Looking for missing GIs in Germany

Kyt · Sep 17, 2008

US experts in Germany to search for missing WW2 GIs - Telegraph

A team of American experts has arrived in Germany to search for the remains of GIs who died fighting the Nazis in World War Two.

Tens of thousands of American troops fell in the Eifel Mountain region as the forces of Hitler made them fight for every inch of ground.

Many of them have never been found, their corpses lost on the battlefields.

The Joint Prisoners of War, Missing in Action Accounting Command of the US Department of Defence (JPAC) is " now combing the killing fields for the remains of those warriors".

Unlike Britain, which buries its war dead at the sites where they fell, America's tradition is to bring every soldier it can home to a hero's funeral. In recent years the focus has been on more recent wars, such as Vietnam and Korea.

But now, with an annual budget close to £30m the decision has been taken to comb Germany for some of the 78,000 Americans still officially classified as missing in WW2.

The job of Denise To, who heads the team, is to find the remains, ship them to laboratories back home and have them firmly identified before they can be released for burial or cremation to relatives.

Currently they are trying to find remains of soldiers and airmen in the Huertgen Forest, scene of a devasating clash of arms in 1944 that cost 32,000 American lives.

Americans and Germans fought at close quarters, often in hand-to-hand combat, as heavy guns tore up the forest around them. The dead were buried where they lay or interred by the high explosive shells of both sides.

Huertgen is something of a "forgotten" battlefield to Americans. It never achieved the immortality of the breakout from Normandy or the Battle of the Bulge but was deadlier than both.

Now, in a bid to bring home the remains of the dead, To and her team hope that Huertgen will become more of a household name in the consciousness of Americans.

Much of their activity occurs after speaking to elderly local residents who remember planes crashing and tanks blowing up. Last week a crash site of a P-38 Lighting fighter which crashed killing its pilot was identified thanks to such local knowledge.

Deep in the forest walkers find helmets, shrapnel, bullet cartridges and the other detritus of war on a daily basis.

"We are working with local people and historical groups intently to bring these boys home after so long," said To.

More than 2,000 are missing in the Huertgen forest. Realistically, the teams searching in the area over the next six months will be lucky to find a dozen bodies.
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liverpool annie · Sep 17, 2008

Kyt said: ↑

US experts in Germany to search for missing WW2 GIs - Telegraph
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Little is known about the Huertgen forest maybe this will give an idea of what happened !

Sco Web - The Battle of the Huertgen Forest

Antipodean Andy · Oct 5, 2008

World War II soldier finally coming home

Nearly 64 years after he went missing in action in Germany's Huertgen Forest, the scene of the fiercest, longest-running battle in U.S. history, Army 2nd Lt. Ernest E. Martin is coming home to Washington.

The remains of the World War II soldier, a member of Charlie Company, 109th Infantry Regiment, 28th Infantry Division, were found in 2000 in an unmarked grave. A construction crew clearing unexploded wartime artillery shells, bombs and other explosives left over from the carnage of that day in the forest found the grave, the Defense Department said this week.

Although his hometown was Hanover, Mont., with the passage of time, Martin's next of kin became a niece and nephew, Ellen Pollock and Tom Rogers, living in the Kittitas Valley near Ellensburg, who provided DNA samples to verify the remains were Martin's.

Scientists from the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command and the Armed Forces DNA Identification Laboratory confirmed the results only after painstaking forensic and detective work over the past several years.

Pollock said they knew little about Martin, who was the brother of her and Rogers' mother, but always hoped he would be found. A University of Washington graduate in mechanical engineering commissioned through the school's ROTC program, Martin had been serving with the 109th for more than a week when he died.

The family feels fortunate his remains were recovered given that 78,000 people from World War II are still listed as missing in action, Martin's survivors said in a printed statement.

"We hope these other families will receive the kind of closure we are experiencing."

Martin's odyssey home is "mind-boggling," she said. A Lewiston, Mont., couple noticed a local news article about the Army's search for Martin's family, triggering a diligent, painstaking effort by the Army and veterans groups that found them in 2006.

