Veteran's Remains Coming Home

[conlor]

A Korean War veteran who was killed in the battles of the Chosin Reservoir 57 years ago will be laid to rest in Cheboygan in January.

His brother, Bernie Potter of Cheboygan, was notified that his half-brother, Billy MacLeod, was identified through DNA comparison tests on Halloween day. Potter will meet with U.S. Army officials on Dec. 27 and will lay his half-brother to rest in sometime in January.

“I was 9 when he was killed in Korea,” Potter said Tuesday. “He was 11 years older than me. He was killed at Chosin.”

Potter said the Army took samples of his DNA nearly a decade ago on the chance that they identified MacLeod's remains.

“It has to be the DNA of a male on the mother's side,” Potter explained.

He said his mother was notified that MacLeod was missing in action during the Chosin campaign, in which 20,000 Americans were killed. MacLeod was killed Nov. 28, 1950.

“At first they said he was missing,” Potter stated. “Then later, a young soldier came up and said that he had seen my brother killed. The military changed his status to killed in action.”

Hearing that the remains had been found and identified shocked Potter.

“It floored me. We're talking 57 years,” he explained.

The call came in on Halloween as he was working at the cemetery. His wife, Deb, took the information and then rushed to Pinehill Cemetery to tell him.

“It sounds strange, but I work out at the cemetery sometimes with Ellis Olson. Every day I go to the grave where my mother, grandmother, uncles ... all my family is buried except my dad. I would say ‘everyone is here but you, brother.' Then Deb came out and told me they had called.”

Potter said Army officials have recovered 98 percent of the skeletal remains, found in trench with other soldiers.

“The sad thing about this is that there were no remains when we were notified, and nothing was sent back home back then,” Potter recalled. “My mother had sent him letters, but he never got them. He sent letters that we got, but we got all the letters we sent to him back.”

MacLeod will be buried with the remainder of his family.

“Ellis Olson helped me get the grave dug. He dug it before the ground froze,” Potter said. “We have the vault in there. When he comes home sometime in January we will bury him with military honors.”

A cousin, Keith MacLeod of Cheboygan, remembers spending time with Billy MacLeod before he went into the service.

“He lived in town and we lived in the country,” Keith MacLeod said Tuesday. “We got into town once in a while to see he. He was a pretty good boy to hang around with.”

Keith MacLeod and his brother actually tried to enlist in the Army at the same time as Billy MacLeod, but were told they should wait because they were not yet 18.

Keith MacLeod said he was surprised to hear that the body had been recovered and identified.

“We heard so many different stories. We heard he had been blown right up,” he explained. “Another friend of ours was sent there to replace him. That's the story he was told.”

Billy MacLeod also has two half-sisters living in the Cheboygan area, Heather Carney and Kathy Abernathy.

Cheboygan Tribune

[redtanker]

thank you for the post.. I am always glad to hear about these stories

[Woodmonkey]

May he rest in peace.

[sabadgeman]

At least he will get a honourable burial I just hope those god awful freaks who disrupt Mil Funerals will not be there!