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Fallen KW Marine returns home


dunmore1774
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dunmore1774

Below is a snippet about the return of Sgt. John McLaughlin, Korean War USMC, Killed in Action.

 

 

 

Korean War veteran, unidentified for decades, laid to rest in Pittsburgh

 

http://triblive.com/news/allegheny/8479308-74/mclaughlin-pittsburgh-marine#axzz3cOEhbxmG

 

Korean War veteran, unidentified for decades, laid to rest in Pittsburgh

 

For 64 years, he was known only for being unknown.

On Dec. 7, 1950, he was a body riddled with Chinese bullets hurriedly buried in an unmarked grave near North Korea's Choisin Reservoir.

In 1954, his remains filled one of 25 “Operation Glory” boxes shipped from Korea to the Army's Camp Kokura in Japan. Marked as Unknown X-13693, his bones revealed only that he was 60 inches tall, of European descent and about 19 when he died.

Two years later, he was interred in Grave 996 of Section U, Court 8 in the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Honolulu, known informally as Punchbowl Cemetery.

That was his identity until 2012, when medical detectives from the Defense POW/Missing Personnel Office at the Air Force's nearby Hickam Field ordered the exhumation of his and seven other bodies, two of which turned out to be the remains of Koreans.

On Jan. 29, he became a hypothesis. After nearly three years in the lab, investigators believed that they matched his teeth and clavicle to the dental and x-ray records of a Marine missing in action at Choisin. They called Dr. Marcella H. Sorg, a forensic anthropologist at the University of Maine, for a second opinion.

Her decision officially gave the nameless man a name: Sgt. John McLaughlin, an infantryman in D Company, 2nd Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment. The North Side native died while rallying his encircled squad during brutal fighting. His selfless heroism posthumously earned him the Bronze Star Medal for valor.


Read more: http://triblive.com/news/allegheny/8479308-74/mclaughlin-remains-family#ixzz3cOGc4FMh

 

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