Lost to war, he’s now home at last
Pfc. Martin vanished in Korea’s brutal, icy Chosin battlefield 68 years ago.
Schuyler Dolton f lew across the country Friday, escorting the remains of a great-great-uncle who died almost five decades before he was born.
As Dolton’s grandmother, grandfather, aunts and uncles grew emotional on the tarmac at Albany International Airport, the 21-year-old Airman 1st Class stood at attention while the f lag-covered casket of Army Pfc. John Martin was carried to a waiting hearse for his final journey to a cemetery in Schuylerville.
Dolton is from the latest generation of a family that can trace its military service back to the American Revolutionary War. On Friday, it was his mission to make sure an ancestor killed on a frigid Korean battlefield nearly 68 years ago finally made it home.
“It’s been a very humbling experience,” Dolton said.
Martin vanished on Dec. 2, 1950, as U.N. forces battled the Chinese army at the Battle of the Chosin Reservoir — a brutal, protracted fight in a mountainous area where temperatures dropped as low as minus 35 degrees, and casualties were high on both sides.
Martin’s remains were lost in North Korea along with thousands of other combatants in the battle. While they were turned over to the U.S. military in 2001, it took another 17 years before DNA tests could link the remains to a sample provided by one of Martin’s brothers, who died in 2012 without getting confirmation that his sibling had been found.
The family — including Martin’s nieces, nephews and their children — gathered in a quiet waiting room at the airport’s fire station and waited for Delta Flight 2401 to land.
“I don’t think of it as a mourning,” said Marina Wilson, one of Martin’s nieces. “It’s just extreme sadness for the siblings and his parents because they didn’t have the experience of him coming home.”
Members of the military, State Police, firefighters, and airport staff stood at attention as an honor guard carried the casket off the plane.
“Everyone’s been so gracious and warm and caring for a man who’s been gone for 68 years,” said Nora Santore, the daughter of Martin’s sister Eleanor, as a van brought the family back to the firehouse.
Martin’s parents and all of his siblings died before his remains were identified. “They’re all up there watching the spec-
tacle,” Santore said.
The soldier will be buried next to his parents Sunday at Prospect Hill Cemetery in Schuylerville.
The November-december 1950 battle at Chosin Reservoir “had significant, far-reaching consequences,” said Courtney Burns, the director of the state Military Museum in Saratoga Springs.
The civil war on the peninsula, at that point only six months old, had already seen a series of reversals — including the June 1950 North Korean invasion across the 38th Parallel, which was repulsed by the United Nations coalition force in the weeks that followed. The U.N. forces pushed back across the border in late summer, and inflicted regular defeats on the North Koreans. Gen. Douglas Macarthur promised victory by Christmas, and pressed the enemy closer to the Chinese border. But Burns and other military historians said Macarthur’s gambit taxed supply lines and underestimated the possibility of a counteroffensive by Chinese forces, who had entered the war on the North Korean side in October on the orders of Chairman Mao Zedong.
Martin was a member of the Medical Company, 32nd Infantry Regiment, 7th Infantry Division, one of the divisions that were part of X Corp’s amphibious invasion of the Korean peninsula at Wonsan in October.
As the Chinese closed in near Chosin Reservoir, both sides faced sub-zero temperatures — explosives were needed to create foxholes in frozen ground — and supply shortages. Veterans of the battle call themselves the “Chosin Frozen” and “Chosin Few.”
X Corps was eventually able to escape to the sea; the Marines fought their way south, suffering heavy casualties.
By Dec. 6, the Army had evacuated roughly 1,500 service members. The remaining soldiers — more than half of the original force — had been captured or killed, or were missing in enemy territory.
The history of the battle, Burns said, “just speaks to the individual valor and perseverance of the individual soldiers involved.”
Martin’s name did not subsequently appear on prisoner of war lists, and no returning POWS reported seeing him among the captured. He was declared deceased as of Dec. 31, 1951. Five years later, his remains were declared “non-recoverable.”
His family spent years pleading with the U.S. military in the hopes of learning his fate. Their relatives say they never gave up hope Martin would one day make it home.