Thank you for the help.

This is my uncle, my dad's brother. Appreciate seeing Lee's medals and photos!

The NY WWI Service Abstracts on ancestry.com are a great resource for researching NY residents who served in the Navy during  the "Great War."  I don't know of any other state other than maybe PA where you can generally deduce online what WWI Victory service clasp a Navy serviceman might have had without ordering their OPF from NARA St. Louis.  Like the cards for Hilliard posted here (b. Asheville, NC),  my great-uncle (b. Mapleton, MN) became a NYC transplant and a couple years later enlisted in the Navy at 23 for four years, serving from 1912-16.    I'm posting his NY service abstract cards as an illustration of the case where a man was attached  (given orders, as opposed to being a passenger in transit)  to more than one ship during  WWI and so might qualify for more than one service clasp, as my ancestor did.   The Navy only officially issued one clasp and didn't authorize wearing more than one Victory Medal service clasp on the medal's drape.   My uncle finished his four-year hitch in July 1916 and was honorably discharged as a quartermaster 2nd class (QMC2) having served primarily on destroyers.    Less than a year later, he volunteered for duty in May 1917.  Given his prior service he was rated  a quartermaster chief petty officer (QMC) in the newly created US Naval Reserve Force (USNRF) and assigned to shore duty at the Newport, RI Naval Training Station.    He was antsy to get back to sea and join the fray in the North Atlantic and wrote to request "duty in the War Zone".  His request was ignored  since he was regarded as more useful training new recruits.  He was promoted to ensign in January 1918 and that April they finally detached him from shore training duty at Newport and ordered him to the USS Arizona, then only a couple years old and deemed too valuable to risk sending overseas to face the perils of the U-boat wolf-packs.   During WWI, Arizona was used for ceremonies and as a gunnery training ship.  My uncle was assigned to command one of the five inch gun crews for five months, from May to September 1918.   Near the end of the war,  his request to go to the "War Zone"  was finally honored and he was attached to the mine-layer USS Saranac, one of ten converted mine-layers in the all-volunteer Mine Squadron One, operating from Inverness, Scotland.   So while his five months on USS Arizona sailing up and down the Atlantic Coast qualified him for the "Atlantic Fleet" clasp,  his subsequent six weeks on USS Saranac before Armistice Day qualified him for the scarcer "Mine Laying" clasp which is what the Navy issued him.    I've not studied the regs, but my assumption based on my uncle's service and the single service clasp he was issued for his WWI Victory medal is that if a man qualified for more than one clasp, the Navy issued the one for the latest service.   Also, I believe that even a single day's duty attached to a qualifying ship during the qualifying period would rate a service clasp for the WWI Victory medal.  If either of these assumptions are wrong, I trust someone will correct it.      

Thanks, John. I took a look at your article which was fascinating. I also brought home how scarce these patterns are.

Greetings,   Wanted to give a quick update on the 12th Division uniform. Several weeks ago I picked up a copy of the 12th Division roster off Ebay and searched for the name of Walter Davis, the name found on the liner of the tunic. Using the medical collar disc on the coat as a guide to try and narrow down on a name, I found one Private Walter Davis assigned to the camp infirmary staff of Field Hospital No. 248, 12th Sanitary Train:   ROSTER, PLYMOUTH (12TH) DIVISION Pg. 127   Best Regards, -J.D.

I agree it would have been nice if everything could have stayed together as a group.  

I looked once for holes and didn’t find them but will look again. Thanks for your thoughts. If I find the holes and can photo them I will post. Appreciate it!

I meant to ask, are there holes in the jacket where wings had been?  If there are that might potentially point to either LGB or Amcraft as the maker.  Companies tended to me pretty consistent to where they mounted their hardware.  Personally I am leaning towards the wings in the photo being LGB.  I see a bit of flare in the upper shield like the LGB wings have.  The Amcraft wings have less such flare.

So, I believe I have figured out some of this man’s story. It appears that this man fought with the 771st TD Battalion until December 1944 when he was hospitalized. After hospitalization, he was transferred to the 850th Aviation Engineers as a mechanic.

U.S. Military Assistance Command, Vietnam "Saigon Enlisted Mess, Open". Japanese-made "W Dragon".