Korea vet remains ID’d, will be buried - Army News | News from Afghanistan & Iraq - Army Times

Korea vet remains ID’d, will be buried

OWENSBORO, Ky. — Mary K. Mitchell was 5 years old when her brother, Sgt. Charles Patterson Whitler, was executed by North Korean soldiers on Nov. 2, 1950, on a farm in North Korea.

Whitler, a veteran of the Korean War and World War II, was almost 23 years old when he was killed. Eight other soldiers and their interpreter died with her brother, and all had been listed as missing in action for 60 years, Mitchell said.

Mitchell, of Cameron Park, Calif., and her sister, Nancy Whitler, of Wilson, N.C., will attend their brother's burial Friday in his central Kentucky hometown of Cloverport in Breckinridge County.

In June, the sisters were notified by an armed forces representative that through DNA the family had provided a few years ago, remains found in a rice paddy in North Korea were those of their brother.

The Defense Department said he was assigned to 3rd Battalion, 8th Cavalry Regiment, which came under attack in 1950 while they were near the town of Unsan. Almost 400 men were reported missing or killed after the battle, the military said.

Many residents of the Cloverport community will be standing by the roadside holding American flags when Whitler is taken to his final resting place, said Chris Burns of Burns Funeral Home.

Mitchell said the community has supported the burial of her brother, and one man has worked more than three weeks making sure that Whitler is carried to the cemetery with the dignity he deserves.

"Kenny Popham, who's married to one of (Whitler's) nieces, came up and asked me if they could pull the casket to the graveyard with my Owensboro Wagon," Hewitt White said.

"It's a pretty wagon, but I didn't think it was appropriate," White said. "It's painted red and green.

"I thought he deserved better," White said, so he built a horse-drawn funeral wagon for the soldier's burial.

"I had a bunch of cherry wood, and I painted it black," White said. "My sister made the drape that hangs on the back."

The wagon is "absolutely remarkable," Mitchell said. "I had to see it with my own eyes to believe it."

Whitler will be buried with full military honors, Burns said. "The VFW and American Legion will be represented."

Motorcyclists from Rolling Thunder and the Patriot Guard also will be in the procession from the funeral home to the cemetery, Burns said.

Mitchell said when her father was notified that her brother was missing in 1950, he keeled over from a heart attack and died that evening.

"That left my mother with six children under the age of 16," Mitchell said.

At the time, she said her father's death overshadowed losing her brother. But after wondering what had happened to him for 60 years, she's grateful that he's been found.

Mitchell and her sister were given details of their brother's capture and death in a book from an organization that locates MIAs.

Whitler and his companions were killed because the North Korean soldiers who were to take them to a Prisoners Of War camp didn't have enough food for the journey, so they took them to a field and shot them.

Mitchell said two of the soldiers survived to tell the story. After the men were shot, the man whose farm had been used to hold the soldiers buried the dead. Later, he moved the bodies to a rice paddy because he didn't like them being so close to where he lived. The farmer marked the paddy where the men's skeletal remains were found several years ago.

Whitler will be buried next to his father and mother.