5 World War II dead coming home at last
A staff report
The remains of five members of the U.S. Army Air Forces who died in Operation Market Garden in Holland during World War II have been identified and are being returned to their families for burial with full military honors.
The Department of Defense POW/Missing Personnel Office announced that:
• 1st Lt. Cecil W. Biggs of Teague, Texas, will be buried June 9 in Teague.
• 1st Lt. William L. Pearce of San Antonio was buried April 27 in Louisville, Ky.
• 2nd Lt. Thomas R. Yenner of Kingston, Pa., will be buried July 30 at Arlington National Cemetery.
• Tech. Sgt. Russell W. Abendschoen of York, Pa., will be buried June 13 at Arlington.
•Staff Sgt. George G. Herbst of Brooklyn, N.Y., will be buried June 8 at Arlington.
The men were flying a C-47A Skytrain on Sept. 21, 1944, to deliver Polish paratroopers to a drop zone south of Arnhem, Holland, in support of the U.S. ArmyÕs largest airborne operation.
ÒSoon after departing the drop zone, the plane crashed and there were no survivors,Ó a statement from the Pentagon said. ÒThe Germans opened the dikes in the region where the plane crashed and flooded the area before any remains could be recovered.Ó
When Dutch people returned to their homes in Arnhem the next year, they recovered remains from the SkytrainÕs wreckage and buried them in a nearby cemetery. A U.S. Army graves registration team later disinterred the remains, which were reburied as group remains in 1950 at the Zachary Taylor National Cemetery in Kentucky, the Pentagon said.
In 1994, a Dutch citizen located more human remains and other crew-related materials at a site associated with this C-47 crash. They eventually were turned over to U.S. officials.
Scientists from the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command and the Armed Forces DNA Identification Laboratory also used dental records and mitochondrial DNA in the identification of the remains of these five men.
©2007 - The Fayetteville (NC) Observer