Homecoming: Sgt. Hamilton's Long Journey

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(radio static) - [Franklin D. Roosevelt] As our power and our resources are fully mobilized, we shall carry the attack against the enemy.

We shall hit him and hit him again.

(melancholic music) (crashing) - [Eloise] They never found the plane.

- All the people that never quit looking, all the people that never quit hoping.

- [Shelley] We got a phone call from the military.

"We have found your uncle's remains."

(motorcycle revving) - [Shelley] It was almost as if the skies opened up.

And here he's coming back and coming back in a big way.

(guns fire) - It was a homecoming like I've never seen before.

(uplifting music) Fun, Vernie was always fun.

A little bit ornery and got us in trouble once in a while.

- [Narrator] Eloise Evans is 91 now living in Weirton, West Virginia.

She's one of just a few people still alive who actually knew Vernon Hamilton.

They were cousins.

- [Eloise] He was certainly special to me.

- [Narrator] From West Virginia, the Monongahela River flows north into Pennsylvania toward Pittsburgh.

Here on this bank of The Mon is a town with the same name.

The locals call it Mon City.

- [Eloise] We went to Mon City to visit.

It's good memories.

- [Narrator] There's still a lot of hometown charm here.

Historic landmarks and buildings, a busy main street.

And still on main street is the second floor apartment where Vern Hamilton's family once lived.

Eloise has photos of them all.

- [Eloise] That's Uncle Jim.

- [Narrator] Vern's dad, James, was a coal miner.

- Look at that.

- [Narrator] His wife Dorothy, a stay-at-home mom.

- This is Aunt Dottie.

- Oh mom she was so beautiful.

- [Narrator] Vern had an older brother, Jim, and a younger sister, Donna.

- [Eloise] Everybody in the family loved him.

- [Narrator] All American is how the family describes Vern.

He was an athlete, also an usher at the Anton Theater.

For decades, this movie theater brought dreams of Hollywood to a small town, a town where Vern had dreams of flying.

- When I see Vernie's picture in uniform, I thought he's doing just what he wanted to do.

I was looking through some old photos and albums and I just couldn't believe that I had all the letters that he had written to me when I was in high school.

And it brought back a lot of memories.

The date of the first letter that I found was December 4, 1943.

Most of the letters Vern sent to me just had my name, Miss Eloise Pillett, Weirton, West Virginia.

"Hi cousin, I sure appreciated your letter."

- [Vernon] It was very interesting.

Well, they sure are putting us through a tough physical down here.

They have us run three miles every morning - [Eloise] Vernie's letters were always special.

- [Vernon] Well Eloise, it's getting close to 9:30 and that's when the lights go out around here, so I'll be closing, cousin Vern.

(radio clicks off) - January the 3rd, 1944.

"Hi El, boy, that was a swell picture of you."

This is the picture I sent to Vernie.

- [Vernon] I showed it to my buddies and they all approved.

One wanted your name, but he is a wolf and writes to almost every girl he sees, so I held out on him.

- I think he hasn't changed a bit.

(laughs) No, Vern has not changed a bit.

(jazz music) - [Eloise] January the 9th, 1945.

- [Vernon] I met a swell blonde and we took the town in.

We went to a formal dance at the armory, and then took a detour to two night clubs.

My girl wore a maroon gown.

And it was too long, well I was riding on it all night.

My old time girl from Mon City went to Florida and I read that she got engaged, lucky fellow.

- I think I can see his getting older in this letter.

Not that he's changing, but, I think, he's grown up.

- [Vernon] As you can see, I'm not at Florence Army Airfield.

We are now assigned to A26's, you probably never heard of it 'cause it's one of the latest ships out.

I'm gonna end this yapping and head for our flight line.

- [Eloise] "Well now, I'll sign off, "and ask for excuses for all my mistakes.

"Your flying cuz, Vern."

And that's the last letter I got from him.

(mellow music) (suspenseful music) - [Narrator] In the spring of 1945, air activity was fierce in the skies above Dortmund, Germany.

A26 invaders from the 409th bomber group were on a mission.

- [Mark] The A26 was a medium bomber built by Douglas Aircraft in the later days of the Second World War.

- [Narrator] Mark Noah is the founder of the nonprofit, History Flight.

- [Mark] it was very important to be able to actually identify this wreck site as the one with the missing aircraft.

- [Narrator] History Flight's primary mission?

Finding the remains of missing American troops and bringing them home.

- Vernon Hamilton's A26 was on its way inbound to the target.

- [Narrator] Second Lieutenant Lynn Hadfield of Salt Lake City, Utah was the 26-year-old pilot.

