82Marine89
10-14-2007, 09:32 PM
LOUISVILLE, Ky. - Nearly six decades after he was killed fighting in the Korean War, a Marine is going home to Kentucky.
Donald Morris Walker was 19 when he was killed on Dec. 7, 1950, fighting at the Chosin Reservoir in Korea, where outnumbered U.S. forces faced a Chinese onslaught in one of the war's bloodiest battles.
He was buried in an area that the Marines evacuated and that fell under North Korean and Chinese control. The United States was allowed to exhume the remains in 1954, but for decades they were buried at a military cemetery in Hawaii as an unknown soldier.
Troy Kitch, a spokesman for the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command in Hawaii, confirmed the identification.
"It's very good news," said Walker's niece Carolyn Stewart of Louisville. "We've heard so many different stories. There was no closure. Even though my grandmother isn't alive to know, at least we know."
It isn't clear where Walker will be interred, but Stewart said she wants her uncle buried at Arlington National Cemetery outside Washington.
Donald Morris Walker was 19 when he was killed on Dec. 7, 1950, fighting at the Chosin Reservoir in Korea, where outnumbered U.S. forces faced a Chinese onslaught in one of the war's bloodiest battles.
He was buried in an area that the Marines evacuated and that fell under North Korean and Chinese control. The United States was allowed to exhume the remains in 1954, but for decades they were buried at a military cemetery in Hawaii as an unknown soldier.
Troy Kitch, a spokesman for the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command in Hawaii, confirmed the identification.
"It's very good news," said Walker's niece Carolyn Stewart of Louisville. "We've heard so many different stories. There was no closure. Even though my grandmother isn't alive to know, at least we know."
It isn't clear where Walker will be interred, but Stewart said she wants her uncle buried at Arlington National Cemetery outside Washington.