Another Two Are Home
DPAA has identified and accounted for the following formerly-missing US military personnel.
• 1st Lt. Frederick W. Langhorst, 1330 Army Air Force Base Unit, Air Transport Command, U.S. Army Air Forces, US Army, was lost on 17 July 1945 in India. He was accounted for on 17 March 2016.
• SFC Alan L. Boyer, Command and Control Detachment, 5th Special Forces Group, US Army, was lost on 28 March 1968 in Laos. He was accounted for on 16 March 2016.
Our apologies that your return took so long, elder brothers-in-arms. Welcome back.
You’re home now. Rest in peace.
. . .
Over 73,000 US personnel remain unaccounted for from World War II; over 7,800 US personnel remain unaccounted for from the Korean War; and over 1,600 remain unaccounted for in Southeast Asia (SEA). Comparison of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) from recovered remains against mtDNA from a matrilineal descendant can assist in making a positive ID for unidentified remains that have already been recovered, or which may be recovered in the future.
DPAA’s web site now has what appears to be a decent “Contact Us” page. The page doesn’t have instructions concerning who can and cannot submit a mtDNA sample or how to submit one, but the POCs listed there may be able to refer you to someone who can answer that question – or may be able to answer the question themselves. If you think you might possibly qualify, please contact one of those POCs for further information.
If your family lost someone in one of these conflicts and you qualify to submit a mtDNA sample, please arrange to submit one. By doing that you just might help identify the remains of a US service member who’s been repatriated but not yet been identified – as well as a relative of yours, however distant. Or you may help to identify remains to be recovered in the future.
Everybody deserves a proper burial. That’s especially true for those who gave their all while serving this nation.
Category: No Longer Missing
Welcome home, men.
Drink up on the Green and then rest well.
You have earned it.
In regard to SFC Boyer, this link is from the Virtual Wall:
http://www.virtualwall.org/db/BoyerAL01a.htm
An Illinois boy says thank you and welcome home. God Bless.
Welcome home brothers. Rest in peace in your home soil now. God be with your families.
Welcome home gentlemen. Rest in Peace.
I’m not sure where to start with this so I’ll begin with a name: Clayton Kuhles. He’s an American from Prescott, AZ and a mountain climber in more ways than one. Some 14 years ago he was in Burma when he learned from a mountain guide about the wreckage of a plane. He had the guide lead him to it, found the wrecked aircraft, removed the tags, and turned them into the American embassy. What followed were both a fiasco and a godsend. The godsend was that the event prompted Kuhles to dedicate himself to finding aircraft lost on The Hump. He has since found more than two dozen, along with the remains of their crews. The fiasco was that JPAC became involved and ultimately spent hundreds of thousands of dollars excavating… the wrong site. What’s more, it is alleged that JPAC is no stranger to lifting Kuhles’ good work from his website and serving it up as its own. But that’s a separate matter. This is about Clayton Kuhles, a man who has brought closure to dozens and dozens of families whose loved ones were lost on The Hump, and whose singular efforts to do so have resulted in the finding and repatriation of the remains of many missing crews. One American, properly motivated, can do what 100 others cannot.
It was Kuhles who found Langhorst’s C-109 and the remains of the crew.
Welcome home, lieutenant. Thank you, Mr. Kuhles.