A dented World War II mess kit unites Roxborough family

The dented mess kit of a soldier from Roxborough who fought in a bloody battle in Normandy came home Tuesday, 72 years after it was lost on French soil.

About 40 relatives of Hudson Leroy Funk, including great-grandchildren and his 95-year-old brother, hugged and proudly passed the mess kit around a kitchen table in Medford after hearing how a World War II memorabilia collector had found it last fall, using a metal detector.

Funk, who lost his legs later, in a battle in Luxembourg in November 1944, had carved his initials - HLF - into the metal container. Those marks helped the collector identify him and find his family through social media. Four serial numbers were also etched into the mess kit, which were traced to Funk, who fought with the 83rd Division, 330th Infantry, and who died in Philadelphia at age 55.

"He ate off of that mess kit," said Bob Funk, 60, one of Hudson Funk's five children.

His brother Leroy, 75, said their father never spoke of the incident when he was maimed and never told any stories about the war - and the family never asked. Years after Hudson Funk died, the family found columns that he had written for a Roxborough newspaper in which he recounted vivid memories of combat in Normandy and Luxembourg. "He wrote that the medics were the real heroes and that he had laid on the battlefield for an hour and a half, and was rescued by them," Leroy Funk said.

The recovery of the relic would have made his father "very happy and very proud and also emotional," he said. "He would have been overwhelmed by the whole thing."

When family members received word that the mess kit was being returned, they came from as far as Kentucky and Florida to be at the Tuesday night event together. "Thank you so much. You are so wonderful," Karen Richard, one of Hudson Funk's two daughters, said to Glyn Nightingale, an Englishman who unearthed the kit and returned it to the family.

Nightingale said he had just been following his avid interest in the 83rd Division. He said that he had purchased a vacation home near the battlefield and had found thousands of artifacts. The mess kit, he said, was on a friend's farm nearby.

Nightingale, an engineer, said that he posted a photograph of the item on Facebook with the information he could find, and a Funk relative who was interested in genealogy found his post. While visiting the United States, he also returned the dog tags of another soldier and went to an exhibition to collect and trade other items.

"We never saw this coming," said Bob Funk, who lives in Cape Coral, Fla., adding he hadn't seen his family in more than 20 years. He said the discovery immediately brought the family together after members had moved to different locations and lost touch.

For him, the discovery brought back fond memories of the family but also bitter feelings about the toll that a war takes on soldiers and their families. "I feel cheated. I never got to have a beer with my father," he said, adding his father had become nervous after the war and did not want to talk about it.

Leroy Funk, of Ocean City, N.J., said he, too, was shaken by his father's injuries. When his father returned home, he had "wooden legs that were held up by a belt around his waist."

"When my father had his legs blown off, I was 4 years old," he said. "My mom was home with two children when she got the Western Union telegraph from the government. She was a hero, too," he said, saying it was a struggle because his father was disabled.

Funk said Roxborough held fund-raisers and later purchased a house for the family because his father, a former trolley operator, could not work. In the news articles, his father wrote about the generosity and kindness of the community, he said. But he also wrote of the dark days, especially the day he lay on the battlefield after stepping on a "bouncing Betty mine" that shattered his legs. Hudson Funk had also written about how a German sniper hit him in the helmet and also in a finger as he lay wounded. Hudson Funk was awarded a Purple Heart.

The mess kit, Leroy Funk said, brought tears to his eyes: "It means a lot. It [the war] was something we never talked about or discussed, and it's part of our family and our life, and the life we didn't have with him."

jhefler@phillynews.com

856-779-3224 @JanHefler