Episode 140: Honored Return

 

The Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA) is the federal agency responsible for recovering the remains of previously missing in action service members and identifying them, and each year, DPAA strikes hundreds of names from the rolls of the missing.

To emphasize the importance of what DPAA does, this episode highlights four families who have received closure regarding their formerly MIA loved ones, and one family who received help from DPAA to get a cenotaph at Arlington for their Korea War MIA.

Army Private First Class Alfred Bordeau was captured on his first day in combat in the Korea War and subjected to many physical and mental hardships, and ultimately death, at the hands of his North Korean captors. DPAA helped his family get in touch with a POW who was held with Bordeau who was able to tell them about the brave things their loved one did while a captive to help others around him.

Some 70 years after his death, Bordeau's family celebrated his life and placed a cenotaph in his honor at Arlington in Memorial Section L, Site 88.

Army Air Forces Lieutenant Colonel Addison Baker was the commander of a bombardment squadron when his bomber was hit over Poland. Instead of returning to safety, he continued to pilot his plane to the target, leading his squadron's planes in the process, and successfully dropped his payload.

On the return leg of the mission, he was forced to drop out of formation and made a gallant effort to give his crew a chance to bail out. His bomber finally lost all power and he crashed behind German lines. He was awarded the medal of honor but his remains could not be recovered so his final disposition was unknown so his named was added to a wall of the missing at the Florence American Cemetery in Italy.

Thanks to many efforts by DPAA personnel, LTC Baker's remains were located, positively identified, and at the behest of his surviving family - several of whom are Addison in their hero uncle's honor - reinterred at Arlington in Section 78, Grave 403.

Navy Seaman First Class James Richard Ward was on the battleship USS Oklahoma when it was hit by multiple torpedoes and began to sink during the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Instead of rushing out of the gun turret he was manning to escape, he led the rest of the crew to safety. Every member of the crew made it out except for S1 Ward who was awarded the medal of honor for all of the lives he saved.

Ward remained interred in the Oklahoma until that ship was refloated. His were one of dozens upon dozens of comingled remains recovered from the ship and buried in mixed graves at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific. His status as a medal of honor recipient also earned him a cenotaph at Punchbowl.

In 2015, DPAA began a special mission to disinter the comingled Oklahoma remains and identify each crew member still considered missing. Through these efforts, Ward's remains were identified and buried at Arlington in Section 81, Grave 1560 with many of his family members and Admiral Lisa Franchetti, the Chief of Naval Operations, in attendance.

Marine Corps Captain Ronald Forrester was killed when the A6A Intruder he was piloting was shot down over Vietnam.

A cenotaph was placed at Arlington in his honor and stood in the cemetery for nearly sixty years. Just imagine how shocked and pleasantly surprised Forrester's daughter - who had only knew for father for a short time as a child - was when she got a phone call telling her that DPAA had recovered and identified Forrester's remains. His funeral service was two weeks ago so his headstone has not been placed yet, but when it is, it was rise over his remains in Section 47, Grave 29.

Navy Radioman Third Class Starring Winfield was also lost when the USS Oklahoma sank at Pearl Harbor.

Like S1 Ward, Winfield's remains were comingled, placed in a group burial at Punchbowl, and later disinterred and identified as part of the 2015 special Oklahoma project. His family chose to move his remains to Arlington and they now rest in Section 55, Grave 2085.

Episode 129: Tales from Punchbowl, Part III

Though he was a Korean American, the US Army didn't quite know what to do with Young Oak Kim after he became a second lieutenant so it put him in the 100th Infantry Battalion as a platoon leader of Nisei troops. While in Italy, Kim became an ardent advocate for his soldiers and vocally opposed actions that would put them at risk needlessly - but he had no problem volunteering to sneak behind enemy lines to capture a few prisoners for intelligence reasons. 5th Army commander General Mark Clark personally awarded him the distinguished service cross for that mission.

He stayed in the Army for 30 years, and during the Korean war, became the first minority officer to lead a battalion in combat.

Colonel Young Oak Kim died in 2005 at the age of 86. His ashes are at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Columbarium Section CT9, Wall G, Site 458.

Episode 111: The Arlington of the Pacific, Part 1

 

There are two famous extinct volcanic craters boxing in Honolulu, Hawaii. Diamond Head, the one in the distance, is probably the more famous. But Punchbowl, in the foreground, is where ancient temples once stood and where those who broke the most serious tabus were executed. For more than one hundred years, artillery pieces were placed on its rim to protect the city, and since 1949, it has been the site of the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific.

Rising more than 450 feet above Hawaii's capital city, there were no tall office buildings of resort hotels to hide its grandeur in this photo from around 1885.

