Leonard Noreen's name and serial number were inscribed on the cup with "Smash and Drive," the motto of the 422nd Regiment. He also used it for a record of his military service, etching the places his unit was deployed and the dates, Hernando Today reported.

Noreen brought the cup home, but it vanished decades ago. He thinks one of his children took it to school.

Then last week, he got a call from Monica Hill of Owosso, Mich. She told him she found the cup 30 years ago in Hudson, N.Y., near where Noreen once lived in Averill Park.

Hill said she had been trying to trace him for years and finally succeeded through a genealogy Web site.

"I didn't start crying, but I was tremendously emotional. It's only a cup, but I carried that thing for years."

Noreen said that his unit got moved around a lot because they were shipped to "places where the war was being lost."

"When you're losing a war, you don't stay in one place for too long," he said.