Local veterans unaccounted from the Korean War
Clark County
Pfc. Elno Adams Jr. was a member of Company A, 1st Battalion, 5th Marines, 1st Marine Division. He was killed in action while fighting the enemy in Korea on May 9, 1952. Adams was awarded the Purple Heart, the Korean Service Medal, the United Nations Service Medal and the National Defense Service Medal.
Sgt. Travis Burcham was a medic serving with the Medical Company, 9th Infantry Regiment, 2nd Infantry Division. He was seriously wounded in action by the enemy in South Korea on Aug. 17, 1950, and returned to duty on Nov. 4, 1950. He was wounded again while tending to wounded comrades near Kunu-ri, North Korea, on Dec. 1, 1950, and died of those wounds later that day. His remains were never recovered. Burcham was awarded the Purple Heart with Oak Leaf Cluster, the Good Conduct Medal, the Combat Medic Badge, the Korean Service Medal, the U.N. Service Medal and the South Korean Unit Citation.
Cpl. James H. Howdyshell was a member of Company H, 38th Infantry Regiment, 2nd Infantry Division. He was listed as missing in action while fighting near Kunu-ri, North Korea, on Nov. 30, 1950, and presumed dead on Dec. 31, 1953. Howdyshell was awarded the Purple Heart, the Combat Infantryman's Badge, the Korean Service Medal and the United Nations Service Medal.
Sgt. William B. Potts was a member of the 57th Field Artillery Battalion, 7th Infantry Division. He was listed as missing in action while fighting the enemy near Hagaru, North Korea, on Dec. 6, 1950. He was presumed dead on Dec. 31, 1953. Potts was awarded the Army Commendation Ribbon and the Purple Heart.
Champaign County
1st Lt. Ronald C. Bowshier was a veteran of World War II. In Korea, he was a member of Company E, 38th Infantry Regiment, 2nd Infantry Division. He was listed as missing in action while fighting the enemy in North Korea on Dec. 2, 1950, and presumed dead on March 10, 1954. For his leadership and valor, Bowshier was awarded the Bronze Star with Oak Leaf Cluster, the Purple Heart, the Combat Infantryman's Badge, the Korean Service Medal, the United Nations Service Medal, the National Defense Service Medal and the World War II Victory Medal.
Cpl. Charles E. Hiltibran was a member of Headquarters and Service Company, 32nd Infantry Regiment, 7th Infantry Division. He was listed as missing in action while fighting the enemy in North Korea on Dec. 2, 1950. He was presumed dead on Dec. 31, 1953. Hiltibran was awarded the Purple Heart, the Combat Infantryman's Badge, the Korean Service Medal and the United Nations Service Medal.
Pvt. Kermit E. Jenkins was a member of Company H, 27th Infantry Regiment, 25th Infantry Division. He was killed in action while fighting the enemy in North Korea on Nov. 29, 1950. Jenkins was awarded the Purple Heart, the Combat Infantryman's Badge, the Korean Service Medal, the United Nations Service Medal and the National Defense Service Medal.
— Information from Maj. Carie Parker, Defense Prisoner of War/Missing Personnel Office
National POW/MIA Recognition Day
Local veterans groups will observe National POW/MIA Recognition Day:
The Military Order of the Purple Heart, Chapter 620, will hold a brief ceremony at 1 p.m. Friday in Veterans Park, near the Fountain Avenue bridge, on Cliff Park Road.
Veterans of Foreign Wars, Post 1031, 1237 E. Main St., will host a POW/MIA vigil at 1 p.m. Sept. 23.
1st Lt. Ronald Bowshier of Mechanicsburg long ago received a funeral, even without his body.
Sgt. William Potts of Springfield has never been memorialized, as his family held out hope for his return.
A Springfield News-Sun examination of military records revealed that 7,950 Americans are still missing in action from the Korean War, nearly five times more than Vietnam.
And, while no local servicemen are missing from Vietnam, seven Clark and Champaign countians remain unaccounted from Korea — the conflict many call “the forgotten war.”
Bowshier and Potts are two of them, and both will be remembered on National POW/MIA Recognition Day on Friday.
