Tribute to fallen soldiers.

[ledhead36]

article the other day said we reached 4000. Sad to see this happen to anyone, prayers for the families, rip.

[seamonkey]

Neil put to rest yesterday. - RIP

[surferman]

Even those from long ago should never be forgotten.

Lt. Arthur F. Eastman, 22 years old, took off on a test flight out of Finschafen, New Guinea in 1944. He never returned. Until now, he is to be buried in Arlington National Cemetery in September.

IMMEDIATE RELEASE No. 229-08

March 24, 2008

Missing WWII Airman is Identified

The Department of Defense POW/Missing Personnel Office (DPMO) announced today that the remains of a U.S. serviceman, missing from World War II, have been identified and will be returned to his family for burial with full military honors.

He is 2nd Lt. Arthur F. Eastman, U.S. Army Air Forces, of East Orange, N.J. He will be buried in September in Arlington National Cemetery near Washington, D.C.

Representatives from the Army met with Eastman's next-of-kin to explain the recovery and identification process and to coordinate interment with military honors on behalf of the Secretary of the Army.

On Aug. 18, 1944, Eastman departed the airdrome at Finschhafen, New Guinea, on a test flight of his F-5E-2 aircraft, but never returned. Subsequent searches failed to locate Eastman or his aircraft.

In 2003, a Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command (JPAC) found documents in the Australian National Archives about an earlier site visit believed to be associated with an F-5E crash. According to the archives, an Australian official had visited the crash site in 1950 in Morobe province near Koilil Village, but there was no subsequent recovery.

In 2004, a team from the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command (JPAC) investigated the crash site in the mountains of Morobe Province, Papua New Guinea. The team found aircraft wreckage and recommended the site be excavated.

In February-March 2007, a JPAC team excavated the crash site and recovered human remains, pilot-related items and other personal effects, including Eastman's military identification tag.

Among other forensic identification tools and circumstantial evidence, scientists from JPAC also used dental comparisons in the identification of the remains.

For additional information on the Defense Department's mission to account for missing Americans, visit the DPMO Web site at http://www.dtic.mil/dpmo or call (703) 699-1169.

[paco33]

bump for the soldiers

[voyager35]

25 year old soldier died near Baghdad

A soldier from Morris County on his first deployment to Iraq has died of a non-combat injury, according to the Department of Defense.

Pvt. Ronald R. Harrison, 25, of Morris Plains, died Monday at Forward Operating Base Falcon near Baghdad.
Harrison was a Bradley fighting vehicle mechanic assigned to the 703rd Brigade Support Battalion, 4th Brigade Combat Team, 3rd Infantry Division, Fort Stewart, Ga., said Kevin Larson, a Fort Stewart spokesperson.

Harrison was sent to Iraq in January 2007 on a 15-month deployment, Larson said. Harrison joined the Army in September 2005.
The Defense Department said the incident is under investigation and no further details were released.

[voyager35]

Maj. William Gregory Hall was buried at Arlington National Cemetery yesterday. Maj. Hall was killed during his third tour of duty in Iraq on March 29th. RIP

[clamchucker]

We should also remember those from the past.

BY WAYNE WOOLLEY
Star-Ledger Staff
It had been a routine mission for the men aboard the U.S. Army Air Force bomber nicknamed "The Swan."
The B-24 Liberator and its 11-man crew -- including three airmen from New Jersey -- had dropped its bombs that December night in 1943 and was returning to its home airfield in Dobodura, New Guinea. The crew members radioed ahead to ask that the runway lights be turned on. They called back a few minutes later with a question: "Why aren't the lights on?"

The plane, it turned out, was near the airfield, but headed the wrong way. It crashed into the side of a mountain, burst into flames, and was declared missing -- a fate met by hundreds of World War II planes.
More than 60 years passed and then Norma Rowe of East Hanover got a phone call about her uncle, Staff Sgt. Albert J. Caruso, who left Kearny to fight in the war and never returned.

"The woman said she worked for the Army," Rowe said. "She wanted a sample of my DNA."
She was told wreckage of a plane had been discovered and members of the military's Joint Pow/MIA Accounting Command had unearthed the crash site, analyzed the human remains and col lected artifacts such as dog tags, rings and jewelry.

Yesterday, the Pentagon announced that a four-year recovery effort had been a success -- all crew members had been accounted for and their families notified. The crew of the Swan, the Pentagon said, is coming home. The remains of nine of the 11 crew members will be buried side by side at Arlington National Cemetery in July.

Those arrangements make sense to Marlene Moore, a teacher from Mathews, Va., and one of the few remaining relatives of Staff Sgt. Robert E. Frank, a crew member from Plainfield.
"I chose for Uncle Bob to be buried next to his buddies," she said. "They've been together all these years. They should stay together."

The remains of the third man from New Jersey, Tech. Sgt. Paul Miecias of Piscataway will also be buried at Arlington.

Miecias was the plane's engineer; Caruso and Frank were gunners.
The discovery of their plane, recovery and identification of their bodies after all these years, is part of a broad Pentagon effort to bring home the nearly 90,000 service members who remain missing from America's wars. Most of the missing were from World War II. Since 1973, nearly 1,500 remains have been recovered and identified.

With each identification, a piece of family lore is restored.
Moore, the teacher from Virginia, grew up in North Plainfield and remembers her father, Ralph, talking constantly about his little brother, who never came home from the war.
"He was always talking about the trouble they got into," she said.
Her father had died by the time she got the first call from the military, in 2004.

She learned in that first call that her uncle's dog tags had been found in a preliminary search of the wreckage. But it wasn't until December that she got a visit from two military officers who came with word that tests had determined with certainty that remains found at the crash site were her uncle.
They presented her with the dog tags and a bracelet that had belonged to him.

"That just did me in," she said. "I was so overwhelmed to think they found him after all these years. They were so respectful of the fact he served."
For Norma Rowe, the East Hanover woman, learning the fate of her uncle was more bittersweet.
The DNA tests the Army took were inconclusive, nothing matched the remains found at the crash site. None of her uncle's personal effects were found either.
But the military determined that all available information, including the flight manifest and records kept by the airfield indicated that her uncle must have been aboard the Swan the night it crashed. His gunner position was closest to the fuel tanks and it'sli kely he was incinerated, Rowe said the military told her.

She gets some comfort in knowing that Caruso's two brothers are still alive and are planning to attend the funeral in Arlington.
She said they will go on behalf of her grandmother, Maria Caruso, who never let anyone forget she was a Gold Star mother.
"She was very proud of her son ... she would always say, 'If only I could see my Albert again,'" Rowe said. "There's nothing we can take to bury for him. I was hoping for her, there could be a little something."