Walt completed 2 years at Klamath Union High School and then worked in a doughnut shop.1923 to Thomas (Tomasso) and Rosa Ambrogetti. His parents both emigrated separately from Italy. His father was nearly 30 years older than his mother and by 1940, they had separated and his mother had remarried Oscar Pederson. Walt then had a four year old half-brother, Frank.

Walt completed 2 years at Klamath Union High School and then worked in a donut shop.

He registered for the draft in 1942 when he was 19 years old. He worked for the Crater Lake Lumber and Box Company in Sprague River, Oregon. He had a dark complexion with black hair and brown eyes. He was 5’10” and weighed 163 lbs.

In about 1942, he married Florene (Rusty) Hall of Klamath Falls, in Reno, Nevada. They had a little girl, Mary Elizabeth Ambrogetti in September of 1942, who died of pneumonia a little less than two months later.

Walt entered the US Army Air Corps in September, 1943. “He was tail gunner on a B-17 Flying Fortress with the 614th Bomber Squadron, 401st Bomber Group,”1 with the rank of corporal. He was stationed at Deenethorpe, Northamptonshire, England, in the UK. On September 17, 1944, “Rosie’s Sweat Box" (the air craft Cpl. Ambrogetti was on), “was attempting to take off for a mission to bomb the Siegfried Line but failed to gain enough height to clear the hedge at the end of the runway and crashed on the western Road, Deenethorpe. Cpl. Walter J. Ambrogetti survived the crash but died later the same day of his wounds.”6

Cpl. Ambrogetti was awarded the Purple Heart posthumously and is interred at the Cambridge American Cemetery in Cambridge, England.

Four and half months after Walt’s death, his widow gave birth to a son, Walter Joseph Ambrogetti Jr. Rusty was married again in 1946, to Edward Ybarra and had two more children.

Thank you Cpl. Walt Ambrogetti for you sacrifice.

References

findagrave.com/memorial/56287361/walter-j-ambrogetti
https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/34784383/florene-mae-ybarra
findagrave.com/memorial/15614842/mary-elizabeth-ambrogetti
honorstates.org/index/php?id=103615
http://401bg.org/Main/People/Maslen/614th.pdf
http://aircrewremembered.com/cooke-francis.html

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.

Walter J Ambrogetti