Bodies of two GIs killed in Korea coming home

YONGSAN ARMY GARRISON, Korea – As nearby cranes added to the skyscraper horizon of a new South Korea, the U.S. military brought back to the fold two Americans who made the ultimate sacrifice in old Korea, more than a half-century ago.

The remains of two servicemen recovered by the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command during a 30-day mission to North Korea were formally “repatriated” in a military ceremony Thursday and will be returned to U.S. soil today. They died on the battlefields of the Chosin Reservoir and Unsan County during the 1950-53 Korean War, their remains now little more than skeletons and bits of uniform that specialists at the POW/MIA group’s lab in Hawaii will attempt to identify.

The 8th U.S. Army band played Thursday at the outdoor ceremony, a multinational force saluted the blue United Nations flag-draped metal caskets and two black hearses slowly circled away from Knight Field in a show of respect for the two fallen soldiers.

The recoveries struck close to home for many of the Hawaii-based command’s team members — despite the passage of more than 50 years.

“You realize that could be you,” said Navy Petty Officer 2nd Class David McGarry, 31, an explosive ordnance disposal technician from Boynton Beach, Fla. “You could be in that same guy’s shoes, maybe killed in a battle and lost and family wondering where you are at.”

U.S. forces have been in South Korea since a cease-fire – technically not the end of the war – was declared with the North in 1953, and Air Force Maj. Gen. Thomas P. Kane, deputy chief of staff for the United Nations Command and U.S. Forces Korea, linked that past with the present.