An American hero is lastly coming house.
The Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency introduced that U.S. Military 2nd Lt. Gene F. Walker has formally been discovered and accounted for 79 years after his dying in World Warfare II.
Walker, a local of Richmond, Indiana, was assigned to Firm H, third Battalion, thirty second Armored Regiment, third Armored Division and served as a commander of an M4 Sherman tank throughout World Warfare II.
In November 1944, Walker’s unit fought German forces close to Hücheln, Germany. His tank was hit by an anti-tank spherical, which brought on a fireplace and prompted surviving crew members to desert the tank and flee.
Walker was not amongst them. He was 27 years previous.
His fellow service members tried to get well his physique from the burned tank, however they have been unable to retrieve him attributable to “heavy fighting.”
Efforts to find deceased American army personnel upon the war’s end round Hücheln, Germany, occurred in 1948. Nevertheless, Walker’s stays have been unable to be discovered.
However due to the efforts of a historian from DPAA, Walker’s stays are unaccounted for now not.
The historian decided {that a} set of unidentified stays doubtless belonged to Walker, so the stays have been exhumed from the Henri-Chapelle U.S. Navy Cemetery in Hombourg, Belgium, and despatched for testing and evaluation in August 2021.
After numerous strategies of study and evidentiary examination, together with mitochondrial DNA, the company was assured in concluding that it was certainly 2nd Lt. Walker who that they had recognized.
Though it has been 79 years, Walker will probably be obtained house by his household — his daughter, Anne Walker Collingwood, who was simply three months previous when he died.
He and his daughter by no means met earlier than his passing.
“It was the biggest surprise I’ve ever had in my life. I still can’t grasp it,” Collingwood mentioned in an interview with The New York Times.
Collingwood mentioned her household plans to have a ceremony for her father early subsequent 12 months. He will probably be interred at Fort Rosecrans Nationwide Cemetery in San Diego, California, a scenic vista which overlooks the Pacific Ocean.
“I was extremely happy and wishing that my mother and my grandmother could be alive, so that they could know this,” she continued.
In response to DPAA, one other 72,134 U.S. army service members are unaccounted for from World Warfare II.
As a remaining act of recognition, a rosette will probably be positioned subsequent to Walker’s name on the Partitions of the Lacking in Margarten, Netherlands. A poignant American memorial, it commemorates 1,722 lacking and unaccounted for American troopers from World Warfare II.
The rosette symbolizes the completion of every fallen soldier’s journey, from misplaced to discovered.
This text appeared initially on The Western Journal.
