In Memoriam

[Grace]

15 September 2011

Oklahoma National Guard Sergeant Mycal L. Prince was killed in action on 15th September 2011 in Laghman province, Afghanistan in a battle with enemy forces involving rocket-propelled grenades and small arms fire.

28-year-old Sgt. Prince, from Minco, Oklahoma, joined the National Guard shortly after his 17th birthday and had deployed to New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and Iraq in 2008. He was a serving police officer with the Minco Police Department.

Maj. Gen. Myles L. Deering, adjutant general with the Oklahoma National Guard, paid tribute to Sergeant Prince saying the he "served his nation and this great state for more than a decade with honor and distinction.”

[Grace]

15 September 2011

US Marine Corporal Michael J. Dutcher, age 22, from Asheville, North Carolina, died on 15th September while conducting combat operations in Helmand province, Afghanistan.

Cpl. Dutcher served with the 1st Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment, 1st Marine Division, I Marine Expeditionary Force, based at Camp Pendleton, California. He deployed to Afghanistan in April this year and was due home in October.

Michael is survived by many loving family members and friends including his mother, Teresa, his twin brother Timothy, and his fiancée.

[Grace]

2011 Foreign Fatalities - Afghanistan

* Australia: 7

* Azerbaijan: 6

* Canada: 3

* Czech: 1

* Denmark: 3

* Fiji: 1

* Finland: 1

* France: 23

* Georgia: 4

* Germany: 7

* Hungary: 2

* Italy: 5

* Jordan: 1

* NATO: 4

* Nepal: 4

* New Zealand: 2

* Norway: 1

* Poland: 7

* Romania: 3

* Spain: 4

* Sweden: 1

* UK: 34

* US: 329

[Grace]

17 September 2011

27-year-old US Army Staff Sergeant Michael W. Hosey, from Birmingham, Alabama, was killed in action on 17th September 2011 during a battle with enemy forces in Uruzgan province, Afghanistan. He died from small arms fire injuries.

Staff Sgt. Hosey served with the 3rd Battalion, 1st Special Forces Group, based at Joint Base Lewis-McChord, Washington.

SSgt. Hosey joined the Army in 2001 as a Communications Intelligence Specialist. He served the 11th Military Intelligence Brigade as an instructor. In 2003, he was assigned to Fort Huachuca, Arizona, where he served as a Communications Intelligence Specialist. In 2005, he was assigned to Fort Lewis, Washington.

He has been posthumously awarded the Meritorious Service Medal, the Purple Heart and the Bronze Star Medal.

[Grace]

17 September 2011

US Army Sergeant Garrick L. Eppinger Jr., died in Parwan province on 17th September 2011. This was his third deployment to Afghanistan.

Sgt. Eppinger, age 25, from Appleton, Wisconsin, served with the 395th Ordnance Company, 687th Combat Sustainment Support Brigade, 646th Regional Support Group, based at Wausau, Wisconsin.

Article from local paper.

[Grace]

18 September 2011

US Army Specialist Chazray C. Clark, was killed in action on 18th September 2011 when an insurgent bomb detonated beside his unit in Kandahar province.

24-year-old Spc. Clark, from Ecorse, Michigan served with 4th Squadron, 4th Cavalry Regiment, 1st Heavy Brigade Combat Team, 1st Infantry Division, based at Fort Riley, Kansas.

Article from local paper.

[Grace]

World War II

Airmen Missing In Action From WWII Identified

The Department of Defense POW/Missing Personnel Office (DPMO) announced today that the remains of nine servicemen, missing in action from World War II, have been identified and are being returned to their families for burial with full military honors.

Army Air Forces 1st Lt. William J. Sarsfield of Philadelphia; 2nd Lt. Charles E. Trimingham of Salinas, Calif.; Tech. Sgt. Robert L. Christopherson of Blue Earth, Minn.; and Tech. Sgt. Leonard A. Gionet of Shirley, Mass., will be buried as a group in a single casket on Sept. 21 in Arlington National Cemetery, along with remains representing previously identified crew members 2nd Lt. Herman H. Knott, 2nd Lt. Francis G. Peattie, Staff Sgt. Henry Garcia, Staff Sgt. Robert E. Griebel, and Staff Sgt. Pace P. Payne, who were individually buried in 1985. These nine airmen were ordered to carry out a bombing mission over Rabaul, Papau New Guinea (P.N.G.), in their B-17E Flying Fortress nicknamed Naughty but Nice, taking off from an airfield near Dobodura, P.N.G., on June 26, 1943. The aircraft was damaged by anti-aircraft fire and ultimately shot down by Japanese fighter aircraft. A tenth man, the navigator and only survivor of the crash -- 2nd Lt. Jose L. Holguin -- was held as a prisoner of war until his release in September 1945.

In 1949, U.S. military personnel in the area were led by local citizens to a B-17 crash site on New Britain Island. Remains were recovered but couldn’t be identified given the technology of the time. The remains were buried as unknown at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Honolulu.

In 1982 and 1983, Holguin returned to the area and located the crash site. A fragment of the aircraft nose art was recovered and is displayed in the War Museum in Kokopo, P.N.G. In 1985, the remains were exhumed and identified as Knott, Payne, Garcia, Peattie, and Griebel. In 2001, a team from the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command (JPAC) excavated the site and found additional human remains and crew-related equipment.

Among forensic identification tools and circumstantial evidence, scientists from JPAC used dental comparisons and the Armed Forces DNA Identification Laboratory used mitochondrial DNA -- which matched that of some of the crewmembers’ families -- in the identification of their remains.

At the end of the war, the U.S. government was unable to recover and identify approximately 79,000 Americans. Today, more than 73,000 are unaccounted for from the conflict.