THE MAIL CAME THROUGH A BIT LATE Mrs. Fulmer And Album At Tioga Post Office THE MISSING PACKAGE 18-Year Mystery Solved BY GEORGE BURLAGE Record-Chronicle Staff Writer

     TIoga - During the first weeks following the landing on Utah Beach and the cracking of Hitler's Atlantic wall in 1944, SSgt. Carl Fulmer wrote his parents he had ordered an album about his organization and it would be sent home.

     The album has been received- 18 years later. Last week Tioga Postmaster Byron T. Worsham handed the album to Mrs. Allie Fulmer, widow and Gold Star Mother of World War II.      CARL, the next to the youngest of six sons of Mr. and Mrs James Robert Fulmer, never returned home alive. He was killed Sept. 22, 1944, as his unit, the 359th Infantry of the 93rd Division, fought its way toward Germany.

     Another son, Orang Fulmer of Pilot Point, was badly wounded with the 36th Division in Italy and draws total disability. Two other sons were in the army and two were in the air corps. Where had the album been for a possible 16 years? Worsham, who has been postmaster for 14 years, said it was in the Tioga post office all the time.
 
    "I took over this job 11 years ago and knew Carl Fulmer all my life," he said. "If anything had come addressed to him or the family, I would have delivered it personally to the family." HE SAID he and his staff have been cleaning out the old post office which had been used for several years. A new post office was opened in Tioga last March.

     "We had orders to clean out the old office and burn everything that wasn't of value," he continued. "Stuck among the piles of post office memoranda and letters was this little thin package." If there had been a date of cancellation on the package, it had disappeared in time. A notation in the corner read, "Postage Free," signifying a World War II privilege for service mail which expired about the first of 1947.

     The album was printed by Ferreiss & Co. in Nurnberg, Germany, according to the title page, but the date of printing was missing.

     "Carl's father often remarked about the letter his son wrote telling about the album," Mrs. Fulmer said. "He would periodically wonder what had happened to it." THE ELDER Fulmer died in 1953.

     Mrs. Fulmer said she hadn't been able to find her son's picture in the album." He wrote he should be in it," she recalled. "but also said he probably would be so small he would be difficult to pick out."

     However, the album does serve to tell Mrs. Fulmer and friends of the exploits of the 359th. Its 11 months and two days of action against the Germans will serve as a reminder to Mrs. Fulmer why young men must die in battle.

      And passages such as the following reveal the differences from the 190-acre Tioga farm where Carl was reared to the meeting of the enemy:
"CHAOTIC BEACHES and shattered villages offer first impressions, but very soon the hedgerows not only alter our impressions but our lives-
We fight in hedgerows
We live in hedgerows
We sleep in hedgerows."
    
Carl Fulmer found a long sleep on the battlefield and a temporary burial in a Luxenburg cemetery where his grave was adopted by a native woman. His body was re-buried in Tioga Cemetery following the war.