Team Infidel
Forum Spin Doctor
Boston Globe
February 16, 2008 By Megan Woolhouse, Globe Staff
Florence Leal was a teenager when her brother, Sergeant Albert Forgue, a gunner on an A-20J Havoc aircraft, disappeared more than 60 years ago during World War II.
Barely a day has gone by when Leal has not thought of him.
"He was 20 when he was lost," said Leal, 78, of North Providence.
Military officials announced yesterday that a shallow grave of bones and other remains found in 1975 near Simmerath, Germany, has been identified as three US airmen, including Forgue. The two other servicemen believed to be on board the two-engine bomber when it crashed over Cologne in 1944 were Lieutenant John F. Lubben of Wisconsin and Sergeant Charles L. Spiegel of Illinois.
Officials plan to bury the men with full military honors on April 18 at Arlington National Cemetery.
After the men were found in 1975, identifying them took more than three decades, an odyssey that began with information from a group of German hobbyists who research unidentified wartime dead.
A German company clearing wartime mines and unexploded ordnance first came across the makeshift burial site. US officials evaluated the finding and the remains, and while concluding that they were US personnel, could not determine which ones.
"We didn't know who to look for," said Larry Greer, a spokesman for the POW/MIA office. "There was nothing leading us to who they were."
They could have been buried by the enemy, Greer said, or by local villagers. Considered "unknowns," officials had the men's remains buried at Ardennes American Military Cemetery and Memorial in Neupré, Belgium.
A group of German citizens - hobbyists who research the unknowns, Greer said - contacted the POW/MIA office in 2003 with information about the remains. They identified the men as the crew from an A-20J crash. Officials exhumed the bodies in 2005 based on that information. They found medical records that appeared to match the teeth that were recovered from the burial site and requested samples of relatives' DNA to look for matching genes passed down through generations, a process known as mitochondrial DNA analysis.
In Forgue's case, officials took samples from his sister, Leal, and Leal's daughter, Victoria, and found they matched.
Leal said in a phone interview yesterday that her parents died without knowing what happened to their son. She worries that something bad could happen to her grandson who is serving in Iraq.
Forgue was born in North Providence and entered the Army in 1943, according to the military. He never married, Leal said.
"I'm the last of the family," she said.
February 16, 2008 By Megan Woolhouse, Globe Staff
Florence Leal was a teenager when her brother, Sergeant Albert Forgue, a gunner on an A-20J Havoc aircraft, disappeared more than 60 years ago during World War II.
Barely a day has gone by when Leal has not thought of him.
"He was 20 when he was lost," said Leal, 78, of North Providence.
Military officials announced yesterday that a shallow grave of bones and other remains found in 1975 near Simmerath, Germany, has been identified as three US airmen, including Forgue. The two other servicemen believed to be on board the two-engine bomber when it crashed over Cologne in 1944 were Lieutenant John F. Lubben of Wisconsin and Sergeant Charles L. Spiegel of Illinois.
Officials plan to bury the men with full military honors on April 18 at Arlington National Cemetery.
After the men were found in 1975, identifying them took more than three decades, an odyssey that began with information from a group of German hobbyists who research unidentified wartime dead.
A German company clearing wartime mines and unexploded ordnance first came across the makeshift burial site. US officials evaluated the finding and the remains, and while concluding that they were US personnel, could not determine which ones.
"We didn't know who to look for," said Larry Greer, a spokesman for the POW/MIA office. "There was nothing leading us to who they were."
They could have been buried by the enemy, Greer said, or by local villagers. Considered "unknowns," officials had the men's remains buried at Ardennes American Military Cemetery and Memorial in Neupré, Belgium.
A group of German citizens - hobbyists who research the unknowns, Greer said - contacted the POW/MIA office in 2003 with information about the remains. They identified the men as the crew from an A-20J crash. Officials exhumed the bodies in 2005 based on that information. They found medical records that appeared to match the teeth that were recovered from the burial site and requested samples of relatives' DNA to look for matching genes passed down through generations, a process known as mitochondrial DNA analysis.
In Forgue's case, officials took samples from his sister, Leal, and Leal's daughter, Victoria, and found they matched.
Leal said in a phone interview yesterday that her parents died without knowing what happened to their son. She worries that something bad could happen to her grandson who is serving in Iraq.
Forgue was born in North Providence and entered the Army in 1943, according to the military. He never married, Leal said.
"I'm the last of the family," she said.