Even though each man has a dwindling number of mourners, thanks to the passage of time, work continues to find and identify the remains of the missing.
This year alone, more than two dozen missing Korean War veterans have been accounted for using forensic science, including Army Cpl. Clyde E. Anderson, of Hamilton, whose remains were identified in April with DNA samples provided in 2002 by a niece and nephew.
Missing since Nov. 28, 1950, Anderson was buried in May with full military honors.
“There’s still hope for us,” said Pat Potts, wife of Tom Potts, William Potts’ brother. Tom Potts provided a DNA sample of his own in 2007.
The work is complicated by the fact that the Korean peninsula is still such a volatile place.
“The overall Korean War numbers are high. What it speaks to is the lack of access,” said J. Alan Liotta, a 1982 Wittenberg University graduate with intimate knowledge of the issue, having served as deputy director of the Department of Defense Prisoner of War/Missing Personnel Office, or DPMO, from 1995 to 2004.
After successful talks in Bangkok last fall, the U.S. this year was supposed to have entered North Korea for the first time in seven years to search for the missing.
Statewide, 445 Ohioans are still listed as missing from the three-year conflict between the Koreas during the Cold War, underscoring the present-day difficulties of the U.S. plight to recover remains in North Korea.
The war claimed 36,568 American lives before it ended in 1953 with the creation of a 2-mile-wide demilitarized zone that’s divided the peninsula ever since.
By comparison, 77 Ohioans are listed as missing from the 14 years that the U.S. was involved in Vietnam.
Mike Stuckey, Potts’ nephew and a Springfield resident, remembered a lot of tears shed over his uncle.
“I always felt he was coming back,” he said.
Finding live Americans is, surprisingly, still the U.S. government’s highest priority in Korea, even after six decades. A New York Times story in 1996 alleged the U.S. knew that close to 1,000 live Americans were never released by North Korea at war’s end.
Even still, Liotta said he never saw compelling evidence of live Americans during his time with DPMO.
“In this day and age,” he said, “it’s almost impossible to keep something like that a true secret.”
Now the Pentagon’s principal director of detainee affairs — he oversees the controversial prison at Guantanamo Bay — Liotta in 1996 led the first Defense Department delegation to North Korea since 1953, successfully brokering for a series of joint field activities to locate the missing.
The U.S. conducted 33 joint field activities in North Korea between 1996 and 2005, suspending them that year because of security concerns.
In Vietnam, large-scale field operations have been held annually since 1992.
So far, searches in both Koreas have yielded 229 sets of remains.
While the U.S. operation in Korea has become a recovery mission, it’s no less important.
“We owe it to our service personnel that we will always bring them home,” Liotta said.
Three joint field activities were planned this year in North Korea. They never took place.
Of the 7,950 Americans missing from the Korean War, about 5,500 of them — including six of the seven local veterans — are believed to have died inside North Korea.
“As a matter of policy,” Liotta explained, “we’ve always said we treat this mission as separate and distinct with North Korea.
“The North Koreans, for their part, never treated it that way.”
The Pentagon won’t provide specifics, but, according to the Coalition of Families of Korean and Cold War POW/MIAs, North Korea in February withheld the search team’s visas in protest of military maneuvers conducted by the U.S. and South Korea.
An attempted North Korean satellite launch this past spring aboard a ballistic missile complicated things further, with the U.S. suspending operations, according to the family group.
“I wish it didn’t have to be this way,” said Air Force Maj. Carie Parker, public affairs officer for DPMO. “This is a humanitarian mission. We’re one of the few countries that tries to keep its promise to missing service members.”
Despite the amount of time that’s passed — an entire generation has now grown up with no recollection of the Soviet Union — the hurt never goes away for those with missing loved ones.
“It’s still hard,” confessed an emotional Anne Bowshier-Roseberry, an 86-year-old Mechanicsburg native whose first husband, Ronald Bowshier, went missing in North Korea on Dec. 2, 1950, just about a month shy of his 30th birthday.
A kind-hearted old soul — nicknamed “Doc” because of it — Ronald Bowshier left for Korea in the summer of 1950, and, in his last letter home, wrote that they looked forward to wrapping up the war by Thanksgiving.
