FORT KNOX, Ky. — A World War II veteran from Alliance has been identified and will finally be buried more than 80 years after his death over Burma.
According to a release from the U.S. Army's Human Resources Command, Staff Sgt. Edward K. Pyle will be buried in Augusta, Michigan on July 24.
Staff Sgt. Pyle graduated from Alliance High School and attended Mount Union College (now the University of Mount Union) before going off to war. He was a gunner with the 436th Bombardment Squadron, 7th Bombardment Group serving in the Pacific Theater during World War II.
The Army says Pyle went missing in action on Dec. 1, 1943 after his B-24J Liberator bomber burst into flames after being hit by anti-aircraft fire during a bombing mission from India to Burma. He was 31 years old.
In 1947, the American Grave Registration Service (AGRS) recovered the remains of what they believed to be eight people involved in a potential B-24 Liberator crash near Yodayadet, Burma. The remains could not be scientifically identified at the time and were interred as "Unknowns" at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific (NMCP) in Hawaii, also known as the Punchbowl.
Pyle's remains were exhumed in October 2020. Scientists from the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA) used "dental and anthropological analysis, as well as circumstantial and material evidence" to identify Pyle. Additionally, the Armed Forces Medical Examiner System used mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) analysis.
The DPAA officially identified Staff Sgt. Pyle's remains in March of this year.
