A bond of brothers
Kinship among servicemen drives a search in the jungles of Papua New Guinea
Second in a series
WARANGOI, Papua New Guinea - Allan Harrison was alone in his one-seat fighter, chasing Japanese Zeros through dark clouds, when his plane began its final plunge into the jungles of New Guinea.
Now, 64 years later, all that is visible of Harrison's plane is its rusted, weather-beaten Pratt & Whitney engine, sitting upright in the mud.
Army Major George Eyster, head of a US recovery team made up largely of combat veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan, examines the site and makes a mental assessment of what might have happened: The scattered bits of debris indicate that the plane broke up - and possibly exploded - before it struck the palm trees and hit the ground.
That much Eyster can tell. But as a combat veteran himself - one who had two pilots under his own command perish in Iraq - there is another scenario that's vivid in Eyster's imagination: What those last minutes must have been like for the 19-year-old Harrison.
Before his own combat experiences, Eyster didn't quite understand what it was like to completely risk one's life, even though he came from a family of soldiers, and even though his own grandfather had made the ultimate sacrifice.
Now he knows, and that knowledge is part of what bonds him to the memory of the young fighter pilot who disappeared on February 11, 1944.
"You go into harm's way, but it doesn't really connect in your brain that you are absolutely a very vulnerable human who can die at a moment's notice," Eyster says. "It is at those moments when you have seen someone else killed or maimed that you know that you're really vulnerable. You kind of go, 'I can't run through a hail of bullets and come out the other side.' "
When Eyster was flying helicopter gunships in Iraq in 2004 and 2005, he watched from his cockpit as an American officer was shot by an insurgent whom Eyster had been chasing just moments before. It was also on that tour that the two pilots under his command were killed, both young people like Harrison.
"The relationship to that day and this is still there," says Eyster, who is 32. "While we all kind of know in our minds that the desperation of the Second World War [was greater] than the desperation of what we find ourselves in right now, it's still the same in that this was a 19-year-old kid, out there doing something that just almost defies reality."
The kinship between generations of soldiers is what drives Eyster and 30 other soldiers to come to Papua New Guinea and undertake this mission. Harrison is one of 2,228 Americans missing in the chain of islands, which were home to numerous Japanese military bases.
The six-week search for the remains of Harrison and another pilot, Marion McCown, is part of an expanding effort to locate some of the 78,000 service members unaccounted for from World War II.
The recovery team found human bones very quickly at the site of McCown's wreck. But finding identifiable remains of Harrison would require every tool and technique available to Eyster and his team from the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command.
Their interviews with villagers suggest that Harrison's remains were carried off from the crash site. Some villagers say Harrison was buried in what is now a potato patch down a 30-degree incline from the place where his plane hit the ground. Local lore holds that his skull was used in black magic rituals.
The plane's wreckage was scavenged by locals for scrap metal, including the piece of the plane stamped with Harrison's tail number - 55908. It had been photographed on the site by a local forest surveyor in 1986, but has since been stolen.
And unlike the place where McCown crashed, beside a river, there is no nearby water source to help the recovery team fully screen the soil for the smallest fragments of possible human remains.
But for Eyster, a seventh-generation Army officer who knows firsthand the harsh realities of war, bringing Harrison home - no matter how difficult or how long it takes - is the least he can do for one who made the ultimate sacrifice.
"He's a buddy," Eyster says. "We may never have known him, but he did what we did."
Eyster carries with him a case file on Harrison that includes a diagram of his fighter plane and a terse description of the man and the circumstances under which he went missing.
At 19, Lieutenant Allan S. Harrison III was the only child of Cora M. and Allan S. Harrison II, a Proctor & Gamble salesman, who grew up in a simple house on Lidstone Street in Houston.
A photograph from his Austin High School yearbook depicts a purposeful young man who had been in ROTC and was a member of a school club called Hogan's Happy Hour.
When the war came he left the University of Houston and joined the Marine Corps Reserve, setting off for flight school in Corpus Christi, Texas, and soon shipping off to the Pacific.
He wasted little time in making his mark. In less than two years in uniform, he earned the Distinguished Flying Cross and credit for numerous "kills" of Japanese fighters. His own words bristled with excitement.
"I saw a Zeke sneaking up behind two F4Us at about 4,500 feet," Harrison stated in the official daily action report after escorting bombers over nearby Kabanga Bay on January 23, 1944. "I dove down on him all the way around firing a burst every time I got him in my pipper. At about 2,000 feet he burst into flame from both wing roots."
