Remains of Medford WWII Serviceman Identified 67 Years Later

The remains have been identified of a Medford man who died in a plane crash during World War II 67 years ago, along with 11 others.

Army Air Forces Staff Sgt. Frederick Harris and the other men were last seen leaving an airfield in Papua New Guinea, Oct. 27, 1943. Harris, a machine gunner, was 23, according to a Boston Herald report.

Harris's name is engraved on his parents gravestone in Oak Grove Cemetery, his family told the Herald. His descendants visit the marker every Memorial Day.

Harris did not have any children, but is survived by several nieces and nephews that live in Massachusetts, according to the Herald.

“All I heard growing up was about Uncle Fred,” Durgin told the Herald. “It took a toll on my family. My mom and my aunts worshiped him.”

The remains were identified after an 8 year process that included three months excavating the crash site in 2007, according to a press release from the Department of Defense. The bodies were identified thanks to mitochondrial DNA.

They will be buried next week at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia. They will be buried as a group, but Harris and two other men were able to be individually identified and will also receive their own interment, according to the Department of Defense.

The men were sent on a reconnaissance mission in their B-24 bomber, taking off from an airfield near Port Moresby, New Guinea and heading to the shipping lanes of the Bismarck Sea, the Defense Department said.

During their mission they encountered poor weather and were, they were radioed to land at a friendly air strip. But they were not seen again.

Multiple searches were conducted in the weeks following the crash, but the last radio transmission from the crew did not indicate their location.

Following the war, the Army Graves Registration Service conducted an investigation for the search of the men - along with 31 others - but in June 1949 deemed them unrecoverable.

The search for the missing crew was revived in August 2003, when a Papua New Guinea citizen reported the crash site to a team from the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command, who were in the area investigating a different case. He also gave them an identification card of one of the crewmen.

Twice in 2004 military missing-in-action command teams tried to visit the site but couldn't because of hazardous conditions.

In 2007, a team was able to successfully excavate the site from January to March 2007 where they found several identification tags from the B-24D crew as well as human remains.

The complete list of those identified is as follows:

Army Air Forces 1^st Lt. Jack E. Volz, 21, of Indianapolis; 2^nd Lt. Regis E. Dietz, 28, of Pittsburgh, Pa.; 2^nd Lt. Edward J. Lake, 25, of Brooklyn, N.Y.; 2^nd Lt. Martin P. Murray, 21, of Lowell, Mass.; 2^nd Lt. William J. Shryock, 23, of Gary, Ind.; Tech. Sgt. Robert S. Wren, 25, of Seattle, Wash.; Tech. Sgt. Hollis R. Smith, 22, of Cove, Ark.; Staff Sgt. Berthold A. Chastain, 27, Dalton, Ga.; Staff Sgt. Clyde L. Green, 24, Erie, Pa.; Staff Sgt. Frederick E. Harris, 23, Medford, Mass.; Staff Sgt. Claude A. Ray, 24, Coffeyville, Kan.; and Staff Sgt. Claude G. Tyler, 24, Landover, Md.

The remains representing the entire crew will be buried as a group, in a single casket, Aug. 4 in Arlington National Cemetery near Washington, D.C.  Eight of the airmen were identified and buried as individuals during previous ceremonies.  Shryock, Green and Harris were also individually identified and will be interred individually at Arlington on the same day as the group interment.

The information in this report was provided by the Department of Defense. Read their complete press release.

For more on what Harris's family had to say, read James Hinton's "Hero Finally Makes it Home" from the Boston Herald.