25 year old George Traver was killed in action on Tarawa in 1943 and lay in a mass grave on that island until his remains were exhumed and identified last year. He will finally come home on August 26 where his family will have a second funeral for him.
Via Daily Mail:
In 1942, Pfc. George Traver had already enlisted in the Marines when he received a pocket knife sent to him by his mother who was back home in Chatham, New York. Little did he know how significant a role that knife would play over 70 years later in identifying his remains, which were found in a mass grave on the South Pacific island of Tarawa.
The dramatic discovery was made in May of last year by History Flight, a Florida-based organization dedicated to locating the remains of America’s fallen soldiers from previous wars.‘When we got the report back from the recovery team one of the artifacts that they found on him was a knife’, Traver’s nephew who shares his namesake told WNYT television, an Albany-area station.
‘And the description of it was a three-inch or a four-inch knife blade, bone case covering and a Boy Scout emblem on it. So it was almost like he carried something that meant something to him so much and mentioned about being home’.