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The remains of Army Sgt. Charles Patterson Whitler, found in North Korea and identified through family DNA samples, was interred with full military honors at his hometown of Cloverport in Breckinridge County near Elizabethtown, Kentucky this summer.
Whitler a member of 3rd Battalion, 8th Cavalry Regiment, 1st Cavalry Division, was 22 when on November 2, 1950 he went missing in the area around Unsan, North Korea. Whitler, had just returned to duty from an earlier wound. Until June 2010 Whitler’s family had no idea what had actually happened to him.
U.S. military officials say that Whitler was in a group of 10 U.S. soldiers captured by Chinese troops. It appears that all 10 U.S. soldiers handed over to North Korean soldiers, took them to a nearby farm field and gunned them down. Only three Americans survived and only one of them has told their story publicly.
A U.S.-North Korea search team discovered remains of the seven victims in a mass grave in 2004. Experts from the U.S. Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command then began the process of DNA identification. In addition to Whitler the remains of Cpl. Harry Reeve have also been identified at this time.
“I remember the day we heard he was missing like it was yesterday,” said Mary K. Mitchell, Whitler’s youngest sister. Mitchell who was only 5 at the time, remembers that day clearly because that same evening her father died of a heart attack.
About a 10 years, Mitchell, hoping to find clues to her brother’s whereabouts, began searching military records and talking with Korean War veterans. She also donated a sample of her DNA, so that if remains were ever found they could be identified. Another sister, Sandra Robinson, now deceased, also had given a DNA sample. Mitchell said it was Robinson’s DNA that forensic experts ultimately used to identify Whitler.
Mary was notified in June that Charles Whitler remains had been identified. She said, ”I was so stunned, it’s still hard to get my mind around it. The fact that Pat is going to be brought home and buried beside his mother and father after so long, it’s just incredible. All I really wanted was to learn what had happened. I never dreamed they would actually find him.”
While many MIA families have given samples, the Kentucky Division of Veterans Affairs says it still has no DNA on file for 12 Kentuckians missing in Korea. The are hoping that the news of these sucessfully identified individuals will encorage more families to give samples.
