Blake Hall
WWII veteran Eligio Ramos spent a few nights in a Austrian farmhouse while serving in 1945. His most treasured possessions, such as photographs of his family and old letters, were stored inside his wallet. To keep his wallet safe, Ramos stowed it beneath the floorboards of the farmhouse.
Unfortunately, that wallet would say there for much longer than the now 91 year-old veteran ever expected. After that fateful night, Ramos and the 250th Field Artillery marched on to continue fighting across Western Europe. Eventually, Ramos and his battalion even liberated a concentration camp.
Meanwhile, the wallet remained lost.
“They went through so many little villages and stuff and he didn’t even think about the wallet anymore. They had other problems,” Rosando Ramos, Eligo’s son, said.
The wallet was found by the farmhouse’s new owner, Dr. Josef Ruckhofer, of Salzburg, Austria. After examining the wallet’s contents, he found Ramos’ old Army card and used that information to track him down. A few emails and one international package later, a bundle of irreplaceable family artifacts were returned.
Check out a few of the vintage photographs preserved in that long lost wallet.
