The real beauty of the purchase is that the reason I have been looking for this DUI for so long is that this is the regiment my grandfather served in during World War II. Several years ago I put together a shadowbox of his medals, badges, SSI's and rank insignia from his WWII service plus 27 years in the Georgia National Guard and Army Reserve. I was able to find all of the other insignia but I was never able to locate a 343rd DUI or if I did find one on e-Bay it always sold for a really high price. Anyway, regardless of the rarity of this particular DUI I can finally add it to the shadowbox. Unfortunately, my grandfather won't see it since he passed away last year. However, I have the shadowbox at my house and I plan to display it along with the flag presented at his funeral.
By the way, I always thought my grandfather's national guard service was interesting. He enlisted in 1952 and because of his WWII service he went in as a sergeant and within about six months he was commissioned. Originally, his unit was infantry (121st of the 48th Infantry Division). When the 48th was reorganized as the 48th Armored Division, his unit was redesignated the 162nd Tank Battalion. Finally, a few years later, the unit was redesignated as the 560th Engineer Battalion. Ironically, he was never really transferred between units. Instead, the units were simply redesignated and whoever happened to be serving at the time was simply retrained in a new MOS. Thus my grandfather served as an infantry platoon leader, a tank platoon leader and an engineer platoon leader and company commander while serving with basically the same group of guys all from the same small town in Georgia for most of his career.
