HERCULANEUM, Mo. — A determined stranger recently tracked down Bill Haggard to give him some surprising news.
The man had a canteen that Haggard’s father, Casey Glenwood Haggard, carried as a soldier in the U.S. Army on the battlefields in World War II more than 80 years ago.
Bill Haggard, a former Herculaneum alderman and mayor, as well as a retired Herculaneum Fire chief, said the stranger reached out on Facebook.
“On New Year’s Eve, I got this Facebook friend request from someone I didn’t know and had never heard of,” Haggard said. “I didn’t respond to it. ‘I don’t know who you are,’ I thought.”
The next day, Haggard said, the same person reached out through Facebook Messenger.
“He told me he was sure I was the Bill Haggard he was looking for and he wanted me to call him,” Haggard said. “He said, ‘I looked you up.’ I said I still don’t know what we’re talking about.”
“He explained that he was at a knife and tool show in Johnson City (Tennessee) and came across this canteen. He said he was a collector of knives and World War II stuff, so he traded for it.”
Haggard said that might have been where the story ended were it not for Williams’ friend, Jim Robertson, who offered to do some research into the carvings – called “trench art” – on the canteen.
The canteen included Haggard’s father’s first name and initial, his serial number and the countries he had seen action in.
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