Thursday 4 July 2013

U.S. soldier missing in Vietnam since 1970 laid to rest at Arlington National Cemetery


An American soldier, who died while serving his country in the Vietnam War, was finally laid to rest Tuesday at Arlington National Cemetery. The remains of Army Spc. John L. Burgess were buried along with the remains representing two members of his crew, 1st Lt. Richard Dyer and Sgt. 1st Class Juan Colon-Diaz.

They were part of a crew of five men who were in a helicopter June 30, 1970 near the Cambodian border when they were hit by enemy fire, bringing the aircraft to the ground. The crash resulted in a fiery inferno, claiming the lives of four of the men. Their bodies were taken to a morgue to be identified, but it wasn’t until then that it was discovered that the remains of Spc. John Burgess were missing. Due to enemy presence in the area, the area could not be searched for his remains either.

Although he was presumed dead, his remains were never recovered until years later. More than 40 years after the helicopter crash and after 10 year of investigations and dozens of teams searching the crash site area, Burgess was accounted for using forensics and circumstantial evidence.

Burgess’ family was finally able to conduct a proper burial for him, which included full military honors, at Arlington National Cemetery.

Up until last week, when it was announced that his remains had been recovered, Burgess, who gave the ultimate sacrifice for his country, was one of 807 American soldiers who are unaccounted for in South Vietnam.

Thursday 4 July 2013

http://www.guns.com/2013/07/04/u-s-soldier-missing-in-vietnam-since-1970-laid-to-rest-at-arlington-national-cemetery-video/

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Missing untraced till July 15 will be presumed dead


The Uttarakhand government on Thursday decided to presume dead those missing in the flood-ravaged state if they remain untraced till July 15 and asked officials to remain vigilant in the wake of warning of heavy rains over the next two days.

Chief Minister Vijay Bahuguna said the exact number of people missing after the tragedy is 3,064 and the deadline for finding them is July 15.

“Considering the magnitude of the crisis, the state Cabinet has decided that if the missing persons are not found by July 15, we will presume that they are dead and the process of paying compensation to their next of kin will begin,” he said.

With the MeT department issuing a warning of heavy rains at places in Kumaon region over the next two days, Mr. Bahuguna said that for the next 50 hours the administration needs to be highly vigilant, adding 250 National Disaster Response Force personnel have been deployed in these areas.

Meanwhile, the Indian Air Force flew 70 civil administration personnel to the Kedarnath temple premises to clean the surroundings there.

A team of seven mountaineers is also engaged in a combing operation in areas adjoining the shrine in search of bodies while over 50 members of a team of experts and volunteers is stationed in Kedarnath to clean the temple premises of tonnes of debris under which more bodies may be lying, an official said.

Mass cremation of bodies in Kedarghati held up for the past few days started with 23 more consigned to flames at Gaurikund and Junglechatti last night, DIG Amit Sinha under whose supervision the exercise is being undertaken told PTI.

In Delhi, the government announced it will rebuild 10,000 houses and undertake other activities to develop infrastructure in all affected municipalities in the state.

“All affected municipalities and notified area councils in Uttarakhand can be covered under Rajiv Awas Yojana as a special case to support reconstruction of houses of the poor and reconstruct and redevelop these devastated houses,” Union minister Girija Vyas said in Delhi.

Thursday 4 July 2013

http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/other-states/missing-untraced-till-july-15-will-be-presumed-dead-bahuguna/article4881509.ece

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Bodies of hundreds of China’s Korean War dead could be returned home


The remains of hundreds of Chinese soldiers killed in the Korean War may finally return home, 60 years after an armistice ended the fighting.

On a recent visit to China, South Korean President Park Geun-hye offered to send back the remains of about 360 Chinese soldiers buried in a cemetery outside the city of Paju, a friendly gesture highlighting warming ties between the former combatants.

“Families in China must be waiting for their return,” Park said to Chinese Vice Premier Liu Yandong, according to a statement from Park’s office.

Liu promised to pass the message to China’s top leaders, though it’s unknown whether Beijing will accept the offer. Foreign Ministry representative Hua Chunying said Wednesday she didn’t know where China stood on the offer, but that the issue should be “resolved on the basis of humanitarianism.”

The bodies are buried on a hillside just south of the heavily guarded border with North Korea. Most of the Chinese dead have never been identified.

Several hundred North Korean soldiers are also buried at the site because Pyongyang refuses to take back the bodies.

