[Congressional Record Volume 167, Number 188 (Tuesday, October 26, 2021)]
[Senate]
[Pages S7362-S7363]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




             HONORING PRIVATE FIRST CLASS BERTON J. McQUEEN

  Mr. McCONNELL. Madam President, last week, more than 76 years after 
he was killed in the Second World War, Army Private First Class Berton 
J. McQueen was returned home to Jackson County, KY. His family reburied 
him with full military honors outside the Wind Cave Baptist Church in 
McKee, ending a seven-decade journey from Kentucky, to Italy, to 
France, and finally back home again. Today, I

[[Page S7363]]

recognize Private First Class McQueen as a Kentucky hero who fought and 
died defending our sacred freedoms and honor the steadfast family 
members and public servants who brought him home.
  McQueen was only 20 years old when, as part of Operation Dragoon, he 
and his platoon landed in the Rhone Valley to liberate France from its 
German occupiers. Facing stiff resistance and heavy fire, his unit 
scattered across the countryside. By the time the smoke cleared and the 
enemy retreated, McQueen was lost.
  Two years later, the American Graves Registration Command recovered a 
soldier's body from a farmyard in the area where McQueen had gone 
missing. Local authorities could not verify the soldier's identity, so 
he was reburied in an anonymous grave in Normandy. Back home in Jackson 
County, the McQueen family prayed their lost son would be found.
  Last week, those prayers were finally answered. With the help of new 
DNA technology, the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency identified the 
body as Berton McQueen's. They sent him home to Jackson County, where 
he is now buried next to the church where he was baptized, nearly a 
century earlier. With bagpipes and bugles playing, an honor guard 
marching, and the extended McQueen family gathered together again, 
Private First Class Berton McQueen was finally given the hero's return 
he deserved.
  Our Nation's military is diligent in finding and honoring its missing 
servicemembers. All over Kentucky and across the country, the POW/MIA 
Accounting Agency has reunited lost sons and daughters with their loved 
ones. This program offers important help to grieving families and 
honors our country's most sacred obligation to those who serve. The 
Agency's motto is ``fulfilling our nation's promise,'' and, as the 
McQueen family's story demonstrates, they go to extraordinary lengths 
to carry out that creed.
  The Lexington Herald-Leader published a comprehensive account of 
Private First Class Berton McQueen's life and journey in a recent 
article. I ask unanimous consent the article be printed in the Record.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

            [From Lexington Herald-Leader, October 17, 2021]

`I've Waited For This.' Kentucky WWII Soldier Unidentified for Decades 
                               Comes Home

