bobdina
04-30-2010, 11:07 AM
Remains of WWII airman found, bound for home
By Herb Meeker - Mattoon (Ill.) Journal-Gazette via AP
Posted : Friday Apr 30, 2010 9:03:02 EDT
LOXA, Ill. — After 66 years, Staff Sgt. Mike Elliott is coming home to Illinois.
On May 10, 1944, Elliott, a 24-year-old Army Air Forces staff sergeant, was part of a B-25 bomber crew when the aircraft crashed atop a mountain in southern Corsica. Elliott died with 1st Lt. Ray F. Fletcher, Capt. Lewis J. Gerrings, Pvt. Richard H. Loring and Red Cross nurse Carolyn Chapin. What caused the crash during the noncombat mission is not clear.
Back in central Illinois, Elliott’s family learned his body could not be recovered from the crash site. For Glenn Elliott, Mike’s kid brother, the Army aviator became a painful memory of loss. He mourned the loss of the sibling with his older brothers, Walter and Junior, also World War II veterans, his sisters and his parents, Belle and Levi Elliott.
“He was very young when Mike was lost. He remembers Mike coming home for a leave before he left for Europe. But that’s about all from the war,” said Sue Elliott, Glenn’s wife of 53 years.
Now 73, Glenn is the last surviving member of his family that experienced the war that claimed Mike’s life. He will attend one last funeral May 11 for his lost-but-not-forgotten brother. Determined efforts by military rescue and recovery team members and DNA testing of two nieces of the deceased two years ago helped confirm a few body remains are those of Mike Elliott. These archaeological searches for American MIAs are conducted across the globe to recover remains that can provide DNA matches of living relatives, preferably those on the mother’s side of the deceased.
“This is actually unbelievable,” Sue Elliott said. “We never thought we’d be planning a funeral for something that happened 66 years ago.”
She will be taking a photograph of the brother-in-law she knew so much about but never met to Mitchell-Jerdan Funeral Home for the funeral remembrance display of the Elliott family. She will also be submitting for display letters announcing the aviator’s death from 1944, which Belle Elliott stored in a cedar chest through the decades. Mike’s mother died before word came confirming her son’s remains would come back to the United States.
“She kept them in her chest. I still have them in the envelopes in my chest now,” Sue Elliott said.
Great nephews of Mike Elliott will escort his body on a flight from military facility in Hawaii. Both are veterans, one completing a tour of duty in Iraq and the other in Afghanistan. The body is scheduled to arrive at Coles County Memorial Airport on Mother’s Day, May 9.
By Herb Meeker - Mattoon (Ill.) Journal-Gazette via AP
Posted : Friday Apr 30, 2010 9:03:02 EDT
LOXA, Ill. — After 66 years, Staff Sgt. Mike Elliott is coming home to Illinois.
On May 10, 1944, Elliott, a 24-year-old Army Air Forces staff sergeant, was part of a B-25 bomber crew when the aircraft crashed atop a mountain in southern Corsica. Elliott died with 1st Lt. Ray F. Fletcher, Capt. Lewis J. Gerrings, Pvt. Richard H. Loring and Red Cross nurse Carolyn Chapin. What caused the crash during the noncombat mission is not clear.
Back in central Illinois, Elliott’s family learned his body could not be recovered from the crash site. For Glenn Elliott, Mike’s kid brother, the Army aviator became a painful memory of loss. He mourned the loss of the sibling with his older brothers, Walter and Junior, also World War II veterans, his sisters and his parents, Belle and Levi Elliott.
“He was very young when Mike was lost. He remembers Mike coming home for a leave before he left for Europe. But that’s about all from the war,” said Sue Elliott, Glenn’s wife of 53 years.
Now 73, Glenn is the last surviving member of his family that experienced the war that claimed Mike’s life. He will attend one last funeral May 11 for his lost-but-not-forgotten brother. Determined efforts by military rescue and recovery team members and DNA testing of two nieces of the deceased two years ago helped confirm a few body remains are those of Mike Elliott. These archaeological searches for American MIAs are conducted across the globe to recover remains that can provide DNA matches of living relatives, preferably those on the mother’s side of the deceased.
“This is actually unbelievable,” Sue Elliott said. “We never thought we’d be planning a funeral for something that happened 66 years ago.”
She will be taking a photograph of the brother-in-law she knew so much about but never met to Mitchell-Jerdan Funeral Home for the funeral remembrance display of the Elliott family. She will also be submitting for display letters announcing the aviator’s death from 1944, which Belle Elliott stored in a cedar chest through the decades. Mike’s mother died before word came confirming her son’s remains would come back to the United States.
“She kept them in her chest. I still have them in the envelopes in my chest now,” Sue Elliott said.
Great nephews of Mike Elliott will escort his body on a flight from military facility in Hawaii. Both are veterans, one completing a tour of duty in Iraq and the other in Afghanistan. The body is scheduled to arrive at Coles County Memorial Airport on Mother’s Day, May 9.