World War II pilot's remains finally coming home to Akron
Brian Albrecht
Plain Dealer Reporter
April 4, 1945. It's his 35th and last required mission as World War II in Europe winds into its final month.
Just drop the bombs, then head back home to Akron.
He's the 24-year-old co-pilot of a B-24 Liberator bomber nicknamed "Trouble N Mind," flying 10,000 feet
over Havelberg, Germany.
Suddenly there's the flash of a German fighter -- a jet, Messerschmitt 262, Hitler's last secret weapon. Too
few, too late to change the outcome of the war, but still deadly.
The bomber's cockpit fills with smoke and fire. Bail out! He jumps, his parachute flaming. Falling fast. Too
fast. Hits the ground hard. Fatally.
Someone finds his body. Knocks out his gold fillings. Buries him in a shallow grave. Years pass. Decades.
Gone -- missing in action -- but not entirely lost.
Now, 64 years later, 1st Lt. Alden Hershiser is finally making that long-delayed trip home.
Hershiser's remains were dug out of the forest two years ago but were positively identified only last month.
He will be brought back to his hometown for burial on Sept. 11, Patriot Day.
He will be buried in Rose Hill Cemetery beside his father and mother -- who went to her death in 1978 never
giving up hope that somehow her son was still alive.
The discovery of his remains came as a surprise to his brother, Bill Hershiser, and niece, Susan Adair, both
of Kent.
"It was just like a big WOW!" said Hershiser. "I can't believe this."
Adair said that because the airman was seen parachuting from the stricken B-24, her grandmother "always
believed he was still alive, and a POW, and had amnesia. That was kind of the story we had been told for
many, many
years."
So when contacted by the Joint Prisoners of War, Missing in Action Accounting Command, or JPAC, last
year regarding her long-lost relative, she said, "I was shocked. We were all just shocked."
Hershiser is one of 180 Americans missing in action during World War II whom JPAC has identified since
2003. An estimated 74,384 are still unaccounted for from the war.
Chris McDermott, historian with the government agency based in Hawaii, said the JPAC staff's interest in
the case started in 1998 when the family of the "Trouble N Mind" bombardier (one of the three crewmen
killed) went to Havelberg and placed an ad in a local newspaper, seeking information about the crash.
It wasn't until 2007 that local historical interest resulted in exhumation of an American airman's grave that
foresters had kept secret.
The remains were flown to Hawaii, and subsequent interviews in 2008 with people in Germany determined
that the "Trouble N Mind" provided the best candidates for possible identification through comparison to the
three crewmen's medical service records. The Army's Casualty Office was asked to locate surviving
families.
About the same time, Susan Adair attended a high school reunion, met former classmate John Beckwith of
Kent and discovered that he was searching for information about a relative lost during World War II.
She asked if he could find out anything about her father's brother, and Beckwith spent a year locating
Hershiser's flight records, old photos and even surviving crewmen.
Adair believes JPAC was able to find and contact her family because of Beckwith's search efforts over the
Internet.
Beckwith said, "Coincidence, luck, circumstance, being in the right place at the right time, is basically what
happened."
When authorities called Bill Hershiser, seeking a DNA sample for comparison to the remains, he was initially
reluctant.
He was only 5 years old when his brother was killed, never really knew him and spent a lifetime without
thinking much about him. "Then all at once, Boom! He pops back into your life," Hershiser said.
The DNA test would bring back either a brother, or disappointment.
Though his brother was gone, the impact of the loss had always lingered. Their mother had urged her last
surviving child never to enlist in the service, and he didn't.
Bill Hershiser's wife, Sally, said the boys' mother and Alden had been very close.
"She was very young when he was born, and they kind of grew up together," she said. "She would wait up
for him after his dates, and they'd each have a cigarette and he would tell her about his dates."
Bill Fensch still has fond memories of cousin Alden, a graduate of Akron North High School. "We were good
friends. We played baseball and used to go to the bakery to get day-old rolls and stuff," recalled Fensch, 88,
of Clearwater, Fla.
Fensch said he served with the Army field artillery during the war and had been in Czechoslovakia when he
got a letter from his mother, telling him of his cousin's disappearance over what would become the Soviet-
controlled sector of Germany.
"They said his parachute opened and I'd worried ever since that the Russians got hold of him," Fensch said.
"I'm happy they found his remains, so at least now I know he hadn't been captured and suffering all those
years."
Susan Adair recalled that she once got a call from a woman who said she'd always had a crush on Alden
Hershiser and just wanted to talk about him. "This is what, 1990. That's a long time to carry a torch," she
said.
Through Beckwith, Adair got a copy of a journal written during the war by one of Hershiser's fellow
crewmen. In it, the airman told of a time when his co-pilot got a little "flak happy" on one mission after
having dreamed about the horrors of anti-aircraft fire.
To Adair, the journal -- with its glimpses of the personal lives and fears of these bygone combatants -- adds
a human element to the long-lost airman.
"It makes him real," she said. "It's comforting to me. You can tell they were living as much of a good life as
they could."
The family also has another grim bit of reality -- a button from Hershiser's grave, sent to them along with
JPAC's full report of the recovery and identification process.
The burial service for Alden Hershiser will include full military honors, including a possible fly-over salute,
said Capt. Joseph Baibak, an Army casualty assistance officer who serves with the Ohio National Guard.
Baibak said he will accompany Hershiser's remains from airport to grave.
"He will not be left alone," Baibak said.
"He's been alone long enough."
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