       Nannie McQueen was desperate to find out what had happened 
     to her son in World War II.
       Army Pfc. Berton J. McQueen had been badly wounded by 
     artillery fire while his unit was fighting German troops near 
     a small town in France in November 1944.
       He died at an aid station set up in a barn, and amid the 
     chaos of war, someone buried him in a garden.
       American troops didn't recover his body until after the war 
     in Europe ended months later, and he couldn't be identified.
       The Army notified McQueen's parents in Jackson County that 
     he was listed as killed in action, but with few details and 
     no one to bury, his mother couldn't accept it.
       She wrote letters to soldiers who served with him to try to 
     figure out what had happened to him and put advertisements in 
     a farming magazine and other publications seeking 
     information, said his niece, Genevieve Palm.
       When her grandmother went to town, she left the door at her 
     house unlocked so her son could get in if he came home, Palm 
     said.
       ``She couldn't give up,'' Palm said of her grandmother.
       ``I can't imagine what kind of torture that would have 
     been.''
       Now, Berton McQueen is home.
       Based on historical research, dental records and analysis 
     of DNA samples from Palm and other family members, officials 
     with the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency identified the 
     body recovered from the garden in France as McQueen, 
     according to a news release.
       McQueen was accounted for in July, more than 76 years after 
     he was killed at age 20.
       He was reburied Saturday with full military honors in 
     Jackson County, in the hillside cemetery at the Wind Cave 
     Baptist Church. McQueen attended the small wooden church as a 
     boy and was baptized in a creek nearby.
       A bugler played ``Taps,'' and a bagpiper played ``Amazing 
     Grace'' before members of the honor guard fired a 21-gun 
     salute and folded the flag from his casket to give to his 
     family.
       McQueen was raised on a small farm in the Wind Cave 
     community, the youngest of seven children of John and Nancy 
     Jane ``Nannie'' McQueen, said Palm, whose mother was one of 
     Berton McQueen's sisters.
       Like thousands of others who grew up on Kentucky farms in 
     those days, McQueen moved to Indiana to find work. He was 
     living in Connersville when he was drafted, Palm said.
       McQueen was wounded fighting in Italy in February 1944, 
     spending 11 weeks in the hospital, and was wounded again in 
     August 1944, spending several more weeks in the hospital.
       His family hoped he would come home, but McQueen wanted to 
     finish the job. He believed that if the U.S. and allies 
     didn't carry the fight to the Nazis in Europe, the war would 
     come to America, said Palm, who has letters he sent to his 
     family.
       ``He felt a strong duty,'' Palm said. ``He said, `I will 
     come home when the rest do.' ''
       McQueen landed in southern France in August 1944 as part of 
     Operation Dragoon, pushing north through the Rhone Valley to 
     meet up with forces that had gone ashore in the massive D-Day 
     invasion and then turn to the final assault on Germany.
       McQueen saw plenty of combat but didn't write about the 
     horror of war in his letters home because he didn't want to 
     worry his parents, Palm said.
       Instead, he wrote about the people and the beauty he saw, 
     Palm said, though he did mention in one letter in mid-1944 
     that U.S. troops were driving the Germans back.
       ``He said, `We have'm on the run now,' '' Palm said.
       But his unit ran into stiff resistance in a battle in a 
     hilly region near the border with Germany, according to the 
     Army's account.
       As German infantry pursued his unit, McQueen was going to 
     get more ammunition for his machine-gun platoon when he was 
     hit by shrapnel.
       One soldier later told Army investigators he helped carry 
     McQueen to an aid station, and that when he asked later how 
     the badly wounded man was doing, he was told McQueen had 
     died, Palm said.
       McQueen's battalion, which suffered heavy casualties, was 
     forced to pull back and was in ``disarray'' for a period 
     before regrouping, according to an account from the Army, 
     Palm said.
       It's not clear why McQueen went missing or who buried him. 
     After German troops withdrew a few days later, U.S. troops 
     didn't find his body.
       A woman who lived on the farm later disclosed that an 
     American soldier had been buried there. The American Graves 
     Registration Command recovered a body in April 1946 but 
     couldn't identify the soldier.
       He was reburied under the designation X-6093 at the 
     Normandy American Cemetery in Colleville-sur-Mer, France, 
     until science could solve the mystery.
       Palm was born 10 years after her uncle died but lived close 
     to her grandmother and heard stories about him.
       ``We really grew up with that grief for her, and that 
     loss,'' said Palm, a retired property manager who lives in 
     Laurel County.
       McQueen's mother died in 1972. Years later, the local bank 
     president called Palm's mother to report there was money in 
     an account Nannie McQueen had kept.
       She had been putting money away for her son to use when he 
     came home, Palm said.
       Palm read a letter at the church Saturday from an Army 
     buddy of McQueen's that her grandmother had contacted just 
     before Christmas in 1945.
       Louie Hughes said in his letter back to McQueen's mother 
     that McQueen often talked of his home and his family while he 
     was overseas, and that the two of them talked about the Bible 
     into the night at times.
       McQueen had drawn a sketch of how to get to his house in 
     Jackson County in Hughes' Bible so he could visit after the 
     war.
       The two later got assigned to different companies, and then 
     Hughes was captured and spent 16 ``horrible months'' in a 
     German prison camp, he said, so he hadn't heard that McQueen 
     had been killed before McQueen's mother wrote him.
       He told McQueen's parents to be brave because that's what 
     their son would have wanted. The ``brave deeds of such men as 
     Berton'' were the reason ``that we enjoy peace today,'' 
     Hughes wrote.
       Palm wishes her mother had lived to know her brother had 
     been identified, but she died in 2008. Palm, a Christian, 
     believes her mother and grandmother were reunited with 
     McQueen in heaven long ago.
       Family members felt new grief when the Army notified them 
     McQueen had been accounted for but were also thankful.
       ``I consider it a miracle,'' Palm said. ``My whole lifetime 
     I've waited for something like this.''

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