Corporal Charles W. Vulyak was a gunner with the 127th AAA battalion (Mobile), Battery "B". He is third from the left in the group photograph of his gun crew. The picture was taken in early 1944 at a motor pool near Los Angeles.  

Corporal Vulyak and the battalion arrived at Liverpool on the converted British Cunard Passenger Liner the HMT Scythia, and then proceeded directly to Camp Blackshawmoor (Staffordshire) on 15th July 1944. On 3rd August 1944, the battalion set up their gun positions between St Margaret's and Dover. Their main camp was at Camp Swingate Down. The 127th was the first US Gun Battalion to be positioned between St Margaret's and Dover, alongside the Royal Regiment of Artillery, to protect Dover and London from the enemy  "Buzz Bombs".

After they fulfilled their duties on the cliffs of Dover, the battalion crossed the Channel and arrived in France (Omaha Beach) on 27th September 1944. Corporal Vulyak was wounded in Germany in October or November, and spent a long time in England in hospital before returning to the USA in April 1945.

His wife, the former Rose Ann Senffner, enlisted in the Woman's Army Corps in late 1944, and served in the USA as a nurse until February 1946, just after her marriage.

She is second from left in the photograph, shovelling snow at Fort Des Moines, Iowa WAC camp. The picture was taken around February 1945, before she went as a nurse to an Army Air Force base in Mississippi. There she treated wounded GIs. 

with thanks to Charles W. Vulyak, Jr