After 45 Years, a Fallen Soldier From the Fields of France Is Brought Home to Rest

A Georgia soldier killed nearly 45 years ago on the war-torn fields of France is finally coming home for burial, and his widow hopes she now can put to rest the haunting memories of their life together.

Theo Wilburn Underwood was a 24-year-old Army private fighting in his first battle when he was killed Sept. 10, 1944, by a shell that collapsed his foxhole. Two weeks later the Army notified his 21-year-old pregnant wife, Ernestine, that he was missing in action.

Theo Underwood was declared officially dead July 20, 1945, but his remains weren’t found until this year, when metal detectors wielded by two French youths picked up the soldier’s helmet. The youths began digging and found the body, the Army told his widow.

“When someone is missing like that, you have a feeling that it could happen. And, a lot of times it would run through my mind when I thought about him it could happen. But you never really expect it to happen,” Ernestine Underwood said recently.

“When it does happen, it’s a whole new ballgame. It didn’t depress me. It made me sad,” she said of the memories that flooded into her mind when the Army notified her June 6 that her husband’s remains had been found.

The irony of the Army’s timing did not escape her. Theo Underwood left New York City aboard the Queen Mary on June 6, 1944, bound for the battlefields of Europe.

“He never came out of his first and only battle. I felt like that when the boys came home in 1945 and 1946, they received recognition. Now, he’s coming home 45 years later and I feel like he deserves recognition,” she said.

Ernestine Underwood had known all along that her husband was dead. Another soldier, Dale White of Bluefield, W.Va., saw Underwood buried by the collapsing foxhole and told her. But, without a grave to visit, it was difficult to let go.

It also was difficult to convey to her daughters--one 5 years old when Theo Underwood died, the other not yet born--and later, her grandchildren, that he had truly existed.

“The youngest daughter was born after her father was killed, and she always wanted a father. So, I think this will give her a father,” Ernestine Underwood said. “I think it will help our three grandchildren. They can say now, ‘I do have a grandfather.’ Before, all they had was me talking and pictures.

“It’s going to be good for all of us. Because (the remains were) missing, it took me 7 to 10 years to put him aside. It was kind of hard to do when you don’t have something to hold to or look at and say, this is his grave.”

A military funeral is planned for Aug. 11 in Savannah, where Ernestine Underwood moved after her husband’s death. Theo Underwood’s cousins, some of whom are too young to have known him, have asked to be pallbearers, his widow said.

“He’s somebody that the older (cousins) remember and the younger ones have heard him talked about. He was 6 feet 2, weighed 160 pounds, brown hair, brown eyes, olive complexion. He was really good-looking. He was the best-looking guy there (in Jeff Davis County). He captured my heart,” she said.

Underwood’s widow, who married him at age 14 against both families’ wishes, never remarried. Until recently, she kept a framed 8-by-10 picture of him in her bedroom. She had to store it, fearing that sunlight would fade it.