A-20G Havoc (J was the same but with slightly different engines)
Welcome home buddies.
Posted on 02/15/2008 1:36:57 PM PST by Dubya
Missing WWII Airmen Are Identified
The Department of Defense POW/Missing Personnel Office (DPMO) announced today that the remains of three U.S. servicemen, missing from World War II, have been identified and will be returned to their families for burial with full military honors.
They are 2nd Lt. John F. Lubben, of Wisconsin Rapids, Wis.; Sgt. Albert A. Forgue, of North Providence, R.I.; and Sgt. Charles L. Spiegel, of Chicago, Ill.; all U.S. Army Air Forces. They will be buried on April 18 in Arlington National Cemetery near Washington, D.C.
Representatives from the Army met with the next-of-kin of these men in their hometowns to explain the recovery and identification process and to coordinate interment with military honors on behalf of the Secretary of the Army.
On Dec. 12, 1944, these men crewed an A-20J Havoc aircraft departing from Coullomiers, France, to bomb enemy targets near Wollseifen, Germany. The aircraft was last seen entering a steep dive near Cologne, Germany. Several searches and investigations of this area and reviews of wartime documents failed to provide information concerning the incident.
In 1975, a German company clearing wartime mines and unexploded ordnance near Simmerath, Germany, reported the discovery of a gravesite northeast of Simmerath where American servicemembers were buried. U.S. officials evaluated the remains and determined they represented three individuals, but they could not make identifications at that time. The remains were subsequently buried as unknowns in the Ardennes American Military Cemetery in Neupre, Belgium.
In 2003, the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command (JPAC) was notified that a group of German citizens had information correlating the three servicemembers who were buried as unknowns with the crew from the 1944 A-20J crash. Based on that information, JPAC exhumed the three unknown graves from the Ardennes American Military Cemetery in 2005.
Among dental records, other forensic identification tools and circumstantial evidence, scientists from JPAC and the Armed Forces DNA Identification Laboratory also used mitochondrial DNA in the identification of the remains.
For additional information on the Defense Department’s mission to account for missing Americans, visit the DPMO web site at http://www.dtic.mil/dpmo/ or call (703) 699-1169.
If I read this correctly, the airmen were buried. At that time, the Germans were bad, bad, bad! But...they treated their enemies in a humane manner. Fast forward to war in Muslim land..........
Requesting prayer for the family, friends, and loved ones of Sgt. Albert A. Forgue, of North Providence, R.I.
Requesting prayer for the family, friends, and loved ones of Sgt. Charles L. Spiegel, of Chicago, Ill.
We always bring our sons home be 1 year or 100 years in the past.
You don't really have to fast forward. Same war, different enemy - Japan.
Welcome home and RIP brothers.
Other than the 10 million who died in death camps, the US soldiers and Beglians at Malmedy, almost anyone on the Eastern front...
Welcome Home Airmen.
A-20G Havoc (J was the same but with slightly different engines)
Welcome home buddies.
Well no. That's a post WW-II thing for the most part. As Colin Powell told the previous Archbishop of Canterbury in January of 2003:
"We have gone forth from our shores repeatedly over the last hundred years and we’ve done this as recently as the last year in Afghanistan and put wonderful young men and women at risk, many of whom have lost their lives, and we have asked for nothing except enough ground to bury them in, and otherwise we have returned home to seek our own, you know, to seek our own lives in peace, to live our own lives in peace."
But we did try to identify them and see that they have a proper resting place. And we still are doing that.
Welcome Home Airmen and thank you JPAC.
Welcome home boys and prayers for their families...
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.