Remains of Solder Lost in Korean War Found, Identified With Aid of Family's Blood Sample

WAHPETON, N.D. — More than a half-century after Pvt. Joseph Meyer Jr. disappeared while fighting in the Korean War, the Army has told his family his remains will be coming home.

Meyer was 17 when he left Wahpeton to enlist in the Army. He was declared missing in action in 1950, with few clues offered to his family.

I did some quick fact finding at Koreanwarpowmia.net and discovered that Private Joseph K Meyer was declared missing in action on Dec. 12, 1950. He was assigned to K Company, 3rd Battalion, 31st Regimental Combat Team, 7th Infantry Division.

This 3,000-man RCT was virtually wiped out just east of the Chosin Reservoir by the Chinese 80th, 81st, and 94th Divisions. The few survivors managed to link up with the 1st Marine Division at the reservoir shortly before the Devil Dogs made their famous march to the sea.

I thought you might find this interesting.

I have an elderly gentleman who often comes into the Lowe's store where I work who always wears a 31st RCT ballcap. I commented on it one day, and he informed me that he was a member of the 31st when they were captured at Bataan and he ended up spending the next three and a half years as a POW in Japan. He recuperated from this and rejoined the regiment just in time to be sent to Korea, where he was one of the few hundred who managed to escape the Chinese and link up with the Marines.

FOR MY BROTHER: REPORTED MISSING IN ACTION, 1943

from Selected Poems of Thomas Merton

Sweet brother, if I do not sleep
My eyes are flowers for your tomb;
And if I cannot eat my bread,
My fasts shall live like willows where you died.
If in the heat I find no water for my thirst,
My thirst shall turn to springs for you, poor traveller.

Where, in what desolate and smokey country,
Lies your poor body, lost and dead?
And in what landscape of disaster
Has your unhappy spirit lost its road?

Come, in my labor find a resting place
And in my sorrows lay your head,
Or rather take my life and blood
And buy yourself a better bed —
Or take my breath and take my death
And buy yourself a better rest.

When all the men of war are shot
And flags have fallen into dust,
Your cross and mine shall tell men still
Christ died on each, for both of us.

For in the wreckage of your April Christ lies slain,
And Christ weeps in the ruins of my spring;
The money of Whose tears shall fall
Into your weak and friendless hand,
And buy you back to your own land:

The silence of Whose tears shall fall
Like bells upon your alien tomb.
Hear them and come: they call you home.

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