Gunner killed in WWII coming home
Duran said it wasn’t until a Slovenian journalist and a U.S. congressman stepped in that the mystery was solved.
In April 2016, Duran received a message through a genealogy site from Slovenian journalist Renata Gutnik. “I know where your uncle is buried,” Gutnik told Duran.
Gutnik, who had been trying to get U.S. authorities to exhume Alfonso Duran’s remains, went on to tell Duran that her uncle was buried near a small church in the village of Pokojisce and sent Duran a number of reports, including a 2012 Army report on sites where the remains of American airmen might be buried.
Duran contacted the Defense Accounting Agency and got “only a vague assurance that the Army intended to eventually search for the remains,” she said.
“We started calling our congressional people and started to get the process jump-started again,” Duran said.
One of those calls went to Rep. Christopher Van Hollen Jr., now a U.S. senator. The Maryland Democrat sent two letters on Duran’s behalf to move the case forward, and in July 2017, the POW/MIA accounting agency advised the senator’s office that it was sending a team to exhume the remains in a common grave, Van Hollen’s office said in a statement.
The Army had been aware of the burial site since 2006 and took photos of it, but there was apparently confusion as to whether a U.S. or Australian airman was buried there, Patricia Duran said.
The Defense Agency asked the family for DNA samples, which allowed for positive identification, Duran said.
Each MIA case, which can take decades to resolve, is worked on its merits. In Duran’s case, there were “anomalies in the research,” including the uncertainty over whether the remains were Australian, said Chuck Prichard, director of public affairs for the MIA Accounting Agency.
Duran’s remains were returned to the U.S. for analysis and will be released to the family after a face-to-face meeting with a government representative, Prichard said.
A spokeswoman for French Funerals and Cremations of Albuquerque confirmed that once the remains are returned to Albuquerque, it will handle all the arrangements at no cost to Duran’s relatives.
The prospect of getting Duran back to New Mexico is a relief for the family, Patricia Duran acknowledged, but it also brought back a flood of memories all these years after his death.
Alfonso Duran’s father, Gilberto, was a farmer in Rio Arriba County and his mother, Maria Gracia Martinez-Duran, was a teacher at the El Rito Normal School.
Born Sept. 19, 1921, the fourth of five siblings, young Alfonso was very close to his mother, Patricia Duran said.
“It was a very heartbreaking thing for his mother, who took his death extremely hard,” said Duran. The family “rarely spoke about him, and basically they would tell the same two stories.”
Which brings them back to sugar and ice cream.
Maria Gracia Martinez-Duran would give her five children a dime apiece for ice cream. Alfonso’s money always went to buy the cool treat for his mom, not himself.
“He put it in a little tin pail,” Patricia Duran said, “and he rode his horse as fast as he could. But it melted before he got home.”
Alfonso’s love of horses is also the stuff of family legend.
“His mother would give him sugar for his cereal and he would save his sugar … and give it to his horse,” said Patricia Duran.
Those treasured family memories are tempered by the timing of the recent news, said Alfonso’s nephew, Stan Evans, 78, of Santa Fe. Evans was about 4 when Alfonso was lost and said his mother and grandmother did not live long enough to hear that Alfonso’s remains had been found.
“That’s the sad part of it,” Evans said. “They always believed he was alive somewhere.”
For quite some time, there has been a headstone at the national cemetery waiting for Duran’s homecoming. “I wanted him to be buried here,” Evans said. “When I was young, my mother and grandmother … would take flowers” to the cemetery.
Duran’s name is recorded on the Tablets of the Missing at the Florence American Cemetery in Impruneta, Italy, with the names of other MIAs from World War II.
A rosette will be placed next to his name, indicating he has now been accounted for.