Long after the temples disappeared, it was still seen as a place of religious significance, even after the local population largely converted to Christianity in the early 1800s. This photograph from 1910 - with Diamond Head in the background - shows the crowds for a sunrise Easter service.

Once roads were built to the summit, tourists and locals alike began flocking to the site, first with carriages and then in automobiles, like in this pre-World War II photograph.

A hike to the crater rim has offered spectacular views of Oahu for centuries.

Though a cemetery at the site had been discussed for decades, the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific opened in 1949 in the wake of World War II.

And has continued to grow with each successive military conflict... but that is a story for part two.

Today, Punchbowl crater, the Arlington of the Pacific, is a site to behold.

Episode 106: Too Tall

 

As a young boy in Mississippi, Ed Freeman wanted three things: 1. escape from his home town, 2. to join the army, and 3. to learn to fly. He enlisted in the navy  during the final year of World War II, which got him out of Mississippi; he enlisted in the army after returning from World War II and finishing high school; he became a pilot after a battlefield commission during the Korean War, but only after the army raised its maximum height limit for a pilot. The first time he tried to fly he was told that at 6' 4" he was simply, too tall.

After flying mapping mission for nearly a decade, Freeman went to Vietnam as a helicopter pilot. On November 14, 1965, he helped dropped a battalion of cavalry troopers in the isolated Ia Drang valley, where they found themselves facing a much larger force that threatened to annihilate them. For the next 14 hours, Freeman and his commander, Bruce Crandall, were the only two pilots willing to fly into a hot LZ dropping off supplies and evacuating critically wounded personnel.

35 years later, in July 2001, the Distinguished Flying Cross that Freeman received for his efforts that day was upgraded to the Medal of Honor. He was the first person President George W. Bush bestowed the medal on.

It wasn't until the movie We Were Solders came out in 2002, that I learned that Freeman had lived around the corner from me for a decade. In 2005, I walked over to his house unannounced, asked him to autograph his photo in a book about living Medal of Honor recipients that I had bought for my dad, and ended up in an impromptu mentoring session between Freeman, a bona fide hero, and me, a lowly army cadet. I walked away with the autograph and a memory I will never forget.

Army Major Ed W. "Too Tall" Freeman, a navy veteran of World War II and an Army Veteran of Korea and Vietnam passed way in Boise, ID on August 20, 2008 at age 80. He was interred in the Idaho State Veterans Cemetery in Boise in Section 12-J-155.

Freeman's commander in Vietnam, then-Major Bruce Crandall, was the other pilot who spent 14 hours in 1965 trying to help the troopers in the Ia Drang valley survive the onslaught by a much larger force. 

He had to wait a little longer than Freeman, but in 2007, 40 years after the battle in Ia Drang, Crandall's Distinguished Flying Cross was also upgraded to the Medal of Honor.

Crandall, who retired a lieutenant colonel, but was promoted to colonel years later in 2010, is still with us as of this post, but his wife Arlene passed away in 2010, which is why we know that when his time does come, Colonel Crandall with join her at Arlington in Section 7A, Grave 1.

The commander of the battalion Crandall and Freeman support, then-Lieutenant Colonel Hal Moore (seen above in an image taken during the battle in Ia Drang) advocated for the both pilots to receive the Medal of Honor for years, as did many other survivors of the battle.

Moore, who retired a lieutenant general, lived long enough to see his campaigning come to fruition and was present at both Freeman and Crandall's Medal of Honor ceremony.

When he passed away in 2017, he choose to be interred at the Fort Benning (Georgia) post cemetery, among many of his troopers who were killed in the Ia Drang in 1965.

In May 2023, Fort Benning, the home of the US Army's Infantry and Armor schools, was renamed Fort Moore.

Episode 103: The Epitome of Army Aviation, Part I

This week, we begin the story of Army Aviator Chief Warrant Officer 4 Mike Novosel, a guy who was too short to fly according to the military standards of the day, was forced out of the service against his will, and who eventually took a demotion, all because he wanted to pass his 20+ years of aviation experience on to the next generation of Army pilots. Instead, and much to his surprise, he was sent to Vietnam to serve in his third war.

Since he was in the Army Air Corps when the Air Force was created in 1947, he was automatically transferred to the new service, and served in it more than a decade, but try as I might, I couldn't find any photos of his online in an Air Force uniform. Most that are readily available are from his time in Vietnam. The above photo is the only one I could find of his WWII service in the Army Air Corps.

Episode 102: A Family Legacy in Korea

 

The Collins Family (Left to Right: Major General James L. Collins, Sr., General J. Lawton "Lighting Joe" Collins, Brigadier General James L. Collins, Jr., and Major General Michael Collins) are all honored on the front wall of the US Army's Second Infantry Division Museum at Camp Humphreys, South Korea.

