WWII Sergeant’s Remains being sent Home

SOUTH ZANESVILLE, Ohio – A World War II Sergeant’s remains are being brought back to his hometown of Zanesville after 73 years.

Army Air Corps Sergeant Harold Burton Davis was a passenger riding from Horanda Airfield to Port Moresby when the B-25 flew into bad weather and was forced to call into Horanda Airfield and turn around. Sergeant Davis’s nephew Dick Waite said the B-25 never returned, February 1, 1944 and Davis was declared ‘Missing in Action’. Just one year later Davis’s status was changed to ‘Killed in Action’.

“In 1961 they found the plane,” Waite said. “So they gathered up all the bones that they could find, put them in two boxes, and took them to Washington D.C. The bones they found, they really didn’t know D.N.A. like they do this day in age. So they just put them all together and buried them over there.”

Davis was buried with his crew members at Arlington National Cemetery in 1963. Waite said about three years ago he received a call from the Military asking for a sample of Waite’s D.N.A. The Military found more remains of Davis on Mount Kenevi in Papua, New Guinea and was able to confirm their findings through D.N.A. testing. On August 10, 2017 the remains will arrive in Columbus Ohio and be brought to DeLong-Baker and Lanning Funeral Home for the funeral Service on August 12, 2017 at 10:00 A.M. A parade will follow the ceremony to Zanesville Memorial Park where his remains will be buried with his mother’s.