Gordon’s family knew he’d been killed on August 13, 1944 during the failed attempt to surround the Germans at the Falaise Gap in France. He was one of 44 casualties in his reconnaissance division. The remains of 43 were identified and returned to their families or buried overseas. Gordon was the only one unaccounted for … until now.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
The story of his coming home includes Lawrence Gordon, who was named after his deceased uncle and spent years trying to account for his namesake. <\/p>\n
During a taped interview with Henry in 2012, Gordon described his frustration with the process. “Almost all of it is being done by private individuals. It has been handed over and there still doesn’t seem to be a spirit of cooperation, a desire to bring the body back, a desire to deal with it. It’s like we’ll put it on the pile and unfortunately it will be at the bottom of the pile and we may never get to it and that’s a frustrating feeling.”<\/p>\n
Gordon and Henry appealed to the governments of Germany and France (who shared responsibility for the Mont-de-Huisnes German War Cemetery) to disinter the remains of crypt 40, burial chamber 57, coffin number 8209, which they believed belonged to PFC Gordon. Germany and France agreed. In fact, France ordered its national crime lab, l’Institut National de Police Scientifique(INPS), to run DNA tests on the remains at no charge.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
But, Joint POW\/MIA Accounting Command (JPAC) stood in their way, showing no interest in coffin 8209’s occupant, but now that the work is done, they’re interested;<\/p>\n
JPAC has now taken an active interest in the Gordon case, sending representatives to the University of Wisconsin for the next few days to examine test results.<\/p>\n
As for the remains of Gordon, the family and Henry will go back to the cemetery in France at the end of May for a ceremony in Gordon’s honor. After that, the remains will be transported back to the U.S. on a commercial airliner as arranged by the family.<\/p>\n
On August 13, the 70th anniversary of his death, Gordon will be buried near his family in Canada.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Welcome home, PFC.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
MCPO Ret. In TN sends us a link from CBS News about PFC Lawrence Samuel Gordon … PFC Lawrence Samuel Gordon comes home<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[217],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-42718","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-we-remember"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42718","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=42718"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42718\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=42718"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=42718"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=42718"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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