History of The United States Army's 117th Infantry Regiment

30th Infantry Division

Memorial to Private John Herman Sippola

John Herman Sippola was born May 28^th, 1923 and was killed in action March 1^st 1945 in Germany while assigned to the 117^th Infantry Regiment. On September 1^st 1939, John’s mother Anna was shopping with his sister Johanna in Sacramento, California when the newspaperman on the corner shouted, “Extra, Extra, Read All About it – War!” announcing the German invasion into Poland. John’s mother started to cry. She knew her eldest son John would have to go to war almost six years before he was killed.

John was born on a fruit farm north of Sacramento on the outskirts of Loomis to Finnish immigrants John August Sippola and Anna Johanna Rytkonen Sippola. They
owned a family fruit farm where John was born. He had one older sister Aune, a younger sister Johanna and two younger brothers William and Thomas. His brothers also served in the military. John was drafted into the Army in January of 1943, participated in training at Camp Barkeley Texas, and Atterbury, Indiana. The last time his family saw him alive, is when he briefly returned home on furlough, before he deployed overseas.

Initially, he was assigned to a unit in England as an ambulance driver, before he was assigned to the front lines in the 117^th Infantry Regiment in February 1945. After initially reported as “missing” by the War Department, he is believed to have been killed by shrapnel on March 1^st 1945. It is also believed he was likely killed somewhere in the vicinity of the Battle for Cologne.

Johanna was working at the Army Signal Depot in Sacramento, when she received the news via telephone that her brother had been killed. She caught a Greyhound bus home to find her grief-stricken father and mother. John’s body was temporarily buried in Europe until it could be repatriated to the family plot at the cemetery in Rocklin, California sometime after 1948.