabeth-seyfert

[xv] https://www.abmceducation.org/understandingsacrifice/soldier/rose-puchalla

[xvi] https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/56250251/leona-marie_elizabeth-seyfert

[xvii] https://www.honorstates.org/index.php?id=334268

[xviii]https://chicagotribune.newspapers.com/image/?clipping_id=22956270&fcfToken=eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJmcmVlLXZpZXctaWQiOjM3MDE5ODM5MSwiaWF0IjoxNjAwNjUzOTMxLCJleHAiOjE2MDA3NDAzMzF9.GGROPxU0pGgcIxOv2cUjLCtQalRy9746RfogyVqiR44

[xix] https://www.abmceducation.org/understandingsacrifice/soldier/rose-puchalla

[xx] New York Times, June 7, 1945 “18 WACS Missing on African Flight”

[xxi] https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/56250251/leona-marie_elizabeth-seyfert

[xxii]https://chicagotribune.newspapers.com/image/?clipping_id=22956270&fcfToken=eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJmcmVlLXZpZXctaWQiOjM3MDE5ODM5MSwiaWF0IjoxNjAwNjUzOTMxLCJleHAiOjE2MDA3NDAzMzF9.GGROPxU0pGgcIxOv2cUjLCtQalRy9746RfogyVqiR44

[xxiii] https://www.honorstates.org/index.php?id=334268

[xxiv] https://www.honorstates.org/index.php?id=334268

[xxv] https://search.ancestryinstitution.com/cgi-bin/sse.dll?indiv=1&dbid=60525&h=82771416&ssrc=pt&tid=47669062&pid=180178986766&usePUB=true

Leona M Seyfert