US searches for World War II dead in East Europe
For more than six decades, the family of U.S. Army 1st Lt. Archibald Kelly had no way of being certain he was killed when his bomber smashed into a rocky cliff in Croatia in World War II.
They didn't know his bones lay under a makeshift cairn cobbled together by villagers. Without a body or a proper burial they could never completely convince themselves he was dead.
"We didn't have anything confirmed," the navigator's brother, Samuel Kelly, 85, recalled. "My mother always thought he got knocked in the head and had amnesia and was wandering around Europe somewhere. She never gave up thinking that he would come home. My dad was the same way."
Last year, Kelly was finally buried back home in Michigan in a ceremony with full military honors after his remains were located and identified by U.S. investigators — the latest success in a renewed push to recover the bones of missing WWII servicemen in Eastern Europe.
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They didn't know his bones lay under a makeshift cairn cobbled together by villagers. Without a body or a proper burial they could never completely convince themselves he was dead.
"We didn't have anything confirmed," the navigator's brother, Samuel Kelly, 85, recalled. "My mother always thought he got knocked in the head and had amnesia and was wandering around Europe somewhere. She never gave up thinking that he would come home. My dad was the same way."
Last year, Kelly was finally buried back home in Michigan in a ceremony with full military honors after his remains were located and identified by U.S. investigators — the latest success in a renewed push to recover the bones of missing WWII servicemen in Eastern Europe.