Town holds belated funeral for missing World War II soldier

Crew disappeared during supply flight over Himalayas.

Pike County is holding a long-delayed funeral today for 1st Lt. Robert Eugene Oxford, more than 70 years after his crew disappeared during a 1944 supply flight from China to India during the height of World War II.

Oxford, who went by the name Eugene or Gene and died at age 24, did not have a burial before now. His initial resting place was an unknown crash site in the Himalayan mountains.

Organizers are inviting the public to line the 8-mile funeral route this afternoon with flags and yellow ribbons.

Oxford’s parents, Charles and Bessie Oxford, are no longer living, but they placed a memorial marker and reserved a burial plot at tiny Magnolia Cemetery in Concord. He will be buried following a 2 p.m. funeral at the Pike County School Auditorium, 7362 U.S. 19 South in Zebulon.

Well-wishers are invited to line the roadside from U.S. 19 in Zebulon and along Ga. 18 westward from the courthouse in Zebulon to the center of Concord, according to the local newspaper, the Pike County Times, which has written for years about the search for Oxford’s remains.

The site of the funeral and burial are about 40 miles south of Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport between Griffin and Macon.

Oxford’s remains were found in the wreckage of his crew’s B-24J Liberator known by its nickname, “Hot as Hell,” in India’s Himalayas. The site of the Jan. 25, 1944, crash was found near Damrah in Arunchal Pradesh State by Clayton Kuhles of MIA Recoveries, which works to find crash sites in the Himalayas. It was first discovered in 2006, but exploration of the site and the discovery of the remains came much later, in 2015, finally resulting in India’s permission to return them to the United States for identification in 2016.

The remains of seven other crew members have not been found. The missing crew members will also be remembered during the funeral.

1st Lt. Robert Eugene Oxford