After over 60 years, Daytona Beach soldier's remains are coming home

Many people do not know how many were not accounted for after Korea.

KOREAN UNACCOUNTED FOR
(Bodies not identified/bodies not recovered) 8,176
Prisoner of War 2,045

Killed in Action 1,794

Missing in Action 4,245

Non-battle 92

Total: 8,176

After over 60 years, Daytona Beach soldier's remains are coming home
By Jason Wheeler, Volusia County Reporter
Last Updated: Friday, April 22, 2011 2:58 PM
DAYTONA BEACH --
The son of a U.S. soldier, killed during the Korean War, is getting ready to lay his father to rest -- 61 years after he died.

Sergeant First Class James Caldwell's remains were were excavated from a mass grave by the North Korean government in the 90's, and turned over to the U.S.

DNA helped identify the remains at the POW-MIA Accountability Center.

Johnston Caldwell was a toddler when his father disappeared in 1950.

For Caldwell, he and his sister said their goodbyes years ago.

"I lost my dad when I was a kid, only 4 1/2 years of age," Johnston Caldwell said. "I never got to know that much about him except what my mother told me, so we kind of buried him a long time ago."

James Caldwell's remains are being flown to Volusia County on Monday. They will be met by a full military honor guard, as well as the president of the local Korean War Veterans Assocation, Robert McGuire.

According to McGuire, Caldwell's family is lucky. Many more families are still waiting for word of their loved ones.
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Daytona Beach soldier's remains are coming home

Here is one more story I came across that will warm your heart a bit more. It is about the Vietnam War and a group of veterans, police and firefighters making a difference.

KIA Man’s Dog Tag Returned to Family by Nam Knights
Biker group returns fallen soldier’s dog tag
By AUDREY PARENTE, Staff writer

March 10, 2011 – DAYTONA BEACH — At 16, Darlene Woodruff looked up to her soldier cousin, Army Sgt. Robert Melvin Fletcher, who wrote letters to her from the jungles of Vietnam.

The thought of him not coming home never crossed her mind. But on Mother’s Day in 1968, she learned of his death.

“I remember thinking — wondering — what kind of things he had faced over there as such a young man,” Woodruff said. “I remember thinking he had done something far greater than I had done or would ever do.”

More than four decades later, as part of an annual Bike Week party Thursday morning, she learned how her cousin died.

At a special ceremony at the Veterans of Foreign War Post 1590, she watched her sister, Sharron Blais, clutch his dog tag and hug the soldier in whose arms he died.

The former soldier, retired steelworker Clifford William Searcy Jr., found his way to Daytona Beach and Fletcher’s family as part of a chain of events that began in 1998 when a Wall Street trader bought a sack of 100 dog tags from a Vietnamese peasant. The journey ended with Searcy telling Woodruff and Blais the story of their cousin’s final moments.
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KIA Man’s Dog Tag Returned to Family by Nam Knights