Missing WWII medals: an emotional loss and a local dispute

James West refuses to buy Shell gasoline out of respect for his father, a World War II veteran who had always harbored resentment toward the Dutch company.

Shell, his father told him, supplied the Nazi Germany war machine.

“If he knew that I bought Shell gas,” West said, “he would roll over in his grave.”

Cpl. James S. Fennell, born in Burton, Ga., and raised on a tobacco farm in Ripley, Ohio, died in 2007. He was 88.

He was buried in Texas, with full military honors. A 21-gun salute heralded his service to his country. West kept three of the spent shells.

These days, when West talks about his father, he gets emotional. Not only does he miss him, but he is missing the keepsakes that kept his father close — the flag that the family received during the funeral and the collection of his father’s wartime medals and ribbons.

In spring 2013, a member of the American Legion Newport Harbor Post 291 encouraged West to loan the materials to the post so they could be displayed for a time there, West says. They were kept in a unique mahogany box designed by a vendor at the Orange County Fair.

West agreed.

“I was so proud of what my dad did in the Second World War,” he said. “I thought it would really be nice to share it with other people.”

After filling out an application to join the post himself, West says, he talked about his dad’s medals with someone there — he doesn’t recall exactly who — before leaving the box and his application. Even with no written agreement, West says he felt comfortable loaning his dad’s things to the well-regarded Post 291.

In October 2014, he returned to Newport from his home in Hailey, Idaho, to retrieve the box. He assumed it would be there.

It wasn’t.

West contacted the post in frustration a few times before getting his best friend, Newport Beach attorney Stanley R. Jones, involved in what appears to be an unfortunate series of miscommunications. Jones told West that he should consider bringing the dispute to small-claims court.

“It’s not the money, Stan,” West recalled telling his lawyer. “I just want my dad’s box and flag back. I don’t care about the money.”

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Post 291 Cmdr. Jess Lawson’s account of what happened to the wartime materials of Cpl. James S. Fennell differs from West’s. Lawson says the post received the box without any instruction.

No name. No account of who the medals belonged to today or years ago.

Thus, the mahogany box was displayed to commemorate a nameless soldier, identified only as a World War II veteran.

“There was nothing to tell us what to do with it,” Lawson said in an interview. “What I am supposed to do?”

After its exhibition, the box was stored in a room at the post for safekeeping. Lawson says the materials were later donated to a group that reenacts the Fox Co., 506th Infantry Regiment’s World War II experiences.

“In the spirit of honoring veterans, I sent them to the airborne,” Lawson said.

In a letter to Jones, Lawson wrote that because Post 291 feels it received the box anonymously, “I am doubtful that there is any way to trace these donations. I apologize in this matter. The post receives many items of this type, and we give every effort to honorably display and record the valor of those veterans that served.”

West says he left his phone number on a piece of paper taped to the box, which contained his dad’s Purple Heart, various ribbons and a replica Bronze Star — a caregiver had stolen the original one.

The box also had the folded American flag from his father’s funeral and the three spent shells West picked up from the 21-gun salute.

West says he was initially told that the box was sent to another American Legion post, some kind of a national office for the organization, in San Francisco, Sacramento or Indianapolis.

Lawson says what happened is unfortunate but that no disrespect was ever intended; Post 291 would never dishonor a veteran. In the last four years alone, the post — which boasts about 7,000 members — has donated $400,000 to veterans causes, organizations and veterans in need, he says.

“The American Legion Post 291 is a veterans association who takes care of its veterans,” Lawson said. “We do not dishonor anyone.”

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The box’s medals and ribbons aren’t necessarily rare for the period. Still, for West, the are irreplaceable because of they memories they hold of his father, who like many of the so-called Greatest Generation, spoke very little about the war.

Only twice, West says, did his father offer any window into his time in a field artillery battalion that fought in North Africa and Italy.

Fennell faced the Afrika Korps, led by the feared but respected Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, nicknamed the Desert Fox. He was later wounded at Monte Cassino, a rocky hill in Italy that was the site of a 1944 battle. An exploding mortar shell left him with permanent scars.

West is a veteran too, a Marine who served during Vietnam.

Following his service, he lived in Costa Mesa from 1970 to 1999, eventually retiring as an engineer for the Walt Disney Co. West now works at a golf course in Idaho.

He says he doesn’t want to spend thousands of dollars resolving the dispute, either in court or by traveling between Idaho and Newport Beach. He just wants the box back. The post should know “where the hell they sent it,” West said.

West, who hasn’t directly spoken with Lawson, only to other Post 291 staff, says he “isn’t going away.”

Lawson says the same thing. West’s attorney is “throwing rocks at me. I’m not going to take that ... [and] I’m not going to go away quietly either.”