Leave no gentleman on.
Army Air Forces Tech. is based on those words, a religion that started during the American Revolution and has since become a part of American military method. Sergeant. More than 80 years after his death in World War II, Paul F. Eshelman Jr. is returning to Pittsburgh.
The DNA division chief of the Armed Forces Medical Examiner System, Dr. Timothy McMahon, said,” We will leave no stone unturned to bring ( fell ) heroes home. This honor comes from all service members and veterans.”
The Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency announced last week that Eshelman, age 21, had been buried in a Belgian graveyard in order to honor unidentified soldiers.
His system is currently being transported back to the Steel City where he once resided before taking a duty elsewhere. Eventually, the Purple Heart-award winning student and graduate of Perry High School will be interred in a North Hills tomb.
Eshelman was the television operator on one of the 51 planes that previously returned from a attack Aug. 1, 1943, during Operation Tidal Wave, a mission to destroy Axis oil fields and refineries at Ploiesti, Romania.
Although the procedure was powerful, hundreds of airmen lost their lives as a result of opponent antiaircraft fire.
The American Graves Registration Command recovered the remnants of many of them after the war, but 80 remained unidentified until six years ago when DPAA began exhuming the remnants of the missing soldiers.
Researchers used DNA, criminal doctors from the Armed Forces Medical Examiner System, and dental and anthropological analysis to determine Eshelman.
Since starting its search in 1973, DPAA has located 1, 574 lost World War II soldiers. In 1991, the DPAA and the Armed Forces DNA identification test collaborated.
Dr. McMahon said he believes 39, 000 of the roughly 72, 115 British troops still missing from World War II may be identified by DNA.
” When WWII ended in 1945, we had n’t even defined DNA yet”, Dr. McMahon said. ” We have an obligation to provide our fallen champions house and to provide their loved ones back on American soil.”
Next year, 162 novel identifications were made, including two Military soldiers who likewise hailed from European Pennsylvania.
Lt. William Montgomery, 24, of Ford City, and Tech. Sergeant. John Holoka Jr., 25, of Cresson, near Altoona, were identified last year from the disaster of a bomb that crashed in England in 1944.
Eshelman’s brand is recorded on the Tablets of the Missing at the Florence American Cemetery, an American Battle Monuments Commission site in Impruneta, Italy, DPAA said in a media release. His name will be indicated by a ribbon that he has been found.
The least we can do for these young men and women is to give them the ultimate sacrifice in order to justify our rights, according to Dr. McMahon.
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( c ) 2024 the Pittsburgh Post- Gazette
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