Korea Casualty News

Korea Casualty News

Korea MIA comes home

GORDON DILLOW

Register columnist

GLDillow@aol.com

It's been more than 56 years since a young American soldier named Jimmie Dorser disappeared in the freezing, bloody cauldron that was the battle of the Chosin Reservoir in the Korean War.

But today, finally, Jimmie is coming home.

Shortly after noon, if all goes according to plan, a commercial flight will land at placePlaceNameJohn PlaceNameWayne PlaceNameAirport with a coffin on board. Inside the coffin, at long last released from the hard cold earth of placecountry-regionNorth Korea, will be Jimmie's skeletal remains, still bearing evidence of a gunshot wound he suffered in that terrible battle so long ago. His bones will be wrapped in a wool Army blanket, with a fresh uniform draped over him, complete with all his medals and insignia.

A delegation will greet the coffin on the tarmac and then, with a police escort, Jimmie Dorser will be taken to a funeral home in placeCityHuntington Beach. He will stay there until Saturday morning, when with full military honors he will be buried at placePlaceNameEl Toro PlaceTypeMemorial Park - a half a world and more than half a century away from where and when he died in this nation's service.

And for his two sisters, Betty Neilson, 71, and Terri Bommarito, 66, of placeCityHuntington Beach, their brother's homecoming is nothing less than miraculous.

"There wasn't a day that I didn't hope this would happen," says Terri, who was just 10 years old when her brother was lost. "It really is a miracle."

We can start this story in November 1950, when Army Pfc. Dorser, an 18-year-old infantryman from CitySpringfield, StateMo., assigned to the 31st Regimental Combat Team, was part of a seemingly victorious American army marching north toward the placePlaceNameYalu PlaceTypeRiver, driving a defeated North Korean army before it. Everybody thought they'd be home by Christmas.

But the American high command didn't know that hundreds of thousands of Red Chinese soldiers had slipped across the border into placecountry-regionNorth Korea. In overwhelming numbers, and amid sub-zero temperatures, the Chinese fell upon the American soldiers and Marines near the Chosin Reservoir and elsewhere.

Although it was a strategic defeat for the Americans, U.S. Marines remember the Chosin Reservoir battle as a proud moment, a time when they "attacked in a different direction" and made a fighting withdrawal with virtually all of their wounded and most of their dead. Less well-remembered was the Army's 31st RCT - Pfc. Dorser's unit - which helped defend the Marines' flank until the soldiers were overwhelmed and overrun, with the wounded and dead often left where they lay.

In all, the Army and Marines suffered almost 8,000 dead, wounded and missing in the battle. Pfc. Dorser was one of them.

His sister, Terri, remembers when her family got the news that Jimmie was missing in action. (His status was later changed to missing presumed dead.) Her mother, she says, never got over not knowing what had happened to her boy. Later, after the family had moved to placeStateCalifornia, she died not knowing.

Skip ahead a half century, to when a North Korean farmer was working in a field near the Chosin Reservoir and uncovered some bones. He reported it to authorities, and in 2002 members of the Hawaii-based U.S. Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command were allowed by the North Koreans to excavate the site. Skeletal remains of five Americans were found and sent to placeStateHawaii for possible identification.

The find wasn't unprecedented. Although they're currently suspended, since 1996 country-regionU.S. teams have made a number of MIA searches inside placecountry-regionNorth Korea, recovering more than 200 sets of remains, and the North Koreans have handed over about 200 more. Of those, just over 40 have been positively identified.

Meanwhile, Terri Bommarito heard about MIA remains being found in placecountry-regionNorth Korea and contacted the Department of Defense POW/Missing Personnel Office to see if any of them could be her brother. They asked for a DNA sample from her, which she sent.

Then, just before Thanksgiving, Terri and Betty got the word. Their brother had been positively identified as one of the five Americans discovered by the North Korean farmer.

"I never really thought they would find him," Betty says. "I just can't get over it."

"It's an amazing story," says Sgt. 1st Class Michael Giangregorio, a "casualty assistance officer" at Los Alamitos Joint Forces Training Base. Although the exact cause of death can't be determined, Giangregorio believes the circumstances indicate that Cpl. Dorser - he was officially promoted to corporal after he went missing - died doing his duty.

"It appears his position was overrun and he died still fighting the fight," Giangregorio says. "Cpl. Dorser was one of our brothers in arms, and we're going to do all we can to give him the honor he deserves."

There will be a visitation for Cpl. Dorser Friday from 4-8 p.m. at Advantage Funeral & Cremation Services, 627 Main St., Huntington Beach, and a military burial at El Toro Memorial Park in Lake Forest on Saturday at 11 a.m. Cpl. Dorser's sisters say the public is invited.

"We want people to know about this," Betty says.

Of course, there's still a long way to go in resolving the mysteries of the Korean War. The bodies of more than 8,000 Americans from that war remain missing - and many, perhaps most, may never be found and identified.

But at least for Cpl. Dorser's family there is an ending, a resolution, an answer.

Jimmie is coming home.

Korean War Soldier's Remains ID'd

Associated Press | November 23, 2006 WASHINGTON -

The remains of a U.S. Soldier killed in the Korean War have been identified by American forensic experts, 13 years after they were returned by North Korea.

The Soldier was Pfc. Charles H. Long, of Durand, Ill. He will be buried Saturday in Durand, the Pentagon said Wednesday.

Long's remains, along with his Social Security and other identification cards, were returned by the North Koreans in 1993. They were among an estimated 148 sets of remains returned that year. Between 1990 and 1994, more than 250 sets of remains were returned by the North Koreans; Long is only the 17th to be positively identified, according to Larry Greer, a spokesman for the Pentagon's office of POW and MIA affairs.

In 1995, at the request of U.S. officials, the North Koreans stopped returning the remains they had excavated from battlefields. U.S. forensic experts had complained that the bones were being mixed by the North Koreans, complicating the process of positively establishing identity.

In 1996 a deal was worked out to allow U.S. teams to enter North Korea in search of remains, although that arrangement was suspended by the Bush administration in May 2005. The excavations yielded 229 remains believed to be fallen U.S. servicemen - of which 27 have been positively identified.

More than 33,000 U.S. troops were killed in the Korean War, which began in June 1950 when North Korea invaded South Korea. U.S. forces intervened on behalf of the South while Chinese forces backed the North.

Long was one of four Soldiers from L Company, 3rd Battalion, 31st Infantry Regiment, 7th Infantry Division, who were declared missing in action on March 24, 1953, just four months before the war ended with the signing of an armistice. Long and the three others were engaged in combat just north of today's Demilitarized Zone separating North and South Korea, on a piece of ground that became known as Pork Chop Hill.

The bodies of two of the MIAs were recovered and a third Soldier, who was captured by Chinese forces, was returned alive during a prisoner exchange known as Operation Big Switch, which lasted from August to December 1953.

Long remained unaccounted for and was officially declared dead on March 24, 1954. When the North Korean government returned a box containing his remains in 1993 they said they had been found near Komsa-ri in Kangwon Province, which was near Long's last known location. Also in the box were his Social Security card and identification tags. Forensic experts also used mitochondrial DNA and dental comparisons to identify the remains.

More than 8,100 U.S. servicemen are still listed as missing from the Korean War. The Pentagon believes at least a few thousand are recoverable - more than 1,000 from POW camp burial sites near the Chinese border and roughly an equal number around the Chosin Reservoir area in northcentral North Korea.