{"id":70872,"date":"2017-03-15T13:18:52","date_gmt":"2017-03-15T17:18:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=70872"},"modified":"2017-03-15T13:19:23","modified_gmt":"2017-03-15T17:19:23","slug":"2lt-john-donald-mumford-comes-home","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=70872","title":{"rendered":"2LT John Donald Mumford comes home"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Hondo told us<\/a> back in January that 2LT John Donald Mumford’s earthly remains were identified in a faraway field in what was Traianu, Romania (now Novi Troyany, Ukraine). On June 6, 1944, he was escorting a flight of B-17 \u201cFlying Fortress\u201d bombers of the 5th Bombardment Wing on their mission to bomb and destroy a German occupied airfield at Galati, Romania when he was caught in a hail of gunfire from German fighters. Mumford was last seen by fellow pilots in pursuit of two German fighters. Later, villagers of Novotroyan- present day Novi Troyany- Ukraine, observed two aircraft with U.S. markings pursued by several German aircraft. One of the U.S. aircraft crashed in a nearby field.<\/p>\n

Tampa Bay Times<\/a> reports that he will finally make it home from war;<\/p>\n

It never occurred to the brothers that anyone was looking for their uncle, let alone that they would actually find him after so many decades. “I thought it was a scam,” said Lynn Woolums, 67, who like his brother still lives in St. Petersburg. “I was like, ‘Really?’ It was too good to be true.”<\/p>\n

But it was true. And thanks to the Defense MIA\/POW Accounting Agency, or DPAA, a unit of the military dedicated to finding missing troops, Ronald and Lynn Woolums are preparing for an unexpected visitor.<\/p>\n

Mumford’s remains are scheduled to arrive Wednesday night at Tampa International Airport.<\/p>\n

Now the brothers’ heads are filled with thoughts of their uncle and his last frantic moments zooming through the skies of Eastern Europe, chased by machine-gun blasting Nazi warplanes.<\/p>\n

“This is rather overwhelming,” said Lynn Woolums, a retired advertising agency owner.<\/p>\n

“This is unbelievable, really,” said Ronald Woolums, 68, a retired teacher.<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

Wednesday night, the hard work put in by people they never met to solve a mystery they knew little about will pay off for the brothers in the return of their uncle’s remains. The remains will undergo a dignified transfer ceremony before heading to the Anderson-McQueen Funeral Home in St. Petersburg. No date has been set for a service or interment of the cremains, which will take place at the Bay Pines National Veterans Cemetery.<\/p>\n

“I’m kind of anxious about it,” Lynn Woolums said about the ceremony.<\/p>\n

“Me too,” said his brother. “I don’t know how I’ll react.”<\/p>\n

While the brothers say the return of their uncle will bring about a sense of closure, there’s something deeper about what happened, they say.<\/p>\n

“It is very important that everyone knows that there are people who are still looking for remains,” Lynn Woolums said.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Thanks to Wilted Willy for the tip.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hondo told us back in January that 2LT John Donald Mumford’s earthly remains were identified in … 2LT John Donald Mumford comes home<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":70873,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[217],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-70872","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-we-remember"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70872","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=70872"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70872\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/70873"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=70872"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=70872"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=70872"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}