Remains of gunner killed in World War II coming home

Duran, discovered in grave in Slovenia and identified with family DNA, will be reburied in Santa Fe National Cemetery

Alfonso Duran was a quiet, caring man who loved horses and was very close to his mother.

His sweetness, his loved ones say, lived on in family tales of sugar and ice cream.

But it would be more than 70 years before his family would know what happened to the young man who grew up on a farm in El Rito and disappeared in the skies over Europe in 1944.

A nose gunner in the Army Air Forces, Duran was one of 10 crew members who manned a B-24H Liberator on Feb. 25, 1944, en route to a bombing run in Germany. It was the final day of Operation Argument, a five-day air campaign against the Nazis.

The Liberator — under assault from antiaircraft fire and German fighter planes — was shot down over what is now Slovenia. Duran, who enlisted in 1942, was the only member of the Liberator’s crew who didn’t bail out as the disabled plane faltered and passed from sight.

The tail gunner on Duran’s aircraft tried to force the young New Mexican to abandon the plane without success.

“All nine who bailed out were captured and then interrogated by the Germans,” according to the government’s Missing Aircraft Report. A German interrogator told crew members that Sgt. Alfonso Duran one body had been found in the aircraft wreckage.

Although he was presumed dead, family members in New Mexico never knew precisely what happened to Alfonso Duran. Until now. On May 22, Duran’s family was informed by the Defense Department’s POW/MIA Accounting Agency that his remains had been identified. He will soon be brought home to be buried at Santa Fe National Cemetery.

“We are ecstatic about the finding, and now looking forward to the interment of my uncle’s remains at the military cemetery in Santa Fe,” said Duran’s niece, Patricia Duran of Silver Spring, Md. “Finally, everything was resolved and we had the good news.”

She said there were many times she nearly gave up, but friends and family said, “We can’t give up! We have to keep pushing!”