Some stolen World War II mementos returned

It could have been a thief's pang of conscience, or perhaps fear of being caught.

Some of the World War II memorabilia stolen from a Bohemia office a month ago was found at a side entrance to the building Tuesday afternoon.

The shadow box snatched in a break-in on Oct. 27 was found by an employee of Concept Components, with the dog tags and picture of U.S. Army Ranger Francis McGuigan still inside, his grandson, James McGuigan, the business owner, said.

The Purple Heart, Combat Infantryman Badge and other decorations earned by Francis McGuigan were still missing, but Rep. Steve Israel (D-Huntington) had provided replacements for those items during a news conference Monday at James McGuigan's specialty machine shop on Knickerbocker Avenue.

"I'm ecstatic," McGuigan, a Sayville resident, said Tuesday. He said the box was found in the early afternoon by a workman, but it could not have been there long because the door on the south side of the building is used regularly, and the box was dry, despite recent rain.

He said the picture and the dog tags were the only items that could be identified, and that might have been why they were returned. "I don't care. I didn't want to press charges. The dog tags were all I asked for," McGuigan said.

The shadow box had been hanging on a wall near a window of McGuigan's ground-floor office when someone broke the window on the night of Oct. 27. It was the only item taken, and McGuigan speculated that the thief saw the motion detectors in the well-lit office and decided not to come in through the broken window.

"It was probably some stupid kid or whatever. I'm very fortunate to have these back," he said.

Francis McGuigan, who lived most of his life in Brentwood and died in 2002, was one of six men in his 60-man unit who survived a D-Day assault on the cliffs overlooking an invasion beach to take out large enemy guns. He was wounded later in the Battle of the Bulge and in nother action, his grandson said.

He said he did not know what unit his grandfather was with during the assault. Military records were incomplete, according to Israel's staff, but McGuigan was a heavy machine-gunner and a Ranger, and was in the 112th Infantry at some point in his military career.