Colorado WWII veterans identified after decades | News

Worldwide, approximately 81,000 U.S. service members are missing – buried in unmarked graves, still in their crashed planes – their final resting place unknown to their loved ones.

“For many families, the wounds of uncertainty are still very raw,” said Denise To of the U.S. Department of Defense's POW/MIA Accounting Agency.

The agency works to identify about 200 service members each year, To said, and the agency estimates about 38,000 are potentially recoverable.

Fowler's World War II Army technician Clifford Strickland was among those identified in December, more than 80 years after his death, said To, who is the agency's federal supervisor and laboratory director.

She told Strickland's story Monday under bright blue skies at Pikes Peak National Cemetery during a Memorial Day ceremony expected to draw more than 1,000 people.

Strickland was fighting in the Philippines when he was captured after the American surrender of the Bataan Peninsula in 1942, when 12,000 Americans became prisoners of war. He was among those who participated in the 65-mile Bataan Death March. He was buried in mass grave 215 at a local cemetery, To said. After the war, he was moved to the American military mausoleum near Manila, where some of his comrades were identified. Those who could not be identified, including Strickland, were buried at the Manila American Cemetery and Memorial.

In 2018, his remains and others from the same mass grave were exhumed again and taken to a laboratory in Hawaii for identification, To said. He is expected to be buried for the last time in Florence.

WWII Army Pvt. James B. McCartney, of Ridgway, was also identified within the past year. He was killed in 1945 while his unit was patrolling near Wildenguth, France. In 1951, his remains were deemed irrecoverable.

In 2022, he was exhumed from his grave in France for analysis of his teeth, DNA and other clues that led to his identification. In March, he was buried for the last time in California, she said.

In recent years, the agency has had luck identifying service members in unmarked graves, To said in an interview. But the work has slowed considerably during the pandemic which has upended the politics of foreign countries where investigators work.

Some of the most important relationships are with local authorities who grant access to burial sites, she said. The agency has teams working in Vietnam, Kuwait, the Philippines, Germany, France and Bosnia.

In fiscal year 2023, the agency identified 158 service members and is returning to its pre-pandemic work level. Identifying more people each year would require additional resources, she said.

“We remain committed to achieving the most complete accounting possible,” she told the crowd.

Skyler Holmes, director of Pikes Peak Cemetery, was not aware of any veterans identified by the agency and buried in the new national cemetery.

The cemetery opened in 2018 after 23 years of work to bring the community the cemetery it needed, said retired Air Force Master Sgt. Pete Tetley told the crowd. During the event, the cemetery parking lot filled up and attendees parked along the narrow two-lane Drennan Road to attend and many wore hats, shirts, jackets, patches and other proclamations of their own service.

Former American Legion State Commander Jay Bowen told the crowd many stories of individual heroism and the magnitude of D-Day, when approximately 156,000 soldiers landed in France.

He also acknowledged that many in the crowd had seen the sacrifices and were fighting alongside those honored Monday.

“Veterans saw heroism in its purest form,” Bowen said.