While China remains North Korea’s only real ally, it has also established close ties with the South since the nations normalized diplomatic relations in 1992. China has overtaken the U.S. as South Korea’s biggest trading partner, with two-way commerce hitting $215 billion in 2012.

Beijing has never given a precise number for its Korean War dead because it claims Chinese troops all volunteered to defend a communist ally from what was portrayed as U.S. aggression. However, estimates of Chinese war dead run as high as 900,000, the bulk of them killed in the final year of the war, when the U.S. and its allies unleashed overwhelming firepower to force an end to the conflict.

With its hundreds of fading white wooden grave markers surrounded by forest and rice paddies, the cemetery has become a popular stop for Chinese tourists visiting Paju, according to Kim Dong-hun, the head of a group responsible for maintaining the cemetery.

Despite the potential loss of Chinese visitors, Kim said he was “very positive” about Park’s offer. Sorting and repatriating the bodies would likely take some time, and new Chinese and North Korean remains continue to surface, he said.

Thursday 4 July 2013

http://www.vancouversun.com/news/Bodies+hundreds+China+Korean+dead+could+returned+home/8613394/story.html

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Missing RAF airman to be finally laid to rest


When Lancaster ED470 was shot down over Holland on its way home from a bombing raid in 1944, among the six men on board to be killed was Flying Officer Derek Heather.

The 22-year-old bomb aimer left behind a heavily pregnant wife, Betty, who gave birth to his daughter Gillian, five months after his death.

Now 68, Gillian Rumsey, who lives in the US, still travels every other year to the RAF memorial at Runnymede, near Windsor, to lay flowers there for the father she never met.

The monument remains the only site at which he is commemorated, because the bodies of Heather and his crewmates were never recovered from the wreckage of their aircraft, which was buried in a Dutch field.

Now, though, officials in the Netherlands announced that they were to excavate the aircraft and recover any remains left inside, to allow them to receive a proper burial.

The dig follows a long campaign by Peter Monasso, a Dutch historian who has traced dozens of missing aircraft from the Second World War.

After nine years of lobbying, the authorities have agreed to the search, which is expected to start in October and will be conducted by a specialist unit from the Royal Netherlands Air Force.

Mrs Rumsey said: “It is wonderful news. I am so pleased that they are going to do this.”

Her parents met before her father joined up, when he and her mother were working for an insurance firm in London. Mrs Rumsey was their only child.

“They lost so many aircraft that my mother said that half of her always thought that something would happen to my father,” she said.

“That’s why she got pregnant. She wanted to keep a part of him - that is what she used to tell me.”

Betty, who died in 1999 remarried in 1951, to a merchant sailor, Albert Myers, and the following year the family moved to Nassau and then, in 1954, to California.

Mrs Rumsey first made the journey to Runnymede at the age of 16 and has returned regularly ever since.

ED470, from 61 Squadron, had set off for its last mission at 7.20pm on September 23, 1944 from its base at RAF Skellingthorpe, near Lincoln.

It was one of 136 bombers, accompanied by five Mosquitos, sent to attack the Dortmund-Ems canal, near Gravenhorst.

The waterway was an important transport link for German industry and at that location, the level of the canal water was well above that of the surrounding area.

Despite thick clouds, the attacking force, which also included aircraft from 617 Squadron - the Dambusters - managed to breach the banks and a six mile stretch of the canal was drained.

ED470 reached the target but it is thought a mechanical fault prevented it from dropping all of its bombs.

Travelling home, it was intercepted by a Junkers 88, a German nightfighter, which attacked it from above and astern. It was repelled by gunfire from the Lancaster, but either the same or a different aircraft attacked again, setting the bomber on fire.

It crashed near a farm just outside the village of Zelhem, near the German-Dutch border.

One of the crew survived the attack - Sergeant John Miller, the rear gunner, had been able to parachute to safety.

In an echo of the war time film One of Our Aircraft Is Missing, Miller, from Warrington, was able to link up with the Dutch resistance, who protected him.

He stayed with a family on a farm until the Allies liberated the country the following year. When he left, he took the farmer’s niece, Tilly Reterink, back to London with him, where they married - although they divorced in 1949. Miller, who later remarried, died in 1992.

Mrs Rumsey said: “After the loss of my father, it was very, very difficult for my mother. For years and years, she thought he would come back, because there was no grave.

“When people go missing, there is always hope. It gave her hope that one of the crew had come back. She thought maybe my father had stayed over there and had another life.”

