After more than half century, the fallen regain their history

They’re home.

West, Dorser, Becker, DeSalvo, Trent and Bunchuk.

Their humanity vanished in the acrid clouds of war more than half a century ago, leaving only their names writ large in the memories of their survivors.

Their widows grew old and their children grew up without them. Parents died mourning and friends turned to other lives.

But now their names emerge once more as new tools are employed to identify those regarded as missing in America’s past wars, dating back to 1941.

The remains of soldiers, sailors, Marines and airmen -- once the nameless detritus of combat -- are given faces and past lives in a Pentagon effort to identify all who have come home to be buried at last with military honors.

I pulled some of the names from the Defense Department website, Marines I might have known or seen in the war that raged on the all those years ago. As it turned out, I knew none of them. They were strangers but brothers in the uniformity of combat.

They were:

Carl West of Amanda Park, Wash.

Jimmie Dorser of Springfield, Mo.

Clarence Becker of Lancaster, Pa.

Domenico DeSalvo of Akron, Ohio.

Donald Trent of Crab Orchard, W.V.

Frank Bunchuk of Medina, N.Y.

The litany continues solemnly, like the rhythmic cadence of funeral drums. It seems to never end.

The men the drums beat for came from small towns and major cities. Some were just out of high school or still in college. Some had fought in World War II and had remained in the reserves. All marched off to fight in a war whose horror was minimized in euphemism; it was, by lessening, a “police action.” But wordplay cannot degrade the cost: among the dead and wounded, 8,142 missing in action.

They disappeared in places they’d never heard of until the war broke out in Korea. Places like Inchon, Chongchon, Unsan, Kunuri and Hagaru-Ri.

Their remains were recovered by treaty with the government of North Korea. They had been buried in nameless graves or in mass interment near the places where they’d fallen. I have monitored the list released by the Pentagon, wondering if it contained the identities of anyone I knew back then, a brother in arms who had simply disappeared.

After each major battle, we looked for friends in other units to see if they had survived the confrontation. Some had, some had not. One among the missing was a Marine infantryman I have mentioned before. His name was Charles Wertman.

He vanished in the ferocity of hostilities as though he had never existed, torn from reality to dwell in limbo between life and death. No one ever knew what happened to him, and he came to symbolize those embraced by the darkness that war creates. I keep looking for his name. I always will.

It’s a strange juxtaposition of bodies being identified at a time when representatives of the two Koreas are at last talking about formally ending the conflict that ceased its violence only by an armistice 54 years ago. Governments demand a written conclusion. A handshake isn’t good enough. And so they meet and they talk.

DNA, dental records and even skeletal remains are utilized to give names to men like West, Dorser, Becker, DeSalvo, Trent and Bunchuk. The tools of forensic science extract identities from what remains of the living soldiers but can never re-create their voices, their childhoods, their touch or their laughter. These too are victims of war, blank spaces left in the years without them that no military funeral, no flag-draped coffin and no 21-gun salute can ever replace. The past, like a sandcastle, cannot be rebuilt.

I’m not sure why I wanted to revisit times I would rather forget. The morning is melancholy enough with thick clouds obscuring the sun and a forecast of rain in the news. I guess that a dark mood revives the notion that I just don’t want anyone forgotten. Better to bury them than to live with their ghosts for the rest of my life.

When the dead of World War I were returned to the United States, a newspaper reporter who met the ship wrote the lead to a news story that said simply, “They’re back.” Everyone knew. That same spirit applies in a parallel manner to those who, by being given names, return home today.

They too are back: West, Dorser, Becker, DeSalvo, Trent and Bunchuk.

almtz13@aol.com