Trail of Bones: More Cases from the Files of a Forensic Anthropologist

3. Coming Home

Coming Home N the summer of 2003,1 watched the backhoe from the shade of a sweet gum tree at the edge of a small cemetery in southern Arkansas. For some strange reason, the words to "When Johnny Comes Marching Home" kept running silently through my head. The young man in the grave we were exhuming had come home some fortyeight years earlier, but he had not been marching at the time. Corporal James B. Sanders, Company D, 32nd U.S. Infantry Regiment, was just nineteen years old when he died during the Korean War. Of course, officially, it was not a war, just a conflict, but U.S. soldiers died by the thousands just the same. For the second or third time in as many weeks, I asked myself once again why was I involved in this case. My thoughts slipped backward almost a year to my initial introduction to the Sanders family. In July 2002,1wascontacted by Shelley Belgard, a victims' advocate who had been working with various families of POWs and missing soldiers from several wars. Shelley herself had a missing uncle from one of the wars. She had heard about my work on historic cemeteries and forensic burials and called to ask if I would be willing to help the Sanders family. She related their story to me. Corporal Sanders's mother was in her nineties at the time and in poor health, Shelley said. Since "Jim" had been sent home all those long years ago, his mother had been troubled greatly about whether or not the remains in the casket were actually his. The usual rumors had also circulated , arousing suspicion in some, that sealed caskets from that era might not have any bones at all in them. Corporal Sanders's remains had been i 3 Coming Home 25 returned to U.S. custody by communist forces years after he had been reported missing in the Chosin Reservoir of Korea during a mission on December 2,1950. Though the remains identified as Corporal Sanders's had been buried in Arkansas in 1955, his name continued to be listed on official government rolls as being unaccounted for as late as 1957. Lloyd Sanders, Corporal Sanders's older brother and the family spokesperson, wanted to provide peace of mind for his mother and ease the doubt she and the rest of the family had felt over the years. Lloyd, too, was a soldier during the Korean War, but the army had not allowed him to come home for his baby brother's funeral, another reason for distrust. War does strange things to people. Sealed caskets sometimes lend doubt to the veracity of government papers. Additionally, the army was not interested in getting involved in the Sanders family's investigation. Though polite, army officials were steadfast, and understandably so, in their decision to stay away from any effort to exhume a body that had already been identified or to try to second-guess an identification made almost fifty years earlier. They advised the family, however, that the army could do nothing to stop them if they wished to pursue their inquiry. It was not just the sealed casket or government lists that bothered the Sanders family. A seemingly minor detail had been nagging at them in the years since they had received the documents describing Corporal Sanders's body. The official government report noted that on December 2, 1950, Corporal Sanders (at that time Private Sanders) was part of an effort in enemy territory in the Chosin Reservoir region of Korea to secure the town of Hagaru-ri. He was reported missing that day. Years later, his skeletal remains and those of nine other soldiers were turned over to the U.S. authorities by communist forces. When his remains were handed over, no personal items of any kind were included with them, and the identity was listed as "unknown." U.S. government personnel performed a skeletal autopsy and confirmed Corporal Sanders's identification. He was identified by "favorable dental records, highly favorable physical profile, and proximity of his body to last known location ." Also, the official report referred to a healed break in one of his foot bones. The records noted that "the proximal phalanx of the left second 26 TRAIL OF BONES metatarsal had a healed break." The Sanders family stated that Corporal Sanders had never broken his toe and that it must not be...