Home At Last: WWII soldier's remains returned after 63 years
By Monte Mitchell
JOURNAL REPORTER
JEFFERSON - Sixty-three years after Lawrence Burkett disappeared in World War II, the Ashe County soldier, husband and father is coming home.
His children, Gladys Shatley, Katherine Gentry and Bill Burkett, expect to meet the plane carrying their fatherÕs remains at the Raleigh-Durham International Airport today.
German volunteers searching for missing soldiers found the remains near the Siegfried Line along the border between Germany and France. When their metal detectors found shell fragments, they dug down four feet and found his dog tags, still clearly legible. The U.S. militaryÕs Central Identification Laboratory in Hawaii used mouth swabs from two cousins to confirm DNA results that proved the identity of the remains.
On Saturday, Army Pvt. Lawrence Burkett will finally be laid to rest in his church cemetery next to his wife, Dora. She died in 1994, knowing that her husband was killed in Germany, but never able to find out what happened to his body.
Burkett, who was 28 when he died in 1944, had been missing twice as long as he was alive.
ÒI think (Mama) really thought Daddy would come back (alive),Ó said Gladys Shatley, who was 10 the day her father left for the war. Katherine was 7.
Bill Burkett was five days old when his father left for the war. After all this time, his voice cracks when he talks about his fatherÕs departure.
As news has spread, people keep telling the siblings that the discovery will help bring closure. And while BurkettÕs children say they are thrilled that their father is coming home, theyÕve found that itÕs been painful, stirring up a past that they thought was settled, even if unsatisfactorily.
Ò(Mama) would say ÔIf Lawrence had come home, things would have been a whole lot different,ÕÓ Gentry said.
Faded black-and-white photographs stir the sistersÕ memories and are the few images Bill Burkett has of his father. A photograph shows Lawrence Burkett with Dora in 1933 on their wedding day. He looks like a young Ernest Hemingway, in shirt and tie with his thick hair combed back.
HeÕs smiling, just as he is in a photograph as he stands beside Dora, as Gladys and Katherine smile, too.
HeÕs smiling in a favorite family photo, one that shows him looking big and strong on a bear hunt. The bear dangles from a pole, with him holding up one end and two other men holding up the back end.
His girls remember their daddy going off to hunt bears. They had a bearskin rug in their home for years, until it got so old that all the hairs fell out.
The girls remember standing in the back of their daddyÕs old Ford pickup, with mama in the front as he drove the family down to the river to fish.
Ashe County was a far different place in the 1930 and Õ40s, cut off by topography and bad roads from much of the rest of the state. Roads were mainly dirt, and people were self-sufficient.
He worked as a carpenter, building homes mainly. He kept a garden, and raised pigs and chickens. He hunted for raccoons.
And he sang in the Friendship Baptist Church choir and in a quartet.
ÒHe was the best bass singer in Ashe County,Ó Shatley said.
His big smile is gone as he looks grim-faced at the camera in photographs showing him in his Army uniform.
Drafted into the war in April 1944, he was allowed a furlough to come home for BillÕs birth on Aug. 23, 1944. Five days later, he returned to Fort McClellan, Ala., and soon shipped off to Europe.
On Dec. 6, 1944, he was with the 90th U.S. Infantry Division as it crossed the flood-swollen Saar River in assault boats. Soldiers fought house-to-house and pillbox-to-pillbox. Fighting was especially fierce because the American Army was now moving into the German homeland. U.S. troops advanced on the city of Dillingen, in a hilly and heavily-forested area of Bavaria.
It snowed and rained heavily on Dec. 10, soaking and freezing the men in foxholes, according to an Army history. It was also the day on which the Germans launched a coordinated counterattack to try to push the U.S. forces back across the river.
Lawrence Burkett was on sentry duty in the early morning of Dec. 11, 1944, as German troops attacked from the north and northeast. Mortar shells rained down on the Americans.
The family says that a soldier from nearby Independence, Va., saw Burkett get hit but couldnÕt go check on him at first because it was too dangerous. Later, the man reached Burkett but found him cold to the touch.
The Germans pushed through that area before BurkettÕs body could be recovered. The Americans would push back and drive into Dillingen three days later, but BurkettÕs body was one of 30 U.S. servicemen not found after the battle. BurkettÕs family speculates that a mortar shell could have hit nearby and covered the body with dirt.
The Army sent a telegram to Dora Burkett telling her that her husband was missing in action. A few days later came another telegram saying that Burkett had been killed in action.
ÒIÕll never forget that day the man brought that to the door,Ó Gladys Shatley said. ÒIt wasnÕt a serviceman. It was just a man from the drug store. I remember the man coming up to the door and telling us about it. I think (Mama) just broke down.Ó
On May 11, 1946, Dora Burkett wrote a letter to an Army adjutant general: ÒI am writing concerning the death and burial of my husband,Ó she said. ÒI have never received any information in regards to any burial, and would greatly appreciate any information you can give me, especially as to the location and number or markings of his grave, if there was a burial.Ó
After other letters, she received this reply on Dec. 10, 1951: ÒIt is with deep regret that your government finds it necessary to inform you that further search and investigation have failed to reveal the whereabouts of your husbandÕs remains. Since all efforts to recover and/or identify his remains have failed, it has been necessary to declare that his remains are not recoverableÉ. May the knowledge of your husbandÕs honorable service to his country be a source of sustaining comfort to you.Ó
She never remarried. She received government death benefits and managed to feed her children by gardening and keeping cows, chickens and pigs. Her children say they donÕt know how she did all that she did.
Last July, an Army historian started calling Burketts in Ashe County and found a cousin who directed him to Bill Burkett. ItÕs possible, the man told him, that your fatherÕs dog tags have been found.
A nonprofit German association - the Verein zur Bergung Gefallener in Osteuropa - had come across shell fragments in the forest. They dug and found bones and dog tags. They alerted local authorities, who informed U.S. authorities.
In June 2006, the U.S. Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command conducted an archaeological dig in a forest near Dillingen. The remains were taken to the worldÕs largest forensic anthropology lab, the Central Identification Laboratory.
The story touched people in Germany.
ÒWe want to help to give those still missing their names back, to give them a grave,Ó said Hans Peter Jung, a member of the VBGO who was quoted in a full-page spread that a German newspaper published about the discovery of BurkettÕs remains.
The German newspaper included a photograph of Lawrence and Dora Burkett on their wedding day in North Carolina 74 years ago, a photograph e-mailed to Germany by their son.
Bill Burkett said he was dumbfounded when the Army told him how many U.S. service personnel are still missing from various wars. The Central Identification Laboratory identifies about two service members a week. There are more than 78,000 service members still missing from WWII.
On March 30, officials notified the family that the remains were Lawrence BurkettÕs. Three weeks ago, an Army official came to Jefferson to brief the family. Bill Burkett was handed his fatherÕs dog tags. He said he felt like the familyÕs questions were finally answered.
ÒIÕve heard about my daddy all these years, and you think about what would it have been like if he were here,Ó Burkett said.
If you go
Services for Lawrence Burkett will begin at 3 p.m. Saturday at Friendship Baptist Church in Jefferson. To get there from Jefferson, turn onto N.C. 16 heading north, then turn right onto Friendship Baptist Church Road. The family will receive visitors at the church from 1 to 3 p.m.
© 2007 Winston-Salem Journal. The Winston-Salem Journal is a Media General newspaper.