Hadfield's gunner, Sergeant John Kalausich of Charleston, West Virginia, age 19.

Vern Hamilton, also 19, was not originally part of the crew.

- [Eloise] He only had one more flight to go before he would have been sent home because they didn't have a full crew for this one flight, he volunteered for that flight.

- It was carrying 4,000 pounds of high explosive bombs to drop on an air raid in the industrial heartland of Germany.

And they were almost at the initial point where they would run into the target that his plane was shot down.

- [Narrator] Witnesses in other aircraft saw it happen.

The plane rolled on its back and went straight down, no parachutes deployed.

- So you can imagine if a plane was spinning down.

- [Man] Come on you guys get out of that plane, bail out.

- [Mark] It was a great amount of centrifugal force and speed.

It would be almost impossible to get out of one of those aircrafts.

You are my sunshine, my only sunshine - [Narrator] Vern Hamilton's voice is forever captured on this old 78 record.

He'd made it overseas with some of his army air corps buddies and sent it home.

His mother's favorite song.

Please don't take my sunshine away For Dorothy Hamilton, it was an aching reminder of a son, now missing in action.

- His mother never gave up that he would walk through the door.

She never locked her doors after that.

- [Narrator] And Dorothy held onto every possibility.

Maybe Vern was badly injured, in a hospital, or buried in a European cemetery.

Her desperation is scripted in letters she wrote for years to anyone who might help, the military.

Even a reverend in the town where Vern's plane disappeared.

- [Dorothy] Please try and find something.

Even a grave would be so dear to me.

Maybe he is walking around and doesn't know who he is or living with some people.

He has light and dark blonde hair.

His eyes are beautiful blue.

Captain Donnelly, have you ever had a tearing inside of you telling you there is more to do?

I have done everything possible-- - [Shelley] "Except go over there to that cemetery."

The letters that my grandmother wrote were very heartfelt.

- [Dorothy] I would search this Earth until I find the part of me that is lost.

- Very desperate to find my uncle and she was very persistent about it.

- She was fighting for her son and fighting for him to be found.

- She always thought Vern was coming home.

- She got responses back, but it was never a positive response.

It was always, "I'm sorry, we're unable to find him."

- [Narrator] And the answer never did come for Dorothy Hamilton, she died in 1992.

- [Shelley] We're her eyes and her voice right now.

- [Narrator] These are three of Dorothy's grandchildren.

They're the children of Vern's older brother Jim.

Cindy, Shelley, Vern.

- [Vern] I was named after Vern and I'm like the last caretaker of the family grave.

- [Narrator] Although the next generation had all but given up hope of ever bringing Vern's remains home.

His namesake honors him by tending the grave site even though it is in name only.

A small headstone in the military section of the cemetery.

- [Vern] I respect the flag, and Vern died for the flag.

When I was a little boy, I always said a prayer for my Uncle Vern.

- [Shelley] My grandmother spoke of him all the time.

- That's how I got to know my uncle Vern was through my grandmother.

- [Narrator] They grew up with reverence for the uncle they never met remembering his voice on that old record and the memorabilia Dorothy saved.

- This is part of Vern.

He wore it while he was stationed in Europe.

- [Narrator] But they also remember the void and grief that touched every member of the family.

- Some grief that my dad had throughout all of his life.

- He missed his brother - [Vern] Vern's life was very short and I think he was cheated out of a lot.

- [Narrator] Including a burial back home.

Why the US government never found the crash site is not clear.

By 1951, the plane and its crew were officially declared non-recoverable.

The excavation of this field almost didn't happen.

But thanks to the old war stories of this man and the persistence of this man, it did.

Adolf Hagedorn is a researcher and historian.

Part of a group that has identified more than 60 World War II crash sites in Germany.

Heinrich Vestrick is a local, still living on his family farm.

In March of 1945, he stood here with his father and watched an American bomber plunge to the earth in a nearby pasture.

(speaks foreign language) - [Interpreter] We were down there on the farm.

I stood there at the gate and saw that the airplane was coming, it was burning, and then how it came down behind the house on the meadow.

- [Narrator] that story eventually got to Adolf Hagedorn who quickly explored the pasture with a metal detector.

- He sleuthed out the site, and reported it to the DOD, and nothing happened.

So he went out their and dug it himself.

- [Narrator] Hagedorn found parts of a Douglas aircraft.

The Department of Defense was convinced but there was a problem.

- The landowner was about to build a barn in a horse pasture where this airplane crash had happened.

And if they did that, there would be no way to ever excavate to find it after that.

- [Narrator] The defense department didn't have a team ready and asked mark Noah's History Flight to step in.

His teams have already recovered more than 300 Americans who went missing in the European and Pacific theaters of World War II.

