"Army Pilot Killed in WWII Buried in Okla.
CLAYTON BELLAMY
TULSA, Okla. - A World War II Army pilot killed nearly 60 years ago but long classified as missing in action was buried Friday in his hometown next to his brother.
A bugler played taps, five soldiers fired a three-shot volley and four World War II training fighters flew overhead at a traditional military ceremony for 2nd Lt. William M. Lewis.
"It is finished," said Sharon Cross, who was about 6 months old when her father died. "I feel complete for the first time."
Lewis' P-51 fighter was shot down Sept. 11, 1944, over eastern Germany during a fierce air battle in which 57 U.S. aircraft were lost. Lewis' plane was last seen nose-diving into a forest.
A German naturalist, Adelbert Wolf, found Lewis' wreckage and buried what remains he could find in a field near Oberhof. Wolf marked the grave with a cross and tended it for decades.
About a decade before the Berlin Wall fell, Wolf notified an American about the grave, and a U.S. delegation visited the site but was not permitted by the Communist government to exhume the remains.
Lewis' grave remained in obscurity until Cross, motivated in 2001 by the film "Saving Private Ryan," decided to search for her father. A family friend, computer consultant Ken Breaux, found a Czech aviation buff and battle historian, Jan Zdiarsky, over the Internet. Lewis was found.
A U.S. recovery team spent a month excavating the crash site and grave in 2002. After official identification, Lewis' remains were returned to Cross two months ago.
"So many people came together to see that my father came home," Cross said. "It's the most amazing thing I have ever seen."
About 78,000 soldiers are still missing in action from World War II, and about 30 bodies are found, identified and brought home each year.
Lewis is buried next to his brother, Ted Lewis, who died Sept. 30, 1944, in a bomber crash near Walla Walla, Wash.
A new headstone will replace one engraved "Missing In Action" that has marked the gravesite for decades."