Less than a week later, on January 29, he reported another kill: "I turned to him, he pulled out and let me get on his tail. I hit him dead astern, raking his fuselage. He, too, exploded and crashed into Kabanga Bay."
On February 7, The Houston Post, Harrison's hometown paper, extolled him as a hero who helped "bag 21 Zeros." But just four days later, amid heavy cloud cover reported between 4,000 and 8,000 feet, his plane disappeared.
Harrison "was last seen at 1055 at 20,000 feet over Bitagalip with a Zeke on his tail," his squadron's official war diary stated. "He did not return from this action and must be considered missing in action."
Later, below a photo of a grinning Harrison, his flight goggles resting on his forehead, the Houston Post relayed the sad news.
"Lt. Allan S. Harrison III, whose 20th birthday was March 6, has been missing since Feb. 11 after leaving on a mission in the Rabaul area."
The paved road out of Rabaul quickly disappears into a muddy track that winds through banana plantations. Eyster, at the wheel of a
After nearly an hour, past bamboo shacks built on stilts, the bumpy route turns through a thick patch of cocoa trees and finally banks off onto what is little more than a walking path.
A short distance ahead and down a slope sits the rusted engine of Harrison's plane.
When the recovery team arrives at the site, the members clear a wide area around the engine and scan for any metal hidden under the surface, a likely sign of additional aircraft wreckage. Then they rope off the site into grids, with little flags indicating where metal had been detected under the surface.
"I use a mix of archeological and crime-scene investigation techniques," says Paul Emanovsky, the team's forensic anthropologist, who analyzed crime scenes for the Chicago police and has led MIA recovery missions around the world.
After more than a week of backbreaking work in the equatorial heat, team members are still digging in the area where they first began, a crater believed to be where the burning plane hit the ground. Others continue to dig at a separate location a few dozen yards away, where local lore says a pilot was buried after the crash.
The signs aren't all bad.
"We have found some things that might have been on the pilot, like hardware from the parachute and a torso harness," Emanovsky says. But so far, no bones or other human remains have turned up.
Frustration begins to set in.
"We should've probably found some bone by now," complains Marine Corps Master Sergeant Jon Couturier, the 36-year-old leader of the soldiers and local helpers digging at the site.
Eyster, who moves between this site and that of McCown's plane, checking on progress, starts to become concerned. At the other site, they are already bagging remains.
In his khaki shorts and worn Florida State baseball cap, Eyster looks as if he stepped out of one of his favorite movies, "The Big Lebowski," which he plays on his laptop computer to relieve tension.
He spends his free time fishing, playing rugby, and watching movies. His tastes range from "Lebowski," about an unemployed ex-hippie bowler, to the epic miniseries about World War II, "Band of Brothers."
But underneath the casual exterior is a highly disciplined military officer with a deep sense of responsibility for his own band of brothers.
Eyster is the fifth George C. Eyster. His father was an Army colonel who served in the 1991 Gulf War. His grandfather, a lieutenant colonel, was killed in the Vietnam War in 1966. His great-grandfather was a one-star general who served on Dwight Eisenhower's staff in World War II.
For as long as he can remember he has been striving to live up to all those other George Eysters, whose military portraits wereproudly displayed on the walls of his childhood homes.
"I have a Lieutenant Dan complex," he remarks on more than one occasion, referring to the character in the movie "Forrest Gump" who struggles to live up to earlier generations who died for their country on the battlefield.
"I figured everybody was in the military and wore camouflage to work," he quips. "It is our family's industry."
When his grandfather was killed in Vietnam, Eyster's father, in a mourning protest, turned his back on invitations to enter West Point. But he later found his own path to becoming an officer.
Thirty years later, Eyster himself had nearly completed Army Ranger School - an intense, nine-week combat leadership course - when his father died suddenly of a heart attack. He considered quitting rather than going through the course all over again, but ultimately decided to push on.
"My family serves the nation in this capacity, and it is my responsibility to do that," he says. "I still feel that way, in some senses, but I am old enough to know that I've done my part. At the same time, when I have a son . . . I would be proud to see him become an officer in the Army."
Such a commitment brings with it a special appreciation for the costs of military service. The loss of his grandfather still casts a long shadow over Eyster and his family.
"It has shaped our lives," he says.
