Defense Team, Families Discuss Efforts To Find Missing Troops

Washington Post - United States

By Daniel de Vise
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, March 29, 2009; Page C05

In a chilly Rockville conference room yesterday, wives, daughters and a twin brother told stories of loved ones who went off to Vietnam, Korea and Normandy and may yet come home.

The U.S. Defense Department's POW/Missing Personnel Office briefed 150 relatives on its effort to identify and return the remains of U.S. service members missing in action. The office is part of a team that identifies the remains of about 100 service members each year, thinning the list of more than 80,000 missing from World War II, Korea, Vietnam and the Cold War through such methods as modern DNA analysis and old-fashioned dental comparison. Sixty-two missions are planned this year -- to jungles, forests and mountaintops where newly discovered crash sites and burial plots are reported.

Microphones were passed around in a remembrance ceremony that filled the room with portions of heroic tales: He was about three to four days into battle. . . . They were out on a night mission. . . . His plane was shot down over the North Sea. . . . It took me 47 years to find the person who was with him when he died.

Families came to hear about efforts to recover their loved ones, to ask questions and to contribute DNA samples. A laboratory worker took a swab from the mouth of Jacqueline Stark of Chevy Chase, whose father, Army Maj. Marshall Wolcott Stark, is thought to have died in North Korea in November 1950.

Stark fought in the Battle of Kunu-ri, his 2nd Infantry Division badly outnumbered by the Chinese. The division took heavy losses as it withdrew through territory now known as the Gauntlet. Stark was reported missing Nov. 30. There was no firsthand account of his death.
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Jacqueline was 3 when her father went to war. She has a picture of him posing as a Korean peasant, an older shot of him beside the military glider he flew to Normandy on D-Day and a memory of bobbing in the air above him, playing airplane in the family home.

She said she attended the briefing because she was "curious about the whole process."

A public affairs officer told her, "I don't want to be dramatic here: We may have his remains."

Remains of more than 1,000 Americans killed in Korea are in hand and not identified.

The Missing Personnel Office has traveled the country since 1995, holding similar meetings and reaching more than 14,000 relatives of missing service members. Spokesman Larry Greer said the Defense Department effort involves about 600 people and an annual budget of about $105 million.

Recovering the remains of Army Cpl. Richard Warren Krepps has been a long endeavor for his twin brother, Vincent Krepps of Towson, Md. They enlisted with friends from Lynnwood, Penn., and went into battle in Korea with the same infantry division as Stark.

Richard Krepps was captured by the Chinese. His group of POWs was marched from village to village and housed at a prison camp on the banks of the Yalu River. There, witnesses said, Krepps died in 1951.

At one point, Vincent saw his brother in an enemy propaganda photo published in a Pennsylvania newspaper. He awaited proof of his death until 1998, when he received a letter from a man who was with Richard at the end.

That year, Vincent Krepps returned to the place where his brother was captured. Neither he nor the U.S. military has been allowed into the prison camp where Richard died. Vincent has written a book, "One Came Home," recounting his efforts and the military's to identify missing service members.

"Every little bit pushes me toward the hope that maybe one day he will be recovered," he said.