Mr Monasso said: “After all these years, it is still important for relatives to know where their loved ones came down. They have their whole lives wondering where their father or brother was killed.

“We think its is important to have a proper place of rest for them. It is more satisfying than the memorial to the missing at Runnymede. We always say ‘missing is worse than dead’.”

The other men lost when the aircraft went down were: Flying Officer Albert Hornibrook, 20, the pilot from Queensland, Australia; Sergeant Tegwyn Roberts, the flight engineer, from Denbigh, Wales; Flying Officer John Condon, 24, the navigator, from New South Wales, Australia; Sergeant Robert Stanley Meachen, 23, the wireless operator, from Billingham, County Durham; Sergeant Thomas Brown, 25, the mid-upper gunner from Southport.

The dig will cost 400,000 euros (£340,000), 70 per cent of which will come from the Dutch government, with the remainder provided by the local authority.

British reports initially suggested that ED470 had crashed into the River Waal but Mr Monasso located it by examining local records in Zelhem, which recorded a crash on the evening the aircraft was lost and gave the location.

According to locals, the aircraft exploded a few minutes after crashing as explosives on board went off. Local records say that a small amount of human remains were buried in a local cemetery.

An aerial shot of the area taken later in 1944 showed a large crater near the farm, but there is now no sign of the crash. It is thought that the farmer filled the crater with sand.

Mr Monasso, 63, a former civil servant, then traced the whereabouts and identity of all the other 17 bombers lost that night to determine which one had crashed at the spot.

He has been campaigning to get the local authorities to dig since 2004.

His interest in locating missing aircraft began in 1972, when he stumbled upon part of a Lancaster bomber while out walking in marshland. He has since set up a museum and a foundation involved in investigating cases of missing aircraft.

His team, which covers an area of eastern Holland of around the same size as London, has searched for 400 British, German and American aircraft lost during the war.

Some of the crash sites were fully cleared at the time, by many others were buried.

The team have been involved with about 200 excavations and have helped find the resting places of 22 missing personnel.

Decisions on what will happen to any remains will be made once the dig has taken place. Wreckage from the plane will be put in the foundation’s museum in nearby Lievelde.

Thursday 4 July 2013

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/history/britain-at-war/10156906/Missing-RAF-airman-to-be-finally-laid-to-rest.html

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Kedarnath valley to be fumigated due to foul smell of bodies


As the rotten smell of decomposed bodies, animal carcasses and floating wood makes it difficult for rescuers to remove the dead buried under mounds of rubble in Kedarnath Valley, the Uttarakhand government is planning to fumigate the area with herbal spray.

That should make it easier for airdropped men to dig out the bodies and cremate them, the state's health minister said.

According to Uttarakhand Health Minister Surinder Singh Negi, the main problem the rescue teams are facing at the moment is to enter the Kedarnath Valley, the worst affected in the June 14-17 incessant rains that triggered landslides.

Hundreds have died and an equal number of people are missing in the state. "At the moment, our prime focus is on the Kedarnath Valley. Our prime need is to take out the bodies buried under at least 10-20 feet of rubble," Negi told IANS in an interview.

"The main question we faced was how to enable rescue teams to enter the area, where it is said many bodies are buried. The teams found it extremely difficult to airdrop in these areas because of the rising stench, which is increasing every day due to the incessant rains," Negi added.

"We are now planning to use herbal sprays which will make the air around that area a little breathable. This will then enable the teams to get down, use the earth moving machines and dig out the dead. The dead can then be given a decent funeral," Negi added.

The minister also said they will use the spray in the entire 14 km stretch that leads to the Kedarnath shrine. While over 100,000 people have been evacuated from the Uttarakhand region, many hundreds are still missing.

According to officials and eyewitnesses, many hundreds have been buried under debris in the Kedarnath Valley.

Negi said they have already sprayed bleaching powder over the Kedarnath Valley to prevent the bodies from decaying. "There are human bodies as well as animal carcasses in the Kedarnath Valley area. The rising stench has made rescue work difficult," Negi said.

He also said there was a fear that the floating bodies in the river and streams could cause an epidemic. "So far, there is no reason for an outbreak. We are monitoring the situation. We are getting the help of central health teams, who are stationed here," Negi said.

Thursday 4 July 2013

http://news.oneindia.in/2013/07/03/kedarnath-valley-to-be-fumigated-due-to-foul-smell-1251420.html

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