Confusion over missing remains
John Devescovi started to think he would never get to say a proper goodbye to his brother. He might be right. Devescovi’s brother, flying officer William ‘‘Tony’’ Devescovi, died during the Malayan Emergency in 1956.
Devescovi and his family have been visiting Tony’s grave at the war cemetery in Kuala Lumpur for decades, so they were shocked when the Defence Force’s repatriation team found an empty grave earlier this month, as part of Te Auraki (The Return) project.
All hope of closure seemed lost but then, a phone call.
Devescovi claims a liaison officer at Base Woodbourne, in Blenheim, promised to bring the family together for some sort of farewell ceremony when the Te Auraki project finished.
But the Defence Force has denied that. None of the families would get a ceremony, as technically they all had military funerals when they were buried overseas, a spokesman said.
However, Defence Force personnel leading the project would visit the Devescovi family, the spokesman said.
‘‘I don’t want to be too critical because they have been very helpful,’’ Devescovi said.
‘‘They said they would arrange a proper goodbye, once the project was all done.
‘‘They said they’re going to get all the family together, wherever we like, I think it will probably be here in Blenheim. And they’ll get any photos or files they’ve got, and we’ll try to have closure through that.’’
His brother was one of three Royal New Zealand Air Force personnel killed when their Bristol Freighter crashed.
They were to be returned as part of Te Auraki last week, along with 27 soldiers and a child.
But the family found out four days before the ceremony that there was no body or coffin beneath the headstone.
The Defence Force sent an expert disinterment team of bioarchaeologists, forensic anthropologists and forensic odontologists to bring the bodies home. After finding the three graves empty, they found the remains of three unidentified people nearby but told Devescovi they could not confirm who they were. A spokesman said the team was unable to identify individual crew members ‘‘because of the nature of their death and the way they were buried’’.
The military court of inquiry in 1956 found the plane struggled to climb out of a valley and hit a ridge.
The remains were recovered and buried at the war cemetery in 1958, but the Defence Force did not have any information about how the recovery operation was conducted.