This magnetometer image was even more proof.

It clearly shows a disturbance in the pasture.

History Flight assembled a team that included historians, geophysicists, unexploded ordinance experts, and forensic archeologists.

- [Interpreter] Yes, we are applying judicial archeological or forensic archeological methods here and that is not much different from a criminal case.

- [Narrator] The team worked seven days a week from six in the morning until midnight.

They used tents with heaters to thaw frozen ground so in the morning they could start all over.

- And in 30 days, we excavated about a football field worth of dirt through quarter inch screens and found what we were looking for.

- [Narrator] Pieces of the missing A26.

- [Mark] Boxes and boxes of aircraft wreckage.

- [Interpreter] We are not being successful in actually clearing some of these cases.

That family members will finally receive some news.

- [Mark] We found the data plate that identified the aircraft as well as numerous pieces and material evidence that the flight crew was wearing.

- [Narrator] And fragments of bones and teeth.

- [Mark] working on the A26 site for Vernon Hamilton was like doing archeology in Gettysburg.

Yes, it is hallowed ground.

We do the work for the souls of the missing and the families they left behind.

- [Narrator] For the family of Vernon Hamilton, finally some hopeful news and a request.

- [Vern] We got the phone call from the military-- - Saying that-- - Well, we think we've found his remains.

- They would like to have our DNA and would we be interested in participating, and of course, we said yes.

- This individual experienced trauma at death.

- [Narrator] The military asked that they'd not be shown and which you can't see on these tables is hope, hope that someday the human remains in this lab will bring long-awaited answers to families across America.

- This nation still is in search of finding them answers that they've long sought.

- [Narrator] At Offutt Air Force Base in Omaha, Nebraska is the Defense POW-MIA Accounting Agency or DPAA.

- We have a responsibility, a personal responsibility that their service cannot be forgotten, their sacrifice cannot be forgotten.

- We have DNA-- - [Narrator] Here anthropologists and other researchers oversee what's part of the world's largest forensic skeletal laboratory.

The remains have been recovered from war zones dating back to the 1940s.

- Some of the sediment's still attached to the bones-- - [Narrator] thousands of bones and teeth like these forensic samples.

And just as many pieces of material evidence.

- [Penny] This is very typical of what we would get with an air crash.

- [Narrator] Buttons, the frame of someone's eyeglasses, a pen knife, wrist watch, the mouthpiece of a trumpet.

- It's very personal to see those wedding rings, regular rings.

- [Narrator] And it was here that those personal effects and human remains from the German excavation site were sent.

- I was assigned to do the material evidence that came out of the site.

That included the material evidence for everyone who was on the plane which included Mr. Hamilton.

In the case of Vern Hamilton, we found a class ring.

- [Narrator] 1943, Monongahela High School, Vernon L. Hamilton's initials clearly engraved on the inside of the band.

And there are belongings of his crewmates, a 45-caliber pistol, the cap of this fountain pen shows the pilot's name, Lynn Hadfield.

His dog tags were also recovered.

Along with those of Sergeant Kalausich.

- It was clear to me that we had more than one person in this particular skeletal assemblage.

- [Narrator] Dr. Sarah Kindschuh is a forensic anthropologist.

Her job was to examine and hopefully match the human remains to the three men on board.

- [Sarah] In this case, there were many fragments.

- [Narrator] In Hamilton's recovery she worked with teeth, parts of his jaw, clavicle, and other bones.

From those, she sent samples for DNA testing at another lab, The Armed Forces Medical Examiner System at the Dover Air Force Base in Delaware.

- [Woman] Open your mouth please.

- [Narrator] There are thousands of American families who hope DNA testing will someday bring answers.

- All done.

- [Narrator] In this busy hotel in Omaha, people are providing DNA samples and information that might someday connect them to a military family member whose body is missing or unidentified.

- I am the niece of Captain Warren Sanderson whose plane was shot down during the Cold War.

And I am the only surviving blood relative.

- [Narrator] Jayne Hanson came here from Minnesota, one of many who gathered for what's called a family member update, this one in Omaha.

Seven times a year, the DPAA sets up meetings like this in different cities.

The room is packed with people longing for answers about a missing brother or sister.

Maybe a father or an uncle they never got to meet.

- Stories have been passed down, memories have been shared, and yet it's as visceral for them as it was for their grandmother or their great grandmother.

- [Narrator] They tell stories, mention the name of a lost loved one.

- I'm the daughter of Second Lieutenant Edwin H. Krantz.

- Donald Bernard Banta.

- By being able to look them in the eye and hear their voices is a powerfully inspirational and very rewarding aspect of this mission.

