Remains of Brooklyn veteran killed in World War II identified; Army Lt. John Heffernan Jr. to be buried Saturday
NEWARK, N.J. -- It took nearly eight decades, but the remains of a World War II veteran are heading back to the U.S.
As CBS2s Dick Brennan reported Monday night, the soldier's only living relative can now give him a proper burial.
"Respect, finality, closure," Andrew McVeigh said.
McVeigh said he can at long last mourn the man he only knew from family lore -- his uncle, U.S Army Lt. John Heffernan Jr.
"Meeting a person that you had heard so much about, and was such a presence in your life, but you didn't know," McVeigh said.
Heffernan was a navigator on a B-24 heading to bomb Japanese rails in Burma, when his plane was apparently shot down, killing everyone on board, including the tough kid from Crown Heights, Brooklyn.
"The Army made an effort to recover the body, and they were just unsuccessful. My grandmother set out to ... she didn't give up," McVeigh said.
But all efforts failed. That is, until the Army reached out to McVeigh and his mother to provide DNA tests in 2015, leading to the match with remains that were found.
"I got a call and they said we have confirmatory evidence of a ... we used the DNA and got a confirmatory response that we found his remains," McVeigh said, adding he was "astounded."
And, incredibly, that's not all that was found.
"These were artifacts that were his that were recovered at the crash sites," McVeigh said.
They included buttons from his uniform, part of something called a binocular that a navigator would use, and the single bar that Heffernan would proudly wear, an insignia of a first lieutenant in the Army.
The Army also gave McVeigh the medals his uncle would never get to look back on years later.
"The one with the blue and the gold was the Air Service Medal," McVeigh said.
So now McVeigh and his wife and family can finally salute their first lieutenant, who will stay forever young in a black and white photo at age 24, who never became the doctor he was studying to be. But he did become something else: a hero for his country, who got in a plane over and over again on a mission to save a nation.
Three terrifying tours in a B-24.
"The odds of your survival were extraordinarily low," McVeigh said. "Every day this is literally likely to be your last day."
The Department of Defense continually seeks to account for Americans who went missing while serving our country, and following every lead. That's how Lt. Heffernan's remains were found. So, incredibly, after being killed in February 1944, this American hero will be buried this Saturday, Nov. 19, 2022.