“Which they would have,” Anne Bowshier-Roseberry said recently, “except for the fact that they sent all those Chinese in. They had it pretty much well won.”
In November 1950, 200,000 Chinese troops intervened on the North’s behalf.
The massive assault forced the U.S. — which had easily chased the North Korean invaders out of South Korea after a heralded landing at Inchon — to go on the run.
It’s believed Bowshier was killed during the 2nd Infantry Division’s retreat from the Chongchon River area in northwest North Korea, when his regiment set up a defensive position in the town of Chasan.
No body was ever recovered, but the Army awarded him with a Bronze Star and the Purple Heart, and presumed him dead on March 10, 1954.
The following month, a funeral was held in Mechanicsburg.
Bowshier-Roseberry, who now lives in Colorado Springs, remarried in 1956 and had two daughters — but the pain of not being able to bury her first love still lingers.
“I don’t know if I’ve ever really gotten accustomed to it,” she said. “You try to make reasons for why you don’t need a body. ‘Maybe I don’t need a body.’ But there’s always something missing.”
Every Memorial Day, she’s reminded of the “good Joe” she married in the spring of ‘46.
“You never quite lose it,” she said, recalling little things, like how she had to learn to drive after Ronald Bowshier went missing.
“You start living and doing for others,” she added. “You start forgetting about yourself.”
All but one of the local veterans went missing in North Korea within just eight days of each other, a testament to the chaos caused by China’s intervention.
Bill Potts was 20 when he went missing on Dec. 6, 1950, at the southern tip of the frigid Chosin Reservoir.
“He was short and never had a date,” recalled his brother, Tom Potts, a 1952 graduate of Springfield High School who now lives in Texas. “He was very, very bashful.”
One of seven kids who lost their dad at a young age, Bill Potts had quit school in seventh grade. The money he made as an usher at the old Ohio Theatre on West Main Street was given to their mother.
Bill Potts eventually was presumed dead on Dec. 31, 1953, and awarded the Purple Heart. There’s never been a funeral.
“Anytime the family is together, that’s one of the topics they talk about,” said Pat Potts, Tom’s wife of 53 years. “There’s no closure. It’s just, ‘Where is he?’ And they were a close family.”
Tom Potts, who has terminal pancreatic cancer, can only smile at the prospect of having his brother’s remains identified before he dies.
“We’d like to have him back. His body, if nothing else, so we can put him with the family,” said Mike Stuckey, Bill Potts’ nephew.
Several years ago, Stuckey was contacted by the government about providing a sample of his DNA in the hope that Bill Potts’ remains might one day be identified.
He complied, gladly mailing the swabs back.
“I’m glad to see they’re still working on it,” he said.
“What we couldn’t identify in 2007, our scientists are taking a relook at,” said Parker, of the DPMO. “The technology has accelerated at a rate where the scientists are even amazed.”
Between 1990 and 1994, North Korea handed over 208 boxes of remains — but it’s believed the boxes contain the commingled remains of 400 different people, of which 71 have been identified.
Still, what’s truly needed is access to North Korea, Parker said.
“We have a very cooperative relationship with other countries,” she said.
In Southeast Asia, where 1,660 Americans are still missing from the Vietnam War, 986 veterans have been accounted for since 1973. By comparison, in Korea, only 207 missing Americans have been identified since 1982.
But, even though decades have now passed, public interest in missing veterans remains high. If anything, families are more interested than ever in finding lost loved ones.
The DPMO once again will conduct six family update events this fiscal year throughout the country. In recent years, more than half the attendees were attending one for the first time, Parker said.
And, surprisingly, the attendees are getting younger.
“Lately, we’re seeing 30s, 40s,” she said. “It’s become a generational quest.”
Anne Bowshier-Roseberry’s grandson has asked for Ronald Bowshier’s medals for a shadowbox when she passes on.
“It’s become something that’s handed down,” Parker said. “It’s almost like a torch that’s passed down from generation to generation: ‘Continue to keep looking. Continue to keep holding out hope.’”
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