On Memorial Day, Americans remember those who gave their lives in service to our country. Many families of those missing in action are never given a full chance to say goodbye to their loved ones. The Defense POW/MIA Agency is working to change that.
“This is the fulfillment of a promise made to those service members who went into combat and never came back,” said Department of Defense Director Kelly McKeag.
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Lieutenant Fred Brewer
According to the National Museum of the United States Air Force, more than 2.2 million airmen served in World War II, including 355 Tuskegee Airmen who served overseas.
“This is a historic segregated unit that performed heroic actions in World War II,” McKeague said.
2nd Lt. Fred Brewer was one of 27 members of the Tuskegee Airmen previously believed to be missing in action. The 23-year-old was the second member of his unit to be identified by the Department of Defense POW/MIA Agency.
The body of Lt. Fred Brewer, who was reported missing over Italy, has been positively identified and he was recently given a proper burial in his hometown of Charlotte, North Carolina. (Department of Defense POW/MIA Agency/US Air Museum)
In October 1944, Brewer departed from Ramitelli Air Base in Italy with 57 other fighters assigned to a bomber escort mission to Regensburg, Germany. The Brewer attempted to climb above heavy cloud cover but its engines stopped working. It was believed to have crashed near Moggio Udinese, Italy. What happened after the crash only became clear more than 70 years later.
“This happened almost by chance. Some Italian villagers brought back the wreckage of the plane in the 1940s and erected a memorial. One of our historians made a connection between that memorial and a set of remains that had been moved from the German cemetery to the Italian cemetery and eventually to the American cemetery. So we exhumed Lt. Brewer’s unidentified remains,” McKeag said.
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Brewer was officially buried in his hometown of Charlotte, North Carolina in December.
“These are cases that were never solved after the war, so we’re working with historians and scientists to search, locate and hopefully identify them,” McKeague said.
Italy’s Moggesse Historical Photo Archive said a ceremony will be held in October near the Italian town where Brewer died.
“Our mission is to use historical materials, scientific and technological research to put names and faces on these remains and return them to their families,” McKeague said.
Corporal Luther Story
A funeral was held last Memorial Day for Korean Medal of Honor recipient Lt. Luther Story after authorities identified his body. Story was just 19 years old when he lost his life in the late 1950s while defending enemy soldiers to help his comrades escape.
Luther Story, who lost his life defending against enemy soldiers to enable his comrades to escape, received a formal funeral on Memorial Day last year. (Department of Defense POW/MIA Accounting Service/DVIDS)
“During the withdrawal, the company was forced to deploy into a rice field by overwhelming numbers,” Story’s Medal of Honor inscription reads. “Realizing that his wounds would hinder his comrades, he refused to retreat to another position and remained to assist in the withdrawal of his company. When last seen, he was firing all available weapons and fighting another enemy attack.”
Story was only 16 when he enlisted in the Army, but he persuaded his mother to let him falsify his papers.
“At just 19 years old, he performed a brave and heroic act which enabled his unit to escape safely,” McKeague said.
Story was born into a family of sharecroppers who worked on various farms in central Georgia, including one owned by former President Carter’s father.
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Carter had begun hospice care when Story was identified in April 2023 and was told Story would be returning to the United States.
“When he heard Luther Story was coming back he put on the biggest smile on his face and said, ‘I remember that young man,'” McKeague said.
When wars are ongoing, it’s hard to quickly identify those killed in combat, and as conflicts wind down, investigators must look to environmental factors and foreign governments.
“Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia are extremely challenging – the acidic soils degrade and almost destroy the remains, so our teams often only manage to find teeth,” McKeag said.
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Air Force Colonel Ernest de Soto
Air Force Colonel Ernest de Soto, 37, flew F-4D Phantom IIs during the Vietnam War.
Air Force Colonel Ernest de Soto was finally found in March 2023 after the plane he was flying went missing during the Vietnam War. (Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund/DVIDS)
“He was born in San Francisco. He was a great athlete and went to Stanford on a scholarship. His parents couldn’t afford for him to go to Stanford, so he joined the Air Force,” McKeague said.[He] He qualified for pilot training, became a fighter pilot, and went to Vietnam.”
He was last seen in 1969 when his plane went missing while returning from an aborted attack mission near Quang Nam Province. The lead aircraft in his unit realized DeSoto was missing and immediately launched an aerial search, which was fruitless; ongoing fighting prevented the team from conducting a ground search.
In 1995, a joint field operation team discovered the crash site in the Djan area. Investigations at the site continued into 2020. After a recovery mission and further DNA testing, DeSoto was finally found in March 2023.
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“In the case of the Col. de Soto incident, we had to send teams back multiple times to investigate and excavate the scene,” McKeag said, “especially because these aircraft losses are often off radar and no one knows where they were last, so it’s a bit of a wait-and-see situation in some cases.”
There are still 72,000 soldiers still missing from World War II, 7,500 from the Korean War and 1,500 from the Vietnam War. Of those 81,000, the POW/MIA Agency believes 38,000 can still be found.
“Each person has their own story,” McKeague said, “whether it’s Lieutenant Brewer, Corporal Story or Colonel De Soto.”
