‘BRINGING HOME A BROTHER’
Vets rally around missing Korean War medic returning to Holyoke
Cpl. Jules Hauterman Jr., killed in the bloody Battle of Chosin Reservoir, will come home Wednesday after six decades at a military cemetery in Hawaii.
The family members of a longmissing Korean War soldier are elated to learn that veterans organizations from across the Bay State are rounding up their members to welcome home the remains of the 19-year-old Army medic, who went missing during a bloody Chinese attack on U.S. troops at the Battle of Chosin Reservoir.
The newly identified remains of Army Cpl. Jules Hauterman Jr. of Holyoke will be returned to Massachusetts Wednesday after more than six decades at a military cemetery in Hawaii, where they were kept under the name “Unknown X-15904.”
“I’m ecstatic,” Hauterman’s 76-year-old cousin Robert Whelihan Sr. told the Herald last night. “It’s been so many years, a lot of years, I’ve been missing him with the whole family. After 10 or 15 years, we figured maybe we’d never find him — but we never forgot him.”
Almost 10 years younger, Whelihan said he always looked up to his older cousin.
“We were real close,” Whelihan said. “I didn’t want him to go. I gave him a big hug and a kiss, and I told him to be safe now. ... He said he would.”
Hauterman’s medical platoon was part of a 3,000-soldier combat team in North Korea that had been ordered to occupy the east side of the Chosin River in November 1950. The unit battled the Chinese People’s Volunteers for four days before withdrawing to a nearby Marine base.
Hauterman was reported missing in action after the bloody battle, which resulted in some 1,300 soldiers killed or captured.
‘After 10 or 15 years, we figured maybe we’d never find him — but we never forgot him.’ — ROBERT WHELIHAN SR. cousin
After the medic didn’t appear on periodic lists of prisoners of war, and no returning American POWs reported seeing him as a prisoner, the Army declared Hauterman dead.
A year after the Korean War ended, a set of remains were recovered from the East Chosin Reservoir and were sent for identification to a U.S. military facility in Japan in 1954. Unable to put a name to the remains, they were sent to the National Cemetery of the Pacific in Honolulu in 1955.
Whelihan said he tried for years to find his missing cousin and made trips to Washington, D.C., to search for records and helped the Pentagon get the DNA it needed to make a match. In the end, it was an X-ray chart and dental records attached to Hauterman’s military file that made that connection through the Pentagon’s Defense POW/ MIA Accounting Agency.
More than 7,750 Americans remain unaccounted for from the Korean War, according to the agency.
Hundreds of veterans are expected to answer the call from Hauterman’s family to come to Holyoke and help lay him to rest alongside his parents and sister. The veterans have also been called to celebrate his sacrifice as the military presents his relatives with his Purple Heart.
“We never forget our fallen,” said Brian Willette, an Afghanistan veteran and commander of the Military Order of the Purple Heart chapter in Holyoke. “For us, it’s like bringing home a brother. He is a brother. His loss in December 1950 is just as important as if he was lost this week. When one comes home, it’s a great thing. It’s closure for the family.”
Willette, who received the Purple Heart when he was wounded in 2010, acknowledged that “this guy was in the middle of the worst of the worst.”
“All eyes are on this,” he said. “We want to make this a great homecoming. We want to honor him every way possible.”
Hauterman’s remains will arrive at Bradley International Airport Wednesday in a flag-draped coffin and American flags will line the route from East Windsor, Conn., to the Barry J. Farrell Funeral Home in Holyoke.
Whelihan said he’ll be one of the first to welcome his hero cousin back home.
“I wouldn’t miss it if I had to walk down there,” he said, adding that the outpouring of support from area veterans organizations has meant everything to his family.
“It’s colossal,” he said. “Veterans, we all stick together. That’s the way it’s going to be.”