Even still, when he visits his grandmother - who was widowed with five children - "the talk is about nothing but him."
"She is not bitter," he adds, "but she is quite sad."
Growing up, Eyster believed the Army's pledge to "leave no man behind" was sacred. He still feels that way. He knows that what he is doing in seeking to recover MIAs is important - important for family members of missing veterans who've waited decades for closure and important for today's soldiers, who need to know they won't be forgotten.
"I feel a connection with the countless number of service members that are still awaiting their homecoming," Eyster says. "My family's history with the Army amplifies that feeling and strengthens my resolve."
Team members play word games to help pass the monotonous hours sifting dirt through quarter-inch screens in search of Harrison's remains.
"We are doing it day-in, day-out for months at a time," says Sergeant Danna L. Forester, the team's 35-year-old photographer, as she runs a gloved hand over a screen piled with fresh earth. "But it's worth it because families back home may get some answers."
On this site, the answers are coming slowly. "It does get discouraging as time goes on, on a mission when you're not finding anything," Emanovsky says.
A short time later, as the midday sun hits its zenith, an excited Sergeant Christopher Mayberry, 24, thinks he has found something.
Sweat pouring down his face, he dashes up the hill to where Emanovsky is looking through scraps of rusted metal.
Mayberry, holding a fragment he found between his fingers, is hoping to earn the bragging rights - and free beer from Emanovsky - for uncovering the first "osseous " material, or bone.
After a close inspection, however, Emanovsky dashes his hopes: It is a piece of pumice, not bone.
"Bone can be different colors, depending on the environment," Emanovsky explains. "It can be ivory, or it can even be blue if it has been lying near oxidized metal. Bone can look like burnt bamboo."
The digging and the sifting continue, punctuated only by breaks every 40 to 50 minutes for water and insect repellant.
A short time later, as the team is preparing to call it a day, Forester picks though a bucket filled with shards of metal and other debris set aside earlier by the screeners. Her determined expression melts away and eyebrows rise up when something catches her eye.
Emanovsky is called to weigh in. He presses the fragment gently in his fingers and turns it over several times.
The team members wait anxiously for his verdict. It is a piece of skull, he finally anounces, setting off high fives and backslapping. It is too small to extract DNA, he says, but nevertheless exactly what they are looking for.
The bone fragment is quickly traced to one of the pits in the area where locals said an American pilot had been buried.
"It's a good sign," Emanovsky says.
Two days later, more pieces of the puzzle fall into place.
The team digs up two .50-caliber machine guns, along with a serial number confirming for the first time since the recovery began that the plane wreck is indeed Harrison's.
And near where the the skull fragment was found, the team locates what is still considered the holy grail in making a positive identification: a human molar.
On May 14, the suspected remains of Lieutenant Allan S. Harrison III and Captain Marion R. McCown, United States Marine Corps Reserve, were placed in a specially designed transfer cases and carried into a small chapel at the headquarters of the Papua New Guinea Defense Force, in the island nation's capital city of Port Moresby.
A US military honor guard - recovery team members in their full dress uniforms - draped the cases with American flags, stood at attention, and saluted their fallen comrades.
The solemn repatriation ceremony marked the beginning of the pilots' final journey home to the United States.
The first stop will be the Central Identification Laboratory in Honolulu, where scientists will test the bones for DNA and examine the teeth for markings consistent with each pilot's medical records. Then, once positive identifications are confirmed, the pilots will each receive a proper burial - in a family plot, if one is located, or in a military cemetery.
At the repatriation ceremony, Eyster sat among the official party of about 50 people, including the chief of operations for the Papua New Guinea Defense Force as well as representatives from the national museum, the US Embassy, the Australian High Commission, and the Australian War Graves Commission.
His work, for now, is done. He will have a few weeks to rest up for his next mission. But his thoughts, at this time, are of his own future.
"If I live all of my years, and I die in Tallahassee, I don't care what you do with me - it doesn't matter to me," he says, imagining his own funeral. "If I die in Iraq, I do care. I don't want you to leave my body in any other place but America."
Bryan Bender, Kevin Baron, and Yoon S. Byun spent a week in Papua New Guinea with Major George Eyster and his recovery team as they searched for two missing pilots last month. Bender also reported from the team's headquarters in Honolulu. Bender can be reached at bender@globe.com, baron at kbaron@globe.com and byun at byun@globe.com
Tomorrow: A crash-site find helps unearth stories of women who aided the war effort. 