lexington yesterday

Wars and leaving home bound for foreign countries have a tendency to tug at our heartstrings.

If you have ever been to Arlington Cemetery outside Washington, DC you will see that emotion hangs heavy over the graves which are lined row upon neat row. Arlington is the epicenter of the Memorial Day story, but that is for another day.

Today, I want to tell you about the homecoming of Army Pvt. Floyd Ariail Fulmer, 20, of Newberry who was reported missing in action in Hurtgen forest, Germany, November 14, 1944, five months after the D-Day Invasion of France.

Pvt. Fulmer’s 28th Infantry Division was engaged in heavy combat in a forest peppered with landmines. It was not until the war ended that American forces were able to search for those missing in action in the forest. Fulmer was among more than two dozen soldiers missing in the Raffelsbrand sector and on November 15, 1945, the war department declared him deceased.

Because the American Graves Command could not make a correlation with any remains found in the area, he was declared non-recoverable.

Sometime later in April 1947 a set of remains was found in the Hurtgen Forest and sent to Belgium for burial at Neuville American Cemetery. The body was designated as X-5460.

In April 2018 a Defense POW/ MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA) historian thought X-5460 might be Floyd Flumer and commissioned his remains to be disinterred and sent to the DPAA lab for possible identification. Armed forces scientists used mitochondrial DNA analysis, dental and anthropological analysis, as well as circumstantial and material evidence in positive identification Pvt. Fulmer.

The names of WWII’s 26,000 American soldiers assessed as possibly-unrecoverable and still unaccounted are recorded on the Tablets of the Missing at the Netherland’s American Cemetery. Fulmer’s grave was meticulously cared for for over 70 years by the American Battle Monuments Commission.

A rosette was placed next to his name to indicate he has been accounted for.