Remains of WWII airman buried in US

On Jan 25, 1944, 24-year-old Robert Eugene Oxford and seven other crew members were on a routine supply mission, flying their B-24 Liberator heavy bomber from Kunming in Yunnan province to Chabua, India. They never arrived.

Oxford's plane, nicknamed Hot as Hell, was one of the five US bombers from the 308th Bombardment Group, 425th Squadron of the 14th Air Force, that took off that morning to fly over the Hump, a treacherous stretch of peaks in the Himalayan Mountains, according to US military documents. At 10:45 am, the formation broke up at 15,000 feet because of extreme weather. Clouds obscured the mountains - visibility was less than a mile.

Each aircraft was on its own to try to land safely. All five bombers went down.

Crews parachuted from two aircraft and survived. A third bomber crashed, with two survivors. The fourth and fifth B-24s-Hot as Hell and Haley's Comet - vanished, and their crews were later presumed dead.

All signs of the mission were lost until 2006, when a hiker in northeast India saw a wing and panel inscribed with the bomber's name. The Pentagon investigated in 2015 and found the remains of First Lieutenant Oxford. DNA analysis of his remains matched his niece and nephew.

On Sunday afternoon, his remains were buried with full military honors alongside his parents, Charles and Bessie Oxford, in their hometown of Concord, Georgia. His parents had long ago placed a memorial marker for their lost son at the family grave site.

Photos of his seven fellow crewmen, none of whom was found, were placed inside his coffin.

Sherri Moody of the Moody-Daniel Funeral Home in Zebulon, Georgia, told China Daily that some 300 to 400 people attended. More than half of them were ethnic Chinese, some coming from as far as New York and Philadelphia.

"I think it went well," said Moody, who gave away 700 yellow ribbons - symbol of a welcome homecoming - on Sunday.

Some 20 relatives who had never seen Oxford in person also gathered.

"We were ecstatic that Eugene was found, but we feel guilty there are seven other men on that mountaintop," said Merrill Roan, the wife of Oxford's nephew.

Oxford's parents, siblings and all other relatives who saw him depart for World War II have since died. His fiancee, Susan Brown Parham, who waited decades to marry another, died in 2011.

Oxford volunteered for the armed forces when he graduated from high school. He joined the war effort after graduating from Midland Army Flying School in Texas on Aug 13, 1942.

The Pike County Times, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and the Associated Press contributed to this story.

chenweihua@chinadailyusa.com