The Department of Defense POW/Missing Personnel Office (DPMO) announced
today that the remains of five U.S. servicemen, missing from World War
II, have been identified and are being returned to their families for
burial with full military honors.
They are 1st Lt. Cecil W. Biggs, of Teague, Texas; 1st Lt. William L. Pearce, of San Antonio, Texas; 2nd
Lt. Thomas R. Yenner, of Kingston, Pa.; Tech. Sgt. Russell W.
Abendschoen of York, Pa.; and Staff Sgt. George G. Herbst of Brooklyn,
N.Y.; all U.S. Army Air Forces. Pearce was buried April 27 in
Louisville, Ky.; Herbst will be buried June 8 at Arlington National
Cemetery near Washington, D.C.; Biggs will be buried June 9 in Teague,
Texas; Abendschoen’s funeral is June 13 at Arlington; and Yenner will
be buried July 30 at Arlington.
Representatives from the Army met with the next-of-kin of these men in
their hometowns to explain the recovery and identification process and
to coordinate interment with military honors on behalf of the secretary
of the Army.
On Sept. 21, 1944, a C-47A Skytrain crewed by these airmen was
delivering Polish paratroopers to a drop zone south of Arnhem, Holland,
in support of “Operation Market Garden.� Soon after departing the
drop zone, the plane crashed and there were no survivors. The
Germans opened the dikes in the region where the plane crashed and
flooded the area before any remains could be recovered.
When Dutch citizens returned to their homes in Arnhem the next year,
they recovered remains from the Skytrains wreckage and buried them in
a nearby cemetery. A U.S. Army graves registration team later
disinterred the remains which were reburied as group remains in 1950 at
the Zachary Taylor National Cemetery in Kentucky.
In 1994, a Dutch citizen located more human remains and other
crew-related materials at a site associated with this C-47
crash. They were eventually turned over to U.S. officials.
Among
dental records, other forensic identification tools and circumstantial
evidence, scientists from the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command and the
Armed Forces DNA Identification Laboratory also used mitochondrial DNA
in the identification of the remains of these five men. The
remains that could not be attributed to a specific individual have been
buried with the first set of group remains at the Zachary Taylor
National Cemetery.