James, Sr. (West Point Class of 1907) briefly commanded the Second Infantry Division before the outbreak of World War II.

MG James L. Collins, Sr. in buried at Arlington National Cemetery in Section 34, Grave 121-A

J. Lawton (West Point Class of 1917), James, Sr's brother, was the Army Chief of Staff during the Korean War. The Second Infantry Division featured prominently in that war and remains on the Korean Peninsula today, nearly 75 since that war broke out.

GEN J. Lawton Collins in buried at Arlington National Cemetery in Section 30, Grave 422

James, Jr. (West Point Class of 1939) rose to the rank of brigadier general before retiring. He was called back to active duty by the Army to become the service's Chief of Military History. He published several books in that capacity, including War in Peacetime: The History and Lessons of Korea in 1969.

BG James L. Collins, Jr. is buried at Arlington National Cemetery in Section 34, Grave 970

Michael Collins (West Point Class of 1952) - James, Sr's son, J. Lawton's nephew, and James, Jr's brother - chose to join the Air Force after West Point and became a prominent NASA astronaut in the early days of the space race. He carried one of the Second Infantry Division patches his father wore while commanding 2 ID into space with him on the Apollo XI mission to the moon.

Maj Gen Michael Collins is buried at Arlington National Cemetery in Section 51, Grave 2891.

Army Sergeant Robert Hopkins was captured by the German Army during the Battle of the Bulge. An enlisted chaplain, he used a makeshift US flag, constructed with two stolen flour sacks and died blue and red, to preside over the funerals of some 700 US POWs until he escaped captivity near the end of the war. After the war, he became a Methodist minister in Virginia and donated the flag to the 2ID museum in 1979. When he died in 2004, the flag was used one final time, draped over Hopkin's casket during his funeral. After the service, the flag was folded and returned to Korea.

SGT Robert Hopkins is buried at Arlington National Cemetery in Section 69, Grave 3420

Episode 34: From Harlem to Tuskegee - Like Father, Like Son, Part II

 

Inspired by his eponymous father, Benjamin O. Davis, Jr. became what his father tried to be but was rejected because of his race - he became just the fourth African American cadet accepted to the US Military Academy and the fourth black graduate of that academy.

During his time at West Point, Davis was an invisible man. He roomed alone, ate alone, and endured four years where his fellow cadet refused to speak to him unless necessary to perform official duties. In later years, Davis was vocal about his fellow cadets' lack of leadership, specifically calling out William Westmoreland, a member of Davis' class of 1936, who was First Captain (the senior ranking cadet their final year at the academy), about 35 years before he became the senior US commander in Vietnam.

Already a certified pilot, Davis wanted to be an Army aviator after graduating from West Point but at that time, black officers were not allowed to join the air corps. After World War II kicked off in Europe, US officials became less picky and decided to stand up a few segregated aviation squadrons. The first of these units, filled by pilots who would become known as Tuskegee Airmen, was given to Davis to command.

Davis and his Tuskegee Airmen went on to become some of the most decorated and famous flyers of World War II. After the war, Davis left the Army for the Air Force when that service was created in 1947 and shortly thereafter, the US military was integrated. When the Korean War began in 1950, Colonel Davis was given another field field command - this time F-86 Sabres, America's first jet fighters. He is piloting the nearest jet in this above picture.

In 1954, Davis followed his father again, this time by becoming the first African American general officer in the US Air Force when he was promoted to brigadier general.

By 1965, he had received two more promotions and when he retired in 1970, he entered the retired rolls as a lieutenant general. Little did he know, there was one more promotion in his future.

In 1998, Davis' groundbreaking service was recognized by President Bill Clinton who took the rare step to honor Davis with a rare promotion to full general. President Clinton and Davis' wife Agatha pined on Davis' fourth star at a special ceremony.

General Benjamin O. Davis, Jr. died a few months shy of his 90th birthday on July 4, 2002. Honors continued to come his way after his death. In 2017, construction was completed on the first new barracks building at West Point in 50 years and the academy choose to name it in honor of the cadet who was treated as a second class citizen during his time there.

In 2019, the airfield at the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, Colorado was renamed in honor of General Davis.

As I was finishing up this episode I learned that one of the last Tuskegee Airmen, 102 year-old Brigadier General Charles McGee, a veteran of World War II, Korea, and Vietnam, has died. Like Davis, he started his thirty year career in the US Army and transferred to the Air Force when that service was stood up. He retired as a colonel but was honored at the 2019 State of the Union address and promoted the next day by President Trump to Brigadier General in the Oval Office. Details for his funeral are still being worked out but he will be laid to rest at Arlington.