Three More Come Home
DPMO has announced the identification one US MIA from World War II and of two US MIAs from Korea.
- 1LT Robert G. Fenstermacher, 506th Fighter Squadron, 404th Fighter Group, US Army Air Forces, was lost on 26 December 1944 near Petergensfeld, Belgium. He was accounted for on 30 April 2013. He will be buried with full military honors in the fall of 2013 in Scranton, Pennsylvania.
- MSG Olen B. Williams, K Company, 3rd Battalion, 31st Infantry Regiment, 7th Infantry Division, US Army, was lost on 12 December 1950 near the Chosin Reservoir, North Korea. He was accounted for on 1 May 2013. He will be buried with full military honors on 9 June 2013 in Clanton, Alabama.
- PFC James L. Constant, Company A, 1st Battalion, 23rd Infantry Regiment, 2nd Infantry Division, US Army, was lost on 8 September 1950, near Changnyong, South Korea. He was accounted for on 1 May 2013. He will be buried with full military honors 18 May 2013 in Indianapolis, Indiana.
Welcome home, my elder brothers-in-arms. Rest in now peace.
. . .
Over 73,600 US personnel remain unaccounted for from World War II; over 7,900 US personnel remain unaccounted for from the Korean War; and over 1,640 remain unaccounted for in Southeast Asia. If you are a relative of one of the individuals listed here (World War II – critical need), listed here (Korea), or listed here (Southeast Asia) – please consider reading this link to see if you qualify to submit a mtDNA sample.
If you qualify to submit a mtDNA sample, please submit one. By submitting a mtDNA sample, you may be able to help identify US remains that have been recovered and repatriated but not yet positively identified.
Everybody deserves a proper burial. That’s especially true for those who gave their all in the service of this nation.
Category: No Longer Missing
Thanks for sharing. I am doing to call my “buddy” who fought with the 7th I’D as a 2nd Lt Infantry during the Korean War. He will enjoy this information!
Thank you for this post. Most of all I thank these mean for the ultimate sacrifice they gave to our country. I pray they rest in peace now. Welcome home my brothers. God bless your families.
Forgive my poor spelling, these “men”, not “mean”. They deserve better than my lack of spell check.
Thanks for the heads-up. The list of missing slowly grows shorter.
The fact that more than 73,000 Americans are still unaccounted for from WWII is really gobsmacking. That’s more than the total number of deaths we suffered in Vietnam and every post-Vietnam conflict combined. Really gives you a sense of what a gigantic endeavor WWII was.
I can only hope that one day my great uncle PFC Max L Bailey is returned to us
Co M 31st infantry. Lost on or about 30 November 1950
Welcome home.
Welcome Home, and may you now finally Rest in Peace.
Doc Bailey: I hope so too, amigo. I’d be honored and pleased to write that notice and post it here.
God willing, perhaps one day soon.
I left Vietnam about two hours before the Tet Offensive. I decided to finish my time in Korea as I didn’t want to come back to the conflict that was the anti-military occurring in the country at that time.
Back to this subject:
I was assigned to a small unit of about twenty in the north east corner of South Korea in the South Korean Military sector. There was a lot of debris of the battles that were fought over this terrain during the Korean war. North Korean infiltrators were also somewhat common.
One day a Korean woodcutter came to us and reported he found the remains of a US trooper. We made the contacts and a G&R team arrived a few days later and stayed with us.
After they recovered our fallen brother they told us: his remains were with two ROK soldiers laid side by side, no weapons, only a few grenades nearby, which appeared to be a battlefield execution.
I used to know the name of the fallen trooper, and his age would have been 35 at the time of his recovery. Back then I felt good that his family would have him back after all those years.
[…] probably read Hondo’s post about Army Pfc. James L. Constant coming home from Korea nearly 63 years after he was killed in the […]