Salinger, Jerome David (32325200)

Jerome David Salinger
Personal details
Birth name	J. D. Salinger
Born	1 January 1919 New York City, New York
Died	27 January 2010 Cornish, New Hampshire
Military service
Allegiance	United States
Branch	United States Army
ASN	32325200
Rank	Sergeant

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Jerome David Salinger (1 January 1919 – 27 January 2010), known as J. D. Salinger, was a United States Army counterintelligence soldier who completed a Counter Intelligence Corps course at Camp Ritchie, Maryland, in November 1943 and served with the 4th Infantry Division from D-Day to the end of the war, and who became the author of The Catcher in the Rye.

Biography

Jerome David Salinger was born on 1 January 1919 in Manhattan, New York City, the son of Sol Salinger, a dealer in kosher cheese, and Marie (Miriam) Jillich; he had one older sister, Doris. He attended public schools on Manhattan's West Side and the McBurney School, and graduated in June 1936 from Valley Forge Military Academy in Wayne, Pennsylvania, where he began writing stories and was literary editor of the yearbook. He spent a year at New York University, worked for a time in the meat-import business in Vienna and Bydgoszcz, Poland, and attended Ursinus College for a semester in 1938. In 1939 he took Whit Burnett's writing class at Columbia University, and his first story, "The Young Folks," appeared in Burnett's Story magazine in 1940. In December 1941 he worked briefly as an entertainer and activities director on the cruise ship MS Kungsholm in the Caribbean, and that month The New Yorker accepted "Slight Rebellion off Madison," his first story featuring Holden Caulfield, though it was not published until 1946.

Salinger was drafted into the Army in early 1942. On 3 October 1943 he was transferred to the Counter Intelligence Corps at Fort Holabird, Maryland, and on 15 November 1943, as a corporal, he was assigned by special order to Company G at Camp Ritchie for the two-week Counter Intelligence Course (Special Class B-6), which he completed on 26 November 1943; he was released from Camp Ritchie on 28 November 1943 and returned to Fort Holabird. Assigned to the 207th CIC Detachment attached to the 12th Infantry Regiment of the 4th Infantry Division, he received further CIC training in Britain, where before D-Day he completed six chapters of a novel about a character much like his teenage self. He landed at Utah Beach on D-Day and served through the Battle of Hürtgen Forest and the Battle of the Bulge, using his French and German to interrogate prisoners; during the campaign he met Ernest Hemingway, who admired his writing. In April 1945 he entered Kaufering IV, a subcamp of Dachau. He rose to staff sergeant and served in five campaigns. The war affected him deeply, and after Germany's defeat he spent several weeks in a civilian hospital in Nuremberg for combat stress. He then served six months of denazification duty with the CIC in Germany, living in Weißenburg, where he married Sylvia Welter; he brought her to the United States in April 1946, but the marriage ended within months.

Salinger's story "A Perfect Day for Bananafish" appeared in The New Yorker in 1948, and The Catcher in the Rye (1951) was an immediate and lasting success whose portrayal of adolescent alienation made it widely influential. He followed it with Nine Stories (1953), Franny and Zooey (1961), and Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction (1963); his last published work, the novella Hapworth 16, 1924, appeared in The New Yorker in 1965. Stories such as "For Esmé—with Love and Squalor" drew on his war experiences. In 1953 he moved to Cornish, New Hampshire, and increasingly withdrew from public life. He married Claire Douglas in 1955, and they had two children before divorcing; he later married for a third time. Salinger died of natural causes at his home in Cornish on 27 January 2010, aged 91.

Research notes

• 207th CIC
• J. D. Salinger: A Life
• CIC Short Course
• Novelist, "The Catcher in the Rye"

Gallery

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Technical record

Field	Imported value
Approx Age at Death	91
row_source	demographics

Timeline

• Born 1 January 1919 in New York City.
• June 1936 — Graduated from Valley Forge Military Academy.
• 1940 — First story published in Story magazine.
• December 1941 — Worked briefly as an entertainer on the MS Kungsholm.
• 1942 — Drafted into the U.S. Army.
• 3 October 1943 — Transferred to the Counter Intelligence Corps at Fort Holabird, MD.
• 15 November 1943 — Started 2-week Counter Intelligence Course (B-6) at Camp Ritchie.
• 6 June 1944 — Landed at Utah Beach.
• April 1945 — Entered Kaufering IV concentration camp.
• 1951 — Published The Catcher in the Rye.
• 1953 — Moved to Cornish, New Hampshire.
• 27 January 2010 — Died in Cornish, New Hampshire.
• On Nov. 15, 1943 Special Order 274 Para. 9 assigned Cpl Jerome D. Salinger ASN 32325200 to Company G where he completed Special Class B-6 on Nov 26, 1943. He was released from duty at Camp Ritchie on Nov. 28, 1943.
• Returned to Fort Holabird.
• Assigned to 207th CIC Detachment attached to 4th Infantry Division.
• Joined 4th Infantry Division.

Sources

• J. D. Salinger — Wikipedia
• Camp Ritchie Museum, Inc. (The Ritchie History Museum), Classes 1–31 roster data
• Dan Gross research spreadsheets, including original Excel timeline/roster work, combined with other research and records
• NARA World War II Army enlistment records (where a NARA ASN is present)
• 1940 U.S. Census (where a census match is present)
• Dan Gross, Timeline of Jerome D. Salinger for Camp Ritchie (private research document; 2 source documents reviewed)
• Dan Gross, Timeline of Salinger, Jerome D. for Camp Ritchie (private research files; selected non-private narrative findings; 2 source files: J. D. SALINGER.doc, J. D. SALINGER.docx.doc)