- [Narrator] It's a mission that seems overwhelming.

The DPAA reports nearly 1,600 Americans are still missing from the Vietnam War, 7,600 from Korea, and nearly 73,000 never returned from World War II.

- We're here in memory of our twin uncles.

- [Narrator] Leo and Rudolph Blitz were twin brothers who died together at Pearl Harbor, they were 20 years old.

- My mom is 93 now and they were her brothers.

I wish I could have met them.

- [Narrator] The twins' bodies were never identified.

They were among 429 who died on the USS Oklahoma.

Many of them trapped in the battleship's sunken hull.

By the time the remains were recovered most could not be identified.

All of them buried in Hawaii as unknowns.

- [Carrie] The skull is in red.

- [Narrator] giving those men names again is Carrie LeGarde.

She's the lead anthropologist on the Oklahoma Project.

- My research has been related to trying to sort out co-mingled human remains.

That's sort of my specialty.

We have many individuals and the bones are all mixed up.

- [Narrator] 13,000 bones and teeth are now spread out on these tables.

Carrie's job is to put them back together.

- We do a biological profile from the bones to try to assess their age, sex, ancestry, or how tall they were, and then we can also combine that with any material evidence, like a ring.

- [Narrator] That plus DNA testing helps close each case.

It's sophisticated work.

but Carrie charts each success in a simple way.

- We just identified our 207th Oklahoma service member.

- [Narrator] And not long after that, Carrie's team finally identified Leo and Rudolf Blitz.

DNA from their mother was a match.

As for the family of Sergeant Hamilton, his nephew, Vern, and nieces, Cindy and Shelley, were among those who provided DNA.

Their news arrived in December 2018.

- [Shelley] It was actually an early Christmas present for all of us.

- [Cindy] I knew it in my heart that it was him but I was excited that it was confirmed that it was finally him.

- We had a million questions we wanted to ask them.

It was a pretty awesome phone call.

- It was just surreal.

- And it was not only that it was my Uncle Vern but it was the other two men.

Those three men went down together.

- [Narrator] And they were finally going home.

Lynn Hadfield, John Kalausich, and Vern Hamilton.

- Since I started working this case, this is really the first time that I've seen a picture of him.

He looks happy, he looks friendly.

He's like a nice guy, I'm sure he was.

- When I saw the plane come in, my heart just began to explode.

(dignified orchestral music) - [Narrator] On a warm spring evening, Vern Hamilton's family gathered on the tarmac at Pittsburgh International Airport.

They came from California, Louisiana, West Virginia, Florida, to serve as the sergeant's final escort.

- It was probably the maternal instincts kicking in.

I kind of felt like he was my son and I was his mother, so it was hard, but it was joyful.

- This was an answer to my grandmother's prayer.

- [Narrator] Vern's mother, Dorothy, was very much in everyone's thoughts that day.

- [Shelley] we were shedding a few tears for her and maybe representing her that day as well.

Just out of the blue, I think it was my actually my brother, he started to sing you are my sunshine, You are my sunshine And then we all joined in.

You make me happy It was just so spontaneous and it was just such a wonderful way to greet him.

You'll never know dear, how much I love you - [Narrator] As the sun began to set, the roar of motorcycles would break the silence on a country road winding its way to Monongahela.

- He's coming back and coming back in a big way.

(church bell tolling) - [Narrator] The next few days would be an emotional blur with a church service-- - And I thank you, Uncle Vern, for teaching us a lesson to never give up.

- [Narrator] And a lesson on overcoming tragedy, healing old scars, and making new friends.

Deanna Dickson is a niece from California.

It's been years since she's been to her family's hometown.

- Not only did we find our uncle Vernie but we found our family.

- [Narrator] This time, she brought her daughter.

- There's been a part of me over here that I didn't know I was missing until now.

I'll never forget it, never.

- This town wrapped their arms around Vern.

(church bell tolling) (dignified orchestral music) - [Narrator] On April 13th, 2019, the people of Monongahela held a victory celebration, one that was 74 years overdue.

- [Eloise] And when I saw the people on the street, I thought, Mon City is some kind of special place.

- Small town but with a big heart.

(mellow music) - [Deanna] All of these people, all of this, was for him.

- [Narrator] The long journey was finally over.

- [Cindy] There was tears of joy but also tears of celebration.

(guns firing) We commend Almighty God, our brother, Vernon L. Hamilton.

- [Vern] This was Vern's homecoming.

- [Deanna] We found him, we found him, and we brought him home.

- [Narrator] Sergeant Hamilton's remains were buried at his mother's grave.

- [Eloise] He's at rest and he came home to his mom.