Science brings soldier home for burial
Almost 67 years later, Sgt. returns from Korean War
A scientific breakthrough decades from discovery when a young Milwaukee soldier died on a famed Korean War battlefield finally brought him home for burial beside his parents on Saturday.
Next-generation DNA sequencing, which became available to military forensics about a year ago, helped lab technicians and scientists conclusively identify the bone-fragment remains of U.S. Army Sgt. Thomas E. Zimmer nearly 67 years after he died.
A joint U.S. and Korean People’s Army recovery team had actually found his remains in 2004 at the Chosin Reservoir in North Korea, where he fought and died a few weeks before Christmas 1950.
But Zimmer’s genetic code was obscured for another 12 years by a formaldehyde preservative. Last year, scientists used the new technology to cut through the formaldehyde, do mitochondrial DNA sequencing and match his DNA with his family.
His family got the call just before Christmas — 66 years after he died — that the military had officially found him, said JoEllen Mengert, a niece in Columbus, Ga. She never met Zimmer but knew of him through her mother, Zimmer’s little sister, Eleanor Mengert.
The young soldier’s parents, Henry and Nora Zimmer, died not knowing what happened to him. So did his two older brothers, Harry and Norman. He is survived by Eleanor, now 85, as well as nieces, nephews and other relatives.
“He’s always been remembered throughout our family,” JoEllen Mengert said Saturday.
For years, Eleanor Mengert flew a flag on a flagpole outside her Waukesha home, with a nameplate bearing her missing brother’s name.
She also kept his memory alive by sharing childhood stories — like the time she and Tom were playing with neighborhood kids in the alley behind their south-side Milwaukee house and they climbed up on a garage roof to pick apples.
Someone called the police.
When they heard the sirens, the boys scrambled off the roof, leaving Eleanor behind. The police ended up helping her off the roof.
“It was a relief and amazement when they identified him after all these years,” JoEllen Mengert said of her uncle. “At the same time, it was bittersweet. My other two uncles had passed away within the previous year.”
Tom Zimmer was the third of four children. His family lived near S. 9th St. and W. Greenfield Ave. He attended Kosciusko High School but did not graduate because he enlisted in the Army when he was 17.
He served with Battery A, 57th Field Artillery Battalion, 31st Regimental Combat Team, 7th Infantry. He died at age 19. In late November 1950, the Chinese attacked and forced Zimmer’s Regimental Combat Team to withdraw from the east side of the frozen Chosin Reservoir to Hagaru-ri,
Chinese forces surrounded many soldiers, who attempted to escape, but they were captured or killed. Zimmer survived that battle.
But overnight beginning Dec. 5, a large Chinese force attacked the Hagaru-ri perimeter held by Zimmer’s Regimental
Combat Team. Zimmer was declared missing in action on Dec. 6.
His name never appeared on lists provided by the Chinese People’s Volunteer Forces or the Korean People’s Army as a prisoner of war. No returning American prisoner could provide information about him.
The U.S. Army declared him deceased on Dec. 31, 1953.
When the Army notified Zimmer’s parents of his death, his father was so devastated, he never spoke about him again, JoEllen Mengert said her mother told her.
On Saturday — a picture-perfect fall day in Zimmer’s hometown — a hearse carried him back to his parents in a fullsize wooden casket draped with an
American flag. He was buried beside them in Arlington Park Cemetery on Milwaukee’s south side, following services at the Rozga-Walloch Funeral Home.
He received full military honors, and a folded and pinned dress uniform was tucked inside his casket.
Among those honoring him with a final salute was Robert Boulden of Burlington, a rifleman in the 1st Marine Division’s 1st Signal Battalion who fought on the same battlefield as Zimmer, but in a different area of the Chosin Reservoir.
The two soldiers never met, but Boulden felt compelled to be there for Zimmer’s rifle salute.
“We were together in that battle,” Boulden said. “The guys we lost were our heroes.”