U.S. Army Sgt. John O. Herrick was aboard the Landing Craft Infantry (Large) 92 en route to Omaha Beach throughout the D-Working day assault on June 6, 1944. Assigned to Company B, 149th Engineer Beat Battalion, he hardly ever established foot on the sandy beaches of Normandy.
Practically 80 decades afterwards, Herrick has now been identified by the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency and will be laid to relaxation in his hometown of Emporia, Kansas, on Nov. 11, 2024 — Veterans Working day. His stays have been recognized on Aug. 21, 2023, but his household was not briefed right until just not long ago.
Sean Everette, DPAA Media Relations Main, stated the DPAA does not short the family but offers a detailed report delivered to the family by representatives of the company member’s branch of assistance, which in this scenario, was U.S. Military Mortuary Affairs.
“Typically, they notify the loved ones of the ID through phone within 48 hours. Even so, when the follow-on full identification briefing transpires is in the end up to the family members,” Everette stated in a published statement delivered to Activity and Intent. “It can often take months after that original notification just before the comprehensive briefing transpires. I imagine that’s what occurred in this article.”
LCI 92 hit an underwater mine right before it was struck by Nazi artillery, which ignited the ship’s gasoline outlets, immediately killing all people in the troop compartment. It was almost impossible for the dwelling to get well the dead right until the beachheads have been secured. 24 troopers on LCI 92 could not be recovered because of the rigorous flames engulfing the troop compartment at the time.
Herrick was just one of 3 aboard LCI 92 that fateful day who has been partially recovered and recognized there are nevertheless 21 of the about 200 troopers who were aboard LCI 92 even now unaccounted for.
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All-around June 10, 1944, the 500th Clinical Collecting Business positioned LCI-92 and the burnt stays of troopers in the ruined troop compartment. The American Graves Registration Command (AGRC) afterwards recovered some of the fallen American personnel who served with Herrick.
They taken out partial remains from LCI-92’s troop compartment and buried them in the U.S. Armed service Cemetery St. Laurent-sur-Mer, France now regarded as the Normandy American Cemetery and Memorial.
In 1946, the AGRC commenced examining the stays located in LCI-92. They were separated into 4 groups, marked as X-53, X-83, X-83B, and X-83C. The AGRC was not able to establish the stays in these teams, so they had been interred in the Normandy American Cemetery as unknowns.
The stays had been later exhumed in June and August 2021 and transferred to the DPAA Laboratory for analysis. DPAA researchers recognized Herrick’s continues to be making use of anthropological assessment. Experts from the Armed Forces Professional medical Examiner Technique made use of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) and Y-chromosome DNA (Y-STR) investigation to additional affirm the remains belonged to Herrick.
Now, Herrick’s inscribed name on the Walls of the Lacking at Normandy American Cemetery will have a rosette positioned upcoming to his title, permitting the environment know he has been uncovered. Sometime just after Herrick was verified killed in action, a regional paper described a estimate from his mother after acquiring notification that her son had died in battle.
“I only pray that he did not undergo much too significantly. He was incredibly younger — only nineteen. In his last letter, he instructed me that his finest would like was that with the dawn of peace, there must be an conclude to oppression, sorrow, and struggling. It is up to us to have on his operate in obtaining these things for the entire world.”