‘He’s house’: Missing 73 years, Medal of Honor recipient’s stays return to Georgia

SAVANNAH, Ga. — Soldiers of the ninth Infantry Regiment made a determined retreat as North Korean troops closed in round them. A wounded, 18-year-old Army Pfc. Luther Herschel Story feared his accidents would decelerate his firm, so he stayed behind to cowl their withdrawal.

Story’s actions within the Korean War on Sept. 1, 1950, would guarantee he was remembered. He was awarded the Medal of Honor, the nation’s highest army honor, which is now displayed alongside his portrait on the National Infantry Museum, an hour’s drive from his hometown of Americus, Georgia.

But Story was by no means seen alive once more, and his resting place lengthy remained a thriller.

“In my family, we always believed that he would never be found,” mentioned Judy Wade, Story’s niece and closest surviving relative.

That modified in April when the U.S. army revealed lab assessments had matched DNA from Wade and her late mom to bones of an unidentified American soldier recovered from Korea in October 1950. The stays belonged to Story, a case agent informed Wade over the cellphone. After practically 73 years, he was coming house.

A Memorial Day burial with army honors was scheduled Monday on the Andersonville National Cemetery. A police escort with flashing lights escorted Story’s casket by the streets of close by Americus on Wednesday after it arrived in Georgia.

PHOTOS: ‘He’s house’: Missing 73 years, Medal of Honor recipient’s stays return to Georgia

“I don’t have to worry about him anymore,” mentioned Wade, who was born 4 years after her uncle went lacking abroad. “I’m just glad he’s home.”

Among these celebrating Story’s return was former President Jimmy Carter. When Story was a younger boy, based on Wade, his household lived and labored in Plains on land owned by Carter’s father, James Earl Carter Sr.

Jimmy Carter, 98, has been underneath hospice care at his house in Plains since February. Jill Stuckey, superintendent of the Jimmy Carter National Historical Park, mentioned she shared the information about Story with Carter as quickly as she heard it.

“Oh, there was a big smile on his face,” Stuckey mentioned. “He was very excited to know that a hero was coming home.”

Story grew up about 150 miles south of Atlanta in Sumter County, the place his father was a sharecropper. As a younger boy, Story, who had a eager humorousness and appreciated baseball, joined his mother and father and older siblings within the fields to assist harvest cotton. The work was exhausting, and it didn’t pay a lot.

“Momma talked about eating sweet potatoes three times a day,” mentioned Wade, whose mom, Gwendolyn Story Chambliss, was Luther Story‘s older sister. “She used to talk about how at night her fingers would be bleeding from picking cotton out of the bolls. Everybody in the family had to do it for them to exist.”

The household finally moved to Americus, the county’s largest metropolis, the place Story’s mother and father discovered higher work. He enrolled in highschool, however quickly set his sights on becoming a member of the army within the years following World War II.

In 1948, his mom agreed to signal papers permitting Story to enlist within the Army. She listed his birthdate as July 20, 1931. But Wade mentioned she later obtained a replica of her uncle’s beginning certificates that confirmed he was born in 1932 — which might have made him simply 16 when he joined.

Story left college throughout his sophomore yr. In the summer season of 1950 he deployed with Company A of the first Battalion, ninth Infantry Regiment to Korea across the time the struggle started.

On Sept. 1, 1950, close to the village of Agok on the Naktong River, Story’s unit got here underneath assault by three divisions of North Korean troops that moved to encompass the Americans and reduce off their escape.

Story seized a machine gun and fired on enemy troopers crossing the river, killing or wounding about 100, based on his Medal of Honor quotation. As his firm commander ordered a retreat, Story rushed right into a street and threw grenades into an approaching truck carrying North Korean troops and ammunition. Despite being wounded, he continued preventing.

“Realizing that his wounds would hamper his comrades, he refused to retire to the next position but remained to cover the company’s withdrawal,” Story’s award quotation mentioned. “When last seen he was firing every weapon available and fighting off another hostile assault.”

Story was presumed useless. He would have been 18 years outdated, based on the beginning certificates Wade obtained.

In 1951, his father acquired Story’s Medal of Honor at a Pentagon ceremony. Story was additionally posthumously promoted to corporal.

About a month after Story went lacking in Korea, the U.S. army recovered a physique within the space the place he was final seen preventing. The unidentified stays have been buried with different unknown service members on the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Hawaii.

According to the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency, greater than 7,500 Americans who served within the Korean War stay lacking or their stays haven’t been recognized. That’s roughly 20% of the practically 37,000 U.S. service members who died within the struggle.

Remains of the unknown soldier recovered close to Agok have been disinterred in 2021 as a part of a broader army effort to find out the identities of a number of hundred Americans who died within the struggle. Eventually scientists in contrast DNA from the bones with samples submitted by Wade and her mom earlier than she died in 2017. They made a profitable match.

President Joe Biden introduced the breakthrough April 26 in Washington, joined by South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol.