Families learn fate of WWII fallen from band of volunteers

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Wayne Ogren is one of the lucky ones.Not because his brother, 2nd Lt. Jack Ogren of the 317th Troop Carrier Group, died navigating a battle-worn bomber during World War II in Australia.Not because Wayne Ogren, then 11, still remembers his family receiving the news, probably through a telegram with the usual wording: "The secretary of war asks that I assure you of his deep sympathy in the loss of your son."Not because his mother Bessie broke down and wept at the slightest mention of her son's mysterious death over the years.Wayne Ogren, now 76 and living in Bremen, Ga., is lucky because one of a resourceful band of amateur history detectives spread out across the country tracked him down 60 years later to lift the veil of secrecy from his brother's death.The revelation was bittersweet."It was a mixture of being relieved, sad to remember it, and yet happy to know more than we did," Wayne Ogren said.The 65th anniversary arrives Saturday for the June 14, 1943, crash of the B-17C Flying Fortress that carried Jack Ogren and 40 other American servicemen. Only one -- Cpl. Foye Kenneth Roberts -- survived the calamity, walking away from the crash at Bakers Creek, near Mackay, Australia.At the time, some families received letters from the Army that apologized for the lack of information available about their loved ones' deaths at Bakers Creek. Wartime censorship was to blame."I wish I could offer some degree of comfort to you by giving you further details of this tragic accident," Maj. Gen. J.A. Ulio, on June 26, 1943, wrote one crash victim's mother. "I am sure you realize that when such reports are made, the circumstances surrounding the accident are seldom known. However, upon receipt of additional information, you will be promptly notified."To fill in the blanks, volunteer genealogists and historians arrayed across the country have waded through documents and put out pleas for help on RootsWeb.com, an Internet information exchange for genealogy. They've also combed through phone listings, and made cold call after cold call to puzzled possible relatives.The families of just two of the soldiers -- Pfc. Norman Goetz and Pfc. Frederick C. Sweet -- have not been found by the researchers.Goetz was born in 1919 and was buried in Saint Mary's Cemetery in Evergreen Park, Ill. Sweet was born in 1910 and buried in White Chapel Cemetery in Oakland, Mich."It's very frustrating," C.K. Gailey, an Army retiree and archaeology volunteer, said. "The first thing I discovered was that there are an awful lot of Goetzes in Chicago."If not for an antique tractor, a 1953 Farmall Super A to be exact, Wayne Ogren might still be wondering about his brother's death. In hunts like these, there's always an unexpected twist.To locate Jack Ogren's kin, Gailey checked the 1930 census reports from his home state of Ohio.Gailey found Jack Ogren in the Ashtabula, Ohio, census with his family. From there, he sleuthed through obituaries and eventually found reference to a surviving brother of Jack. Gailey, an Army retiree and archeology volunteer living in Silver Spring, Md., used Google to track the brother, Wayne, down at his home in Georgia.It was only because Wayne Ogren was interested in restoring his Farmall tractor that Gailey found him. Ogren had responded to an ad in "Red Power," a magazine for antique tractor enthusiasts, and left his e-mail address, which Gailey used to contact him."I couldn't believe there was somebody involved in trying to find the families," Wayne Ogren said.Years later, when the scant official information was declassified, the Army wouldn't have had the manpower to track down all the families like those who lost loved ones in the Bakers Creek crash, Gailey said.There were just too many. The ill-fated B-17C, which had earlier been riddled with Japanese machine gun fire in the Philippines in 1941, was later converted for troop transport to carry American servicemen from the jungles of New Guinea to rest and recreation in Mackay.The plane's nickname was "Miss Every Morning Fix It" or Miss E.M.F., according to "It Happened at Bakers Creek, Australia: A History of the Fifth Air Force's Worst Air Crash in World War II" by Robert Cutler.In 1943, it crashed shortly after takeoff, perhaps because it was overloaded and because of engine trouble. A report on the cause has never been found.Wayne Ogren recalled his brother's funeral, five years after the crash. The circumstances of his death were unknown.When Jack Ogren's body was brought back and re-interred in the United States, Wayne Ogren was 16. That's when he met his brother's widow, Bettie, whom Jack married just before being shipped overseas."It must have been a last minute decision, and there wasn't much of a honeymoon," Wayne Ogren said. She never remarried and has since died.The first volunteer researcher on the case was Teddy Hanks, a military retiree from Wichita Falls, Texas, who has since died. Gailey marveled that Hanks pieced together much of the crash history and found 18 families through low-tech methods -- without the Internet. Hanks had lost friends in the crash and later dedicated himself to finding the families and seeing the men duly honored.The Ogrens were the 23rd family located. Efforts continue not only to find the remaining two families, but also to find a permanent location on American soil for a marker honoring the crash victims. It now sits on foreign soil at the Embassy of Australia in Washington.E-mail Wichita Falls Times Record News reporter Trish Choate at choatet(at)shns.com.(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, http://www.scrippsnews.com)