Army & Navy - MEDALS: Mother's Boy

After her farmer-husband died, Mrs. Lessie Mills, of Fort Meade, Fla., took to babying the youngest of her five children. As a result, Jimmy Mills got to be known as "mama's pet," grew up so timid that he was afraid to go to bed at night unless his mother were close at hand.

Painfully shy, he shunned school athletics for solitary quail-shooting in the woods, sprouted too rapidly to a frail and awkward 6 ft. 2 in.

When Jimmy was called up for induction early in 1943, he did not look his age, was classified 4-F because he was "immature." Calling...

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