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May 2007:
Five Missing WWII Airmen are Identified
The Department of Defense POW/Missing Personnel Office (DPMO) announced
today that the remains of five U.S. servicemen, missing from World War
II, have been identified and are being returned to their families for burial
with full military honors.
They are First Lieutenant Cecil W. Biggs,
of Teague, Texas; First Lieutenant William L. Pearce, of San Antonio, Texas;
Second Lieutenant Thomas R. Yenner, of Kingston,
Pennsylvania; Technical Sergeant Russell
W. Abendschoen of York, Pennsylvania; and Staff Ssergeant George G.
Herbst of Brooklyn, New York; all U.S. Army Air Forces. Pearce was buried
April 27 in Louisville, Kentucky; Herbst will be buried June 8 at Arlington
National Cemetery near Washington, D.C.; Biggs will be buried June 9 in
Teague, Texas; Abendschoen's funeral is June 13 at Arlington; and Yenner
will be buried July 30 at Arlington.
Representatives from the Army met with the
next-of-kin of these men in their hometowns to explain the recovery and
identification process and to coordinate interment with military honors
on behalf of the secretary of the Army.
On September 21, 1944, a C-47A Skytrain crewed
by these airmen was delivering Polish paratroopers to a drop zone south
of Arnhem, Holland, in support of Operation Market Garden. Soon after departing
the drop zone, the plane crashed and there were no survivors. The Germans
opened the dikes in the region where the plane crashed and flooded the
area before any remains could be recovered.
When Dutch citizens returned to their homes
in Arnhem the next year, they recovered remains from the Skytrains 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.
In 1994, a Dutch citizen located more human
remains and other crew-related materials at a site associated with this
C-47 crash. They were eventually turned over to U.S. officials.
Among dental records, other forensic identification
tools and circumstantial evidence, scientists from the Joint POW/MIA Accounting
Command and the Armed Forces DNA Identification Laboratory also used mitochondrial
DNA in the identification of the remains of these five men. The remains
that could not be attributed to a specific individual have been buried
with the first set of group remains at the Zachary Taylor National Cemetery.
Posted:
28 July 2007 |

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