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Spin Zone / Re: On Memorial Day
« on: Today at 06:59:31 AM »I rarely drink but on Memorial Day I have 2 beers. One for my buddies who came home horizontally and the other for me. My flag is at half staff today for them and others.
I am very lucky in that I had no close friends or family killed in war despite several having served. But we have a cousin who died in WW2 and there are two versions of the story. He has a memorial in our family plot but his remains are somewhere in India or offshore underwater.
He was in the Army Air Corps and was shot down over the Himalayas and presumed dead. A year later the family discovered that he had survived and was a prisoner of war in Burma. One version says he was released and was on a transport plane home when the plane went down over India. The other version is he died in the POW camp and it was his body being brought home on the transport which crashed into the ocean.
Either way, another of our cousins recently contacted Indian officials in an attempt to locate/recover his body (80 years later) but was told it was impossible due to religious reasons. Maybe Hindus believe you shouldn't disturb the dead or something? Or maybe just that's what they told him, but no way were they gonna expend any money or effort to do this. Anyway, it ain't never gonna happen. He left a widow who never remarried, and no children. He was 24 years old.
This prompted me to look up recovery efforts and I found that we did indeed try very hard to recover the WW2 dead:
https://www.historians.org/research-and-publications/perspectives-on-history/may-2021/gruesome-but-honorable-work-the-return-of-the-dead-program-following-world-war-ii