The family chose to bury him in Ellensburg, she said, instead of a location like Arlington National Cemetery, so they can tend to his grave each Veterans Day and Memorial Day.

Martin, who was 24 when he died, will be buried at 1 p.m. Oct. 11 at the IOOF Cemetery, 1900 Brick Road, Ellensburg.

According to the Defense Department, Martin was listed as missing in action Nov. 10, 1944, five months after the Allied invasion of Normandy. His unit had driven through France, where it participated in the liberation of Paris. Then it entered Nazi Germany, ultimately pounding at the heavily fortified Siegfried Line that was laden with pillboxes, minefields, artillery and mortars.

The Defense Department said Martin's regiment, along with the 112th Infantry Regiment, was attacking east through the dense, snow-covered Huertgen Forest to try to capture the German towns of Vossenack and Schmidt on Nov. 2.

On Nov. 4, the German army counterattacked.

Fighting was savage, teetering back and forth. Some came to call the dense, snow-covered forest "Green Hell." Fighting and weather killed or injured nearly half of the 109th Regiment's nearly 3,000 men.

Martin, who was not married, eventually was declared dead by the Army on Nov. 11, 1945. He was among close to 200 U.S. servicemen still missing in the Huertgen Forest battle site.

After his remains were found by the construction crew in 2000, German authorities turned them over, along with his military rank and branch insignia found with them, to U.S. officials. They were transported home with military honors, to begin the long quest to be reunited with his family.
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Antipodean Andy · May 25, 2009

Family’s grief returns with discovery of World War II remains - Kansas City Star

On Wednesday, the Patriot Guard will escort Pvt. Henry “Rickey” E. Marquez’s ashes from Kansas City International Airport to his final resting place in Kansas City, Kan.

The beginning of the end came last week with a FedEx envelope on his sister’s doorstep. Inside was a wooden box and Marquez’s dog tags from World War II — tags discovered along with his remains two years ago by a German souvenir hunter in the Huertgen Forest.

“It’s like it’s all back again, and we hurt real bad,” Hildreth Stuart said. “When I look at that and I think, ‘That was around my brother’s neck. That was on his throat when they found him.’ ”

A neighbor came by the day the package came, but Stuart could not pay attention. Her mind was on the package and, as is often the case, on her 18-year-old brother who died 64 years ago.

Marquez grew up in the Armourdale area of Kansas City, Kan., one of six siblings. He was full of dreams and promise when he was drafted. He had a savings account, grew flowers, raised and sold pigeons, made money shining shoes. He played basketball and played the piano. His favorite song was “I’ll Be With You in Apple Blossom Time.”

Most of those who remember the sharp dresser who had his father’s Mexican features have died.

Marquez will be buried with full military honors next to his father and mother at Highland Park Cemetery at 11 a.m. Saturday.

On Nov. 4, 1944, his Army regiment — the 112th Infantry of the 28th Division — was pushing east through the Huertgen Forest toward the German towns of Vossenack and Schmidt. Marquez had been fighting only a few months in Company G when machine-gun fire killed him in a foxhole with Pfc. Julian H. Rogers of Indiana.

Soldiers saw both men dead that day, but Marquez’s body couldn’t be recovered and the U.S. military declared him missing. He was officially presumed dead a year later, but that did not keep his family from hoping he was somehow just missing.

John Clark Marquez was too young to remember when his brother left but grew up “hearing about the wonderful brother I never got a chance to know.” He watched his parents keep a savings account for his brother, and his room was untouched.

John Clark Marquez went along with the fantasies, but “there was some point I accepted the fact he was dead,” he said.

Final confirmation and details of how Rickey Marquez died did not come until recently. Brothers John Clark Marquez and Carl Marquez, who rarely talk, called each other. They were emotionally overwhelmed by the conditions in which their brother died.

“The fighting was some of the most vicious fighting of the Second World War. It was almost an impenetrable forest, a horrible place,” John Clark Marquez said.

More than 170 American servicemen are unaccounted for in the Huertgen Forest, said Larry Greer of the Department of Defense POW/Missing Personnel Office.
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