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Services held for WW II pilot last seen 60 years ago

By Matt Schudel
The Washington Post

Father Isidore Dixon speaks at the service for 2nd Lt. Jack Dyer at Cheltenham Veterans Cemetery in Upper Marlboro, Md., last week.

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The Wednesday ritual could have been any of the scenes playing out across the country as the U.S. dead return from Iraq, but this was a different kind of military burial.

The family of 2nd Lt. John Robert "Jack" Dyer had gathered to honor a man last seen in 1944 and who exists today mostly in fragments of memory. It's taken 60 long years for his story to reach its end.

Dyer was one of 113,000 U.S. fighting men from World War II who were missing in action and never found.

On Dec. 29, 1944, during the Battle of the Bulge, he was flying a P-47 Thunderbolt fighter over the border of Belgium and Luxembourg when he was hit by anti-aircraft fire. Two other pilots saw his plane go down, but his body never was recovered. He was 21.

	SARAH L. VOISIN / THE WASHINGTON POST Jean Dyer Davis, left, Jack Dyer's widow, and their daughter Carolyn Sowell hold flags presented to them during the service for the World War II pilot.

Twice, in 1947 and in 1950, investigations failed to turn up his airplane or his remains. But two years ago, a team of forensic scientists from a military base in Hawaii went to Luxembourg and sifted through soil, bones and metal to discover the place where Dyer had come to rest, if not to peace.

They unearthed an ID bracelet with his name engraved on it. They found teeth, which matched dental records the Army had on file. They found foil packets of powdered lemon juice, a Catholic medallion and a set of wings from a pilot's uniform.

And in a field that a farmer had filled with animal carcasses and trash, investigators dug up a stained and scorched dog tag, clearly imprinted with the name "John R. Dyer."

In March, an Army representative called Carolyn Davis Sowell, Jack Dyer's only daughter, at her home in Clinton, Md. Finally, there was an accounting for the father she never knew.

	A photo of 2nd Lt. Dyer in his P-47 fighter was displayed at his funeral.

"Just eight little teeth and a piece of his dog tags made it real," she said.

In 1947, her widowed mother had married a soldier who made it back from the war, and Sowell, now 59, grew up as the adopted daughter of Robert Lee "Bossy" Davis, a former Washington, D.C., firefighter.

"I couldn't have had a better father," she said of Davis, who died in 2002.

But the rediscovery of Jack Dyer has raised questions that no one knew needed to be asked.

"He died two weeks after I was born," she said. "I wonder what my life would have been like with a different dad."

Sowell didn't have a picture until about 10 years ago, when a friend of her mother's found a photograph of a dashing Dyer in the cockpit of his P-47, wearing an Errol Flynn mustache and a weary half-smile. He had black hair, brown eyes and dramatically arching eyebrows.

"It was the first time I saw anyone in my family who looked like me," Sowell said.

Beyond the sepia image of youth, though, the full picture of Jack Dyer never quite comes into focus.

Dyer's widow, Jean Dyer Davis, is 83 and living in Chester, Md. She was Elinor Jean Hull when she married Dyer on Feb. 9, 1941. They had met on a blind date less than three weeks earlier and had run away to South Carolina.

She was 20 years old at the time; Dyer was 17.

"Only I didn't know it," she said. "He lied to me. He said he was 21."

Dyer was born May 1, 1923, according to military records, but his age was not the only thing about him that was a mystery.

"I know very little about his family," Jean Davis said. But she did learn these things: "His mother committed suicide, and his father had a drinking problem."

The Army had wanted to bury Dyer with full military honors at Arlington National Cemetery, but Sowell had another idea. She asked that the ceremony take place at Cheltenham Veterans Cemetery in Upper Marlboro.

That's where Jack Dyer was laid to rest Wednesday, in a fresh plot barely 100 feet from the grave of Robert Davis, Sowell's adoptive father, who had been a quartermaster in North Africa during World War II.

As the echoes from the honor guard's rifles ceased and the bugler's final note faded, Jack Dyer had made his last and best journey home.

Copyright © 2004 The Seattle Times Company

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