A story for today..

[Whee]

For the last couple of weeks, a friend of my back in Indiana has been awaiting word on what would be his Great Grandfather's remains. Sent me this today....

was Thanksgiving Day in 1944, 85-year-old Elsie Evans recalled, when she got the news her husband was missing in action somewhere in Germany. Her father had just offered a blessing for the family’s holiday dinner when someone knocked on the door. She got up and answered it, she said, only to discover a man in front of a waiting taxicab with a telegram carrying the awful news.
She wrote letters to the Army in an effort to find out more. But that information never came — just a few months later, her husband was declared killed in action but his body was never found.
MORE: Read diary entries from Lt. Robert "Bud" Flynn, who served with Julian Harold Rogers in the 112th Infantry Regiment, 28th Division
Now, more than 60 years later, Unionville resident Pfc. Julian Harold Rogers isn’t lost anymore.
Connie Conard was about 2 years old when her father went missing. She doesn’t remember him, just by the stories people have told her and through a few photographs and mementos.
So she was surprised when she got a call last summer from a genealogist working with the military who said she’d been working to find relatives of Pfc. Rogers. Oddly enough, she said, the call came the same day she learned her grandson would be allowed the honor of placing a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Washington, D.C.
A few weeks later, the military called seeking a DNA sample. Rogers’ last living sibling, sister Phyllis, and her daughter quickly shipped off samples of their DNA. Then, the family waited. And waited. And waited.
Finally, a little over a month ago, they received a call from the U.S. Army, Conard said. The body found in what’s now a cornfield in Germany, a few kilometers southwest of Brandenburg near the Huertgen Forest, was indeed that of her long-missing father.
Military investigators told her a German archaeologist was operating a metal detector in the area when he found a tooth, Conard said. He promptly called authorities, who discovered the remains of both Rogers and another soldier, Henry Edward Marquez from Kansas, in the area.
Rogers’ remains were relatively well-preserved, according to a packet of information provided to Conard and her family by the military. His skull was found inside his helmet, his boots were on his feet and his dog tag was still with his body, though it’s not clear exactly what killed him.
Flipping through the bound packet provided her by the military, Conard pointed out the items found in the area — her father’s canteen, gas mask, well-worn brown boots with the word “Goodyear” still visible on the sole, the tag from his sleeping bag, coins, a fork, water purification tablets and even ammunition for an M1 rifle and an old grenade.
“It’s amazing, but horrible,” she said. “It’s the only way I’ll ever see my dad.”
She always used to think he’d somehow just come walking through the door, she admitted.
“I thought he’d come back,” Conard said, choking up. “I really did.”
A hand-tinted painting of Rogers made sometime before his death shows a young, good-looking man wearing a neatly pressed brown military uniform, his infantry insignia on his collar, brown tie carefully knotted, cap set at a jaunty angle.
Elsie Evans, who remarried after Rogers’ death, said she met Rogers — who went by Harold, because his father had the same first name — because they attended Bloomington High School together, rode the same bus and went to the same Baptist church in New Unionville. She recalled him as a man with a good sense of humor, who was easy-going and liked to joke a lot.
“He turned 18 in September, and I turned 18 in October, and we got married in November,” Evans said. “That was 1941.”
Conard was born in December 1942, and Rogers was drafted in February 1943. He stayed stateside for some time, and then went overseas in March 1944.
The last letter she’d had said his unit was moving into the Huertgen Forest, Evans said.
“Through the years, I’d just made up my mind that it wasn’t for me to know what happened,” she said. “I just thought the Lord didn’t want me to know what happened.”
Rogers’ sister, 78-year-old Phyllis Weddle, said she was just 13 when her brother was reported missing.
She used to tag along with him and her other brother, pestering them, she said, adding with a giggle, “They used to tell me that if I wouldn’t climb a tree, they’d shoot me with the BB gun. And I’d climb that tree. But they always protected me from anything.”
Finding her brother’s body offers some closure for the family, she said, adding, “I just wish my mother was here so she’d know. She really suffered over this.”
Both Evans and Weddle and a host of other family members will travel to Washington, D.C., in the spring. Rogers’ body will be buried there in Arlington National Cemetery, a full military funeral paid for by the U.S. government, Conard said.
“My opinion is he deserves something,” she said. “We can bring him here and bury him, but one of these years, we’ll all be gone and nobody will know who he is. He’ll always be honored if he’s at Arlington. And that’s the best I can do for him.”

Two more come home...