US Army Corporal Charles Henry Stype was born in Jefferson, Ohio on January 8, 1921, the son of Henry A. Stype Jr. (1894-1941) and Kathryn Collins Hull (1896-1992). His father supported his family as a pharmacist, who owned his own retail drug store in Wooster, Ohio from 1926 until his sudden death. His son Charles attended military school and upon completion entered the US Army as a Lieutenant. While stationed at Ft. Benning in August 1943, he would marry Pensacolian Mary L. Anderson, graduate of Tate High School in the Class of 1938. However, he left the Army shortly afterwards only to reenter as a private on August 30, 1944 in Cleveland, Ohio. He was assigned to the 36th Tank Battalion of the 8th Armored Division and went overseas shortly thereafter.
Charles said goodbye to his bride and his new daughter Sandra Sue (1944) as he prepared to head overseas. She was the daughter of John Henry Anderson and Annie Anderson whose father was an employee of Escambia County. As a member of the 36th Tank Battalion, Charles saw his share of heavy fighting as they approached the Rhine River. On the morning of March 5, 1945, he and his regiment were part of a task force ordered to seize the towns of Lintfort and Rheinberg before capturing the bridge across the Rhine. Expecting only light resistance, they passed through Lintfort and approached Rheinberg where they found a substantial enemy force waiting for them. The fierce fighting went on all day and when it was finally over they had lost 41 tanks and 131 men either dead, missing, or wounded. The company commander "Captain Kemble "Cowboy" Tucker's final radio message, after his arm had been shot away, was "I am a one-armed Cowboy now --- let's go, Cowboys." He was killed in action shortly afterwards. The list of dead also included Corporal Charles Henry Stype, whose wife and daughter were waiting at home to hear from him.
Sadly, the only communication they received was from the War Department informing Mary that Charles had been killed in action. Today, he rests in the Margraten Military Cemetery, Netherlands among his fellow soldiers that paid the extreme price for our freedom. After the war, Mary went on with her life and by 1948 she and her daughter were living at 302 Corry Road in Warrington while she ran the Windham Beauty Shop.
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