Family of slain World War II soldier prepares for his return
Tulsa World tim.stanley@tulsaworld.com
TULSA — When the telegram arrived to report him missing in action, Gene Sappington’s family was understandably shaken up.
But they didn’t give up hope until the second one.
It followed a few months after the first, and contained bad news: Sappington, the Army concluded, had been killed in action.
No body had been found, though. “So you always wondered in the back of your mind, could he still be alive?” said his niece Nathlia Brooks, of Tulsa.
This week, 73 years after his death, surviving family members of Army PFC Oscar Eugene “Gene” Sappington will at last be able to put all doubts to rest, and honor their fallen hero in the way he deserves.
On Wednesday, they will gather at Tulsa International Airport for the return of his remains, which were officially identified in April by DNA provided by family members.
Sappington, it turns out, had been buried in Belgium in a grave marked “unknown” for decades, until efforts began there to account for unidentified American servicemen.
‘Come home, Genie Boy’
The youngest of his five siblings and “baby” of the family, Sappington was 19 when he was killed in battle in Germany.
However, even with his death eventually declared, not everyone could accept it.
Brooks remembers well how her grandmother, Sappington’s mother, would pray aloud at night before bed:
“She’d say ‘Come home, Genie Boy. Come home,’ ” she said. “That’s what she called him — Genie Boy,” and it was how he had sometimes signed his letters to her.
Those who knew Gene Sappington best, his parents and siblings, including three sisters and a brother, are all now deceased, along with many of his nephews, nieces and cousins.
There are still a few left, though, who remember him. Norma Schneider of Broken Arrow, his oldest surviving relative, was 9 at the time her uncle went missing. Brooks was 4.
“The night before he left for service,” Brooks said, “he came by to visit. He brought me and my sisters these little milk cans he’d made into rattles.”
Brooks still has her milk can rattle.
“I wouldn’t part with it,” she said.
Buried in Belgium
The family just recently learned more details of Sappington’s death.
It’s believed to have happened on Jan. 11, 1945, as he was fighting with the 309th Infantry Regiment, part of the 78th Infantry Division, in Hürtgen Forest in Germany.
A series of battles fought between midSeptember 1944 and February 1945, the Battle of Hürtgen Forest would go down as one of America’s deadliest.
More than 12,000 troops were killed in the conflict, Sappington becoming one of them when he stepped on a land mine during a fight to take two hills.
His platoon sergeant saw it happen, but in the heat of the action nothing could be done. Based in part on his report, the Army eventually decided to declare Sappington KIA.
Two years later, a local woodsman stumbled across his remains. He alerted authorities. But with no way then to identify him, Sappington was buried with other American war dead in Belgium.
Recently, with efforts underway to identify other servicemen at the site, U.S. Defense POW/ MIA Accounting Agency officials were able to narrow the identity of the remains to Sappington and one other missing soldier.
That’s when they contacted the families, who agreed to provide DNA samples.
Schneider and her brother, Gerald Bruner, also of Broken Arrow, were among the family members who provided DNA.
Bruner, born six months after Sappington’s death, never knew his uncle. But he knew how much he was missed by the family, he said.
“He was so loved by everyone,” Bruner said.
Reading his uncle’s letters home has helped him feel like he knows him.
“Two things in every letter: he always asked about (his nieces and nephews) and asked for the family to send chocolate,” he said, chuckling. “He was just a 19-yearold kid, you know.”
A prayer answered
Born on October 24, 1925, Gene Sappington was a native of the small community of Dawson just north of Tulsa.
He attended Grover Cleveland Junior High and Will Rogers High School in Tulsa.
Hunting was just about Sappington’s favorite thing to do in the world, his family said. And he liked it best when his faithful dog Red and brother Elmer were at his side.
When Sappington left for the service he gave Red, a redtick coonhound, to Elmer for safe keeping.
In a letter he wrote his mother from the war, he told her to tell Elmer “that every time he goes hunting with Red, I’m with him in spirit.”
After his younger brother didn’t return to reclaim the dog, Elmer continued to care for and hunt with him. In doing so, it was like he’d found his own way of honoring his brother’s memory.
No one was hit harder by the loss than their mother, Mabel Sappington.
“She was just devastated,” Schneider said.
Sadly, Mabel died a couple of years later in 1948, probably from a combination of her grief and diabetes, family members said.
They believe Mabel deserves much of the credit for bringing her son home.
Schneider said her grandmother would hold prayer meetings at her home every morning, inviting over friends and community members to pray for her son.
“It took a while,” she said. “But her prayer was answered.”
The results of all that praying — a DNA match — came as “wonderful news,” Bruner said. “They said it was spoton, identical.”
“It’s such a good feeling,” Schneider agreed.
On Wednesday when the remains arrive, Schneider won’t be focused on the casket so much as on an image in her mind, she said.
“In my mind, Gene will be getting off the plane, smiling and waving. That’s how I like to think about it.
“He’s finally home.”