Military buries two heroic WWII airmen in same casket

Associated Press

ARLINGTON, Va. — Identifiable remains of two World War II airmen who died when their plane was shot down were buried the first time 56 years ago and thousands of miles apart.

On Friday, other remains recently recovered from their downed plane, so mixed together they could not be separated, were buried in a single coffin.

Science has made it easier to identify remains, even tiny fragments from decades-old battles. But, as in this case, it’s sometimes impossible to separate them, and the military buries them together, usually at Arlington National Cemetery.

That’s how Lt. Col. Earle Aber Jr. of Racine, Wis., and 2nd Lt. Maurice Harper of Pell City, Ala., came to share one casket and headstone at Arlington, in addition to the separate sites where their identifiable remains lie.

Harper’s sister, Mary Elizabeth Lamberth, who attended Friday’s ceremony, said she approved of the common burial for the remains, which were found in 1999.

"They’ve been together so long, it was appropriate," she said.

The number of group burials has increased as the science of identification has progressed. There were nine by the Army last year, up from seven the previous year. Numbers for the other military branches were not available.

To separate remains, investigators need a fragment about the size of a quarter, said Shari Lawrence, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Army Personnel Command. Smaller remains can produce good DNA samples, but it’s impossible to distinguish between identities.

Aber and Harper were killed on March 4, 1945, when their Army Air Corps B-17 was shot down off the coast of England by British gunners who mistook it for German.

They maintained control of the plane long enough for the nine crewmen to parachute to safety, then crashed into a river estuary. Only Aber’s arm was found, identifiable by a Boy Scout ring he wore. It was buried in England in 1945.

Relic hunters discovered the plane’s wreckage — including human remains from the cockpit — in late 1999, and a team from the British Navy and the U.S. Army’s Central Identification Laboratory recovered it in June 2000.

Harper’s identifiable remains were returned to his family and buried last fall in Birmingham, Ala. Aber’s identifiable remains will be laid to rest soon, alongside his severed arm, in England.