Welcome in out of the cold Enoch ! Jennifer Harper The Washington Times His life ended in the skies over eastern Germany six decades ago. Second Lt. Howard C. Enoch Jr. was 19, a Kentucky patriot with a cheerful grin - a fighter pilot who had been in the U.S. Army Air Corps less than a year. He took off in his P-51D Mustang from a British air base one early spring, never to return. German planes had found the lone pilot; his aircraft went down on March 19, 1945. Back home, his wife waited. She was 17, with a child six months along. But her husband was lost, never to know the son and namesake born that summer, the plane declared unrecoverable. And no wonder. The wreckage was scattered over a countryside that was to fall under control of the communists who welcomed few outsiders behind the Iron Curtain, even on heartfelt missions. But the American military is not wont to leave their boys behind. Howard Enoch is coming home 63 years later. The Defense Department announced Wednesday that his remains had been recovered, identified and would be buried with full military honorsat Arlington National Cemetery in September.
