Remains of WWII soldier coming home to Washington

SEATTLE – Nearly 64 years after he went missing in action in Germany’s Huertgen Forest, the scene of the fiercest, longest-running battle in U.S. history, Army 2nd Lt. Ernest E. Martin is coming home to Washington.

The remains of the World War II soldier, a member of Charlie Company, 109th Infantry Regiment, 28th Infantry Division, were found in 2000 in an unmarked grave. A construction crew clearing unexploded wartime artillery shells, bombs and other explosives left over from the carnage in the forest found the grave, the Defense Department said this week.

Although his hometown was Hanover, Mont., with the passage of time, Martin’s next of kin became a niece and nephew, Ellen Pollock and Tom Rogers, living in the Kittitas Valley near Ellensburg, who provided DNA samples to verify the remains were Martin’s.

Scientists from the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command and the Armed Forces DNA Identification Laboratory confirmed the results only after painstaking forensic and detective work over the past several years.

Pollock said they knew little about Martin, who was the brother of her and Rogers’ mother, but always hoped he would be found. A University of Washington graduate in mechanical engineering commissioned through the school’s ROTC program, Martin had been serving with the 109th for more than a week when he died.

Martin’s odyssey home is “mind-boggling,” Pollock said. A Lewiston, Mont., couple noticed a local news article about the Army’s search for Martin’s family, triggering a diligent, painstaking effort by the Army and veterans groups that found them in 2006.

The family chose to bury Martin in Ellensburg, she said, instead of a location like Arlington National Cemetery, so they can tend to his grave each Veterans Day and Memorial Day.

Martin, who was 24 when he died, will be buried at 1 p.m. Oct. 11 at the IOOF Cemetery, 1900 Brick Road, Ellensburg.

According to the Defense Department, Martin was listed as missing in action Nov. 10, 1944, five months after the Allied invasion of Normandy. His unit had driven through France, where it participated in the liberation of Paris. Then it entered Nazi Germany, ultimately pounding at the heavily fortified Siegfried Line that was laden with pillboxes, minefields, artillery and mortars.

The Defense Department said Martin’s regiment, along with the 112th Infantry Regiment, was attacking east through the dense, snow-covered Huertgen Forest to try to capture the German towns of Vossenack and Schmidt on Nov. 2. On Nov. 4, the German army counterattacked.

Fighting and weather killed or injured nearly half of the 109th Regiment’s nearly 3,000 men.

Martin was declared dead by the Army on Nov. 11, 1945. He was among close to 200 U.S. servicemen still missing in the Huertgen Forest battle site.